Wisconsin Uprising

Michael D. Yates

• Publisher: Monthly Review Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781583672839
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Relaciones laborales e industriales

In early 2011, the nation was stunned to watch Wisconsin’s state capitol in Madison come under sudden and unexpected occupation by union members and their allies. The protests to defend collective bargaining rights were militant and practically unheard of in this era of declining union power. Nearly forty years of neoliberalism and the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression have battered the labor movement, and workers have been largely complacent in the face of stagnant wages, slashed benefits and services, widening unemployment, and growing inequality.

That is, until now. Under pressure from a union-busting governor and his supporters in the legislature, and inspired by the massive uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, workers in Wisconsin shook the nation with their colossal display of solidarity and outrage. Their struggle is still ongoing, but there are lessons to be learned from the Wisconsin revolt. This timely book brings together some of the best labor journalists and scholars in the United States, many of whom were on the ground at the time, to examine the causes and impact of events, and suggest how the labor movement might proceed in this new era of union militancy.

PART ONE

On the Ground in Madison

• • •

The Madison revolt did not occur in a vacuum. Workers in both private and public sector workplaces had faced vicious assaults on their unions and working conditions for years. Then, Governor Scott Walker decided to defeat public workers’ unions once and for all. This was too much for some employees, and their protests eventually mushroomed into the largest working-class uprising in the United States in decades. The essays in this section provide readers with the facts of the uprising, the historical background out of which it arose, and some insights into what might happen in its wake. All of the writers make it clear that the demonstrations did not arise out of thin air, that they had both a Wisconsin-specific and a more general character, that they were led by rank-and-file workers, that they had the potential to give rise to a more radical and democratic labor movement, and that, for the most part, union leaders and their allies in the Democratic Party ultimately gained control over the forces on the ground and channeled the revolt into safer—from the union bureaucracy’s point of view—and less democratic actions. The writers also point out that what Walker and his allies are doing is going to continue, and become even more antagonistic to the economic well-being of working people. More Madisons are going to be necessary. Let us hope what we saw in Wisconsin is the birth of a new labor movement.

1—Disciplining Labor, Dismantling Democracy: Rebellion and Control in Wisconsin

CONNOR DONEGAN

We had already built plans up but it was kind of the last hurrah before we dropped the bomb. And I stood up and I pulled out a picture of Ronald Reagan and I said . . . thirty years ago Ronald Reagan had one of the most defining moments of his political career . . . when he fired the air traffic controllers. And I said, to me that moment was more important than labor relations or even the federal budget. . . . I said this may not have as broad of world implications but in Wisconsin’s history this is our moment, our time to change the course of history. . . . It’s all about getting our freedom back.

—GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER (FEBRUARY 23, 2011)¹

In the midst of the popular uprising to defeat Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s Budget Repair Bill the newly elected executive received a prank phone call from a “David Koch,” a billionaire campaign supporter. With the prompt of “How are things going in Wisconsin?” Walker spent twenty minutes divulging details of his political strategy. Among the more intriguing moments came when “David Koch” baited the governor to admit that this was about “personal interest.” Yet Walker insisted, “It’s all about getting our freedom back.” What spurious freedom is it that strips workers of their unions and the poor, elderly, and disabled of basic, life-sustaining services? “It is,” as Karl Marx described this same “freedom” in the late nineteenth century, “not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but the freedom of capital to crush the worker.”² Walker’s campaign slogan— Wisconsin Is Open for Business—encapsulates his intentions to liberate corporations from the restraints imposed on their profit-making by environmental protection laws, public “monopolies,” unions, and workers’ expectations for a decent standard of living.

