Speed, apathy mute protests for Wisconsin right-to-work bill

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — For two straight days this week, 2,000 union members converged on Wisconsin's Capitol to rally against a new right-to-work bill, chanting, marching and hurling profanities at GOP lawmakers and Gov. Scott Walker.

The tone of the rallies has been bitter and angry but hasn't come close to matching the energy that coursed through the building four years ago during massive protests against Walker's proposal to strip public workers of most of their union rights. This time around, union members said Republicans are moving too fast to organize large crowds. Some have even conceded it's a lost cause and the governor is bound to score another victory against organized labor.

"People are tired," said Gerry Miller, a 44-year-old welder from Milwaukee and United Steelworkers member who joined Wednesday's rally. "You do have a moral base that feels helpless."

The dynamics of the right-to-work fight are very different than the 2011 battle.

Republicans who control the Legislature are moving at lightning-speed to get the bill through to Walker. They introduced the measure on Friday and the Senate began debating it Wednesday, making it difficult for unions to mobilize large-scale protests during the work week.

In 2011, public unions had weeks to organize and hold daily rallies against what became known as Act 10 because minority Democrats in the Senate decided to flee to Illinois in an ultimately futile attempt to block a vote in that chamber.

And other “right to work” states look at government unions with absolute horror, and are not very supportive of private industry unions, as they exist today.

There was a time, when there were no labor laws, that Unions were widely supported, and played a critical role in getting state and federal labor laws and standards passed.

Now the Unions are actively advocating against labor laws, immigration laws, and against their own members.

It was a good thing to make it mandatory for employers to pay time and a half for over 40 hours worked a week.

It is a bad thing that many Union members must now work scheduled mandatory overtime hours, on a consistent and routine weekly basis, until they qualify for medical disability...

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, but lets add in another level of payola and political corruption!

A stroke of the pen allowed government employees to form unions, another stroke of that same pen will clean it up.

F.D.R. Warned Us About Public Sector Unions

“It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”

That wasn’t Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul, or Ronald Reagan talking. That was George Meany — the former president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O — in 1955. Government unions are unremarkable today, but the labor movement once thought the idea absurd.

Public sector unions insist on laws that serve their interests — at the expense of the common good.

The founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this “unthinkable and intolerable.”

Government collective bargaining means voters do not have the final say on public policy. Instead their elected representatives must negotiate spending and policy decisions with unions. That is not exactly democratic – a fact that unions once recognized.

George Meany was not alone. Up through the 1950s, unions widely agreed that collective bargaining had no place in government. But starting with Wisconsin in 1959, states began to allow collective bargaining in government.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/18/the-first-blow-against-public-employees/fdr-warned-us-about-public-sector-unions

The road isn’t going to be a straight line. Walker is savvy enough to know that. He hasn’t changed. He draws on an enormous experience bank given that he won in Dem territory as Milwaukee County Exec.

The trouble is too many FReepers are naïve or catastrophists or both.

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