The Right Wing GOP Wisconsin governor ignited a national movement – and started a national pro-labor crusade – with his destruction of collective bargaining rights for 200,000 state and local government workers.
Walker’s scorched-earth legislation against labor was the vanguard of similar initiatives by GOP governors in Michigan, Florida, Ohio and elsewhere, not to mention the Tea Party-inspired zealots who dominate the caucus of the ruling Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Their anti-worker crusades have brought unionists out into the streets by the hundreds of thousands. Tent cities of upset workers sprang up on state Capitol lawns in Madison, Wis., and St. Paul, Minn. GOP social service cuts in Michigan were so bad that the National Nurses Union ran a soup kitchen on the Capitol grounds in Lansing. And NNU has launched a nationwide crusade to get everyone talking about inequality.
But with a year and several months to go until the 2012 election, can labor keep this up?
Trumka says labor will try to keep the enthusiasm going beyond Wisconsin’s special recall elections against GOP state senators who supported Walker’s law – and a November referendum in Ohio that could kill a similar anti-worker law pushed through by GOP Gov. John Kasich. But he admits it won’t be easy.
“It’ll be difficult to motivate workers. The problem is that the debate on the (federal) deficit and debt is subsuming everything else,” Trumka says. “And the president isn’t talking about” the issue workers really care about: Jobs.
As a result, “Our political program relies on volunteers, but when you have people talking about extending tax breaks for millionaires and taking money away from Social Security, it’ll be tough for us to motivate people across the board.”
The alternative? Trumka says labor will be “candidate-specific” in its on-the-ground operations – unlike prior mass mobilizations.
Trumka’s not the only union leader who says Obama might not get all the labor ground troops he got in 2008. National Nurses Union Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro is blunter.
She points out that her union’s board voted not to endorse any candidate – the president included – who dares to cut Social Security. Obama proposed cutting future Social Security increases as part of grand deals to cut the federal deficits and debt.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten expects the mobilization to occur, but she says it will be tied more to issues than to candidates. She makes the point that those issues are not just jobs, but good jobs, as well as turning the country around to make it work for everyone.
“The question is how we can turn this moment into a movement,” she said of the mobilization in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere.
“We have to bring back a national coalition of parents and teachers,” along with other workers, not just for education reform, but to tackle the nation’s problems of poverty, injustice and inequality, she says.
“This is a fight to take back America,” she declared, sounding the theme for mobilizing workers nationwide next year. It’ll also help the nation’s biggest problem, joblessness, she added. That’s because one plank of the campaign will be “to create a better match between the skills of the unemployed and the jobs available.”
“You make this a movement when you fight for an agenda of how to put people back to work, educate our kids and have access to the middle class,” Weingarten said. “That’s what this is all about.”
Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.
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The Right Wing GOP Wisconsin governor ignited a national movement – and started a national pro-labor crusade – with his destruction of collective bargaining rights for 200,000 state and local government workers.
Walker’s scorched-earth legislation against labor was the vanguard of similar initiatives by GOP governors in Michigan, Florida, Ohio and elsewhere, not to mention the Tea Party-inspired zealots who dominate the caucus of the ruling Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Their anti-worker crusades have brought unionists out into the streets by the hundreds of thousands. Tent cities of upset workers sprang up on state Capitol lawns in Madison, Wis., and St. Paul, Minn. GOP social service cuts in Michigan were so bad that the National Nurses Union ran a soup kitchen on the Capitol grounds in Lansing. And NNU has launched a nationwide crusade to get everyone talking about inequality.
But with a year and several months to go until the 2012 election, can labor keep this up?
Trumka says labor will try to keep the enthusiasm going beyond Wisconsin’s special recall elections against GOP state senators who supported Walker’s law – and a November referendum in Ohio that could kill a similar anti-worker law pushed through by GOP Gov. John Kasich. But he admits it won’t be easy.
“It’ll be difficult to motivate workers. The problem is that the debate on the (federal) deficit and debt is subsuming everything else,” Trumka says. “And the president isn’t talking about” the issue workers really care about: Jobs.
As a result, “Our political program relies on volunteers, but when you have people talking about extending tax breaks for millionaires and taking money away from Social Security, it’ll be tough for us to motivate people across the board.”
The alternative? Trumka says labor will be “candidate-specific” in its on-the-ground operations – unlike prior mass mobilizations.
Trumka’s not the only union leader who says Obama might not get all the labor ground troops he got in 2008. National Nurses Union Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro is blunter.
She points out that her union’s board voted not to endorse any candidate – the president included – who dares to cut Social Security. Obama proposed cutting future Social Security increases as part of grand deals to cut the federal deficits and debt.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten expects the mobilization to occur, but she says it will be tied more to issues than to candidates. She makes the point that those issues are not just jobs, but good jobs, as well as turning the country around to make it work for everyone.
“The question is how we can turn this moment into a movement,” she said of the mobilization in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere.
“We have to bring back a national coalition of parents and teachers,” along with other workers, not just for education reform, but to tackle the nation’s problems of poverty, injustice and inequality, she says.
“This is a fight to take back America,” she declared, sounding the theme for mobilizing workers nationwide next year. It’ll also help the nation’s biggest problem, joblessness, she added. That’s because one plank of the campaign will be “to create a better match between the skills of the unemployed and the jobs available.”
“You make this a movement when you fight for an agenda of how to put people back to work, educate our kids and have access to the middle class,” Weingarten said. “That’s what this is all about.”
Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.