Wisconsin Students Walk Out, Demonstrators Dragged from Capitol

The police dragged a hundred demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capital on Thursday. Protesters had been occupying the building since lawmakers rammed through union busting legislation on Wednesday. No one was arrested in the incident. However, it did inspire thousands more protesters to join the demonstration in front of the state building. While large numbers of union members participated in the demonstration, leaders of the state teachers union, WEAC, and the public employees union, AFSCME, continued to try and quell the unrest and advised their members to go to work today.

Yesterday, Wisconsin students called for a nation-wide walkout at 2:00 p.m. Students did indeed walkout all over Wisconsin. There were also reports of students walking out in Teaneck NJ, Louisville KY, New Paltz and Ithaca NY, Idaho, North Carolina, Ohio, Colorado, Maryland, Alaska, Tennessee, Washington, Portland, Oregon, Mankato, Minnesota, Austin, Texas.

Over 100,000 demonstrators are expect to protest in Madison tomorrow. Farmers will engage in a “tractor-cade” around the capital. There are marches organized by many of the unions, including the AFT.

General Strike or General Politics As Usual?

The bill passed by the Wisconsin Senate gives officials the power to fire workers who participate in any kind of “strike, work stoppage, sit-down, stay-in, slowdown, or other concerted activities to interrupt the operations or services of state government, including mass resignations or sick calls.” However, if workers refuse to go to work and continue their street protests, they can effectively shut down government and block scabs from taking their places, forcing the state to reverse the bill and rehire them. More significantly, in the course of past General Strikes, workers’ demands have often evolved from defensive (e.g., fighting to retain collective bargaining) to offensive (e.g., demanding better pay and working conditions). A General Strike has the potential to so hamper profits that workers can theoretically ask for the sky.

The problem is that planning and organizing are needed for effective General Strike. However, the mainstream unions have flatly rejected this option and, together with most of the left, have thrown their weight into political campaigns to recall the Republicans and bolster the Democrats, a move that might not even bring a return of the old status quo, let alone progressive demands like better pay and benefits. Indeed, the union leaders have already conceded pay and benefit cuts. Furthermore, political action saps time, energy and money from the organizing necessary to pull off a General Strike.

Because the unions have already relinquished all forms of job action, it will be up to workers to organize and mobilize on their own (i.e., Wildcat). There are, of course, some alternatives to a General Strike that might also work, but they require even greater discipline and organizing. For example, working to rule can slow down the system to the point that the state backs down. However, it takes longer for the effects of a work to rule to become apparent than with a General Strike. It is also difficult to achieve high levels of compliance. Public service workers like teachers, police and firefighters tend to have a strong commitment to their constituencies and tend to avoid actions that might harm them. Working to rule at a factory and causing widgets to get produced at a slower rate is quite different than at a school, where students might lose extracurricular activities and opportunities to meet with teachers for extra help. Lastly, a work to rule action is still an organized job action and could be considered illegal under the new bill. Therefore, workers would still be risking their jobs by undertaking such an action.

Another option would be the roving sick-out. Under the bill, public sector workers can be fired if they are out for more than 3 days. However, workers could organize to be out at different times such that an entire department is gone for the same 3 days, followed by a different department for the next 3 days. Again, this would require much more organizing and discipline than a General Strike. It would also take much longer to have an impact, and it could also be considered an organized job action, subject to the same risk of being fired.

Jersey Workers Take Fight to Capital

The class war continues to spread, as thousands protested outside the New Jersey Capitol in freezing rain on Friday. Gov. Chris Christie has called for drastic cuts to education, health, transportation and other services. He wants public workers to pay for 30% of their benefits, while refusing to renew a tax on millionaires. The benefits cuts would amount to a $5,000 pay cut for teachers. Christie also wants to gut tenure protections and increase privatization of public schools.

As typical, the union bosses were there, too, shedding crocodile tears for their members, while bending over backwards to accommodate the demands of the ruling elite. AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka, for example, suggested that union leaders were willing to "find reasonable answers" to budget deficits at the bargaining table. Similar concessions were made by the WEAC and SEIU in Wisconsin. "They've been abusing us for years," said Trumka. "They've taken a lot from us. But they can't take our rights."