So it is no surprise that Walker’s crusade for “freedom”—busting unions, privatizing education, deregulating industry, cutting corporate taxes, and dispossessing the needy of publicly provided services—is understood by the working people of Wisconsin, indeed of the world, as not only a blatant transfer of wealth to the rich but as an attack on democracy itself. Teacher sickouts, student walkouts, mass protest, a popular occupation, and civil disobedience marked the return of social movement politics—and class struggle—as they have not been seen in the United States for upward of three and a half decades. In this essay, I piece together a comprehensive view of the legislative blitzkrieg under way in Wisconsin. I then follow the struggle over the Budget Repair Bill through some of its defining moments, ending with a picture of where this movement finds itself today. I draw mainly on my own observations and discussions with other participants. Lastly, with the U.S. and global economies mired in a prolonged slump, the uprising in Wisconsin must be understood as only the first stage of a much larger struggle over the restructuring of a political economy threatened by instability and mired in deep crisis.

A Legislative Blitzkrieg

The Great Recession clobbered state budgets, Wisconsin included. Between 2008 and 2009 Wisconsin state revenue dropped by 7 percent, and by 2010’s end revenue collection had only begun to tick upward. Increases in poverty and unemployment sent more residents to Medicaid and other social programs, while the bipartisan frenzy of tax cuts since 2003—costing $800 million annually—helped none but corporate profits. On Tuesday, March 1, 2011, Governor Walker delivered his biennial budget address to the legislature and members of the public. Citing high taxes (though two out of three corporate tax returns filed in Wisconsin in 2005 “showed a bottom-line tax of zero dollars”),³ burdensome regulations, and a lack of “frugality and moderation” as the causes of Wisconsin’s economic downturn—not the financial meltdown or global recession—and the state’s $2.5 billion structural deficit, Walker unveiled a reduction of $4.2 billion from the biennial budget and promised more corporate tax cuts.

It was almost three weeks earlier that Walker introduced his Budget Repair Bill, expecting it to pass through the Republican-dominated legislature in a matter of days. It was a monstrosity designed to destroy public sector unions, expand executive power over all government agencies, and slash health and social services by $50 million while restricting eligibility, raising fees, and excluding undocumented immigrants. He also aimed to privatize public utilities in no-bid sales.⁴ Though the last item was removed before signing, the rest remained intact: the entire public sector will be “right to work,” the state will no longer deduct union dues from paychecks, contracts will expire if union representatives fail to receive support from a majority of members in annual elections, employees’ contributions to pensions will increase to half the actuarial cost, and collective bargaining will be strictly limited to wages. Certain university and health care workers will have no right to unionize whatsoever. The legislation promises to land a deadly blow to all of Wisconsin’s public sector unions, on top of an immediate drop in take-home pay totaling roughly $1 billion each year.

At the same time as the administration attempts to strike a mortal blow to collective bargaining rights, an equally monumental offensive on public education is pushing its way into law. It’s a two-step political maneuver that will de-fund public schools while establishing a parallel system of private schools, funded by the state. Students and teachers at Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) already suffer from chronic underfunding, despite depression-level unemployment and hunger rates in Milwaukee’s African American neighborhoods.⁵ On February 15, 150 parents and teachers of MPS gathered to discuss how to respond to the loss of the SAGE program (which supports smaller class sizes), as well as six teachers, two teachers’ aides, and a librarian. That night, they learned that Walker’s budget would cause MPS to lose $233.5 million—25 percent of the district’s revenue. “This may be,” remarked MPS school board president Michael Bonds, “the death of MPS.”⁶ School districts across the state face a similarly bleak future thanks to Walker’s plan to cut $823 million from the general education fund and to eliminate entirely Title 1 Funds, which provide millions of dollars to support students in poverty-ridden districts.

