Union members, organizers and leaders across the nation echo the uproar in Wisconsin at a set of budget cuts proposed last Tuesday that would endanger the right to collective bargaining, which gives unions the ability and power to negotiate hours and wages with employers on behalf of the union members.
The NY Times and the Huffington Post report that protests began in the last week in Madison, Wisconsin as unions react to a recent budget cuts proposed by Mayor Scott Walker (R), who has been in office for 6 weeks. Mayor Walker defends the bill that would provide $1,000 incentive for a laborer to choose not to pay union dues, via a press release from his office, that "We've also got to give those workers the right to choose." The voices from Wisconsin, echoed in cities across the nation, however, tell a different story, one in which it is not the right to choice that is in danger but the right to collective bargaining when negotiating labor contracts in the workplace.
At a press conference held Tuesday at City Hall in New York City, speaker for the city council, Christine Quinn (D), delivered a message of solidarity. “We are in Wisconsin today, we are standing with them.” Wisconsin is the first, the original battlefield. But the fight has spread and caught on as unions from state to state fear the loss of collective bargaining as a fundamental human right and a major tool in asserting and negotiating power in the workplace.
Collective bargaining refers to voluntary negotiations between trade unions (on the behalf of workers) and their employers. It is considered a fundamental human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 23) that “enhances human liberty, dignity and autonomy.” The fight in Madison, Wisconsin is not about wages or salary but this core issue of collective bargaining, which for blue collar workers is, according to Mark Marley of Wisconsin, “the first step to freedom in this country.”
“In Wisconsin it is not a conversation, not a discussion,” said Christine Quinn. The mayor’s cuts to labor amoung to him “saying [he] wants the unions dead. Without collective bargaining, there are no unions.” Marley,, who spoke before Quinn, explained what the unions are doing in Wisconsin, saying that “in Madison, Wisconsin, we are making noise. It is messy. It is loud. We are determined.” The people involved are making noise and receiving national attention as they fight against Walker’s propositions regarding labor in Wisconsin. Their cries for solidarity and brother hood are being answered by unions like the one present at City Hall last Tuesday.
When asked what brought Michelle Keller and five other members of the local 375 in Washington, D.C. to New York City last Tuesday, she answered, “one word: solidarity.” Keller continues, asserting that, for this issue, the danger is in “political fragmentation. We have to stand together on this issue.”
Danny Donohue had a message for Mayor Walker. He says, “It is the little guy that put you there, and it is the little guy that can take you down.” Donohue and a few others take an extreme route, believing that destruction of collective bargaining rights could lead to the destruction of democracy, in which labor relations reflect general relations between common citizens and the government, as it is replaced by oligarchy, in which employers and big business have most of the political power.
The press conference on Tuesday was populated with union member, supporters and leaders from CSEA, AFLCIO, AFSCME, OSA and local unions decorated with banners proclaiming “it’s about freedom!” and “solidarity!” and “we want respect!”. As speakers like Mark Marley, from Wisconsin and Chris Ericson, a union leader in New York, proclaimed messages of sympathy and solidarity with their counterparts in Wisconsin, the crowd sung songs like “Solidarity Forever” and recited chants echoing the messages proclaimed by the speakers. Faces were hard, hardened by the seriousness of the issue of collective bargaining and the fear that it is in danger, hardened by years of long hours put in at labor intensive jobs. This is a way of life in which one of the few tools for leveraging power is through the process of collective bargaining. The blue collar will not easily let it be taken from them.
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