Nation’s unions lost big in the Wisconsin showdown

Wis­con­sin Gov. Scott Walker waves at his vic­tory party in Wauke­sha, Wis. Walker’s defin­i­tive vic­tory in Wisconsin’s recall elec­tion is already rever­ber­at­ing in other state capi­tols, expos­ing unions’ dimin­ished polit­i­cal mus­cle, vul­ner­a­bil­ity to attacks from the right and inca­pac­ity to retal­i­ate. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File)

SAM HANANEL

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Gov. Scott Walker’s defin­i­tive vic­tory in Wisconsin’s recall elec­tion is already rever­ber­at­ing in other state cap­i­tals. It exposed the shrunken polit­i­cal mus­cle of the unions that tried to oust him, under­scor­ing their vul­ner­a­bil­ity to attacks from the right and inabil­ity to retaliate.

Repub­li­cans in some nearby states where anti-union mea­sures failed this year say they now plan to use Walker’s vic­tory to mount renewed efforts in 2013.

Instead of eject­ing the Repub­li­can who slashed state and local gov­ern­ment work­ers’ job ben­e­fits and bar­gain­ing rights, the union-instigated recall has made Walker a heroic model for con­ser­v­a­tives five months before the Novem­ber election.

“I think it’s bad news for the labor move­ment,” said John Russo, a labor stud­ies pro­fes­sor at Youngstown State Uni­ver­sity. “It gives the impres­sion they are not as strong as they once were, which they are not.”

Labor lead­ers main­tain that the fight was worth it, that the mas­sive protests against Walker and bit­ter divi­sions it cre­ated will make other gov­er­nors and leg­is­la­tors think twice before mak­ing sim­i­lar for­ays against unions.

But Walker’s vic­tory is encour­ag­ing Repub­li­cans in other states to push ahead with their own efforts to cur­tail unions’ power and chop away at the ben­e­fits gained for their mem­bers over the years.

GOP law­mak­ers in states such as Michi­gan, Min­nesota, Mis­souri and New Hamp­shire are likely to push harder for right-to-work leg­is­la­tion or other mea­sures that restrict auto­matic union dues collection.

No labor fight had so cap­ti­vated Amer­i­cans since Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan fired 11,000 air traf­fic con­trollers for ille­gally strik­ing in 1981, a move that encour­aged busi­nesses to take tougher stands against unions and helped pre­cip­i­tate a steep decline in union membership.

“I con­sider it big­ger than the air traf­fic con­trollers,” said Gary Chai­son, a pro­fes­sor of indus­trial rela­tions at Clark Uni­ver­sity in Worces­ter, Mass. “I think it’s going to embolden employ­ers in bar­gain­ing and dis­cour­age work­ers from join­ing unions. I think it’s hit­ting unions on all fronts.”

Repub­li­cans in some states near Wis­con­sin are pay­ing attention.

“Not only is there the momen­tum in favor of the kinds of reforms that Gov­er­nor Walker advo­cated for and got passed, but there becomes a com­pet­i­tive issue,” said Min­nesota state Sen. Dave Thomp­son, a Repub­li­can who’s spon­sor­ing an amend­ment to his state’s con­sti­tu­tion to make Min­nesota a right-to-work state.

“It becomes harder for places like Min­nesota to com­pete eco­nom­i­cally with states that make pos­i­tive reforms that ben­e­fit the busi­ness cli­mate and make life eas­ier on tax­pay­ers,” Thomp­son said.

In Mis­souri, state Sen. Dan Brown is hop­ing the Wis­con­sin recall results will encour­age the Legislature’s large, yet reluc­tant GOP majori­ties to move for­ward next year with bills lim­it­ing some union pow­ers. Brown wants to pare back manda­tory wages on pub­lic works projects and halt the per­pet­ual deduc­tion of union dues from pub­lic employee pay­checks by requir­ing annual writ­ten authorization.

After Repub­li­cans swept to power in dozens of state leg­is­la­tures in 2010, unions have spent mil­lions bat­tling anti-labor mea­sures across the coun­try. They were already smart­ing this year after Indi­ana became the first state in a decade to pass right-to-work leg­is­la­tion and Michi­gan banned auto­matic deduc­tion of union dues from teacher paychecks.

Their loss in Wis­con­sin far over­shad­owed the unions’ biggest polit­i­cal win in the past year, when Ohio vot­ers last Novem­ber struck down in a ref­er­en­dum a law pushed by Repub­li­can Gov. John Kasich curb­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights for pub­lic workers.

Pub­lic employee unions suf­fered two more losses Tues­day in Cal­i­for­nia. Vot­ers in San Diego approved a bal­lot mea­sure that imposes a six-year freeze on pay lev­els used to deter­mine pen­sion ben­e­fits for city work­ers. A mea­sure approved in San Jose requires city employ­ees to pay up to 16 per­cent of their salaries to keep their retire­ment plan or accept more mod­est benefits.

