Wisconsin Leads Way as Workers Fight State Cuts

By MICHAEL COOPER and KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Published: February 18, 2011

The unrest in Wisconsin this week over Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to cut the bargaining rights
and benefits of public workers is spreading to other states.
Already, protests erupted in Ohio this week, where another newly elected Republican
governor, John Kasich, has been seeking to take away collective bargaining rights from
unions.
In Tennessee, a law that would abolish collective bargaining rights for teachers passed a
State Senate committee this week despite teachers’ objections. Indiana is weighing proposals
to weaken unions. Union members in Pennsylvania, who are not necessarily facing an attack
on their bargaining rights, said Friday that they planned to wear red next week to show
solidarity with the workers in Wisconsin.
In many states, Republicans who came to power in the November elections, often by
defeating union-backed Democrats, are taking aim not only at union wages, but at union
power as they face budget gaps in the years ahead.
The images from Wisconsin — with its protests, shutdown of some public services and
missing Democratic senators, who fled the state to block a vote — evoked the Middle East
more than the Midwest.
The parallels raise the inevitable question: Is Wisconsin the Tunisia of collective
bargaining rights?
Governor Walker, in an interview, said he hoped that by “pushing the envelope” and
setting an aggressive example, Wisconsin might inspire more states to curb the power of
unions. “In that regard, I hope I’m inspiration just as much as others are an inspiration to me,”
he said.
FreedomWorks, a Washington group that helped cultivate the Tea Party movement, said it
was trying to use its lists of activists to turn out supporters for a variety of bills aimed at
cutting the power of unions — not just in Wisconsin, but in Tennessee, Indiana and Ohio as
well.
And officials seeking to curtail labor’s power in other states said that by focusing attention
on public-sector unions, the tense standoff in Wisconsin could give them momentum.
 “We think that what’s going on in Wisconsin actually helps us here in Ohio,” said Rob
Nichols, a spokesman for Governor Kasich, who is supporting a bill that would limit
collective bargaining rights.
But Wisconsin is also proving to be a catalyst for Democrats and labor leaders, as they take
heart from the way thousands of workers have rallied to the cause.
With the falling popularity of unions in recent years, some union leaders see the attempt to
take away bargaining powers as an effort that could shift the question from whether public-
sector workers are overpaid to whether they should have the right to negotiate contracts at all.
To that end, unions and Democrats are preparing their own post-Wisconsin campaigns in a
number of states against what President Obama called “an assault on unions” in a television
interview this week.
As Gerald W. McEntee, the president of the American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees, the main union of state employees, put it: “Workers’ rights —
including the fundamental right to organize and bargain for better pay, benefits and working
conditions — are under attack in states from Maine to Ohio, from Wisconsin to Florida.”
Governor Walker’s plan would limit collective bargaining for most state and local
government employees to wages, barring them from negotiating on issues like benefits and
work conditions. It would also require workers to contribute more to their pension and health
care plans, cap wage increases based on the Consumer Price Index and limit contracts to one
year. And it would take on the power of unions by requiring them to take annual votes to
maintain certification, and by permitting workers to stop paying union dues. Police and fire
unions, which have some of the most expensive benefits but who supported Mr. Walker’s
campaign for governor, are exempted.
“If they succeed in Wisconsin, the birthplace of A.F.S.C.M.E., they will be emboldened to
attack workers’ rights in every state,” Mr. McEntee said. “Instead of trying to work with
public employees at the bargaining table, they’ve decided to throw away the table.”
On paper, Wisconsin might seem an unlikely candidate for an assault on unions. Like
many other states, it has grappled with large spending gaps during the economic downturn,
but its projected deficits for the next two years are nowhere near the worst in the country —
more like in the middle of the pack.
Its 7.5 percent unemployment rate is below the national average. Its pension fund is
considered one of the healthiest in the nation, and it is not suffering from the huge shortfalls
that other states are facing.
Those facts have groups on both sides thinking if it can happen there, it can anywhere.

