Massive Wisconsin uprising fights all-out assault on unions

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Tens of thousands of workers, students, and their allies have been protesting throughout Wisconsin every day since Sunday, Feb. 20, to save their benefits and collective bargaining rights. There were monster rallies at the Capitol in Madison of 65,000 on Feb. 19 and 100,000 on Feb. 26, the largest protests there since the Vietnam war era.

Schools have closed due to teacher absences and student walkouts, firefighters and prison guards have taken off work despite threats of mass firing, and some unions have called for a general strike if Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled legislature do not back down on their concession demands. “We’re ground zero for the United States right now. … We’re here for Wisconsin, but in many ways we’re here for the entire United States, for all the workers,” said one protester, a teacher at Blackhawk Technical College in Janesville.

Solidarity protests have spread around the country. In Ohio, there have been ongoing protests around the state over Senate Bill 5, which would bar the right to strike for public employees, end collective bargaining over benefits, and do away with step-based pay increases. On Tuesday, March 1, many took off work to attend an anti-bill rally of over 20,000 at the state house in Columbus. A repeat protest is planned for March 8.

The Wisconsin uprising began after the state’s new governor, Republican Scott Walker, issued a sweeping assault on public-sector workers. Calling legislation he introduced on Feb. 18 a “budget repair bill,” Walker sought to outlaw collective bargaining by 225,000 state and local government workers on everything but wage increases, which would in turn be limited by the Consumer Price Index.

The bill would also double public workers’ paycheck deductions to their health plans, to 12 percent, and raise deductions to pensions from near nothing to 5.8 percent. Tax.com reporter David Cay Johnston has pointed out that while mainstream media usually parrot Walker’s claim that state workers would “contribute more” to their benefits, this in fact represents an eight percent pay cut, because the health and pension benefits are a form of deferred payment in lieu of cash wages, part of an overall compensation package negotiated through collective bargaining.

Walker has absurdly called the bill’s attacks on workers “modest,” claiming that the state is “broke” with a $3.6 billion budget deficit, and that greedy public-sector workers have better pay and benefits than their private-sector counterparts. But a study by the Economic Policy Institute put the lie to these claims, showing that public workers in Wisconsin are paid at least 4.8% less than comparable employees of private businesses. Additionally, the new legislature and governor have already given away more than the anti-worker bill’s $137 million-a-year savings in tax breaks to the wealthy. Huffington Post blogger Robert Greenwald pointed out that the state would save over 10 times that amount by bringing all U.S. troops home from Afghanistan.

Included in the bill’s austerity measures are massive cuts to public schools, state colleges and universities, and BadgerCare, the state health insurance program for low-income workers and the poor. It includes a racist provision to exclude undocumented workers from BadgerCare.

The new state budget unveiled on March 1 goes further yet, cutting $834 million over two years from public schools, privatizing the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and curtailing welfare programs, while at the same time exempting in-state businesses completely from capital gains taxes. Some school districts have sent their entire staffs layoff notices, and could shut down completely.

The unions were pushed to respond from the start by their rank-and-file members. The protests began as union-sponsored “Lobby Days” on Feb. 14, but quickly turned into mass action as thousands descended on the Capitol, and rank-and-file workers initiated job actions. Dozens of school districts, including the state’s largest, Madison and Milwaukee, shut down for multiple days due to “sick-outs” by teachers, despite some districts’ threats of mass firings. Thousands of high school and college students from around the state have held walkouts.

In announcing the bill, Walker threatened to use the National Guard as strike-breakers should there be any disruptions to public services, such as action by prison guards. But hundreds of prison guards have taken off work to march on the Capitol anyway. Hundreds of firefighters, who were exempted from the bill along with cops in a divide-and-conquer bid, have marched in uniform almost daily, while police unions have released statements against the bill and in solidarity with protesters.

Wisconsin Education Association Council president Mary Bell ordered teachers back to work on Feb. 22. But teachers have continued to lead many of the weekday rallies, marches, and other support actions. (Bell recently did an about-face on upholding teachers’ bargaining rights with a sellout proposal for “school reform” that includes “performance-based” teacher pay and promotion, a giveaway to the right.)

