Labor Unrest Rocks Wisconsin
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[Saturday] Around 40,000 people surrounded the Capitol square in Madison by 1pm Saturday, continuing to demand "Kill the Bill". 500 police officers were reported to be stationed around the square, although the organized protests have largely cooprated with the police so far - the UW Teaching Assistants Association, for example, has urged protesters not to block bridges around downtown. Police have also been reported to be limiting entry to the Capitol.
A corporate-media hyped Tea Party counter-protest scheduled for noon has turned out fewer than 500 pro-Walker demonstrators so far. Students have set up an "information station" as a sort of protest HQ. At 5pm Monday, Tom Morello and Rage Against the Machine will play at the capitol. Walker, meanwhile, has postponed a schedule budget addresss until March 1.
Watch Live via TheUptake
[UPDATE 9pm Thurs] Democratic state senators depart for Illinois to prevent quorum on vote; Protests continue across state including Hudson Saturday; UW Walkout called for 11:11am Friday, Capitol Rally 12pm Friday; Call for actions outside of WI; Madison schools to close Friday; TheUptake.org will report from Madison; follow on twitter #wiunion #killthisbill @DefendWisconsin ]
The largest protests in Wisconsin in years continued Thursday at the state capitol in Madison, which was occupied by upset state workers earlier this week in response to Governor Scott Walker's proposal to cut salaries, benefits and collective bargaining rights and his threat to call in the National Guard against the workers. On Wednesday, Walker's measure was advanced in committee, and the State Senate is expected to take up the measure today.
Related: Capitol Times: Protests Build on Square, in Capitol Again; Streets Shut Down | Dave Zirin: Green Bay Packers Sound Off Against Scott "Hosni" Walker | AFL-CIO: Rally Grows to 30,000 | The Nation: Largest WI Protests Since Vietnam | Joined by Students | Wisconsin AFL-CIO Blog | In St. Paul: MN Capitol Echoes with Chants of "Jobs Now"
Photo: Hundreds spent the night inside the State Capitol (WI AFL-CIO)
Below -- Workday Minnesota reports: Thousands Protest, Close Schools in Response to Wisconsin Governor's Plan
http://workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4763
16 February 2011
MADISON, Wis. - Schools in Madison were closed Wednesday as hundreds of teachers joined thousands of people at the state Capitol to protest Governor Scott Walker’s plan to strip workers’ rights. The Wisconsin State Journal reported schools had closed because many teachers called in sick so they could participate in protests for a second day. On Tuesday, some 15,000 people massed inside the Capitol and on the grounds to oppose the Republican governor’s plan to eliminate collective bargaining rights for many of the state’s public employees.Hearings were under way Wednesday on Walker’s proposal in the Republican-controlled Legislature.
People marched in Madison Wednesday to protest Governor Scott Walker's plan to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights.
Photo by Melissa Ryan
Under Walker’s plan, unions could still represent workers, but could not seek pay increases above the Consumer Price Index unless approved by a public referendum. Unions also could not force employees to pay dues and would have to hold annual votes to stay organized. Local police, firefighters and state troopers – all of whom endorsed Walker in the 2010 election – would retain their collective bargaining rights.
Walker said he will not negotiate any changes to his plan and if the Legislature doesn’t pass it, he will force massive layoffs, crippling state services and costing thousands of jobs. He has also threatened to call in the National Guard against workers.
Many protesters drew a comparison between their struggle to retain their rights and the efforts of Egyptians to fight autocratic rule. Signs compared Walker’s actions to ousted Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak’s iron rule of Egypt, including “Hosni Walker,” “Don’t Dictate, Negotiate,” and “Dictators Will Fall.”
Mike Oliver, a retired member of the Communications Workers of America told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “I am here to support my fellow union members. I am all for the governor balancing the budget, but not on the backs of state workers.”
Wisconsin was the first state in the nation to grant public employees collective bargaining rights. Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt says Walker is “using the Trojan horse of a budget bill” to change the long-standing state workers’ rights policy. He also says the Walker’s plan will hit at the private sector as well.
“This is an attack not just on unions, but the entire middle class,” Neuenfeldt said. “Because as we fare around wages and benefits, so do those workers who are not represented.”
Along with eliminating collective bargaining rights, Walker’s budget plan calls for big pay and benefit cuts for state workers. A report by the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future released Monday estimates the cuts in take-home pay will cost the state $1.1 billion in reduced economic activity annually and cost some 9,000 private sector jobs.
This article includes information from the national AFL-CIO’s news blog.
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Comments
Wisconsin - can they take the right to organize?
This is the big one, right?
Have you ever fought to win a union? With the bosses bringing in high-priced union-busting consultants and playing every illegal trick in the book? Want to do that every year? With huge National Labor Review Board turnaround times so the bosses union-bust in April and you hear from the labor review board six months later, and then maybe you get to do your election again, with the loss of time and money and energy that gets you, and then again, and again and again. If a union is campaigning all year every year for the right to exist, it will die. It will lose.
And if unions can only negotiate on pay, they can't negotiate on hours, or tenure, or unjust firings. So you're getting sexually harassed? Well, you can just find the money to sue, because your union won't be able to help you. And if your boss wants sixty hours a week instead of forty? Tough shit. Unsafe working conditions? Penalized for taking sick time? Take-backs on health insurance? Check, check and check.
That's what the right is angling for, and that's what the democrats will roll right on over and give them, because a liberal politician has more in common with a conservative politician--good job, fast access to think tank employment if they need it, no worries about their health care or their retirement--than either of them do with us.