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 In Columbus, Ohio, Tea Party organizers said they had 300 to 500 people turn out on
Thursday for a counterdemonstration against several thousand union members.
“We weren’t well-versed in everything about the bill and why they’re doing what they’re
doing except that we’re broke as a state,” said Adriana Inman, an organizer with the Fairfield
Tea Party in Southwest Ohio, who attended the rally. She said that her group had many union
members.
Some union members who are trying to preserve their rights have been cheered by what
they have seen in Wisconsin.
Joe Rugola, executive director of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees and an
international vice president of A.F.S.C.M.E., said that 4,000 protesters gathered at the
Columbus Statehouse on Thursday to preserve union rights. “Yesterday at the Statehouse,
everyone was talking about the images they had seen in Wisconsin, and it gave them great
heart and made folks determined to equal that effort.”
Tennessee, a right-to-work state, where workers cannot be required to join a union, is
likely to become a staging ground for a collective bargaining battle.
State Senator Jack Johnson, a Republican who sponsored a measure to curtail collective
bargaining rights for teachers, said he expected the bill to become law. “Collective bargaining
between teachers and the school boards has been an absolute dismal failure,” he said.
In Indiana, Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican who is considered a possible presidential
candidate in 2012, issued an executive order on his first day as governor in 2005 that ended
collective bargaining for state employees. Now he is supporting a measure to limit
negotiations by teachers to wages and benefits. Some state lawmakers have called for steps
that would go further, but Mr. Daniels has said that he does not think their legislation should
be passed this year because it has not been publicly vetted.
Not all new Republican governors plan to take aim at collective bargaining rights.
In Pennsylvania, which faces a $4 billion deficit, a spokesman for Gov. Tom Corbett, the
state’s new Republican governor, said the governor wanted to shrink the government while
being mindful of a 40-year-old law giving state employees the right to organize.
“We’ll begin negotiations with the public-sector unions and anticipate we’ll conduct those
in good faith,” said Kevin Harley, a spokesman for Governor Corbett.

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Wisconsin Bill in Limbo as G.O.P. Seeks Quorum

MADISON, Wis. — The fight over a bill to slash collective bargaining for Wisconsin’s
public workers came to a standstill on Friday, as Democratic state senators refused to appear
at the Capitol, members of the State Assembly delayed a vote until next week and thousands
of protesters, their numbers still growing, marched, screamed, sang and sat.
“We’re waiting until we can find a way to take these draconian measures off the table,”
Chris Larson, one of 14 Democratic senators who left Wisconsin to prevent a vote from
taking place, said in a telephone interview. So far, Mr. Larson said, there had been
conversations between Republican lawmakers, who control both chambers of the State
Legislature, and Democrats — but no compromise.
Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican who proposed the bill that would reduce public workers’
abilities to negotiate their contracts and would require them to pay more for their pensions
and health care, showed no sign of retreat. In an interview on Friday, he continued to say that
his bill, which he said would help spare the state from budget gaps this year and in the coming
two years, would ultimately pass.
In the end, Mr. Walker said, most people — even public workers — will agree with him,
and life will return to normal here.
For now, Madison looked anything but normal. National leaders, including the Rev. Jesse
L. Jackson and Richard L. Trumka, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., rallied the swelling
ranks here nearly all day, and continued to make speeches outside the Capitol into the night.
The point, many said, was no longer whether Wisconsin workers might lose parts of their
paycheck; a larger worry, they said, was the notion that unions were being asked to give away
their power — to negotiate anything beyond wages, to have dues collected in state paychecks,
to exist without annual votes.
Leaders were expressing some concern over the possibility of increased tension on
Saturday, when opponents of the bill intended to continue their protests, and others —
including some who say they represent Tea Party groups — have called for a counterprotest
here.
Late Friday, members of the State Assembly, which had begun to debate the bill, put off
further action until Tuesday. Among the reasons, according to a spokesman for the
Republican speaker of the Assembly: security concerns inside the Capitol, where protesters
have crammed hallways, slept on the marble floors and beaten drums through the echoing

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hallways. Some political leaders sought police escorts to leave the building, and were jeered
as they went; at least one lawmaker reported being spit on.
The future of the bill still seemed most in doubt in the State Senate, where Republicans
control the chamber, 19 to 14, but where at least 20 members — and thus, one Democrat —
must be present for a vote. Efforts by a state trooper and another official to find at least one of
the Democratic senators at his home came up empty on Friday, and the Democrats told
reporters that they were all out of state, though not all together.
“We’re ready when they are,” said Senator Scott Fitzgerald, the majority leader. “We’ll be
here.”

