Unions heed call to arms

As the power play between Wisconsin's Republican Governor, Scott Walker, and the state's public service unions intensified with thousands protesting against the GOP's bid to emasculate the right to collective bargaining, a phone call came into the governor's office.

Soon Walker was in animated conversation with none other than David Koch, the ultra-conservative, co-owner of Koch Industries, America's second-largest private company. Koch is a generous backer of the Tea Party - New York magazine dubbed him "the Tea Party's wallet" - that helped elect the governor to office in November's midterm elections.

The talk included outrageous suggestions from Koch. Had Walker considered "planting some troublemakers" - agents provocateurs - among protesters outside the legislature in Madison, the state capital?

Yes, admitted Walker, but unnecessary as media interest would flag. Still, there would be no compromise with Democrats, whose senators had left the state to deny his Budget Repair Bill a quorum.

Koch was pleased, offering to show the governor a good time at the billionaire's Rancho Mirage resort "once you crush those bastards". Walker considered this "outstanding". Meanwhile, the Governor had to win "our freedoms back".

Which is one way of describing his role in a national showdown that, if the GOP prevails, could shatter both unions and a major Democratic funding base in what is likely to be a bitterly contested 2012 presidential race.

Normally, such candid talk would be private. However, Walker had been duped by a Koch impersonator and his blunder quickly went viral on websites.

Despite Walker's hope the media would lose interest, protests escalated to Vietnam War-era proportions, and signs appeared in Madison calling him a Koch puppet.

But protests and pranks made no difference to the outcome. Republicans passed the bill by the simple expedient of uncoupling it from the spending measures that needed a quorum. Democratic opponents admitted the bill was a "done deal" but warned the GOP would reap the whirlwind.

"Their disrespect for the people of Wisconsin and their rights is an outrage that will never be forgotten," thundered Mark Miller, Democratic Senate Minority Leader.

Essentially, the bill outlaws collective bargaining on benefits, a right Wisconsin won in 1959, the first state to do so. It does allow collective bargaining on wages, but caps increases to the Consumer Price Index.Any wage rise in real terms would be illegal.

Walker, like other Republicans, say slashing public health and pension benefits is crucial if budgets are to be balanced.

Walker seeks to trim $3.6 billion over two years. As the fight grew uglier, the governor said raising taxes would "cripple" the economy, given the 7.5 per cent unemployment rate. Asking public workers to stump up was a "modest request". Unions agreed to pay more - accepting the equivalent of an 8 per cent wage cut - but stood firm over collective bargaining.

Opponents say Walker's budget figures are "bogus" and a Trojan horse to kneecap unions and gain political advantage.

"This is union busting masquerading as budget cutting," says Harley Shaiken, a specialist in labour issues at the University of California. "It's meant to eviscerate unions and weaken the Democratic Party."

The Wisconsin bill, and another one pending in Ohio, affects about half-a-million public service workers, out of some 15 million unionised workers throughout the US.

The Ohio bill narrowly passed the Senate this month and is expected to clear the GOP-controlled lower house and receive the signature of Governor John Kasich.

Shaiken says the newly elected governor's scorched-earth approach to unions, "amounts to an attack on the American middle class and ultimately on American democracy".

If so, it is a high-risk policy that could backfire.

Polls held last month suggested many Americans sided with the unions.

A USA-Gallup poll found a 2:1 margin favoured collective bargaining, even though 64 per cent believed states were confronting fiscal problems. A majority opposed raising taxes. A CBS-New York Times poll found 60 per cent opposed efforts to reduce collective bargaining.

So far, this has not stemmed the GOP push against collective bargaining. Anti-union bills lurk in 27 states.

This prospect has sparked protests in Ohio and Michigan, where the Republican governor, Rick Snyder - who bested a Tea Party rival - assumed "emergency management" powers, appointing officials who can dissolve local governments, nullify laws and abolish collective bargaining rights.

"Much attention has been paid to Wisconsin in recent weeks," says film-maker Michael Moore, who depicts the struggle as class warfare. "Well, they got nothing to what's going on here in Michigan. Rick Snyder is Scott Walker on steroids."

Besides going after unions, Republicans have National Public Radio - which is partly publicly funded and viewed as a bastion of elite liberals - in their sights.

In a counter attack to the "David Koch" prank, NPR was ambushed last week by conservative activist James O'Keefe.

Posing as a member of a fictitious Muslim group, O'Keefe recorded a NPR fundraiser slamming the Tea Party as "white, middle-American gun-toting", "xenophobic" and "seriously racist". Vivian Schiller, NPR head, quit the next day.

Despite GOP claims unions must bow to tough economic realities, the struggle is, ultimately, about power.

Union membership is highest in the public sector. This is understandable, as besides health and pension plans, public service workers are three times less likely to be fired than workers in the private sector.

Holding on to a job is a life raft many will fight for.

For the Wisconsin struggle is playing out against a grim background of rising poverty and misery among Americans.

Thus, a recent report by Food Research and Action Centre, a US non-profit, found that 20 per cent of residents in California - America's most populous and wealthy state, albeit one with a US$25 billion ($34 billion) deficit - said they were unable to afford enough food in 2010. Fifteen other states were worse off. In 2010, the US Census Bureau said poverty rates had hit a 15-year high, at 14.3 per cent, or one-in-seven people. The overall number in poverty was at its highest level since the 1960s, when President Lyndon Johnson steamrollered through reforms to reduce inequality.

But the Wisconsin stand-off had one surprising result: it re-energised organised labour, as activists rallied in the streets and on the internet. Instead of executing the coup de grace to a moribund labour movement, Walker may have lit the fuse that galvanised the left, as the American Federation of Labour-Congress of Industrial Organisations - with 14.7 million members in 2010 - seeks to go on the offensive by unionising low-paid workers across the US.

"We've never seen the incredible solidarity that we're seeing right now," Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO leader, told the New York Times. "People are giving us another look. They're saying, 'We support collective bargaining'."

The AFL is preparing for a nationwide protest, "We Are One," on April 4 to "fight for middle-class jobs".

Has Walker overplayed his hand, furnishing the left with an incendiary issue to counter the right's use of the Obama administration's healthcare reform to mobilise their base?

"It's quite credible the GOP's move may backfire," says Shaiken. "But it's by no means assured."

It will be a tough battle. In a globalised world, power lies disproportionately with corporations able to go offshore. Any turnaround will have to defeat an anti-union mentality among many Americans, who buy into claims union benefits make the US unattractive in the savage scramble for contracts and jobs in hyper-competitive markets.

Even as Republicans seek to further marginalise unions, the powerful interests that support the GOP sensed victory last year when the US Supreme Court lifted the ban on corporate - and union - spending in election campaigns.

The first skirmishes will likely take place in Wisconsin, where there is a petition drive to recall Republican senators, three of whom have slim majorities. Labour organisers are talking up a general strike, which have a bloody US history and were last used in the 1930s.

This is radical stuff for Middle America and shows how high the stakes are. Passage of the Wisconsin bill, and probable ratification of one in Ohio, is a major setback for unionised workers. It remains to be seen how hard they are prepared to fight in a climate where every job counts.

1955
36 per cent of US workers unionised.

2010
Just 11.9 per cent of workers belonged to unions, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Membership was highest among public service employees at 36.2 per cent. The rate in the private sector was 6.9 per cent.