Protester at Ground ZeroA week ago today I spoke in this posting about the Wisconsin 14, the 14 State Senators who left the state of Wisconsin to prevent the Governor from forcing a quick vote taking away ‘collective bargaining rights’ of state workers. So much has happened during this week and the Governor phone conversation with someone pretending to be a major money supporter really put the issue in perspective. The issue is clearly his attempt to weaken and break state unions.
When big businesses in the State, like Harley Davidson, Mercury Motors and Kohler wanted, in the last year, concessions from their unions they just threaten to move the jobs out of Wisconsin. When the choice was to take pay and benefit cuts or lose your job there was really no choice for union workers. In fact, when Harley Davidson want concessions from its unions they threaten to move the jobs out of Wisconsin and to the Kansas City plant. They won and now are threatening the unions in Kansas City with a move out of state unless they take more pay and benefit cuts.
Governor Walker’s problem is he cannot take state employee jobs out of Wisconsin if they do not agree to pay and benefits cuts and give up collective bargaining. Though the unions accepted the pay and benefit cuts he now says he will not compromise and they must give up collective bargaining.
The Mayor of Milwaukee, the Governor’s opponent for in the elections last year, in response to a question, told a TV interviewer how when the Governor was the Milwaukee County Executive he refused to negotiate with unions of county security workers and replaced all of them with a private security firm. The company that got the county contract had to go out of state to hire employees and than his decision was overthrown by the courts and the original security officers got their jobs back.
The media says Milwaukee is Ground Zero for the nonviolent struggle of workers vs. big business. Since the Governor cannot move state jobs out of Wisconsin, I guess it is.
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