THE WISCONSIN 14 are on the run, on the move all the time, sleeping in different beds each night, keeping out of the reach of the police across the state line in Illinois. The 14, members of the Democratic minority in the Wisconsin Senate, are engaged in a bizarre legislative battle to defeat a Bill that will severely curtail the right of state public servants to collective bargaining.
Although they can’t win the vote in the Senate, they can deprive the Republican majority of the quorum necessary for the vote to be put – as long as they can keep ahead of state police dispatched by the governor to drag them back to the floor.
Over the weekend 70,000 people took to the streets of the state capital Madison demanding the legislation be dropped. Several hundred protesting workers have moved in to sleep in the Capitol building. The clash has become a national testing ground, with demonstrations from Albany to the west coast over similar moves by other Republican governors. Indiana legislators are also hiding out in Illinois, while Ohio is preparing similar measures. Even the White House has weighed in in support of the unions, an important power base for Barack Obama.
Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker was elected in November promising to take on the unions. He says the moves are necessary to save $300 million over the next two years to help close a $3.6 billion budget gap by cutting state employees’ pension and healthcare benefits and severely restricting their right to bargain collectively on anything other than pay. At the weekend he repeated his threat to initiate as many as 12,000 layoffs if his plan is not enacted soon.
The unions argue that the measures are really aimed at destroying their power as most have already agreed to raise their pension and health insurance payments to meet the deficit reduction target. The battle, a first in the public service, reflects a major shift in the country’s industrial balance of forces. For the first time in US history last year, a majority of union members worked for the government rather than private firms. About 36 per cent of public service workers, 7.6 million people, are members of unions, compared to about 7 per cent of private-sector workers, 7.1 million people.
Walker is gambling, as Irish politicians have done in talk of abandoning the Croke Park deal, that hard-pressed private sector voters will see the public employees as a privileged special interest group and have little sympathy. For public service unions across the US, this is an existential battle.