The author of this article is a union organizer.
“In
our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by
false slogans, as ‘right-to-work.’ It provides no ‘rights’ and no ‘works.’ Its
purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining … We demand this fraud be stopped.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
The massive demonstration on
Saturday, Feb. 19, was much bigger and even more powerful than the organizers
had predicted.
When the right-wing, anti-worker
Tea Party decided to mobilize explicitly for the purpose of taking away the
basic right of collective bargaining, many people around the state saw the
danger and the necessity of coming to Madison. With 100,000 people on the side
of labor and a dismal fraction of that with the Tea Party, one thing was clear:
the active and conscious people of Wisconsin want to move forward, and not
backward 100 years.
Responding to the right-wing claim that ‘the state is broke’
Gov. Scott Walker and the Tea
Party say that the state is “broke,” yet many have pointed out that the figures
the governor uses are misleading at best. The governor’s statements give new
life to an old adage: “figures don’t lie, but liars sure can figure.”
State and local budgets are long
and can seem complicated, but the simple truth is that every budget represents
political decisions about what is a priority and what is not.
Walker doesn’t hesitate to cut
back on workers’ rights to balance the budget, yet he leaves the bankers
untouched. Walker wants to gut the right for unions to negotiate a contract,
but he won’t tell the bankers to wait for interest payments. His loyalties are
clear. Walker puts the bankers’ need for profits over the communities’ need for
services and the workers’ need for jobs with decent wages.
A significant number of banks in Wisconsin were bailed
out by our tax dollars through TARP funds. At least five Wisconsin
banks haven’t paid back the money on time. Some of the leading banking
interests in the state, including those that received TARP funds, have been
strong backers of Gov. Walker. They see him as a voice for their class
interests.
For example, M&I is a
Wisconsin-based bank with over 9,000 employees nationwide and 4,300 in
southeastern Wisconsin. In November, the bank paid dividends to its big
investors while at the same time failing to pay back the $1.7 billion TARP
bailout.
In December, management announced
that the bank would be sold. Bank employees who work at the windows and
behind the scenes have no union. They face a precarious future, and many will
lose their jobs in the sale and merger. Leaders in M&I structured the sale
in order to protect their multi-million-dollar paychecks and golden
parachutes.
It is the likes of M&I top
management who have financially supported Walker. They see their class
interests clearly—they want a world with no union rights.
On the one side in this struggle
are the bankers. On the other are working people.
The budget crisis could be easily
solved without putting banking and corporate profits before people. It could be
solved by taxing the rich and corporations. Taxes on corporations are lower in Wisconsin
than many surrounding states, and two-thirds of corporations in Wisconsin pay
no taxes (Wisconsin Department of Revenue).
The answer to the claim that the
state is broke is that the state is not broke. The wealth created by Wisconsin workers is being held hostage by the rich and
corporations as profit. It needs to be taxed to save services and jobs.
The corporate media frequently
gives coverage to those who claim that the high salaries of public employees are
the source of the budget problem. They never mention the enormous salaries and
bonuses of bankers and the corporate executives.
The power of the protests this
week has brought the message into millions of homes that public employees are
not the problem. Images of teachers, sanitation workers, clerical employees,
water treatment workers, nurses and more remind people that the targets of Gov.
Walker’s bill are the people who provide essential services to every community.
This week and next steps
Organizing is taking place in
communities across Wisconsin
from Green Bay
to Racine, from
Eau Claire to La Crosse. Those who
can’t make to Madison will be demonstrating and acting to put pressure on their
legislators and their powerful financial backers to make them do the right
thing when the bill is voted on.
But the main arena of struggle,
the heart of the struggle, is in Madison. Everyone at the demonstration clearly
understands the importance of being at the center of political power when the vote
is about to be taken on the bill of a lifetime. Each one of us should be
reaching out to friends and neighbors across the state to come to Madison.
Monday’s rallies will set the
stage for the legislative action on Tuesday, Feb. 22. And in the same way, last
week’s events and this week’s set the stage for the fight back in Ohio,
Tennessee and every other state facing an immediate threat to collective
bargaining rights. If it passes in Wisconsin, every worker in every state is at
risk.
Everyone who can should be in Madison to keep the
pressure on. By building greater and greater labor solidarity, by building more
organizational unity with students and community groups, we can create the
power to defeat the bill entirely.
While weeks ago it may have been
difficult to imagine 100,000 protesters in Madison, this week it is not hard to
image all public workers deciding to withhold their labor until the politicians
do the right thing. The power of the people, the power of the public workers
can bring these draconian measures to a halt and decisively kill the bill.
