Walker’s Anti-Labor Law Null and Void

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

The good news is that a Wisconsin judge has ruled Gov. Walker’s anti-labor law, Act 10, null and void, restoring collective bargaining rights to Wisconsin’s public sector workers and the right to collect dues through payroll deductions. The bad news is that even if his appeal is rejected Wisconsin’s public sector workers will be back to where they were prior to the enactment of Act 10.

Key sections of Walker’s controversial anti-labor law were ruled unconstitutional by Dane County Judge Juan Colas. According to the Nation, Madison Teachers Inc. director John Matthews, whose union had filed the lawsuit, declared that “We are back to where we were before Scott Walker moved to take away our rights.” That is to say that they have the same low wages, the same mediocre health coverage, the same weak pension benefits, and the same weak unions (also, see here) that would rather send their members home from the nation’s largest workers’ protests in a generation with the promise of electoral victories that never come, than fight their rulers in the streets through a General Strike or even smaller local strikes.

As long as Wisconsin workers occupied the state building and the streets and were not on the job, they were cutting into the profits, ease and sense of security typically enjoyed by the ruling class. This is when they were at their most powerful and this is when they had the greatest chance of demanding and winning better working conditions, wage increases, shorter hours. Granted, the protests had originated as a struggle against Act 10, which which the unions spun as an attack on collective bargaining rights and the automatic dues check off. However, Walker had also demanded a 20% pay cut, which angered the rank and file. And even if the protests had begun with an emphasis on restoring collective bargaining, large sustained workers’ struggles and General Strikes can result in increased worker confidence and empowerment, inspiring them to demand more.

It is also important to remember that collective bargaining is a means to an end. It is an efficient way to win improvements in working conditions and pay, but only when backed with the threat of a strike. Without the force of a job action, the bosses have no incentive to give the workers anything and they generally don’t. Unions need to put the time and resources into organizing their members to strike, educating them as to why strikes are necessary and powerful, and prepare them to do so at the drop of a hat. Otherwise, they cannot accomplish much through the collective bargaining process.

The sad reality is that most unions today are terrified of strikes and avoid them like the plague. They simply do not invest the time and resources necessary to prime their members for the possibility of a strike, choosing instead to spend their resources on political campaigns and lobbying. And they sometimes actively discourage strike actions.

The case in Wisconsin was particularly telling.  Not only did the unions discourage a General Strike, but they essentially ignored Walker’s demand for a 20% pay cut, focusing almost entirely on preserving collective bargaining rights and automatic dues check offs. Some were even willing to concede the pay cut in exchange for winning back collective bargaining. Yet, what good is collective bargaining if it isn’t used to win improved working conditions and pay?

Wisconsin Worker Sent Home For Wearing Union Shirt to Work

(Image from Flickr, by Buschap)

An employee of the Lincoln Hills School in Irma, Wisconsin, was sent home without pay last week for wearing a union t-shirt on the job, according to the Waussau Daily Herald. The employee was Ron McAllister, a youth counselor, who was wearing a t-shirt and jacket with an American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) logo.

The state Department of Corrections, which oversees the school, opened an investigation into the incident this week and sent a memo to staff members saying that workers are permitted to wear union clothing, despite the fact that their administrators sent a worker home for doing so. Not surprisingly, AFSCME is mistrustful of the DOC and continued with a planned demonstration against the DOC and union-busting governor Scott Walker on Monday. More than 70 people attended the protest outside Lincoln Hills School. AFSCME believes that Lincoln Hills Superintendent Paul Westerhaus sent McAllister home on Walker's behalf. McAllister also happens to be president of AFSCME Council 24.

No Unions Allowed

It was not just McAllister’s shirt that was offensive to management. Last week, he found that someone had gone through his office and removed an AFSCME sign, and he said a supervisor told him that union signs and union clothing were not allowed. So he removed his union jacket and shirt and started to unbutton his pants to remove his “union” underwear, before being sent home.

McAllister may be rekindling an old protest tactic made popular by the Doukhobors, a Russian Christian pacifist sect, many of who migrated to Western Canada in the 19^th century (with the help of Tolstoy, Quakers and Peter Kropotkin), who have protested in the nude since the early 20^th century. Canada even passed anti-nudity laws in response to the Doukhobors and have arrested hundreds of them for violating this law.

Doukhobors marching nude in Langham, Saskatchewan, Canada, 1903 (from Wikipedia)

Do As The Doukhobors Do

There’s a new tactic to use, my dear

If you have a protest on one wants to hear,

Just attend a rally where the b ig shots meet

Strip to your hide and walk down the street.

Way up in Canada, Doukhobor lads

Were sent to public schools disapproved of by their dads, So the Doukhobor mamas said “That’s enough”

And they went to the meeting in the buff.

Chorus:

Do as the Doukhobors do, honey,

Do as the Doukhobors do.

If public policy gets on your nerves

And no one pays attention to you

Throw away your dresses and your lingerie too,

And do as the Doukhobors do.

Our women hold meetings to stop atom tests,

They’re not afraid of billy clubs, cops and arrests,

They sign those petitions ‘til they’re sad in the face

And still they seem to be getting no place.

The little boat EVERYMAN couldn’t leave port,

Bomb tests continue of every sort

We’ve got to do something that’s wild and new,

And do as the Doukhobors do.

(Chorus)

Of course, down in Cannes on the coast of France,

You’d get no attention minus bras and pants,

If you’d hit the beach in a grin or less,

They’d think you had on last year’s bathing dress.

But up there in Canada at twenty below

People keep covered from head to toe.

