Rightwing attack on unions won't stop with public sector
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One of the yardsticks for true democracy is not just people's right to vote, but also people's right to vote with their feet.
And what is happening in Madison, Wisconsin has added new meaning to this idea.
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Earthquake in Wisconsin [By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn] |
Facing the prospect of a failure to block Governor Scott Walk's union busting bill in a Republican controlled state senate, 14 Democrat senators audaciously eloped to a hotel in the neighboring state of Illinois to prevent the voting on the bill from ever taking place.
The absence of Democrats on the state capitol floor and the storm of protesters occupying the state capitol didn't stop the bill being passed. But now all eyes are on Wisconsin that will forebode the future of American's already depressed labor movement.
Governor Walker threatened to send the state police to "retrieve" the Democrats, which is a complicated matter given the cross-border nature of the potential police actions. He has also sent out layoff notices to 1,500 state workers.
Apparently Governor Walker took a page from 25 years ago, when more than 12,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) walked off the job on August 3, 1981 in a demand for higher pay and fewer working hours.
In response to the walkout, then President Ronald Reagan issued one of the defining statements of his presidency.
In a sternly-worded letter to the union, he said the striking air-traffic controllers were in violation of the federal law, and if they did not report to work within 48 hours, their jobs would be terminated. He then carried out his threat. Less than 10 percent of the strikers returned to their job, and the rest were fired. Reagan further barred those fired air traffic controllers from being hired for federal jobs again.
This part of the history set off a chain of reactions that would redefine labor relations in the US in many subsequent years. Major labor strikes plummeted from an average of 300 each year in the decades before the air traffic controllers' strike to fewer than 30 today.
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