And politicians have learned--they're no dummies, even if they like to play dumb--that they can let us run our mouths and camp out on their steps and make all the speeches we like, until we have to go back to work, or have to take care of our kids, or can't afford to be away from home. Then they'll do whatever the hell they please. That's the great lesson of the last ten years. That's the great lesson of Obama.
Now, if we're lucky the union-busting angle is just a feint--they'll drop it as a "compromise" if the dems accept the rest of the budget cuts and the gutting of the pension plan. But they'll come back for it next time--they're like vampires, a little blood tonight, a little more next time...and then whoops, they've drained you dry.
And you know? I don't see a good outcome. We're weak, and we're communicating poorly, and we're foolish, and we're in a bad time. Politicians know they don't have to fear us, not in the voting booth and not on the streets. They don't even have to pretend anymore.
And what I should have
And what I should have added--if it happens there, it will happen here. It may take a couple of years, that's all.
And rumor has it that at lobby day in MN yesterday, the AFL-CIO was instructing people not to talk about what's going on in Wisconsin. Do they think that if they don't mention it, our legislators will never find out that it happened? Do they think that our legislators are nicer? If unions can't stand up for unions, then maybe we deserve to lose.
Wisconsin: Mobilize Workers’ Power to Defeat Union-Busting Bill!
This leaflet is being distributed today in Wisconsin and New York.
Republicans, Democrats Are the Parties of Capital -- We Need a Class-Struggle Workers Party!
Wisconsin: Mobilize Workers’ Power to Defeat Union-Busting Bill!
Yesterday thousands of workers and students occupied the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison while tens of thousands surrounded the building for the third day in a row seeking to block the vicious “budget repair” bill being rammed through the state legislature by Governor Scott Walker. The unions have called on all 98,000 teachers to head to the capital Friday. Already so many have “sicked out” that the Madison schools had to shut down. The university is up in arms. This is the most massive labor mobilization in the United States in years. It shows that the working class is mad as hell and ready to fight. We have the power to stop Walker in his tracks. But to mobilize that power it’s necessary to break with the parties and politicians of capital and build a workers party that can wage this class struggle through to victory.
A demonstrator held up a sign in the capitol’s corridors saying “The Class War Is Here.” That is so right. This is perhaps the most blatant piece of union-busting legislation since the days when labor unions were prosecuted under “criminal syndicalism” laws early in the last century. Slashing wages and benefits with a meat ax, the right-wing Republican Walker is going after the state’s public sector workers with a vengeance. The bill would effectively eliminate collective bargaining, while threatening to bring in the National Guard if the unions dare strike. But this assault on labor will not not be stopped by relying on the Democrats, whose most audacious act has been to flee the state. Legislative grandstanding may delay a vote but it will not win this battle. Workers’ power can.
There should be an immediate statewide public workers strike to sink the anti-labor bill, and it needs to rapidly spread to all sectors of labor to shut Wisconsin down. Teachers should mobilize together with students and parents to turn schools into strike organizing centers. Teamsters should tie up the Interstate highways with their rigs. There should be appeals for solidarity action elsewhere in the country. The resistance in Wisconsin can electrify the country, just as the occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago did in December 2008 – but on a far larger scale. It will take nothing less than a statewide general strike to defeat labor hater Walker. But union leaders block militant action as they chain workers to the Democrats. Now is the time to unleash labor’s power – it's use it or lose it!
The Wisconsin anti-union bill is only the first of a slew of anti-union bills outlawing strikes and hamstringing public sector workers. Hundreds of labor unionists jammed into the Ohio state capitol in Columbus on Tuesday and again yesterday to protest Senate Bill 5, which would eliminate collective bargaining. The Illinois legislature is gearing up to ban teachers’ strikes. In New York, where strikes by public sector workers are already outlawed under the state’s infamous Taylor Law, Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo is slashing health care and education while threatening to rip up pensions and go after union seniority provisions in the state constitution. New York City’s billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg is threatening thousands of teacher layoffs. But they are not alone: Democrat Barack Obama in the White House has taken the lead in freezing government workers’ wages and spearheading attacks on teachers unions.
The fact is that the assault on labor is not just some right-wing Tea Party affair – it is a bipartisan capitalist attack, and it can only be defeated by mobilizing working people, the poor and oppressed independently of and against the parties of the bosses. A number of left groups (including the International Socialist Organization, Socialist Alternative, the Socialist Equality Party and other social democrats) call to “tax the rich” to make up for budget shortfalls. The rulers are not short of dollars. Bankers are making money hand over fist. A single hedge fund manager gave himself a cool $5 billion last year, triple the size of the Wisconsin state deficit. The U.S. spends trillions on its imperialist wars and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. And if state treasuries had more cash, you can bet your bottom dollar they wouldn’t use it to fund public education. The purpose of this budget battle is to smash the unions!
We must stand and fight or see decades of union gains go down the tubes in a race to the bottom. Working people must break with the Democratic Party of racist police repression and imperialist war, and forge a class-struggle workers party that defends all the oppressed in fighting for socialist revolution. It’s us or them.
For more information, write to: Internationalist Group, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008. Telephone: (212) 460-0983 E-mail: internationalistgroup@msn.com
Visit the IG/LFI on the Internet at www.internationalist.org
The correct course course of action,
The correct course course of action, as L. Neil Smith has written, is to shut down all the government's mind control mills, raze the buildings so that not a single stone remains standing on another, and sow salt on the ruins.music torrents