MARCH 4, 2011:NWLP
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MEETING NOTICES
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Volume 112
Number 5
March 4, 2011
Portland, Oregon
Spirit of Madison at Oregon rallies
The spirit of Madison came alive
in Oregon at a pair of rallies Feb. 25
and 26 in Portland and Salem.
The actions were called to show
solidarity with Midwest public work-
ers who are under attack from gover-
nors determined to bust their unions,
particularly in Wisconsin.
The Portland event, organized by
Portland Jobs with Justice and the
Oregon AFL-CIO, drew as many as
800 to a rally in Director Park and a
subsequent march that snaked
through downtown Portland.
Walker and other governors have
energized, mobilized, and organized
members across this country like
never before, said National Educa-
tion Association President Dennis
Van Roekel, in town for a regional
conference of affiliated teachers
unions.
“Let’s not dance around what’s
going on,” said Oregon AFL-CIO
President Tom Chamberlain. “Let’s
not tiptoe. Let’s call it like it is. This
is class warfare.”
“We’ve been here before,” Cham-
berlain said. “Your grandparents and
great-grandparents stood in these
streets 75 years ago and fought for
our right to create a union, fought,
bled, and died to create the middle
class. We remember their courage.
We remember they made a better life
for us. If we stand our ground, 75
years from now, our descendants will
be standing in the same place, thank-
ing us for what we did in turning
back the tide.”
“This fight is not about state budg-
ets,” said Oregon AFSCME Execu-
tive Director Ken Allen. “Wisconsin
AFSCME already agreed to the pen-
sion and health care concessions that
that despicable governor demanded.
We agreed to those concessions and
he still wants to eliminate collective
bargaining.”
Portland teacher Adam Sanchez
reported on several days he spent with
the protesters in Wisconsin. Sanchez
slept in the state capitol building
alongside hundreds of high school,
college and grad students, workers
union and non-union, private and
public sector from all across the state
and other states who had come to join
them in solidarity. He described a
high degree of self-organization, with
organized distribution of donated
food, a sign-making station, info cen-
ter, a lost and found, free earplugs,
mittens, and hand warmers, organized
cleaning crews.
The following day, an estimated
1,00 people turned up outside the state
capitol building in Salem for a rally set
up by MoveOn.org with help from
many other groups. The crowd was
mostly nonunion, but citizen after cit-
izen expressed what diehard unionists
have been longing to hear: gratitude
for past victories, and an understand-
ing that union workers set standards
for all.
“We’re not union members, but we
know how important unions are to our
wage scale,” said one business owner.
Oregon State Rep Brad Witt (D-
Clatskanie), a union rep at United
Food and Commercial Workers Local
555, said he sees this struggle leading
to a rebirth of the American labor
movement. “You’ve woken up the
sleeping giant,” Witt said. “There is
no division. There is no public sector
and private sector. This is trade union-
ism: You take one of us on, you take
all of us on.”
Oregon State Rep. Michael Dembrow (D-Portland) holds a “We are One”
sign as Mary Winzig, sporting a Green Bay Packers foam cheesehead, listens
to National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel address a
rally in Portland Feb. 25 in support of workers in Wisconsin who are fighting
to keep their collective bargaining rights.
We are all Wisconsin: Nationwide fightback on the rise
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
A new crop of Republican governors has de-
clared war on unions, provoking the biggest
showdown for the American labor movement
since President Ronald Reagan fired striking air
traffic controllers in 1981. Madison, Wisconsin,
has become the center of the fightback.
State budget shortfalls are the context, but not
the explanation, of the conflict. It’s now three
years into the worst recession since the Great
Depression, and direct federal aid to the states
under the stimulus program has ended. Facing
state budget shortfalls, governors across the
country — including Democrats — are seeking
to shrink public employee wages and benefits.
But a handful of governors in the Midwest want
to go much further, and have introduced legisla-
tion directly targeting unions.
Governors in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Ten-
nessee, and Wisconsin, are pushing bills that
would curb or eliminate public employees’right
to collective bargaining. Indiana Republicans
are also pushing to gut private sector unions
with bills to repeal the state prevailing wage law
and make Indiana a “right to work” state. In
Missouri, there’s even a proposal to overturn
protections against child labor.
But it was Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott
Walker who fired the shot heard around the
world. At a private Feb. 7 dinner meeting of his
newly-convened cabinet, Walker held up a pho-
tograph of Ronald Reagan and announced that
his forthcoming proposals on collective bar-
gaining would be “our time to change the course
of history.”
On Friday, Feb. 11, Walker unveiled what he
called his “budget repair” plan, a 144-page bill
that would strip collective bargaining rights
from 175,000 public sector workers in Wiscon-
sin. His bill would:
• eliminate all collective bargaining rights for
home health care workers and University of
Wisconsin faculty and academic staff, and for
employees of University of Wisconsin hos-
pitals and clinics;
• require public-employee unions to negotiate
new contracts every year, but bar them from
negotiating anything but base wages — not
benefits, not work rules, nothing but wages;
• restrict even those wage negotiations — for
state employees and teachers — by limiting
raises to the consumer price index unless vot-
ers approve higher raises via a referendum;
• require government workers to pay half the
cost of their pensions – in effect, a 5.8 per-
cent salary cut — and to pay at least 12.6 per-
cent of their health care premiums;
• allow state officials to fire workers for strik-
ing, or for missing work for three unexcused
days;
• give public-sector workers in union-repre-
sented workplaces the right to pay no dues
(currently, workers can choose not to join, but
must make “fair share” payments to cover the
costs of representation);
• halt state collection of union dues; and
• require unionized public-sector units to vote
every year to determine whether a majority
of workers still want to be unionized. [The
reverse would not be true: Nonunion units
would not vote annually whether to union-
ize.]
Local police, firefighters and state troopers
would be exempt from the bargaining changes,
but the changes would apply to state capitol po-
lice, university police officers, and prison
guards.
Wisconsin state workers had already been
without a formal contract since July 2009,
though the previous union contract remained in
force under extensions. The same day he intro-
duced the bill, Walker gave the legally required
formal notice that those extensions would end
effective March 13, meaning state workers will
no longer have a union contract after that.
Even before protests began, Walker expected
a reaction. At the press conference announcing
the bill, Walker made repeated open-ended
threats to call out the National Guard in the
event of public worker unrest. He said he was
the “commander and chief” of the state and that
the National Guard would “respond to whatever
the governor may call for,” that it “would fully
prepared to handle whatever may occur,” and
that he thought it prudent to “plan for the worst.”
Walker urged the Republican-controlled Wis-
consin Legislature to pass the bill by Feb. 25.
The Legislature scheduled hearings for the
following Tuesday.
The reaction was explosive. Within days,
teacher sick-outs had shut school districts across
Wisconsin; state Senate Democrats had fled to
Illinois to halt action on the bill; and tens of
thousands of union supporters were maintain-
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