MADISON, Wis. — The capitol dome here filled quickly Tuesday morning with workers in overalls and hard hats, their jackets signifying proud membership in Wisconsin’s blue-collar unions: steelworkers, ironworkers, pipefitters, carpenters, operating engineers. As a Senate committee hearing got underway upstairs — the first step in the fast-tracking of so-called right-to-work legislation in the state — the union members crowded the balconies and floor of the rotunda.
The call: “United we stand!”
And the response: “Divided we fall!”
It’s been four years since Gov. Scott Walker (R) and Wisconsin Republicans enacted Act 10, a deeply divisive law that stripped most collective bargaining rights from public-sector employees. Membership in the state’s public-sector unions has since plummeted, as they can no longer effectively bargain for their members over wages and benefits.
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Saying there’d been a threat to disrupt the hearing, Republicans cut short debate and abruptly passed the bill out of committee late Tuesday, sending it to the full Senate for a vote. Union members who’d waited hours to testify were turned away.
For all the turnout on Tuesday — there were at least a thousand protesters outside the capitol, where the head of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO and others spoke — Wisconsin unions have precious few political levers to pull at this point. Republicans enjoy solid majorities in both chambers of the statehouse, and if passed by the Senate on Wednesday, the bill will begin moving through the Assembly as early as Monday.
Despite some calls for a general strike, the chances of a mass walkout by the state’s unionized workers appeared dim on Tuesday. Several union members said that their locals had not seriously discussed it. Paul Secunda, a labor law professor at Marquette University Law School, recently told HuffPost that “if the union movement has any strength left, it’s in the power of withholding labor. If it’s not willing to do that, there’s very little power they have.”
“I’ve been trying to bring it to people’s attention,” Randy Bryce, an executive member of Iron Workers Local 8 in Milwaukee, said of a general strike. “It’s an extraordinary session, and the only way to beat it is using extraordinary measures. I’m not in a position to come out and call for one. But I’d love to see one.”