AFL-CIO polit­i­cal direc­tor Mike Pod­horzer said unions should get more credit for the Ohio win and for col­lect­ing nearly 1 mil­lion sig­na­tures to ini­ti­ate the Wis­con­sin recall. Walker and his sup­port­ers spent $47 mil­lion — com­pared with Democ­rats’ $19 mil­lion — to counter a strong union ground game that pushed voter turnout to lev­els usu­ally seen dur­ing pres­i­den­tial contests.

“This is not an expe­ri­ence many politi­cians want to go through,” Pod­horzer said.

Still, the turnout effort fell short of pro­duc­ing the unions’ hoped-for results. Exit polls showed vot­ers from union house­holds break­ing 63 per­cent to 37 per­cent for Demo­c­ra­tic Mil­wau­kee Mayor Tom Bar­rett. That’s vir­tu­ally the same as in the 2010 governor’s race, even though union house­holds rep­re­sented a big­ger greater share of the elec­torate this time.

Walker had con­vinced his Republican-dominated Leg­is­la­ture that lim­it­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights and mak­ing union mem­bers pay more for their health cov­er­age and pen­sions was nec­es­sary to plug a $3.6 bil­lion state bud­get short­fall. Labor lead­ers claimed he also wanted to crip­ple unions by ban­ning auto­matic dues deduc­tion for pub­lic employees.

Since the new Wis­con­sin law took effect, the state’s sec­ond largest union, the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of State, County and Munic­i­pal Employ­ees, has lost nearly half of its mem­bers in the state, accord­ing to inter­nal doc­u­ments obtained by The Asso­ci­ated Press. The doc­u­ments show that between March 2011 and Feb­ru­ary 2012, Wis­con­sin mem­ber­ship in AFSCME dropped from 63,577 to 34,942.

As national union mem­ber­ship has dwin­dled to just 11.8 per­cent of the work­force, the one growth area in recent years has been among teach­ers, fire­fight­ers and other gov­ern­ment employ­ees. Pub­lic sec­tor work­ers now rep­re­sent more than half of all union members.

Some gov­er­nors may be reluc­tant to cre­ate the kind of stark divi­sions seen in Wis­con­sin, said Nel­son Licht­en­stein, direc­tor of the Cen­ter for the Study of Work, Labor and Democ­racy at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Santa Barbara.

“Are these gov­er­nors going to cam­paign on more attacks on pub­lic sec­tor unions?” Licht­en­stein said. “I don’t think they are. It’s clear they got a lot of push­back, it’s divi­sive. It’s dif­fi­cult to be a gov­er­nor with com­plete polarization.”

Russo, the labor pro­fes­sor at Youngstown State, said the les­son of Wis­con­sin may be to take on unions in smaller steps rather than through sweep­ing mea­sures as in Ohio and Wisconsin.

Michi­gan Rep. Mike Shirkey, a Repub­li­can who backed a new law pro­hibit­ing schools from deduct­ing union dues from employ­ees’ pay­checks, said the Walker vic­tory pro­vides “addi­tional spine-stiffening” for law­mak­ers look­ing at chal­leng­ing union leaders.

“It basi­cally puts some wind in our sail to con­tinue down the road that we’ve already been on to advance free-market prin­ci­ples across the econ­omy of Michi­gan, includ­ing in the behav­ior and per­for­mance of union lead­er­ship,” Shirkey said.

Unions in Michi­gan are already try­ing to gather enough sig­na­tures to put a mea­sure on the bal­lot this Novem­ber that would amend the state con­sti­tu­tion to pro­hibit the right-to-work laws they fear Repub­li­cans will pass.

In New Hamp­shire, Repub­li­cans were unable to over­ride Demo­c­ra­tic Gov. John Lynch’s veto of a right-to-work mea­sure last year. But Lynch is not run­ning for re-election this year, and a vic­tory by con­ser­v­a­tives could revive that effort. New Hamp­shire House Speaker William O’Brien “will con­tinue to pri­or­i­tize right-to-work leg­is­la­tion,” spokes­woman Shan­non Shutts said.

In New Mex­ico, Walker’s vic­tory could embolden Repub­li­can Gov. Susana Martinez’s effort to limit that state’s col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing law. Through legal action, she has won con­trol of a board that over­sees pub­lic worker con­tract disputes.

And in Iowa, Gov. Terry Branstad, two seats shy of a GOP lock on the Leg­is­la­ture, said he would pro­pose requir­ing state work­ers, some who pay noth­ing toward their health insur­ance, to shoul­der 20 per­cent of their premiums.

“Every state’s situation’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent … but we kind of fol­low what each other is doing, and I’ve been inspired,” Branstad said.

Posted by AP News on Jun 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.