by Clarence Page

If anything is clear in the labor clash that has brought Wisconsin government to a screeching halt it is how neither side has been all that clear about what the fight really is about.

From the thousands of angry teachers and other public employee union members in the streets of Madison, you hear cries of the "death of democracy" and denunciations of the new Gov. Scott Walker as some sort of a dictator.

Yet Walker, unlike, say, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, didn't have to put any of his opponents behind bars. Like it or not, he was elected fair and square. So were his fellow Republicans who now hold a majority in the Wisconsin Senate and seek to strip most state workers of most of their collective bargaining rights.

In this case, ironically, it is the Democrats who are trying to stand athwart democracy, particularly the 14 Democratic senators who fled the state in a last-ditch effort to delay a vote on Walker's bill.

But Walker has not been candid about what this fight is really about, either. He says it is about getting rid of the $3.6 billion deficit that the state built up during more prosperous economic times. But it's really about busting the unions.

The unions already have agreed to Walker's demands on pay and benefits. But that's not enough for the tea party-backed governor. He made that clear in an interview with MSNBC's Chuck Todd on Monday.

Walker said these are lean times and no one doubts that. "We're broke," he said. No doubt about that, either.

Walker said that workers in the private sector have had to make do with less, including taking cuts in pay and paying more for their benefits, and public workers should be willing to sacrifice, too. Again, the governor showed a keen grasp of the obvious, so obvious that the unions have agreed to his demands on pay and benefits.

But that's not enough for the new gov. He really wants to strip their right to negotiate. He'd rather, shall we say, dictate.

His bill would end the right of most state union workers to bargain collectively for benefits and limit any wage increases to inflation, unless voters approve a larger raise in a referendum.

Power is what both sides' protests are really about. The governor says he doesn't want to kill the unions, but without the right to collective bargaining, a union is little more than a social club.

To end the stalemate, Republican state Sen. Dale Schultz proposed a sensible compromise under which collective bargaining would be suspended for only two years. That would make sense, if getting the state through its current economic emergency were Walker's true goal.

But when the governor was presented with that option in his MSNBC interview, he rejected the idea as a "short-term fix." He wants "long-term sustainable changes," he said, to "protect" state and local budgets from more cuts.

Translation: He wants to rid himself of those pesky unions. He wants to end collective bargaining, not only for the duration of the current emergency but, ever again!

Besides, he said, Schultz's alternative would never get to the floor anyway because all of the state senate's other Republicans favor the governor's original plan. He may be right. The dismantling of collective bargaining rights is the sort of turn-back-the-clock move that many Republicans, in particular, have been pushing for decades.

The organized working world is closely watching the Badger State. Ohio's new Republican Gov. John Kasich Indiana's Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels and other GOP governors are pushing legislation similar to Wisconsin's. Democratic governors like Pat Quinn, next door in Illinois, also seek concessions, although with a far more conciliatory tone than Walker and his in-your-face threats to workers' rights. Small wonder. Democrats rely about as much on organized labor support as Republicans rely on corporate donors.

Crippling budget deficits are a crisis in most states these days and as an old saying goes, crisis offers both danger and opportunity. Walker sees an opportunity to promote policies that voters rejected in happier times -- and he's taking full advantage of it.

 

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A Crisis Offers Union-Busting Opportunity | Politics

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