What Is At Stake in Wisconsin

For the eighth consecutive day the Wisconsin state Capitol was taken by thousands of people, the majority syndicalists, who seek to avoid the approval of a bill that would cut pensions and health coverage, as well as the collective bargaining power, of the employee unions of this state.

Up to 70,000 people have arrived to congregate in the vicinity of the building, in a setting more like that of a Middle East country in a pre-revolutionary state than a democracy as mature as that of the United States’. The U.S. union movement has turned to support their companions in Wisconsin with a multitude of actions, from the sending of activists in Wisconsin to ordering pizzas by telephone bound for the Capitol.

And it is no wonder; union leaders across the country know that their future is being played out on the streets of Madison. With their resort to civil disobedience, unions have placed all of their meat on the spit, so a defeat could expose their weakness and incite many states to follow in the footsteps of the governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. In fact, in Ohio they have already started preparing the presentation of a similar measure.

The rate of affiliation in the United States is one of the weakest in the Western world. The membership rate has been falling during the last few decades until stationing itself below 12 percent in 2010. However, this figure masks a very strong duality between the public and private sectors. While only 6.9 percent of workers in the private sector belong to a union, the number rose to 36 percent in the case of public officials.

That is to say that the employee unions, which include teachers, firefighters or policemen, constitute the last bastion of trade unionism in the United States. The expansive wave of a defeat in Wisconsin could finish transforming the union movement into a marginal social and political actor in the entire country.

The governor has justified the initiative on the need to cut the government’s public deficit, which rose to $3.6 billion. His decision to reduce labor costs is logical, since they represent the bulk of the state budget. Well now, it is not so much his refusal to reach a compromise agreement that preserves their pensions and health care, continuing the lower the deficit, without transforming the current model of industrial relations.

With this attitude, Walker has shown that his objective is not only budget concerns, but rather political ones. The governor intends to weaken the right of collective representation of the unions, and therefore their financing capacity. This move is very sharp politically, since unions are one of the most solid pillars of support of the Democratic Party.

Since 1990, workers’ associations have received political donations valued at $614 billion, and 92 percent of these have gone to stopping Democratic coffers. Thus, the pulse that is taking place in Wisconsin affects not only unions but also Obama’s party.