Hurriyet Daily News
Wisconsin approves anti-union measure
AP
With the American labor movement suffering an epic defeat in the state of Wisconsin, union leaders plan to use the setback to fire up their members nationwide and mount a major counterattack against Republicans at the ballot box in 2012.
Wisconsin's union-busting governor and fellow Republicans in the state legislature successfully pushed through a law Thursday that strips public workers of most collective bargaining rights, ending for now a three-week battle that saw all Democratic state senators flee to a neighboring state and as many as 80,000 protest at the state Capitol building.
The extraordinarily contentious law passed the state Assembly, the lower house, on a 53-43 vote within hours of a Republican maneuver in the Senate on Wednesday night overcame a parliamentary logjam caused by the three-week self-exile of Democratic Senators. They had taken refuge in neighboring Illinois to prevent a vote on the larger budget measure to which the collective bargaining ban was attached.
The upheaval in Wisconsin, once a leading state in the U.S. union movement, gained outsized national and international attention, serving as a flash point example of the deep divisions in American politics over how to deal with the country's out-of-control budget deficit and debt.
Republicans, newly empowered after seizing control of the U.S. House of Representatives and many state governments in November elections, had promised backers they would institute deep spending cuts, hold the line on or cut taxes and shrink the size of government.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was part of the new, highly conservative wave of Republicans. He has already cut taxes for businesses in Wisconsin and his move against public employee unions was seen by many as part of a nationwide campaign by Republicans to silence organized labor. Similar bargaining restrictions are making their way through Ohio's Legislature. Several other states are debating lesser measures to curb union rights.
AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, leader of America's largest labor federation, said the anti-union action in Wisconsin was a "corruption of democracy" that had already led to a backlash and created more solidarity in the labor movement.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, Trumka joked that unions should give Walker their "Mobilizer of the Year" award for galvanizing support for labor among thousands of protesters and in national polls.
If events in Wisconsin do energize activists nationwide, it could be good news for President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election bid. Union backing will be critical to Obama's winning a second term. Organized labor has traditionally be a bastion of support for Democrats.
Six to seven decades ago, more than one-third of all American workers were members of labor unions. That number has fallen to about 12 percent overall, with public employee unions left with the only real clout. Nearly 37 percent of public employees belong to a union. In the private sector only about 7.5 percent of workers now have union representation.
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