Tens of Thousands Protest Move to Destroy Public Unions
John Nichols
TheNation.com: February 17, 2011
"I have never been prouder of our movement than I am at this moment,"
shouted Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt, as he surveyed the
crowds of union members and their supporters that surged around the state
Capitol and into the streets of Madison Wednesday, literally closing the
downtown as tens of thousands of Wisconsinites protested their Republican
governor's attempt to strip public employee unions of their collective
bargaining rights.
Where Tuesday's mid-day protests drew crowds estimated at 12,000 to 15,000,
Wednesday's mid-day rally drew 30,000, according to estimates by organizers.
Madison Police Chief Noble Wray, a veteran of 27 years on the city's force,
said he had has never see a protest of this size at the Capitol - and he
noted that, while crowd estimates usually just measure those outside, this
time the inside of the sprawling state Capitol was "packed."
On Wednesday night, an estimated 20,000 teachers and their supporters
rallied outside the Capitol and then marched into the building, filling the
rotunda, stairways and hallways. Chants of "What's disgusting? Union
busting!" shook the building as legislators met in committee rooms late into
the night.
The country was starting to take notice, as broadcast and cable-news
satellite trucks rolled into town. The images they captured were stunning,
as peaceful crowds filled vast stretches of the square that surrounds the
seat of state government.
Republican legislators -- who had been poised to pass the governor's plan
Thursday, and might yet do so - were clearly paying attention. Two GOP
senators broke with the governor, at least to some extent. Dale Schultz from
rural southeastern Wisconsin and Van Wanggaard from the traditional
manufacturing center of Racine, proposed an alternative bill that would
allow limit bargaining rights for public employees on wages, pensions and
health care for the next two years but allow them to continue to bargain on
other issues.
While that's hardly an attractive prospect to state workers - as it would
also require them to make significantly higher pension and health-care
contributions - the measure rejects the most draconian component's of the
governor's plan. Other Republicans resisted the proposal, however, offering
only minor amendments to the governor's plan.
If Schultz and Wanggaard actually vote "no" Thursday, when the measure is to
be taken up, just one more Republican senator would have to join them in
order to block the bill.
That the first real movement by Republicans came after Wednesday's rally was
hardly surprising, as few state capital's have seen the sort of mobilization
that occurred at mid-day, and that is likely to reoccur at nightfall as
teachers from across the state are expected to pour into the city for a
rally and candlelight vigil.
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In some senses, Wednesday's remarkable rally began Tuesday evening, when
Madison Teachers Inc., the local education union, announced that teachers
would leave their classrooms to spend the day lobbying legislators to "Kill
the Bill" that has been proposed by newly-elected Republican Governor Scott
Walker.
The teachers showed up en masse in downtown Madison Wednesday morning.
And then something remarkable happened.
Instead of taking the day off, their students gathered at schools on the
west and east sides of Madison and marched miles along the city's main
thoroughfares to join the largest mass demonstration the city has seen in
decades - perhaps since the great protests of the Vietnam War era.
Thousands of high school students arrived at the Capital Square, coming from
opposite directions, chanting: "We support our teachers! We support public
education!"
Thousands of University of Wisconsin students joined them, decked out in the
school's red-and-white colors.
***
From: "flacks" <flacks@soc.ucsb.edu>
Subject: important information for understanding what's behind the huge
Madison WI protests
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Thursday, February 17, 2011 1:29 PM -0600
From: Myra Ferree <mferree@SSC.WISC.EDU>
To: SWS@LISTSERV.URI.EDU
Subject: [SWS] Madison news (esp for UW alums)
If you want a better sense of why current UW Madison students and faculty
are upset, my colleague has assembled some of the sources. Unlike the spin
from the NYTimes, the core issue here is not the budget (we sucked up a 8%
pay cut, aka furlough last year with only a few grumbles) but ending the 20
year right for TAs and RAs and academic staff to organize collectively,
ending the 2 year old right for childcare workers to organize collectively
and also blocking home health workers from joining a union, changing the
rules so that all unions must hold an annual certification election every
year or lose their status, making all contracts one year only, ending the
union right to have dues collected from a paycheck and instituting
"right-to-work rules" that exempt employees represented by a union from
having to pay dues to the union unless they affirmatively check off that
they want to pay. In my personal view, this is not (as the NYT says)
"weakening" unions, it is corporate-style union-busting. And if any of you
are old enough to recall the effects of Reagan breaking the air traffic
controllers' strike on all unions in this country, you will know why this
is a much bigger issue than the NYT suggests, and has implications well
beyond WI.
Now there is also a proposal to split UW-Madison off from the rest of the
UW system and put it under a new board wholly appointed by the governor
too. Not yet clear what our administration will do.
I just got back from the Capitol where the firefighters and police unions
(exempted from the Governor's give-backs) had joined the demonstration, and
where the Democratic legislators walked out to prevent a quorum (since all
Republicans, the majority, are unwaveringly in favor of this anti-union
bill). Keep an eye on how the media in your part of the country are framing
our story, and if you can help set the story straight, please do. Facts
follow in Kris's GlobalHigherEd blog posting.
Subject: GlobalHigherEd
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:40:42 +0000
From: GlobalHigherEd <kolds@wisc.edu>
To: mferree@ssc.wisc.edu
GlobalHigherEd <http://globalhighered.wordpress.com>
http://fusion.google.com/add?source=atgs&feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/Globalhighered
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