(I feel the need to compare this struggle to the one taking place between the NFL owners and players. The Wisconsin events really minimize the NFL's petty bullshit. What really matters vs What doesn't matter at all, really.
And for anyone who thinks this uprising here is treason or a betrayal, understand this: this is not about overthrowing America, it is about removing corporate influence and corruption from the govt. The corporate sponsored Supreme Court legalized the purchase and ownership of congress, the White House, and federal courts. Every political position has a price tag, and corporate influence and corruption guides every political decision made in this country now, including the anti-labor moves of Wisconsin's state govt.
The most important aspect to this uprising here is that it remains PEACEFUL, NON-VIOLENT, RESOLUTE and STRONG. If you are not committed to seeing this through to the end, it's OK if you'd rather watch it on the news. But history will look back on these days as the time when people all over the world said "Enough of this bullshit. Corporations aren't people, they shouldn't have influence over the govt" (which is technically fascism)"and when they break laws, they need to be punished the same way an individual who commits the same crime is punished, which means holding its executives and board responsible for crimes committed by the corporation. Corporate bottom lines do not come before the health, welfare and civil rights of the people. The people are what is most important about the United States--not it's govt, not its history, not even its security or economic standing. The people come first in America, and that has gotten way lost over the years leading up to this."
It remains to be seen how committed people will be, how the govt will respond (the Wisconsin governor has already threatened to call out the National Guard), and what changes as a result. But history is on our side. Ours is the side of what's right, what's fair and what's good for the people of this country, not the corporate bottom line. "The people...United...will never be divided!"--jef)
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Saturday, February 19, 2011 by The Capital Times (Wisconsin)
Nation's Eyes Turn to Wisconsin Amid Struggle over Collective Bargaining
by Clay Barbour
MADISON, WI - The birthplace of Progressivism this week became the key battleground in a fight that has repercussions stretching from New York to California.
As protests against Republican Gov. Scott Walker's plan to severely curb collective bargaining rights for public employees continued for a fifth day at the state Capitol Friday, demonstrators were joined by union supporters from Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as national union leaders and civil rights advocate the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
The political fight has captured the nation's attention, landing on nearly every major network and spurring dialogue about its relevance for the rest of the country. To many, Wisconsin represents the line in the sand for public employee unions, who find themselves under siege in several states. Losing ground here, they fear, will cost them everywhere.
"This is a coordinated effort by the Republican Party to destroy the labor movement in this country," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, in town Friday for the largest day of rallies, estimated by Madison police at 35,000 to 40,000 people. "If Wisconsin passes this, there are at least another 12 to 15 states that will try it."
Republicans leaders who took office as part of the conservative wave the swept the nation in November are promising deep spending cuts and more fiscal discipline. Many are also fighting for major changes to labor relations.
Union membership decline
The efforts come as organized labor reels from a steady loss of members in the private sector. The public sector, with about 7.6 million members, now accounts for the majority of workers on union rolls, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Making matters worse for unions, most states are wrestling with major budget problems. It has gotten so bad that even Democratic governors — usually friendly with labor — are targeting public employees and unions as ripe for cutbacks.
Lawmakers in Tennessee, Indiana, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Nevada and California are considering severe cuts to public employees, including layoffs, pay freezes and increased donations to employee pension and benefit plans. Collective bargaining in each of those states is in danger.
In Ohio, where lawmakers face an estimated $8 billion budget gap, the Legislature debated a bill this week that would limit collective bargaining for about 400,000 public employees. Protestors have rallied at the statehouse in Columbus, but on a far smaller scale than in Madison.
Pieter Wykoff, who works for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, said public employee contracts have gotten out of hand.
"They are an albatross around government's neck," he said. "What you are seeing is state governments across the country making a stand. Taxpayers are tired of subsidizing benefits they never get."
In New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is facing a $10 billion budget gap. He has vowed to balance his budget without tax increases. One of the key parts of his plan is to cut about $550 million by freezing public employee salaries and requiring them to pay a bigger share of their pensions and benefits coverage. He has threatened unions with as many as 9,800 layoffs if they can't agree on a deal.
"We are all in the same boat when it comes to public employees," said Morris Peters, Cuomo's budget spokesman. "It's just math. You can't run from that."
Giving government tools it needs
Walker wants to remove nearly all collective bargaining rights for most of Wisconsin's 175,000 state and local government employees, allowing workers to negotiate only over salary. He has exempted most law enforcement, firefighters and Wisconsin State Patrol troopers from his proposal.
By ending state employees' ability to negotiate for their pensions and insurance rates, the governor will be able to increase employee pension contributions to 5.8 percent of salary and more than double their health insurance contributions.
Currently most state employees pay nothing toward their pensions and a modest amount for their insurance. Walker said those increases alone would save the state $30 million this fiscal year and 10 times that much in future budgets. He said that would help him overcome the $137 million hole in the current budget, and eventually help the state make up the $3.6 billion shortfall projected for the next biennial budget.
