One, Two, Many Madisons: The War on Public Sector Workers

AP Photo/Jay LaPrete

Protesters in opposition to Senate Bill 5 gather at the Ohio Statehouse, February 26, 2011.

In the mad race to the bottom that has gripped American politics, no sector has been more targeted and maligned than the government and its employees. Buffeted by the shellacking the Democrats sustained in 2010—largely because of their failure to make a serious dent in the appalling jobs picture—in January 2011, President Obama announced a two-year federal-employee salary freeze. The policy was barely contested by the weak federal unions, so state and local governments—strapped for funds in the wake of the economic crisis—are massively following suit by instituting layoffs, salary cuts and freezes, and threatened pension and health insurance cuts. Some union leaders have registered words of protest and some public employees’ organizations are furiously lobbying legislators. But contained by many state and federal laws that outlaw strikes by public employees—and also by their own timidity or resignation to the inevitable—public sector union leaders have taken it lying down. That is, until Madison.

When GOP Governor Scott Walker and his legislative allies moved in on Wisconsin public employees’ unions, they could not have anticipated the outburst of protest and militancy that greeted the legislation. Mass demonstrations at the state capitol building in Madison have been continuous, emulating the model exhibited by the recent Egyptian democratic movement against the Mubarak regime, an ever-escalating movement that brought down the dictator in ten days and helped inspire parallel struggles throughout the Arab world. In Wisconsin—as anger and large demonstrations mounted, including school shutdowns across the state and occupations of the legislative chambers—the imminent passage of the GOP bill spurred Democratic senators to leave the state rather than provide the majority with the quorum needed to enact the legislation. In addition to reducing bargaining to wages, the bill outlaws strikes by public employees, a measure that is in effect in a number of other heavily unionized states (such as New York). But the Republicans found a legislative maneuver that permitted them to pass the bill without the presence of the fourteen Democrats, and the assembly quickly approved it. As of this writing, the governor is expected to sign the bill and make it law.

However, the story is far from over: union, student, and community activists promise to escalate the size and frequency of the protests; the president of Madison’s AFL-CIO has threatened a general strike among the area’s forty-five local unions; civil disobedience continues to strain the resources of law enforcement agencies; and—buoyed by public opinion polls showing strong sentiment favoring employees and their unions—Wisconsin Democratic strategists seem confident that there will be a backlash at the polls in 2012. Although Governor Walker is publicly defiant, reports have revealed that—as the protests roiled the Capitol—he was frantically seeking a compromise with his rivals, who rejected the overtures as inadequate.

National leaders of the important public employees unions—notably the American Federation of Teachers (AFT); the National Education Association (NEA); and the State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)—expressed their support for Wisconsin affiliates. And Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO president, issued a strong statement backing the demonstrators. Even a usually cautious President Obama came out for the right of public employees to bargain collectively with state and local governments. But the reactionary offensive against public employees is not likely to abate unless the scope of the opposition spreads. For it is clear that the Right is counting on organized labor’s traditional hesitation to engage in direct action, because for the past seventy-five years union leaders have harbored deep respect for the law and principles of labor peace. The question is whether the Right has accurately read the situation or whether Wisconsin will prove to be a watershed, reversing the long slide of unions in American life.

Of course the February and March 2011 events in Madison—when tens of thousands of public employees, students, and progressives demonstrated...