The first step, then, in the administration’s offensive will severely impair the capacity of public schools to serve students. The second step—creating the legal and financial infrastructure for a privatized school system—likewise has been under way in Milwaukee for at least two decades. Milwaukee’s school voucher program, a national model, began modestly in 1990 to provide low-income, mostly African American students with vouchers to attend private schools at no cost. All along, supporters of privatization in Milwaukee, as elsewhere, have used the rhetoric of civil rights to gain support, allowing them to characterize opponents as in favor of a racist status quo. The financial and ideological backers—including the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation, Wal-Mart heir John Walton, and a host of corporate executives—“have had a strategic game plan,” reports Barbary Miner, for expanding Milwaukee’s voucher program.⁷ The program has grown from 300 to 20,000 students to become, as the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation described, a “beachhead . . . in the long march to universal school choice.” As of the fall of 2005, sixty-seven private schools—many of them lacking “the ability, resources, knowledge or will to offer children even a mediocre education”—had opened in Milwaukee to capture the growing market in poor children, siphoning $65 million from MPS in 2004 alone.⁸

The Walker administration’s offensive marks the culmination of a long-standing elite project to privatize the school system, in which bashing educators and their unions is only one part. The voucher program will be expanded to Racine County while every Milwaukee child will become eligible—regardless of income—to attend any private school located in Milwaukee County. The cost will be deducted from the MPS budget, which will shrink further as enrollment declines. A separate piece of legislation will institute an appointed, statewide charter school authorizing board. Charter applicants will then bypass the authority of democratically elected school boards and instead appeal to an executive board. The bill also removes the limit on the number of students who can attend “virtual charter schools”—online classes that require no school buildings or teachers at all. When, on March 23, the Senate Education Committee held a public hearing on the bill, parents, teachers, and other residents from across the state came to Madison to express their disapproval and dismay. For nine hours parents and teachers spoke against the bill. “What you’re introducing,” a resident of rural Schofield inveighed, “is going to destroy my district. This is not about education, it’s about money and control and you’re trying to take it away.”

The barrage of legislation being fast-tracked into Wisconsin law— much of it tied to the corporate lobbying group the American Legislative Exchange Council and strongly supported by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce—is tantamount to a legislative blitzkrieg, with attacks coming from every direction at once. The bombs are still falling, but when the dust clears the state itself will be fundamentally restructured. First, the systematic exclusion of poor and working people from electoral politics will be nearly complete. Destroying public sector unions will abolish the only means the working class has, meager and limited as it is, to influence electoral politics. Individually, working people have no capacity at all to contend with corporate donors. On top of that is a new, highly restrictive voter ID law that will disenfranchise countless thousands of voters, particularly the poor, students, people of color, and seniors. Second, the state is withdrawing even further from its responsibilities for social reproduction. Essential, life-sustaining tasks now provided by the state—like child services and health care services for the poor, elderly, and disabled—will be drastically reduced and available almost exclusively on the market, for a price, or from unpaid, mostly female family members. Education will still be paid for publicly, but its quality and content will increasingly be decided and administered privately.

Lastly, the government, as an employer, has long been a haven for decent benefits and compensation in an ever-more brutal labor market. Now, the public sector is exerting downward pressure on wages and benefits, curtailing the bargaining power of workers in the job market. In all, these changes amount to a structural adjustment of Wisconsin’s political economy, something akin to the “Structural Adjustment Programs” imposed by the IMF and World Bank on the entire Third World, enriching the few and immiserating countless millions. But the attempt to discipline Wisconsin workers sparked the greatest backlash in decades, one that may yet revive progressive and left movements in Wisconsin.

Rebellion and Control

I arrived in Madison to find a line of hundreds of people snaking out of the capitol building. Police guarded the doors, allowing only one person in for every few that left. The game lasted for only an hour before the doors were closed and those still inside were told to leave. I stood outside in curiosity-cum-frustration as a small group of students spoke to the growing crowd from behind a line of police officers, flanked by AFL-CIO trained “marshals” in bright orange vests, urging everyone to comply with police orders to give up the capitol occupation. Later, I would wince as protesters chanted “Thank you” to the officers sent there to control the movement. Yet, that night around one hundred protesters defied police orders to end the occupation, and two weeks later the police would be forced to cede control of the state-house to the people. These conflicts and contradictions within the movement—between union workers and union bureaucrats, between the promises of liberalism and the reality of class domination, and between differing interpretations of the attack—both constrained the struggle and propelled it forward. How did this mass upsurge of popular struggle occur? Is its energy now contained by electoral politics? And what has it achieved?