Wisconsin Education Association Council President Mary Bell and Wisconsin State Employees Union Executive Director Marty Beil have both said the state's unions are willing to consider the governor's changes to their pension and benefits plans. But the unions remain dead set against his bid to end most collective bargaining rights.
In his office Friday, a raucous crowd just outside his window, Walker stood firm on his goal.
"I know full well the negative impact collective bargaining has on a county, city, town and school district officials to balance their budget," Walker said. "We're going to give local governments the tools they've been asking for, for decades."
That promise is the stuff of nightmares for union leaders. Organized labor is expected to spend a lot of money on fights in Wisconsin, as well as the other states where lawmakers have targeted labor.
And if Walker's bill goes through, as expected, Trumka promised a massive labor uprising in the state.
"We will be in the streets," he said.
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Saturday, February 19, 2011 by YES! Magazine
Wisconsin: The First Stop in An American Uprising?
It took awhile, but Wisconsin shows that the poor and middle class of the U.S. may be ready to push back. Madison may be only the beginning.
by Sarah van Gelder
The uprising that swept Tunisia, Egypt, and parts of Europe is showing signs of blossoming across the United States.
In Wisconsin, public employees and their supporters are drawing the line at Governor Scott Walker’s plan to eliminate collective bargaining and unilaterally cut benefits. School teachers, university students, firefighters, and others descended on the capital in the tens of thousands, and even the Superbowl champion Green Bay Packers have weighed in against the bill. Protests against similar anti-union measures are ramping up in Ohio.
Meanwhile, another protest movement aimed at protecting the poor and middle class is in the works. Cities around the country are preparing for a February 26 Day of Action, “targeting corporate tax dodgers.”
Learning from the UK
The strategy picks up on the UK Uncut campaign, begun when a group at a London pub—a firefighter, a nurse, a student, and others—came up with an idea that is part flash mob, part sit-in. In an article published in the Nation, reporter Johann Hari tells the story of the group’s frustration about government cutbacks. If Vodafone, one corporation with a huge back-tax bill, paid up, the cutbacks wouldn’t be needed. The group spread the word over social media, and held loud, impolite demonstrations. The idea quickly went viral, and flash mobs/sit-ins materialized at retail outlets across Britain, shutting many of them down.
Now, a US Uncut group has formed and announced a February 26 Day of Action here to coincide with UK Uncut's planned protests on the same day. Already, a dozen local events are planned. Some groups are keeping quiet about their targets, but several are targeting Bank of America. The goal, according to a statement on the US Uncut website, is “to draw attention to the fact that Bank of America received $45 billion in government bailout funds while funneling its tax dollars into 115 offshore tax havens [...] And to highlight the fact that the poor and middle class are now paying for this largess through drastic government cuts.”
The Politics of Class Warfare
Across the country, the poor and middle class have suffered from the economic collapse: jobs disappeared, mortgages sank underneath debt, and opportunities for a college education evaporated. Much of the bailout that was supposed to fix the economy went to the very institutions that caused the collapse. Many of these institutions are now using tax loopholes and offshore tax shelters to avoid paying taxes.
The poor and middle class, those who didn't cause the collapse but have felt the most pain from the poor economy, are now being asked to sacrifice again.
It took some time for a political response to coalesce. The Tea Party movement was able to direct discontent away from the Wall Street titans who brought the economy to its knees. Funding from the Koch brothers’ petro-fortune along with fawning attention from Fox News helped get the libertarian movement off the ground. But progressives remained fragmented and few built active, organized bases. Many waited for President Obama to act.
The tide may now be turning. Inspired by people-power movements around the world, people in the United States are beginning push back. The poor and middle class, those who didn't cause the collapse but have felt the most pain from the poor economy, are now being asked to sacrifice again.
Politicians are scurrying to cut spending, but fewer than one in five Americans say the federal budget deficit is their chief worry about the economy, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center; 44 percent say they're most worried about jobs. Polls show that Americans also want spending for education, investment in infrastructure, and environmental protection. Yet spending in all these areas is up for drastic cuts in state and federal budgets.
Likewise, on the tax side, 59 percent of Americans opposed extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest, according to a Bloomberg poll. Congress cut the taxes anyway, and the package will cost $800 billion over just two years.
Until now, polls have been one of the few places where anger at government policies that favor the rich while cutting service to the middle-class has been visible. But the crowds in Madison and the momentum of US Uncut tell us that may be about to change.
As a statement on the US Uncut website puts it: “We demand that before the hard-working, tax-paying families of this country are once again forced to sacrifice, the corporations who have so richly profited from our labor, our patronage, and our bailouts be compelled to pay their taxes and contribute their fair share to the continued prosperity of our nation. We will organize, we will mobilize, and we will NOT be quiet!”