In other words, the unions will help the ruling class to squeeze workers as much as they like, so long as they allow unions to exist and the union bosses to continue getting their six-figure salaries.

GENERAL STRIKE!!! Will Wisconsin Have the 1st General Strike in Over 70 Years?

First the Good News

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Wisconsin’s mass demonstrations continued today for the eighth straight day, with public workers demanding that Gov. Walker withdraw his plan to gut their unions. Between 5,000 and 20,000 braved the frost to protest outside the capital. Graduate students also walked out of classes today. Some teachers continued their sick-out despite orders by their union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), to go back to work.

Meanwhile, the Madison-based South Central Federation of Labor, which represents 97 unions in the state, has endorsed a call for a general strike, possibly to take place the day Walker signs his "budget repair” bill. This is fantastic news in light of the fact that most of the state’s unions have thrown in the towel and conceded that passage of the bill is a done deal. It is also an indication of labor’s growing militancy and frustration with traditional union tactics that a general strike is even being considered. It is particularly exciting, as there have been very few General Strikes in U.S. history, including Seattle in 1919; San Francisco, Toledo and Minneapolis, in 1934; and Rochester, Pittsburgh, Stampford and Oakland, 1946. In a show of solidarity, the tiny but militant IWW has made their General Defense Committee available to support the General Strike.

Now the Bad News

A federation cannot declare a General Strike. It can only educate unions and members on the structure and function of a General Strike. Another problem is that General Strikes were outlawed with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, in 1947, one of the many rollbacks the ruling elite was able to enforce on the working class in the wake of a wave of post-war labor militancy. As a result, there hasn’t been a General Strike in the U.S. since the Oakland General Strike in 1946. Therefore, unions and members will need lots of education and encouragement. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, a General Strike involves work stoppages across numerous industries, with the goal of paralyzing business long enough to force the ruling elite to concede to working class demands. It is the fear of precisely such an action that prompted Gov. Walker to threaten to use the National Guard on workers. The question is, would the National Guard, police and prison guards join the movement or suppress it on behalf of the ruling class? Several National Guard officers toured a state prison yesterday, ostensibly to get a feel for their role as prison guards, should the prison guards join the strike.

We will probably never find out. There is very little chance that WEAC, AFSCME or the AFL-CIO would support a General Strike because they would be breaking the law to do so. They would also be violating their social contract with the ruling elite. Union leaders from both the WEAC and the Wisconsin State Employees Union have consistently agreed to the governor’s pension and health care cuts, demonstrating their willingness to serve as the enforcers of ruling class dominance. Their demands that collective bargaining and workers’ voices be preserved are completely cynical and meaningless to workers considering that they have already bargained away pensions and health care for the coming year (which will result in an 8-20% de facto pay cut) as well as working conditions (through increased class sizes). This comes on top of de facto pay cuts last year in the form of furloughs. In other words, collective bargaining, unions, democracy, free speech, are all good and well as long as you don’t use them to fight for better living conditions, and certainly not to challenge the hegemony of the ruling elite.

The union leadership is much more interested in preserving their elevated status, including their six-figure salaries and their perennial seats at the table with law makers and business leaders, than they with the living standards of their members. As union leaders, their status and interests are no longer the same as ours. What happens to us on the ground and in the classrooms does NOT happen to them. The implications of our sell-out contracts, our declining pay, pensions and benefits, do NOT happen to them. The only tangible, material connection between the rank and file and the union leadership is their salaries, which come from our dues, and the war chests they use to buy elections (and their seats at the table), which also come from our dues.

This relationship binds the union leadership more closely to the interests of the bosses, and loosens their accountability to their members. It turns them into internal enforcers of the contract, which primarily serves the interests of the bosses by keeping workers well-behaved, compliant and productive. This has often manifested itself in the outright suppression of worker dissent by the union leadership. For example, every March, layoff notices go out to thousands of teachers, as required by Ed Code. Union leadership typically takes the stance that it is in the districts’ rights to do this and consequently does nothing in defense of these teachers who have paid their dues to the union all year.