Wisconsin Battle Resuscitates Big Labor

by | Mar 11, 2011 | Labor Relations Ink

In the wake of protests over budget cutting measures in Madison and around the country, Big Labor is enjoying a surge of energy, unity and public approval not seen in generations. A number of polls taken over the past two weeks indicate growing support for public unions and “collective bargaining rights” over budget cutting measures and the governors who attempt to enact them. Clearly the unions are winning the PR war, branding themselves as the voice and last hope of the “average working American.” Unprecedented media attention of the last month has catapulted the usual union talking points out of the local newsletter and onto the front page of the New York Times — as unions go so goes the middle class — unions alone make jobs safe and pay fair — unions are the only pushback left to corporate power. As it has played out, what seemed disastrous for public unions has proven to be beyond the wildest dream of even the most well financed union communications director. The Wisconsin struggle has also redrawn the public’s image of a “union member” from surly overpaid UAW factory worker to unsung fireman, schoolteacher and nurse. In shaping public opinion, the media has generally avoided any balanced or investigative approach to the business of public unionism instead opting to lionize individual protestors and pass along union talking points as accepted common knowledge. The media has also been complicit to the unions’ pivot off of the hard cold facts of fiscal responsibility to their hyperbolic sermonizing on the value of our children and their educations. Due credit must also go to labor leaders for maintaining order and discipline over the massive crowds in Madison, keeping the protests clever, conscientious and even wholesome. This allowed the media to paint the protests as organic spontaneous grassroots uprisings of likable ordinary working folks and not the carefully orchestrated left wing mobilization efforts that they actually are. Basking in such once inconceivable positive media attention, unionistas from Hoffa to Trumka to Michael Moore were quick to grab the spotlight in Madison to declare both victory for the “American worker” and class warfare against The Haves and Corporate America. Moore told the cheering crowd “until Madison and this last month we have felt helpless against the rich.” United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts said, “People are looking at this and saying, ‘This is a struggle I want to be a part of.’” (An observation not long lost on union strategists.) By any measure the struggle has ignited a firestorm in the pro-union progressive base. A Pew Research poll from the first week of March found favorable opinions of unions outnumbering unfavorable by a 47% to 39% margin. This is unchanged from the first week in February before the protests began in Madison. However, very favorable ratings jumped sharply between the two polls, from 14% to 32%, suggesting those who once simply approved of unions have grown zealous in their support. (It remains to be seen how today’s controversial late night passage of the revised anti-union senate bill will spread and spike pro-union sentiments.) And as every union organizer knows, agitation and zeal correlate directly to phone lists and shoe leather. Seizing the moment, at the AFL-CIO winter meeting last week in Washington union leaders huddled in workshops discussing how to maintain momentum and turn the thousands of pro-union protestors into unpaid union organizers. Trumka opened the meeting with the hope that support for public-sector union workers would translate to support for organizing efforts in the private sector. And the consensus among labor leaders and pro-labor pundits was plain — quickly organize as many private sector workers as possible to capitalize on the moment and counteract the notion of unionized public workers as a privileged class. “This is our moment,” AFT president Randi Weingarten said, “The challenge for us is to take this moment and turn it into a movement.” By week’s end the AFL-CIO had announced the targeting of 20,000 T-Mobile workers by the CWA and 45,000 newly eligible airport security workers. Meanwhile, just down the avenue, SEIU simultaneously announced a mammoth SEIU-sized undertaking – campaigns in 15 cities including Detroit, Chicago and Houston to unionize tens of thousands of low-wage private sector workers under the guise of fighting foreclosures and government budget cuts. Not to be overlooked, the larger progressive movement and the Democratic Party, faced with the eminent loss of their major funding stream, have overnight become openly rabidly pro-labor. Once the thuggish embarrassing ugly step uncle (with the fat wallet) of the progressive movement, unions are suddenly cool again. Support for the labor movement is coming from Obama’s Organizing for America as well as a seemingly endless list of progressive organizations. While it remains to be seen how well everyone can play together nicely, 2011 finds Big Labor not only unified against a common enemy (all things Republican) but free of the turf wars and internal bickering that have plagued the labor movement for over a decade. Change to Win is all but dissolved back into the AFL-CIO and labor’s perpetual bully boy Andy Stern has left the union hall. Public unions have also come to the abrupt realization that they cannot survive forever without the financial clout of private sector unions and the largesse of the NLRB. After half a century of mutual indifference, the last month has shown public and private sector unions that their fates are inextricably intertwined. The coming year will no doubt prove reports of the death of unionism were grossly premature.

INK Newsletter

APPROACHABILITY MINUTE

GET OUR RETENTION TOOLKIT

PUBLICATIONS

Archives

Categories