Here's a "how-to" from UK Uncut:
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By Joshua Holland | Sourced from AlterNet
Posted at February 18, 2011
What's happening in Wisconsin is not complicated. At the beginning of this year, the state was on course to end 2011 with a budget surplus of $120 million. As Ezra Klein explained, newly elected GOP Governor Scott Walker then " signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it turned a surplus into a deficit."
Walker then used the deficit he'd created as the justification for assaulting his state's public employees. He used a law cooked up by a right-wing advocacy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC likes to fly beneath the radar, but I described the organization in a 2005 article as "the connective tissue that links state legislators with right-wing think tanks, leading anti-tax activists and corporate money." Similar laws are on the table in Ohio and Indiana.
Walker's bill would strip public employees of the right to bargain collectively for anything but higher pay (and would cap the amount of wage hikes they might end up gaining in negotiations). His intentions are clear -- before assuming office, Walker threatened to decertify the state's employees' unions (until he discovered that the governor doesn't have that power).
But he's spinning the measure as something else -- a bitter pill state workers must swallow in order to save Wisconsin's government. So the first things you need to know are:
1. Wisconsin's public workers have already "made sacrifices to help balance the budget, through 16 unpaid furlough days and no pay increases the past two years," according to the Associated Press. The unions know their members are going to have to make concessions on benefits, but they rightly see the assault on their fundamental right to negotiate as an act of war.
2. There are already 13 states that restrict public workers' bargaining rights and it hasn't helped their bottom lines. As Ed Kilgore notes, "eight non-collective-bargaining states face larger budget shortfalls than either Wisconsin or Ohio," and " three of the 13 non-collective bargaining states are among the eleven states facing budget shortfalls at or above 20%."
3. This isn't just about public employees. What even a majority of the protesters don't know is that Walker's law would also place all of the state's Medicaid funding in the hands of the governor. State senator Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton -- one of the Dem law-makers who fled the state to block a vote on the bill -- told local media that this amounted to "substantial Medicaid changes" that put "the governor, all of a sudden... in charge of Medicaid, which is SeniorCare, which is BadgerCare ...and he has never once said what he intends to do” with those programs. But the provision led journalist Suzie Madrak to conclude that "the end game for all this is to defund state Medicaid programs and make it impossible to serve as part of the new health care safety net."
4. Health-care costs, rather than workers' greed, are what has driven up the price of employees' benefits. But generally speaking, those public sector health-care costs have grown at a slower clip than in the private sector.
5. Public employees' pensions account for just 6 percent of state budgets.This has nothing to do with the state's fiscal picture. Aside from potentially undermining Wisconsin's public health-care system, it's really about destroying the last bastion of unionism in the American economy: public employees. As Addie Stan wrote on AlterNet's front page:Walker is carrying out the wishes of his corporate master, David Koch, who calls the tune these days for Wisconsin Republicans. Walker is just one among many Wisconsin Republicans supported by Koch Industries -- run by David Koch and his brother, Charles -- and Americans For Prosperity, the astroturf group founded and funded by David Koch. The Koch brothers are hell-bent on destroying the labor movement once and for all.Consider these facts:
6. Last year, more working people belonged to a union in the public sector (7.9 million) than in the private (7.4 million), despite the fact that corporate America employs five times the number of wage-earners. 37 percent of government workers belong to a union, compared with just 7 percent of private-sector employees.
7. Whether in the public or private sector, union workers earn, on average, 20 percent more than their non-unionized counterparts. They also have richer retirement and health benefits -- the “union compensation premium” rises to almost 30 percent when you include those bennies.
That workers can still negotiate from a position of strength somewhere in the US is simply unacceptable to the right, and that's what this is about. As you might expect, the tool they're using in their campaign is a pack full of lies and distortions about public employees. Here are some answers to those falsehoods:
8. Public sector workers have, on average, more experience and higher levels of education than their counterparts in the private sector (they are twice as likely to have a college degree).
9. When you adjust for those factors, they make, on average, 4 percent less than their private-sector counterparts.
10. Like any group of workers with a high union density, they have better benefits, on average. But even including those benefits, state and local employees still make less in total compensation than they would doing the same work in the private sector.
11. In 2007, the average pension for a public sector worker was $22,000. Not exactly caviar dreams.
12. Many public employees are not eligible for Social Security -- those pensions, and whatever they can put away on their own, is all that they'll have in their golden years.
(Unless otherwise indicated, you can find links to the data for all of the above in my piece, "Right-Wingers Using Public Employees as 21st-Century Welfare Queens.")
The Right has made great political progress getting Americans to ask the question: "How come that guy’s getting what I don’t have?" It’s the crux of the politics of grievance. Progressives need to get Americans to ask a different question: "What’s keeping me from getting what that guy has?" At least part of the answer is the Right’s decades-long assault on private sector workers’ ability to organize, and the latest battle is being waged in Wisconsin.
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