Bell’s politics are typical of state union leaders, who have bargained with Democratic legislators and sought compromise on basic principles at every turn. In the first week of protest, all of the unions representing public workers announced a closed-door agreement with the Democrats to accept the eight-percent pay and benefit cut in exchange for keeping their collective bargaining rights. Union brass and Democrats alike have since touted the unions’ willingness to “sacrifice” their members’ wages and benefits in order to “help fix” a manufactured crisis as proof that Walker’s purpose is union busting.

It turns out that no such proof was needed. On Feb. 23, Walker was caught by a prank phone caller bragging about his union-busting plans, which he likened to Ronald Reagan’s crushing of the 1981 air-traffic controller’s strike. The caller, on-line journalist Ian Murphy, pretended to be David Koch, one of the billionaire industrialist brothers who have bankrolled the Tea Party and gave $43,000 to Walker’s election campaign.

Unions and their supporters launched recall petition drives against eight Republican state senators, which could serve to take energy off the streets and put it back into business-controlled election politics. Five Democrats also face recall petitions from Walker supporters.

For their part, 14 state Senate Democrats left Wisconsin on Feb. 17 to deny the quorum needed to debate the bill. Under pressure from the mass protest, (Above) Protesters occupy Wisconsin Capitol.

(Left) Rally in Green Bay, Wis., Feb. 16.

they continue to defy orders of the Republican majority to return. But Sen. Bob Jauch, considered a spokesperson for the 14, indicated in a Mar. 4 interview with the Duluth News Tribune that they would take the first possible face-saving exit without holding onto bargaining rights. “If people want to restore collective bargaining to the way it was, they’ll be disappointed. I can’t do that. … The bill will pass. We’ve always known that,” Jauch said.

In praising the 14, the union brass seem plenty willing to forget that two Senate Democrats, Jeff Plale and former majority leader Russ Decker, voted against ratifying already-negotiated public worker contracts in December, paving the way for Walker’s attempt at union-busting.

The majority of protesters have so far adopted the official line embodied in the chant, “It’s not about the money, it’s about rights!” But at the same time, rank-and-file members and non-union workers recognize that they are victims of a one-sided class war. Madison’s weekly Isthmus newspaper captured the bill’s economic impact in the words of Ramona Tenosorio, a UW-Milwaukee graduate student and union member in the Teaching Assistant Association: “I make less than $20,000 a year supporting a family of six. … These cuts would cause devastation for my family.”

While the state-level union brass try to reign in the fightback to stay cozy with the Democrats, a number of locals and groups are organizing to push for more militancy. Madison’s AFL-CIO labor federation, the South Central Labor Council, passed a resolution to endorse and prepare their memberships for a general strike as well as affirm their opposition to “all provisions contained in Walker’s ‘budget repair bill.’”

On March 3, the Kill the Whole Bill Coalition held a jazz funeral-style protest at the Capitol against concessions. “No Concessions” organizing meetings have been called by National Nurses United under the theme expressed by AFSCME member Andy Heidt: “100,000 people do not need to beg.”

Young people have been crucial to the struggle, pushing resistance to “business as usual.” Students turned a Feb. 15 late-night hearing on the bill into a sleepover, which continued as an 18-day occupation of the Capitol. Protesters organized teams for food and supply distribution, medical needs, and information distribution. The building was finally cleared by court order after the sleepers were isolated from fellow protesters by an illegal administrative order restricting public access to the building.

As of this writing, daytime access to the Capitol has been restored, though under heavy guard by cops with metal detectors. The walls and pillars on three floors of the building remain plastered with colorful banners (including a giant “Kill the WHOLE Bill!”), homemade signs with creative slogans, statements of solidarity, fliers for forums and meetings. Food is plentiful, dis(continued on page 11, in “Owners threaten football lock-out”)

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12 Socialist Action march 2011 Workers cannot rely on the Democratic Party, bought and paid for by the business elite. We need a Labor Party, based on revitalized, democratic and fighting unions.