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A Watershed Moment for Public-Sector Unions
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: February 18, 2011

In the half century since Wisconsin became the first state to give its public workers the right
to bargain collectively, government employee unions have mushroomed in size and power —
so much so that they now account for more than half of the nation’s union members.
But the legislative push by Wisconsin’s new governor, Scott Walker, a Republican, to
slash the collective bargaining rights of his state’s public employees could prove a watershed
for public-sector unions, perhaps signaling the beginning of a decline in their power — both
at the bargaining table and in politics.
Three-fourths of the states allow collective bargaining by some or all of state or local
government employees. And labor’s friends and foes alike agree that if the Wisconsin
legislation passes, it will create momentum for similar bills in Ohio, Indiana and other states.
“These kinds of high-profile public-employee battles have enormous stakes,” said
Benjamin Sachs, a professor of labor law at Harvard. “We’re still feeling the consequences of
President Reagan confronting the union in the air controllers’ strike. For anyone interested in
union rights, the fight in Wisconsin couldn’t be more important.”
From Florida to California, many political leaders are seeking to cut the wages and benefits
of public-sector workers to help balance strained budgets.
But Mr. Walker is going far beyond that, seeking to definitively curb the power of
government unions in his state. He sees public-employee unions as a bane to the taxpayer
because they demand — and often win — generous health and pension plans that help push
up taxes and drive budget deficits higher.
To end that cycle, he wants to restrict the unions to bargaining over just one topic, base
wages, while eliminating their ability to deal over health care, working hours and vacations.
Moreover, he wants to require unions to win an employee election every year to continue
representing workers.
By flooding the State Capitol in Madison with more than 10,000 protesters, labor unions
are doing their utmost to block Mr. Walker’s plans. They helped persuade Democratic state
senators to slip out of the building this week to deny Republicans the quorum they needed to
pass the legislation.
Democrats say the governor’s “budget repair bill” — strongly supported by the
Republicans who control both legislative houses — is political payback, intended to cripple

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public-sector unions, which spent more than $200 million to back Democrats across the
country in November’s elections.
Mr. Walker denies any such notion, saying he simply wants to curb union bargaining rights
and bring public workers’ wages and benefits in line with the private sector. “It’s not about
the unions,” he said this week. “It’s about balancing the budget.”
Christopher Policano, a spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees, said his union was willing to negotiate concessions with Mr. Walker,
“but he wants to throw out the bargaining table.”
Mr. Walker has repeatedly argued that most Wisconsin residents back his legislation. After
visiting a factory this week, he said that private-sector workers often complain that public
employees receive more generous health and pension benefits than they do.
There is no question that public-sector unions and the thousands of contracts they have
negotiated over the years have improved wages and pensions of government workers and
made government service more attractive. But union leaders are quick to point to studies
showing that overall compensation for government employees is slightly lower than for
private-sector employees of comparable age and education.
Also embedded in the Wisconsin debate — and reaching well beyond that state — is a
more fundamental dispute over the role, even the legitimacy, of public-sector unions. Like
Mr. Walker, Ohio’s new governor, John Kasich, and Indiana’s second-term governor, Mitch
Daniels, both Republicans, see public-sector bargaining as something to be banned or
severely restricted because of its effect on taxpayers and government budgets.
Some Republicans quote President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, who bridled at
public-sector unionism and once said, “The process of collective bargaining, as usually
understood, cannot be transplanted in the public service.”
Republicans say the Democrats have embraced the government employees’ cause because
weaker unions would reduce crucial political support for Democratic candidates. Republicans
have often denounced what they say is a squalid deal in which public-sector unions spend
generously to elect allies to office and then those allies lavish generous wages and benefits on
union members.
Ever since Wisconsin gave its government employees the right to bargain in 1959, it has
generally been Democrats who have extended that right in other states. In 1962, President
John F. Kennedy gave most federal employees the right to unionize and bargain collectively.
The national importance of the Wisconsin fight is clear. President Obama weighed in on
labor’s behalf on Wednesday, calling Mr. Walker’s proposals “an assault on unions.” And the

