"You are winning the super-bowl of workers rights," Jesse Jackson told 60 thousand workers, families and citizens in Madison, Wisconsin last week.
It will strike some as extremely odd that Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker gave rise to a political – not a collective bargaining – strike by deciding to attack public workers' right to collectively bargain. When the tens of thousands of teachers, public workers – and those that they serve, students, parents and grandparents – gathered in Madison to protest stripping Wisconsin working people of their rights, they in fact discarded all ordinary collective bargaining interests related to pay and benefits to expose the serious threat to democracy in the Governor's right-wing agenda. In doing so they rose heroically to meet the challenge of a political strike, proposing alternative budget and tax policies, addressing the budget deficit issues head on – taking political leadership on issues that affect not only themselves but all working people – and all citizens – of Wisconsin.
To take away public workers' rights to bargain has devastating effects on both jobs, incomes and economic recovery in Wisconsin. But it also says, with respect to education, for example: the people most directly affected by education – the teachers, students and parents shall have NO seat at the decision-making table on the entire question of education. Further, firefighters shall have no effective say on fire dangers; police no effective say on public safety, not to mention many other public services and their providers – not least sanitation workers who know what is garbage, and what is not.
The attack on public workers has nothing to do with budget fixing, as all actual budget issues are off the table, and is merely a cover to launch an attack on public services of every description while raiding the public treasury for 140 million dollars in new tax breaks for corporations and the rich. In other words: take the money spent on education and give to the Koch brothers who have large timber interests in Wisconsin, and who funded so-called Tea Party and other candidates – including Governor Walker. These candidates are little more than shills, con jobs pretending to be grass roots advocates, intent on destroying democratic government and any other obstacle in the way wealth accumulation for the top one percent of the population.
Butter would not melt in the mouths of the scoundrels who proclaim "unions are only for the private sector" when in fact they and their rich backers have spent the past 75 years attempting to reverse the passage to national labor relations act under Roosevelt, protecting private sector workers, ever since the day it was enacted. Aided by globalization, changes in labor law that permit firing workers who organize or strike to defend themselves, and changes in the modes of private production, these public enemies have made great progress toward rolling workers rights back where they want them to go – to the mid-19th century.
Wisconsin is showing that public workers, when they are united with those they serve, can block, stop, and – if we ALL lend a hand – reverse this exceedingly dangerous assault. To not turn this assault back risks a confrontation between haves and have-nots in this society that could rival the conflict over slavery in its devastating consequences for our country.
Marxists long thought (and it was born out in much experience in the past century) that production workers in mass industries would lead the path toward genuine democracy and progress throughout the world. The advancing social nature of production was a powerful argument for more democratic controls over large-scale economic institutions (corporations) who were all growing "too big to fail" and in many ways "too big to remain private" without unacceptable costs to society. Most democratic and social democratic reforms of the past century were focused on addressing various aspects of the growing social dependencies in advanced capitalist economies. In fact, more socialist-style relations – in the form of more regulatory and income re-distribution legislation (e.g. retirement, health care, education, labor protections, civil rights, environmental regulation, financial regulation, etc, etc) – have given rise to a very large domain public, non-profit, and quasi public institutions upon which all depend. Even the corporations depend on these institutions while they simultaneously, and schizophrenically, seek to corrupt them in order that they do not stray into the "hands of the people", who they noisily proclaim "are not entitled to anything.
Thus public workers – in a sense, the kernel of the socialized component and infrastructures of our society – may have replaced private production workers as the leading edge of this titanic democratic struggle now underway. Perhaps too soon to finally judge – but it is a fascinating and thrilling moment for the entire progressive movement to ponder. Not just ponder – put your shoulder to the wheel, brothers and sisters: because this train is bound for glory.
Photo by PeoplesWorld.org
