Labor faces a moment of truth By: Ben Smith and Maggie Haberman
February 21, 2011 05:04 AM EST
As organized labor hails an unprecedented moment of unity playing out amid a sea of supporters marching in Madison, Wis., other union officials elsewhere are quietly wringing their hands about the risks of a high-stakes and historic loss in against Gov. Scott Walker.
The six days of protests against Walker’s bill to curb collective-bargaining rights have mesmerized cable news viewers and shown a fighting spirit and cohesion that labor groups have rarely displayed during 12 months of serving as public enemy number one in the eyes of tea party insurgents and newly empowered budget cutters.
Yet that sense of determined harmony comes at a potentially steep cost, and with no clear end-game. Some strategists and labor officials watching the protest conflagration from the outside are beginning to fret that a large-scale defeat in Wisconsin will have a devastating ripple effect, weakening labor state by state throughout the rest of the country.
“Some of the labor people are saying ‘It’s the beginning of the fight back,’ ” a top labor official said of Wisconsin. “But if the labor movement rallies and gets run over in Wisconsin, it opens (the gates) in every state” for governors to start pushing harder to curtail labor rights.
“Not every state’s going to roll back collective bargaining,” the official – who, like many, spoke off the record to avoid undermining the protests — added, but said it could open the gates for union losses on various fronts, like benefits.
Even as union officials hailed solidarity rallies, White House support, and sympathetic pizza orders from all over the nation for protesters, the difficult politics on the ground began to take their toll Sunday. Wisconsin teachers – whose walkouts last week forced school closures in many districts – were urged back to work by their union leaders. At the same time, Republican state officials said they wouldn’t wait any longer for Democrats who fled the state to stall legislation.
“Tomorrow they begin again in their schools and classrooms,” state Wisconsin Education Association Council president Mary Bell in a statement. “ Their voices will remain strong – and they will continue to be heard wherever and whenever they can.”
She urged people to “return to duty by day – and find ways to be vocal and visible after their workday is done … We send this message to Wisconsin’s educators and parents as a show of good faith.”
Yet “good faith” offerings seemed almost quaint to some inside the labor movement, who described the protests’ organic nature as much a result of poor planning as a reflection of from-the-heart support. The public backing from Obama, meanwhile, was a cost-free love letter to his union backers – and the DNC quickly distanced itself Friday from reports that it was master-minding protests.
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