From Madison to a State Capitol Near You?

For those of you fortunate enough to have a job in this economy - have you looked at your pay stub recently? I looked at mine the other day - overtime after an eight-hour day, accumulating sick leave, medical insurance - all of those things can be easy to take for granted. I don't work for a union shop, but what I just listed, along with the safe working conditions I work in, are all brought to me (and you) by unions. The stories of the sacrifices working men and women made during the turn of the 20th century are legion - thousands of people were literally killed or maimed so that their descendants - us - can have a decent life as well as a decent job.

We've all seen these benefits erode since at least the time Reagan fired the PATCO employees in the early 1980s. Nowadays, the last stronghold of organized labor in this country is that of the public employees - teachers, fire fighters, police, etc. Their contracts help set the "floor" for wages outside of the public sector - a trait seen in the eyes of the Republicans as a distortion in their sacrosanct "free market" that must be removed. This is where Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and his Repub minions in the Capitol halls in Madison, come in. Mr. Walker has proposed legislation that is would, among other things, outlaw collective bargaining for public employees and cut their pay by 8%. He has also stated that he would call out the National Guard to quell any unrest created by these draconian measures. He apparently has the votes in the Capitol to pass them, as well, and assuming they do, then expect this to be a model for other states, especially those with Republican governors such as New Jersey and Florida.

What scares me the most, however, is that what Walker is doing in Wisconsin, may wind up becoming a federal model, if the Republicans take the White House and Senate in 2012. The GOP has been against the union movement since it's rise during the Industrial Revolution, and have been chomping at the bit to destroy it ever since. With the current composition of the Republican Party (tea partiers, Friedmanist free-marketers, etc.), they just might have the chutzpah this time to bring the hammer down - figuratively and literally.

I would hate to think that the sacrifices made by those early unionists, like the IWW, would need to be made all over again. But I fear that's where we're headed. With economic globalization, any type of effective union movement would also need to be global - a herculean effort even with the Internet and other communications technologies. Seeing all that needs to be done at this point - educating a population and an upcoming generation of the labor movement and the price paid, organizing them, and exerting political clout - it can only be too easy to fall into denial and just let things "happen". It may be late in the game for those of us in the Baby Boomer and Gen X generations to reap some of the benefits of a rebirth of organized labor. But this fight isn't just for those generations - it's for those that come after - the Gen Ys and beyond.

The lesson here: lose the complacency. As the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, so is the price of a decent wage, medical care, and safe working conditions: eternal vigilance.