Support Grows for Embattled Public Workers

Friday, March 04, 2011

UCS News Service- Massive rallies and demonstrations supporting embattled state and local government workers broke out across the United States as February drew to a close. The spontaneity was an uncanny echo of the gatherings that brought down dictators in Tunisia and Egypt.

From Juneau, Alaska to Boston, Massachusetts and dozens more cities across the country, activists and supporters took their state capitals in vibrant and unscripted surge of solidarity. The spark: tens of thousands of Wisconsin state workers and their supporters were demonstrating at, and even occupying, the state capitol building in Madison in steadfast opposition to Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to strip them of collective bargaining rights-rights they had enjoyed for 50 years.

Walker was stymied in his attempt to advance his union-busting bill when Wisconsin Senate Democrats left the state, denying the Senate the quorum necessary to vote on the measure. Walker claimed the law was necessary to help balance the state budget, but when unions said they would accept the wage and benefit cuts he demanded, he still insisted on the end to bargaining. Clearly, his motivations went beyond budget-balancing.

In Indiana, meanwhile, GOP lawmakers killed a “right to work” measure after Democratic members of the House also headed out of state to block action on the bill, while in Ohio, massive protests erupted against legislation that would roll back public employee collective-bargaining rights. Demonstrating workers were locked out of the Ohio statehouse at one point, but GOP support for the bill was weakening at press time.
In other states, efforts to strip public workers of some or all of their bargaining rights were underway, while in yet more states, also dominated by Republicans, there were further efforts to enact union-weakening Right-to-Work laws. (see related story: Public Workers Battle: Selected Highlights)

Support for the Wisconsin workers was pouring in from across the country and around the world, from Green Bay Packers cornerback Charles Woodson to Piotr Duda, President of the Polish Trade Union.
A USA Today/Gallup poll showed 61 percent of the public opposing a law in their state similar to one being considered in Wisconsin, and The New York Times editorialized that, “Republican talk of balancing budgets is cover for the real purpose of gutting the political force of middle-class state workers.”