On Tuesday, February 15, four days after Walker announced the Budget Repair Bill, over 700 students from East High School walked two and a half miles from their classes to join 10,000 protesters at the statehouse. In Milwaukee, teachers had already been organizing demonstrations at the governor’s house with the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) and the Educator’s Network for Social Justice (ENSJ); some were using personal days to travel to Madison; and one school had already organized a sickout. Milwaukee teacher Joe DeCarlo spoke through a megaphone to a group of teachers rallying in Madison: “Even before the governor put forth this budget, we were losing our specialties, we’re losing our art programs— we’re here with art teachers today—we’re losing our phys-ed programs, we’re losing so many paraprofessionals.”⁹ Students rallying outside schools voiced not only their solidarity with their teachers but also anger that their own education is under continued assault.

This is not the first time that teachers in Milwaukee have struggled against an aggressive governor. The previous governor, Democrat Jim Doyle, sought to dissolve the school board and impose mayoral control on the district, a reform that is becoming common in major cities. ENSJ and the local NAACP organized the Coalition to Stop the Mayoral Takeover with community groups and labor unions, including the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association (MTEA). Their public campaign included mobilizing Milwaukee residents to attend protests at legislators’ homes and community hearings and forums. Doyle eventually revoked the proposal.

Many of those same activists from ENSJ gathered on those first Wednesday and Thursday nights to call other teachers about the next day’s sickout. By the time Mary Bell, president of WEAC, called for a statewide sickout the rank and file was already mobilizing. Twenty-four school districts closed on Thursday, and by Friday that included Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, and Waukesha—among the largest districts in the state. Just as the student walkouts inspired teachers, the mass strike by teachers infected workers, university students, and others around the state with a sense of urgency and militancy. By then, the capitol was occupied twenty-four hours a day, providing a space for essential movement building activities like communication, planning, and a visible presence. When the Senate prepared to vote on the Budget Repair Bill, protesters quickly organized blockades in stairways, hallways, and the Senate antechambers to stop the legislators from voting. This not only was the fire that compelled the Democrats to break the Senate’s quorum by leaving the state, it also is why they were able to escape the Senate’s sergeant at arms. Police, who were scouring the building for the minority party members, were stopped by an ironworkers’ blockade while the Democrats fled the building.

Police responded carefully to the occupation and the protests so as not to inflame them. Outside the statehouse, law enforcement personnel patrolled in groups and were generally uninterested in intervening in demonstrations and rallies. Inside, police built relationships with a small group of unofficial leaders of the occupation. These police-appointed spokespeople acted as conduits for police orders to protesters, who generally complied. For two weeks the police slowly increased their control over the building until they finally moved in, locked the doors, and demanded that the occupation end. Most reluctantly vacated the building, though eighty would remain for two more weeks before finally being cajoled to leave by authorities.

The success of this soft-power strategy revealed as much about the protesters as it did law enforcement. There were competing conceptions of the struggle, and the “middle-class” perspective quickly became hegemonic. Defending the middle class was a common refrain in speeches, homemade signs, and conversations. These protesters drew from the progressive roots of Wisconsin politics and tended to personalize the struggle (that is, blame Walker). Many argued strongly for respecting and obeying police orders (to thwart any direct action) and even thanked the police for their hard work. For them, victory meant returning the Democrats to power. There were others—mostly from unions, immigrant rights groups, and leftist organizations—who understood this to be a broader struggle of the working class and oppressed groups. They made more militant demands, like “No Concessions” and “Tax the Rich,” that drew on the history of class struggle in the United States, and placed this battle within the context of a transatlantic fight against austerity. These groups aimed to build a broader movement independent of the Demo...