US Politics: A Beginner's Guide to the Wisconsin Uprising

Photo: Andy Manis (AP)Back in October we took a look at the likelihood of a Tea Party-backed candidate, Ron Johnson, winning the Senate election in the state of Wisconsin, the traditional home of Progressives in the US. Well, Senator Johnson won the election, and on the back of the disillusionment that drove his campaign, Wisconsin also elected a new Republican Governor.

Now it is Governor Scott Walker, rather than Johnson, who is exciting national attention. Last week the state legislature was scheduled to vote on Walker's proposals to cut the costs of employment benefits for state workers. The measure was certain to pass in the Republican-controlled legislature, before two different yet connected events stalled the legislation and focused American eyes on Wisconsin.

First, Democrats in the State Senate fled Wisconsin, for Illinois apparently, to ensure the necessary quorum for a vote to take place was not reached. Not one of the 14 Democrats has chosen to return, leaving the 19 Republicans in the 33-member Senate one member short of a quorum. 

Then, the protests began from the state employees most affected by the recommended changes in their employment conditions. On Saturday, conservative groups held counter-protests in support of Walker, swelled the crowds to an estimated 70,000. But it is the enthusiasm of the employees, with calling in sick to protest, that still has the upper hand, supported by the involvement of the progressive group Organising for America.

OfA is an activist arm of the Democratic National Committee credited with generating the "hope and change" message that transformed Barack Obama's campaign for President in 2008. Now OfA was immediately, if implicitly, backed by Obama when he took the unusual step of hosting a local Wisconsin reporter in the White House to describe the legislation at stake as an "assault on the unions".

But that's getting ahead of the proper introduction to the story. What legislation has Governor Walker introduced? And why are the public-sector unions that represent Wisconsin's state employees so vehemently opposed?

The first, crucial point to remember is that Wisconsin, like every other state in the union except for Vermont, must balance its budget every one or two years. The National Conference of State Legislatures' introductory statement notes, “Balancing the budget is widely considered to be the foundation of state fiscal practices. Keeping a budget balanced in times of fiscal stress, however, can be an overwhelming challenge for policymakers.”

Walker has decided that, with the 'overwhelming challenge' of a $3.6 billion deficit for the next two years, all workers should contribute more to their healthcare premiums and retirement packages,  thus avoiding the lay-off of thousands of state employees to cut costs. Currently, most of the public sector workers do not pay into their pension funds and furnish 6% of their healthcare premiums. Governor Walker proposes that these figures should rise to 5.8% and 12% respectively.

As these are still generous levels when compared to many other states in America, and workers do not dispute Walker's contention that Wisconsin is "broke", the fervour of the protests in Wisconsin has not been sparked by these cuts. Rather, the unions and their members are taking to the streets in their numbers to object to his intended termination of the right of public-sector unions to collectively bargain on the employment conditions of state workers.

Under collective bargaining, the unions negotiate a fixed-term contract of employment with the employer. Many states do not allow any collective bargaining with their workers, but in Wisconsin, unions sit down with the government and decide wage levels, benefit contributions, and termination of employment procedures. Walker maintains, with his background in local government, that this arrangement s biased in favor of unions that are far too powerful, and he wants to end all but collective bargaining over wage rates. Tthe state government can rein in its massive commitment to employees' entitlement programs, without sitting down each negotiating period with unions which possess a disproportionate influence over who is elected to that government.

Walker's legislation includes two further measures designed to blunt the influence of public sector unions in state elections. First, his bill requires that the unions be recertified each year by a majority vote of all members --- not, as now, by a count of those actually casting a ballot. This means that unions will need to persuade their less-ideologically convinced members to come out in active support, rarely a prospect that unions face eagerly.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Walker intends to stop the practise of union dues being automatically deducted from workers' pay at source. The threat that this poses for the long-term political influence of unions was explained by labour historian Fred Siegel in Saturday's Wall Street Journal: “Ending dues deductions breaks the political cycle in which government collects dues, gives them to the unions, who then use the dues to back their favorite candidates and also lobby for bigger government and more pay and benefits.” Myron Lieberman, a former contract negotiator for the American Federation of Teachers, argues that since the advent of collective bargaining in the public sector in the 1960s, the process has so “greatly increased the political influence of unions” that >members have become insulated from the changes workers have had to face in the private sector.

Still, public sector workers in Wisconsin enjoy entitlement program benefits not afforded to many state workers elsewhere, and which private sector employees in some industries can only regard with faint optimism. Christian Schneider, a Senior Fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, pointed out this weekend that, according to research by his organization, “a private sector worker would have to earn $70,000 per year to earn the same pension as a public sector employee that makes $48,000".

This is why it was mystifying to try and analyse the strategy planning session that must have taken place before Organising for America, and President Obama, decided to get involved in this particular controversy. Only 7% of workers in the private sector belong to a union, a number that rises to the still less than impressive 36% in the public sector. And, whatever the historical accomplishments of labour unions in the United States, they are clinging to outdated prerogatives like collective bargaining against a widespread acceptance that, as one sign at the conservative counter-protest rally declared: "The gravy train is over."

The sad fact is that labour is not in the position of strength that it held when, ironically in Wisconsin, collective bargaining was first introduced for public sector workers in 1959. The 1950s and 1960s, despite some serious blips along the way, saw a massive rise in the pay of private sector workers, and government employees had a case for their argument that they should receive similar benefits.

But those days are over, and in the current economic conditions for private sector workers it is surprising that the White House decided going after Governor Walker's "assault on the unions" was a wise move is surprising. Walker is not defending some overblown corporate interest, in this case at least, but the state's taxpayers. In his election campaign, when he stressed he would try to rein in the power of public sector unions, the electorate voted him in, and Walker has delivered on that promise, one that he vowed on Sunday to keep despite the growing nationwide movement against his policy.

Now there are growing calls from liberals for President Obama to visit the state and bolster the enthusiasm of the protesters, or if he deems that unwise, for a figure of the stature of Secretary of State Clinton to attend. That poses a difficulty: the Administration needs to rebuild a relationship with the progressive base that Obama has frustrated over the last two years, but opposing a democratically-elected governor in his own state would raise the stakes in this controversy.

This is a developing story that will need updating as it unfolds. But it brings back memories of the 1984-5 coal miner's strikes in Britain, and they wre not happy ones. Liberals are calling this a must win fight for the unions, as did the coal miners and the allies. The problem, as British unions found, is that when you put out every moral defence of the labour movement --- in Wisconsin's case, presenting the dispute as concerning the rights of all union workers – and you lose it after a long and protracted battle, then the original credibility of the unions is destroyed. Fail in Wisconsin and it becomes that much harder, despite the differences in regional politics in the US, for unions to retain any rights elsewhere. And that is why, with demonstrations planned in at least 29 states next week, Wisconsin has become Ground Zero for the immediate future of American labour unions.