There is nobody attempting to re-unionize Wisconsin. In the absence of any kind of collective voice, the state employees who haven’t left are having benefits and working conditions chipped away at just for the idea of it. Because scott walker said “union bad”. (He knows because the kochs told him)
There doesn’t seem to be much pushback. I believe it’s an indication of the failure the State Employees Union had been allowed to become. Ultimately, the idea that it was illegal to strike makes the whole union idea an illusion, and it was obvious that the state treated it accordingly. Contracts were routinely settled after the end of their effective period. Deals were cut shorting certain groups of workers in favor of others. New buildings were staffed with private outside contract workers whose pay and benefits were lower than union workers. Basically, the state never really bargained in good faith as far as I could see – at least from the early 80’s on.
The folks at the top of the union carried on as if it was all legit and the fix wasn’t in. Everybody got their pittance – a little bigger or a little smaller pittance – and life went on. The union brass was there to lead the parade and justify their existence, and they were out of the reach of the membership. They maintained a minimal structure of work rules and benefits and maintained their titles and salaries, paid for out of dues. But they didn’t bother to maintain any kind of real solidarity among the diverse membership. They allowed a situation to develop in which members didn’t see the value of paying dues. (This is an assumption. I believe that if there was perceived value in the union, members would have found a way to continue to support it in spite of Act 10) I suspect that this is a result of another illusion, this one held by the union establishment: that by virtue of the dues they had the support of the membership. This is a problem with the whole “fair share” dues philosophy. They get your dues whether you’re in the union or not. You cannot collectively withhold your dues if the union sells you out.
Let’s see… You can’t collectively withhold your labor if the boss screws you; and you can’t collectively withhold your dues or support for a particular union if the union screws you. Sounds like a good deal for the boss and the union.
So you have a union that’s fat and lazy and corrupt, and a state that’s fat and lazy. Then walker comes along with a new level of corruption that makes the old time mutual back scratching look like a Sunday church swap meet. This guy is straight up selling the state to whoever puts up the money. Bad times are coming. I suspect that right now, at least some state employees who didn’t before, may see the value of having a collective voice. Too bad there’s nobody there.
I think Wisconsin would be pretty ripe for a new union movement. It seems clear to me that if there is going to be a resurgence of unions, the old assumptions and rules will need to be scrapped. Fair Share dues have been taken away, and if unions are to survive, they’ll need to do without, and will need to demonstrate sufficient value to justify dues. They’re going to need to educate and connect dots and start pretty much from scratch. Many gains unions made in the 20th century have been chipped away and sold out. We see who ultimately won. It’s time for workers to respond now and start to charge the 1% for their avarice and greed. The first step in that is reclaiming their birthright: the ability to collectively withhold labor as leverage.
This is where this all ties to the elections. Too often recently, the government executive, court, and legislative thumb has been on the scale for the boss and against workers. Voting some of those thumbs off the scale at every level will help a great deal. So many major bi-partisan legislative initiatives of our federal and state government, from Taft Hartley on, have served to restrain workers’ rights and leverage, and encourage exploitation. Most recently they’ve encouraged the outright elimination of jobs here in favor of exploiting people elsewhere in the world, where it can be done much more cheaply and easily. It’s obvious that even the destruction is of unions is insufficient in the eyes of the job creators. It’s time to regroup and start to fight back. (BTW… Recently, there’s an excellent and ascendant — and very much parallel — movement which would serve as a great organizing model and structure) Government policy favorable to labor could make a huge difference in all this, but at this point such things sound revolutionary.