Kennedy would send a cup of coffee or two

If we did as the Doukhobors do.

(Malvina Reynolds, 1962).

Financial Martial Law in Wisconsin, Too?

According to Forbes magazine, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his cronies are drafting legislation that would allow him to appoint emergency managers who could cancel union contracts, fire elected officials and school board members, and take control of entire cities and towns. Rick Unger, who wrote the piece, said that the plan is being written by the largest law firm in the state, Foley & Lardner, and is scheduled to be introduced to the legislature next month.

Walker went on the radio yesterday to deny the report, asserting that it was “absolutely bogus.” He denied that he or anyone in his office ever did or said or planned anything like this, which leaves open the possibility that Foley & Lardner are indeed working on such a plan, and that Walker is simply making a stab at plausible deniability. Unger’s source, a Wisconsin political organizer named Nate Timm, refused to name his source for this information, but had confirmed that he received his information from a “highly placed GOP source” who was in a position to know the governor’s plans.

If true, Wisconsin’s plan would be very similar to the financial martial law plan enacted in Michigan earlier this year, where Governor Snyder has already appointed an Emergency Financial Manager, Joseph Harris, to take over the town of Benton Harbor. One of Harris’ first acts as Manager was to issue an order stripping away all powers from the city’s elected officials. Erik Kain, another Forbes writer, said that the Michigan and Wisconsin plans followed a pattern of similar legislation being pushed through in other Tea-Party controlled states enacting strikingly similar legislation all at the same time across the country.

Indiana Dep. Prosecutor Suggests Fake Shooting to Discredit Unions

Indiana Deputy Prosecutor Carlos F. Lam suggested to Wisconsin Gov. Rick Scott that he use provocateurs to discredit the unions protesting his union busting bills. Lam even went so far as to propose a fake assassination attempt against Scott. According to the WSWS, Lam’s email was sent the same day that Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Cox sent a Twitter message calling on Scott to use live ammunition against demonstrators. Both Cox and Lam resigned after journalists traced the provocative messages to them.

As crazy as these two provocations may seem, Walker was already thinking along those same lines. He had already threatened to call in the National Guard on public sector workers if they went on strike. The National Guard, of course, carries live ammunition with them. Furthermore, in a telephone conversation with a blogger pretending to be billionaire David Koch, Walker admitted that he had considered using provocateurs against demonstrators.

The WSWS suggests that such conspiracies are usually reserved for wartime and counterinsurgency operations. However, the U.S. government and business have a long history of using whatever means necessary to disrupt labor organizing and political opposition. Anti-war organizations, civil rights groups, environmental groups AND labor have been infiltrated by provocateurs and spies bent on disrupting and discrediting them. Nevertheless, the WSWS is correct that these two examples are emblematic of the explosive class tensions permeating the country today, with harassed and beaten-down workers on the one hand, desperately fighting to save what little protections they have left, and the ruling elite, on the other hand, hell bent on crushing every last vestige of organized labor.

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Class War: Union Bosses vs Public Sector Workers

 (Image by Sue Peacock)

While Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has been doing everything in his power to destroy the public sector unions, the leaders of those unions have been doing everything in their power to comply, including selling out their own members, in a desperate attempt to preserve their six-figure incomes. They have been madly pushing through contracts that cut workers’ pay and benefits in hopes of beating a deadline that would preserve their right to continue automatically collecting dues from paychecks. According to the WSWS, the average Wisconsin public sector worker will lose $4,000 per year as a result of the cuts.

The WSWS has just published some of these union bosses’ salaries. Their large incomes relative to those of their members should lay to rest the delusion that they share the interests of their union members. The average Wisconsin public sector worker earns only $51,000 per year (not counting the $4,000 cut), while their union leaders earn in excess of $100,000 each, not counting the thousands more many receive in perks and other benefits.

• Marty Beil, Wisconsin Public Employees Union (WPEU) executive director, $162,000 in 2008
• Rick Badger, Wisconsin AFSCME executive, $133,000 in 2009
• Gerald McEntee, national president of AFSCME, $480,000 in 2009
• Mary Bell, Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), $173,466 in 2008
• Dan Burkahlter, WEAC’s Chief Executive, $242,807,
• Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association (NEA), $397,721 in salary and benefits.
• Rose Ann De Moro, executive director of National Nurses United, $293,000 per year.
• Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO President, $283,340 last year
• Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president, $620,000 from two jobs in the same union.
• AFT has nearly 100 officials who earned over $400,000 each

WSWS correctly points out that Wisconsin’s public sector union bosses served as the ruling elite’s bulldogs by demanding that all workers return to work after Republicans pushed through a modified version of the union busting bill. This version of the bill slashed workers’ pay and benefits and cut funding for social programs, but left intact collective bargaining and the automatic payroll dues collection (the only issues that affect the union bosses’ salaries). The union bosses argued that they could best continue the fight through the election process.

This has been the historic role of union bosses: to serve as capitalism’s enforcers. Their financial interests are so much more closely tied with those of the ruling elite that they routinely sell out their members in order to protect their own status and income. The tragedy and irony is that Walker had done more to organize and mobilize workers than any union boss has done in generations and the unions wasted the opportunity. Tens of thousands of workers were in the streets, skipping work in a de facto strike, occupying buildings, and they were willing to continue to doing so. The momentum and sentiment were there. People were talking about a General Strike. All the unions had to do was provide the support. Instead, they allied themselves with the class enemy of the workers and crushed the movement.

The lesson is that class conscious union activists and organizers need to do a much better job organizing from the ground up, not only in opposition to the bosses and politicians, but in opposition to our own union leadership.