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| UE members have been rallying across the country in response to the all-out attack on the public sector unions. At top, UE Dir. of Org. Bob Kingsley (right) joins UE Pol. Action Dir. Chris Townsend at the Washington office of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; in Connecticut UE members rallied at the State House and UE members have been at Wisconsin State House since the protests began. |
Our message to UE members nationwide is this: “It’s time to fight!” We urge all UE locals, public and private sector alike, to immediately find ways to join and support this pivotal fight to defend our rights. For decades UE has played a leading role in the struggle to win collective bargaining rights for public workers denied these rights in North Carolina and other southern states; now we have a key role to play in a struggle to defend bargaining rights for workers nationwide.
UE rank-and-filers are already leading the way. In Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker is attempting to strip away public employee collective bargaining rights, members of our private-sector locals in the state have been regular participants in protests at the state capitol. Rank-and-filers from neighboring states have also joined the protests, including members from Iowa who raised the UE Young Activist banner inside the capitol and camped out overnight inside the building. Elsewhere, UE locals in North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia have organized and led solidarity actions, while members in Connecticut, Vermont, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Washington, DC, and elsewhere have joined solidarity rallies in their areas. UE locals not yet engaged in this fight should attempt to organize a solidarity rally in their community, or consult the Jobs with Justice blog for a fast-growing list of solidarity activities around the country. Emails and letters of protest, donations, mobilizing members to protest in Madison and other state capitals where workers’ rights are under attack, are all ways to join the fight. Check the UE website at www.ueunion.org and the UE Facebook Page regularly for updates.
We welcome news that Wisconsin’s South Central Labor Council has begun preparations for a general strike. The labor movement must be prepared to respond in kind to the attempt by extremist politicians and corporate interests to destroy us. Two years ago UE Local 1110 at Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors factory revived one of labor’s most militant tactics, the plant occupation, and won an historic victory. The U.S. labor movement as a whole is fighting for its survival against rich and powerful forces, and our movement needs to revisit the militant tactics of our own legacy, as well as those employed successfully by union movements in other countries.
We must refuse to be scapegoats in the debate over our nation’s economic troubles. All across the country, even in state capitols where attempts to roll back bargaining rights are not yet on the legislative agenda, public services and public employee jobs, wages, and benefits are under attack. Public workers are being blamed for local, state and federal budget crises, and for the entire economic crisis. But public employee pay is not the problem. State workers typically earn 11 percent less and municipal workers 12 per cent less than their private-sector counterparts. Collective bargaining is not the problem either. If it were, then why is North Carolina, which bans public employee bargaining, facing one of the worst budget deficits of any U.S. state?
The real cause of our nation’s economic problem is the reckless greed of Wall Street bankers that blew up the economy in 2007 and 2008. The effects of that crisis in the private sector are spilling over into the public sector. Three main sources of revenue for state and local governments – income taxes, property taxes and sales taxes – are down at the same time that the increased hardships suffered by families and communities create a greater need for public services. One obvious answer to the crisis of public budgets is to introduce greater justice to the tax system, and make the rich, the corporations and the banks pay their fair share. Yet most politicians seem unwilling to even discuss this option. Nor are the trillions of dollars being squandered on the bloated military budget and seemingly endless wars being seriously considered by our political leaders as causes of our budget shortfalls, and as sources of the money we need to reverse the crisis. So instead, public employee wages, public employee pensions, and now the very existence of public employee unions are being made the scapegoat for problems not of their making.
We must be mindful that the legislative efforts to rob workers of bargaining rights in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other states are not isolated. Rather, they are part of a coordinated assault on the American Labor Movement by far-right political forces in the Republican Party, the so-called Tea Party movement, bankrolled by ultra-reactionary corporate money. For example, the Wisconsin governor, who has so far been the national point man for the effort to destroy bargaining, received the second-biggest contribution to his 2010 election campaign from the billionaire Koch brothers, virulently anti-labor industrialists who have bankrolled various extreme right-wing political organizations and “think tanks” to the tune of more than $100 million. (The Kochs do not live in Wisconsin.) The next step for protesters fighting to defend workers’ rights may be to single out the corporations and wealthy individuals who sponsor Walker and other extremist politicians and take our picket lines and protest rallies directly to the doorsteps of these sponsors. We can take such a step in the knowledge that the hardships endured by workers in the current down economy don’t extend to those who created our economic troubles and now try to blame us for them. In fact, they are laughing all the way to the bank. Income for the wealthiest Americans grew five-fold in the latest report, and third quarter reports from 2010 show corporate profits rose 28%, the biggest one-year jump in history.
When we fight for workers’ rights we fight on high ground. In response to a complaint from UE, the International Labor Organization, the labor arm of the United Nations, has ruled that a state law prohibiting collective bargaining violates the internationally recognized right of workers to freedom of association. The ruling was won through UE’s International Worker Justice Campaign, one of our union’s proudest efforts of recent years. While that ruling cited North Carolina, we should bring its resonant message with us to every state in the current struggle.
The mass demonstrations that are continuing in Madison and elsewhere are inspiring workers, trade unionists and human rights activists across the country and around the world. People are connecting the struggles for democracy and human rights in the Middle East to those in the American Midwest. A group of independent unions in Egypt expressed solidarity with workers in Wisconsin, telling them, “Stand firm… Victory always belongs to the people who stand firm and demand their just rights.” We urge all UE members to stand firm in the days ahead.