Photo of JC7 delegation at March 26 rally in Los Angeles
The Joint Council 7 delegation joins more than 5,000 Teamsters to rally in Los Angeles on March 26, in solidarity with workers of Wisconsin and other states.

GOP governors attack union rights

Across the nation, union supporters rally for rights

Don’t ever believe that elections don’t matter. The November, 2010 elections not only swept in a wave of conservative congress members, but also moved 20 state legislatures and numerous governors to the far right. As soon as those newly-elected leaders took office, they acted quickly to reduce taxes on the rich and claim that the resulting deficit needed to be paid for by public sector workers. And more—in several states, they sought to end the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions.

The first, and nastiest battle was launched in Wisconsin. Here, Governor Scott Walker and his Republican legislature passed $140 million in tax giveaways to corporations and the wealthy. Then they bemoaned a $137 million deficit that required solving through a “Budget Repair Bill.” That bill included two key components: first, cutting public workers’ wages and pension contributions, and second, ending the rights of public sector unions, except for firefighters and police, to collectively bargain on all but cost-of-living wage increases.

In a remarkable act of civil disobedience and courage, the 14 Democratic Senators left the state to deny the Senate a quorum to vote on the bill. For three weeks, they made it impossible for the Senate to pass that particular legislation.

At the same time, Wisconsin workers took over the state Capitol building as thousands rallied daily during a cold and snowy February. Numerous weekend rallies each brought out more than 100,000 demonstrators.

Unfortunately, the Republicans did a work-around; they removed the budget parts of the bill and were able to vote just on gutting union rights. Their action, done too quickly to comply with the state’s open meetings law, is now tied up in court.

Similar fights were launched by Republicans in Ohio, Florida, Alaska, Indiana, Maine and Michigan. Ohio’s legislature passed a bill that enacts sweeping changes to the
state's existing collective-bargaining law, allowing only “wages, hours, and terms and conditions” to be subject to collective bargaining, while health care benefits, pensions, and other issues would not be. The governor of Maine had a mural depicting the history of Maine workers taken down from the state’s Labor Department offices.

While Indiana beat back the union-busting challenge, the battles in Wisconsin and Ohio were lost—for now. But the anti-union forces have not won the war that they launched against workers who seek to join together in a union. State budget deficits are real but cutting jobs and essential services isn’t the answer and will only make it harder for states and communities to recover from the recession.

Many of the newly-elected Republican politicians are especially targeting public employee pensions—pensions these workers have paid into for years and earned at the bargaining table by foregoing pay increases.

Even More than Union Rights

What is really at stake isn’t wages and benefits. It’s labor’s influence—not just in the American workplace but in American politics.

Unions play a role beyond fighting for their members— they want to make good middle-class jobs the norm. And the most important way to pursue this larger goal isn’t by demanding concessions at the bargaining table, but by operating as a counterweight to the demands of corporations and Wall Street in the corridors of power.

That is precisely why opponents of organized labor are seizing upon state fiscal troubles to try to destroy labor’s remaining clout.

Wisconsin has arrived in California

On March 24, 2011, Roger Niello, a former Republican assemblyman from the Sacramento area, filed an initiative with the Attorney General, seeking to amend the California Constitution. The proposed initiative would invalidate all negotiated collective bargaining agreement provisions governing pensions, retirement benefits, or retiree health benefits, for active employees, after the initiative takes effect

In Costa Mesa, the city council voted to lay off half of its public employees in the next six months, outsourcing services from firefighting to street cleaning in order to get out of paying pensions and benefits.

What we can do

Across the country, people are rallying to stand up for workers’ rights. In Los Angeles, about 30,000 workers— including about 5,000 Teamsters—marched and rallied on March 26 to show their solidarity with those union members whose rights have been stolen. Joint Council 7 sent four busses from across Northern California. Dozens of rallies also took place across the nation on April 4.

Here in California, we have a Governor and legislature who understand that workers are not the problem, and if we work together, may just provide solutions. But we’ll need to stay vigilant so that the spark that started in Wisconsin does not become a fire here in California.