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House speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, praised Mr. Walker for “confronting
problems that have been neglected for years at the expense of jobs and economic growth.”
Citing an anticipated budget deficit of $137 million this year and a $3.6 billion shortfall
over the next two years, Mr. Walker argues that his measures to curb union power and
bargaining are essential to help balance the budget. Union leaders say that several of Mr.
Walker’s proposals — including the one that would require elections each year to determine
whether a majority of public employees want to keep their union — are really intended to
cripple unions, not balance the budget.
Other governors, Democrat and Republican, are also grappling with budget deficits. But
many of those governors, like Jerry Brown of California and Andrew M. Cuomo in New
York, both Democrats, and Rick Snyder of Michigan, a Republican, are not trying to strip
bargaining rights. They are instead using public pressure and the threat of layoffs to persuade
public-sector unions to make far-reaching concessions.
“Wisconsin has become ground zero for the process of pushing back against unions,” said
Steve Meyer, a professor of labor history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “People
are waiting to see what happens here. That’s why the labor movement has become so deeply
involved trying to stop this process.”
As happens so often in today’s increasingly partisan politics, the battle reflects how
differently Republicans and Democrats view a particular subject — in this case, unions and
their power. Many Republicans see public-sector unions as greedy, powerful special interests
that are taking too many taxpayer dollars. Many Democrats see them as natural allies and a
vital part of a labor movement that has helped build the nation’s middle class.
The furious demonstrators in Madison have shown that public-sector unions still wield real
power. But if the Legislature enacts Mr. Walker’s bill, a tipping point might well be reached,
with the power of public-sector unions tilting into decline.

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Wisconsin's Blow to Union Power
Will the governor's fight against public employees' collective bargaining rights sweep the nation?
A Turning Point in Labor History
Updated February 19, 2011, 08:45 AM

Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker, the newly elected Republican, has proposed drastic budget
cuts and threatened to restrict the bargaining rights of the state’s public employees through
legislation unless their unions agree to lower wages and benefits and weakened job security.
This is an explosive issue that goes to the core of the right of workers to be represented by
unions while also conjuring up images of all-powerful union leaders raiding the public
treasury. Thousands of protesters appeared at the Wisconsin state Capitol, and governors in
other states, particularly Chris Christie of New Jersey, are building their political careers on
their records of fighting public employee unions. And those who teach labor relations at
universities and those who bargaining for unions are incensed by the Wisconsin restrictions
on union and workers’ freedoms.
But this is more than proof of the obvious premise that once you give a group of workers'
bargaining rights, you can’t take them away. Rather, I believe this is the second of a two-stage
attack on a weakened American labor movement. The unions are being made the scapegoats
for all that is going bad economically.
Stage one. Two years ago, at Congressional hearings over the bailout and possible
bankruptcies of the Detroit Three automakers (G.M., Ford and Chrysler), members of all
parties apparently felt the need to publicly blame both company management and the United
Auto Workers for the industry’s decline. It was argued energetically and repeatedly that union
and management had jointly agreed to high wages and strong job security measures, and, by
their own fault, Detroit carmakers were being capsized by high labor costs and no longer able
to compete globally.
As workers at non-union companies were being laid off or forced to accept cuts in wage
and benefit cuts, why should auto workers be protected? No one wanted hear that the
automakers had a marketing problem — they couldn’t make cars that consumers wanted. The
public demanded equality of sacrifice: the union members must also feel the pain of the
economic hard times.
Stage two. Now, as the high unemployment continues and many states have huge budget
shortfalls and appear on verge of bankruptcy, once again the unions are being blamed. In the
private sector, only 7 percent of workers are union members, but fully 36 percent of

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government workers are in unions. Unions of government workers seem relatively large and
powerful and, according to politicians and many voters, they need their comeuppance.
A decade ago, candidates for governor in highly unionized states eagerly sought the
endorsement of government workers’ unions, knowing that this could lead to election victory.
They seem to have learned that confronting the unions rather than courting them pays off.
Blame the public workers' unions, particularly the teachers, clerical and transportation
workers unions (there is nothing to be gained politically by attacking the unions of police and
firefighters), and tremendous public support will surely follow.
There has never been anything like this in American labor history. In the late 1960s and
early 1970s there may have been some qualms about giving public workers the right to
unionize, but those qualms have turned into animosity. There seems little difference in the
approach toward government workers’ unions taken by Governor Walker and his Wisconsin
Legislature than there would have been in most states 100 years ago.
Why is Governor Walker attacking the unions and threatening the rights of union
members? It's simply because he can and he benefits by doing so. It resonates with the voters.
This second stage in union scapegoating could only happen with a labor movement in
decline in size and public support (unions lost more than 600,000 members over the past years
and the Gallup polls, for example, show a trend toward lower public support for unions).
Although, government worker union may seem large, this is only in a relative sense — for
every public worker in a union there are two who aren’t.
The unions must fight for the hearts and the minds of the voters. It is not enough for them
simply to demand that what has been given to them in the past must be continued, or argue
that they are really not better paid than private sector workers and that cuts are not justified.
The unions can only repel attacks with concessions in bargaining reasonableness that seems
adequate and fair. If they are to survive to represent workers forcefully in better times, they
must now demonstrate that they are willing to shoulder a share of these hard times.

