The stories are framed in terms of Scott Walker -- a governor who rose to national prominence in 2011 when he supported and signed a law curtailing collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin public-sector workers (with an exception for police and firefighters) -- and Walker's 2016 presidential run.
But the atmospheric backdrop of the two stories is a defeated labor movement. Monica Davey covered the 2011 battle in Madison. Organized labor mustered its troops at the capital but to no avail. Walker prevailed, he signed Act 10 into law, which gutted Wisconsin's public-sector unions, and in so doing he built a national profile for himself.
Davey and Smith open and close their report today accentuating the beaten nature of the unions:
MADISON, Wis. — It was a flashback to 2011: Hundreds of union members in hard hats and work boots waved signs under falling snow, denouncing Gov. Scott Walker and his fellow Republican lawmakers outside this Capitol building on Wednesday. Yet this time, their numbers were smaller, their chants softer.
As Mr. Walker builds a presidential run on his effort to take on unions four years ago, he is poised to deliver a second walloping blow to labor. After saying for months that an effort to advance so-called right-to-work legislation would be “a distraction” from dealing with larger issues like the state’s economy and job growth, Mr. Walker is now preparing to sign a measure — being fast-tracked through the Republican-held State Legislature — that would bar unions from requiring workers to pay the equivalent of dues.
The State Senate passed the bill, 17 to 15, mostly along party lines, Wednesday night after about eight hours of debate. As the results were announced and senators left the chamber, protesters chanted “Shame” from the balcony. The State Assembly is expected to take up the measure next week. Where Mr. Walker’s earlier high-profile strike against labor cut collective bargaining rights for most public-sector unions, this one is aimed at workers in the private sector. And where Mr. Walker led the drive in 2011, he has taken a far less publicly forceful role this time, saying only that he will sign a bill. Yet the political effect will be the same, burnishing Mr. Walker’s record as an unafraid foe of Big Labor, who has been able to prevail in a state where Democrats have won presidential elections.
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Before a crowd of demonstrators that spilled out around the Capitol on Wednesday, Phil Neuenfeldt, the president of the Wisconsin A.F.L.-C.I.O., called out, “We’re back.” He promised, to cheers, “We’re not going to forget about it.” Cold weather, short notice and work schedules may have diminished the crowds, some protesters said, but there was also a sense of inevitability — and of weary déjà vu.
“From day one,” Mr. Finkler, the retired university worker, said, “Walker was all about running for president.” About two hours into the debate on Wednesday afternoon, protesters inside the Capitol had dwindled to several dozen.Davey and Smith give a succinct definition of right to work:
The measure would allow private-sector workers who choose not to join unions to avoid paying the equivalent of dues, known as “fair share” payments, which union leaders say are reasonable for anyone who benefits from union contracts. The widely protested 2011 law gave most public employees that same right. Neither provision would apply to police officers and firefighters.Make no mistake, right to work destroys union density wherever it is passed. And with the loss of union density goes any hope of a political force for working people. Wisconsin is set to join Michigan and Indiana, two states of the nation's former industrial heartland that have recently passed right to work. Jimmy Hoffa's spirit is weeping.
And where is the push back from the AFL-CIO? Where is a declaration of resolve, a plan of counterattack, a mass mobilization of all members and political allies? There isn't one. And there won't be one.
Union leaders at the national and local level make six-figure incomes. Their overriding concern first and last is not to upset the apple cart. They can't do mass mobilizations; they can't do large organizing drives. The only thing they can do is turn members out for staged protests on the steps of capital buildings, like they did in Madison in 2011 and the other day, and like they do in Olympia in my home state of Washington. And what Walker has shown along with the Republican legislature in Wisconsin is that this theater can be ignored at very little electoral cost.
Organized labor's failure in Wisconsin should have been a wake-up call to upend business as usual. The fact that it did nothing of the sort is proof that unions are dead men walking, old white guys who are hoping to quietly muddle through for the next few years until they can retire with multiple fat pensions.
The answer -- which is no answer -- that will be forthcoming from the marble halls of the AFL-CIO will be to elect Hillary, no friend of labor. Members will be called on to man the phones and hit the doors. But the members in all their ignorance know better and the turnout for Hillary will be anemic.
Coming down the pike in 2016? Scott Walker, elected POTUS.
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