Solidarity forever!

Anne and I got in the car Saturday morning and headed up I-90 for the 150 mile drive to Madison, Wisconsin.

By the time we headed home 100,000 people had circled the capitol. Some entered it.  Almost everybody carried a unique piece of the most impressive array of home-made signs I’ve ever seen. All were sending the message, “Union busting? It’s disgusting!”

More will be there today. And tomorrow. And Tuesday.

Give or take some of us from Illinois, that is one out of every 60 people in the state of Wisconsin.

The Tea Baggers? Their counter-demonstration was so small only the NY Times could see it.

The Democrats.

For many reasons, many progressives fell asleep after Obama got elected. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is waking everyone up.

The uncompromising attack by Walker and other Republican governors is a gift to the Democratic Party. They have sent their operatives to Wisconsin. Even Obama himself, who just a year ago was applauding the firing of union teachers in Rhode Island, is now condemning what he has rightly called an assault on unions.

Walker, who was endorsed by the Tea-baggers when he was elected just 12 weeks ago, has lost the support of half the voters in polls that ask about his handling of the present crisis. Walker can’t be recalled for a year. But three vulnerable Republican state senators, enough to turn the state senate back to the Dems, can be recalled easily according to Wisconsin law and face genuine recall threats in their home districts.

My Union Leadership.

To their credit, the IEA leadership has sent scores of organizers and staffers to Wisconsin to help in the effort to mobilize people and wage the political fight.

But they have taken their “sit at the table” strategy with them.

Read IEA Communication Director Charlie McBarron’s piece on the fight in Wisconsin if you want to get the party line.

Called, “It’s not about the money,” McBarron says, “It’s about union-busting. Nothing else.”

Nothing else? What nonsense.

Of course it’s about union busting. Of course Walker wants to use the present financial crisis to destroy unions. Of course his PR campaign which claims that collective bargaining rights are the source of the financial crisis is bogus.

But collective bargaining is about something. Right now it’s about bargaining to keep as much as we can of a decent contract, salary, tenure, seniority, and promised pensions.

A teacher walking next to Anne and me said, “We really don’t have much in our contract anyway.”

I get it. Part of the appeal of the leadership’s “it’s not the money” slogan is the desire of public service workers to not seem greedy.

Who is greedy?

But how did the leadership ever allow us to be put in this position? How did a crisis created by Wall Street, with huge profits still being made by Wall Street, ever get framed as being the fault of a kindergarten teacher, a nurse or a fireman?

How do you bargain?

The right to collective bargaining is the right to bargain over something. It is not an abstract right. It is a right we have fought and won, and now must fight for again, to improve the lives and the lives of our families.

The lesson I have learned from over twenty years of bargaining contracts is that you don’t give in before you sit down.

In Illinois the IEA leadership, in the face of the assault by Stand for Children and other anti-union political action groups, has said we must draw the line on retaining the right to strike. They have proposed a counter proposal that has conceded on everything else, from tenure and seniority to teacher evaluation.

The Battle in Mad Town has shown that our folks are awake. We know what time it is. We now need leadership that is worthy of the rank-and-file who jam Madison every day.

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