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Hitting the Unions Where It Hurts
Updated February 18, 2011, 11:34 PM
Daniel DiSalvo, assistant professor of political science at the City College of New York-CUNY. He is the
author of "The Trouble With Public Sector Unions," in the fall 2010 issue of National Affairs.

For over a century, the Badger State has been an incubator of public policies that have been
adopted across the nation. In the early 20th century, university-trained social science experts
collaborated with politicians to turn Progressive ideas into reality. In 1959, Wisconsin became
the first state to permit collective bargaining for public employees, which sparked a rapid
unionization of government workers.
Led by new Gov. Scott Walker, the state’s latest policy innovation is to roll back those
bargaining rights to improve the state’s fiscal future. In the state that can justly claim to be the
originator of modern liberalism, the unions and their Democratic party allies have met this
move with stiff defiance, including what amounts to an illegal strike by teachers and
Democratic state senators. They rightly fear that if Walker is successful, his plan could again
serve as a national model.
The impetus for reform is clear. Wisconsin faces a $3.6 billion deficit over the next two
years. In the governor’s words, the state is “broke.” Walker therefore proposed that public
workers pay half their pension costs, roughly 5.8 percent of wages (rather than zero as they
currently do) and 12 percent of their health care costs (up from 6 percent now). The net effect
would be an 8 percent cut in take home pay. This part of the “budget repair” wasn't especially
controversial. Despite the unions’ rhetoric during last year’s election campaign, they knew
they would have to give some ground. On Friday, the largest state workers union said it would
make the concessions on the benefits -- if the governor would give up his collective-
bargaining demand. He said he wouldn't.
That step would fundamentally alter the relationship of unions to government. Walker
seeks to strip state workers — except for police and firefighters — of collective bargaining
rights over anything but wages; to limit raises for union (but not nonunion) members to
increases in the Consumer Price Index; to stop the state from collecting union dues; and to
require an annual vote among employees on whether to maintain a union. Combined these
measures are likely to cripple nearly every public employee union in the state.
Walker clearly does not want to let a “crisis go to waste.” His aim is to dismantle to the
dysfunctional, circular relationship between unionized government employees, the politicians
they help elect, and the rising wages and benefits to which they commit government. In

11
Walker’s view, only such structural reform can prevent the ratchet effect that that will start up
again once the economy regains it footing.
If successful, Walker’s plan may put Wisconsin on a course to become more like Texas or
Virginia, where most collective bargaining in the public sector is illegal.
In response, the unions and their defenders have argued that they are being punished for
the states’ fiscal problems, which were really caused by the Wall Street induced recession.
Yet, the fiscal crunch in the states is not simply a consequence of the recession. Long before it
hit, the pension and health-care benefits that unions negotiated locked in huge long-term
structural deficits.
This is why Walker wants to limit collective bargaining to wages, which don’t rise very
fast and are not dramatically out of sync with the private sector. Pensions and health care, on
the other hand, are huge commitments, outpace the private sector, are easily sweetened in
legislatures, and threaten to crowd out spending on other government priorities.
If successful, Walker’s plan may put Wisconsin on a course to become more like Texas or
Virginia (two states that weathered the recession relatively well), where most collective
bargaining in the public sector is illegal and the percentage of unionized public employees is
paltry. His hope is that in the future, Wisconsin will have as bright a fiscal outlook as those
states.

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Wisconsin's Blow to Union Power
Will the governor's fight against public employees' collective bargaining rights sweep the nation?
The Essence of Democracy
Updated February 19, 2011, 08:46 AM
William B. Gould IV is a professor of law at Stanford University and a former chairman of the National Labor
Relations Board.

As the United States has argued for South Africa, Poland and now Egypt, unions are a basic
part of democratic society. Yet that is the principle under attack by Governor Walker in
Wisconsin now.
It is hardly coincidental that the governor, like other Republicans, has launched an assault on
collective bargaining, a process which is part of the fundamental rights supported by the
International Labor Organization of which we are a member -- and deeply rooted in our
public policy ever since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
Governor Walker probably supports the principle beyond our borders. But here the labor
movement is part of the political opposition -- a factor which induced then Governor
Schwarzenegger to unsuccessfully support statewide referendums to strip unions of basic
rights in California too.
Governor Walker's policy undermines not just good labor-management relations, but the
essence of democracy itself. Moreover, it is unseemly and downright obscene to strip workers
of unions while deficit-expanding tax breaks are being handed out as they are in Wisconsin.
Increasing inequality remains a troubling stain on our promise of fairness to all sectors.
Of course, unions in both the public and private sector are guilty of abuses. The United
Auto Workers, along with other industrial unions, which brought a measure of dignity to
American workers as well a good standard of living, facilitated corporate inefficiency,
eroding competitiveness in the process. Faced with a doomsday -- bankruptcy in the auto
industry -- labor backed up in search of middle ground that would save good jobs.
The public employee unions in Wisconsin and throughout the U.S. can do the same as state
red ink splashes its way throughout much of the country. Governor Walker's hostility toward
the public employee unions is hardly rooted in their unresponsiveness at the bargaining table.
There have been no negotiations. It is rather triggered by the fact that they are part of the
opposition. The labor movement -- with public employee unions in the advance guard -- are
major contributors to the Democratic Party.
The answer is not to destroy the democratic fabric and the political opposition but rather to
engage in dialogue. In California and New York, Democratic governors now approach the

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bargaining table with pension and health care reform demands, a tough-love version of
collective bargaining.
But collective bargaining there must be- -- not a single-minded devotion to the interests of
the most fortunate. That is why Wisconsin workers are right on the issues in Madison -- and
why the emulation of Governor Walker by other Republican governors is a step backward
away from the civilized world. The unions have made a stand for free people.

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Wisconsin's Blow to Union Power
Will the governor's fight against public employees' collective bargaining rights sweep the nation?
It's Not About Money
Updated February 19, 2011, 08:47 AM
Linda Kaboolian is lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

She is the author, most recently, of "Win-Win Labor-Management Collaboration in

Education."
Since the fiscal crisis began, unionized public sector employees in many cities and states have
accepted unpaid furloughs, layoffs and other concessions with hardly a peep – and very little
publicity. Why mobilize now?
Governor Walker isn’t interested in saving money. He’s interested in crippling the unions
that didn’t support him last fall.
The rallies in Madison and other cities are about whether working people have any
protections against the moneyed interests that bought the last election, not about wages and
health insurance premiums. While the rich get richer and middle class prospects diminish,
they've seen every opportunity to level the playing field crippled by the same people who
supported Governor Walker’s election.
The playbook has been written: block the appointment of Elizabeth Warren who argued for
consumer protection against credit card and mortgage predators. Gin up fear about the federal
deficit to defund student loans, home heating oil assistance, the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting, the National Labor Relations Board, federally guaranteed home mortgages.
Change layoff rules so better paid workers go first, revoke public sector collective bargaining,
Governor Walker is betting that private sector employees who have seen their wages
decline and who rarely enjoy the benefits of union contracts will rise up in disgust against
their public sector neighbors. He’s betting the images of rallies will disturb those who love
order and work stoppages will outrage citizens. What he risks is that other citizens will make
common cause with these middle class workers, be inspired by them and join in.
Governor Walker isn’t interested in saving money – if he did, he’d sit down with the
unions and work out a deal. He’s interested in crippling the unions that didn’t support him last
fall – while protecting the unions that did.
Americans believe in shared sacrifice. When finances are tight, public employees should
be asked for concessions – and so should those who are doing well. But the latest assaults
aren’t about necessary sacrifice, they’re about asserting power and these employees know it.
That’s why they’re demonstrating: They’re mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it any
more.

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