TRADE UNION supporters had a rude awakening last Wednesday with news of the Massachusetts state House vote to slash collective bargaining rights for municipal workers.
Democratic-controlled, and among the bluest of the blue, Massachusetts is not the place where most expected to see the next battle in the nationwide organised labour fight with state legislatures crop up.
The state House bill, which passed with overwhelming support in the Democratic-controlled state legislature, would ‘strip police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees of most of their rights to bargain over health care,’ as the Boston Globe reported Wednesday.
The goal, according to proponents, is of course to ‘save millions of dollars for financially strapped cities and towns.’
What happens next is unclear. But the president of the state AFL-CIO and Gov. Deval Patrick (D) agree – Massachusetts is not likely to be the next Wisconsin.
The signs are there: union activists are blanketing the airwaves with pro-labour radio ads and rallying thousands of union workers to storm the state Capitol in the coming days.
The sheer magnitude of the vote against their interests may have been a surprise, but the AFL-CIO says it’s prepared for what comes next: a loud and unwavering lobbying effort for labour.
‘We got another bite at the apple in the state Senate,’ Massachusetts AFL-CIO president Bob Haynes told TPM in an interview.
‘The state Senate vote isn’t likely to come for a month or so, giving workers plenty of time to shore up their legislative base among the Democratically-controlled upper chamber.
‘We’re hopeful we’ll do a little bit better there,’ Haynes said.
Even if there’s a surprise in store in the Senate, Haynes said he’s confident Patrick – who won re-election last year in a cycle that wasn’t great for his party nationally – will come to the aid of workers.
‘I’m very confident that he’s not going to take our collective bargaining rights away,’ Haynes said.
Patrick is certainly speaking Haynes’ language, telling reporters on Wednesday he understood where the workers are coming from.
‘This is not Wisconsin,’ he said.
But Patrick also wants to see changes in the way organised workers interact with their bosses in government. As Mike Elk reported, Patrick may not be the saviour union workers are looking for.
Playing good cop to House Speaker Robert DeLeo’s (D) bad cop, Governor Deval Patrick has sought a more moderate proposal on limiting collective bargaining rights.
Patrick’s plan gives unions a limited time window to bargain before local officials would be allowed to impose their own health care benefit plans unilaterally without coming to a collective bargaining agreement.
Patrick hasn’t condemned the state House bill. In fact, he praised the vision behind it.
‘The Governor appreciates that the Speaker has taken action on this important issue, but also acknowledges that this is a process,’ Patrick told TPM in a statement, ‘and there will be changes to the bill before it reaches his desk.’
Haynes has plenty of time to lobby the state Senate, where he told TPM that AFL-CIO members expect to find some strong support. But according to the Globe, Senate President Therese Murray, ‘said the House had “moved the needle” on the issue’ of bringing down local health care costs. Murray ‘would not say whether she supports’ the House bill.
Still, Haynes seemed confident that his side will stop what he said was a degradation in the rights of workers in Massachusetts.
‘It’s not Wisconsin yet,’ he said. ‘If they succeed we can say it’s Wisconsin.’
The decision by the Democratic dominated Massachusetts state House to vote to slash collective bargaining rights for municipal workers makes it obvious to large number of workers that the Obama savage cuts policy will force the trade unions to break with the Democratic Party.
The trade unions must establish a Labour party to fight for socialist policies to defend the working class and the poor.
The politically more conscious sections of the working class and students must establish a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International in the USA, to lead the fight for a Labour Party and for the organisation of the American socialist revolution.
l Meanwhile, Wisconsin activists on Thursday filed more than 26,000 signatures to recall the sixth Republican state senator – Robert Cowles of Green Bay – who voted for Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) bill to eliminate collective bargaining rights of public employees.
All the petitions have carried far more signatures than the minimum needed to qualify, which must equal 25 per cent of the total vote for governor in November’s election in each Senate district.
The Cowles petition needed just 15,960 signatures and the 26,524 represents 166 per cent of the requirement.
Along with Cowles, recall petitions have been filed for Alberta Darling of River Hills, Sheila Harsdof of River Falls, Luther Olsen of Ripon, Dan Kapanke of La Crosse and Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac. Democrats need to win three seats to take control of the Senate.
Republicans targeted eight Democratic senators for recall, but filed petitions for just three and those have yet to be verified. They fell short and missed the deadline for four others. They still have a few days to file against their last target.
National AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke at Milwaukee’s May Day march for immigrant and worker rights on Sunday.
The rally, started at 1.30pm at the corners of 5th and Washington Streets and wound through downtown to Veterans Park for the music and speeches, was one of more than 100 marches and rallies that were held across the country on May 1 by immigrant advocacy groups.
This year because Wisconsin has become a battleground since Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill that eliminated bargaining rights for public employees, there’s ‘an unprecedented alliance’ between labour and immigrant rights communities to join forces, said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the founder and executive director of Voces de la Frontera.
‘We want to send a message to corporate America, politicians and others that working people will not be divided,’ she said.
Sheila Cochran, the secretary-treasurer of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO, and its chief operating officer, said many employers profit from cheap labour that many immigrants provide.
That’s why it’s in labour’s interest to see comprehensive immigration reform, so that wages and working standards aren’t driven down further, she said.
Walker’s eliminating collective bargaining rights for public employees, she called ‘a direct assault on the middle class’ and part of a national movement that must be pushed back.
Neumann-Ortiz said the march was part of the fight against Wisconsin lawmakers considering ‘Arizona copy cat’ legislation that would allow local police to determine if a person arrested or charged with a crime or civil violation is lawfully present in the state if the officer has ‘reasonable suspicion’ to believe a person is not.
It also protested against the governor’s proposal to eliminate in-state tuition for some illegal immigrant students and to protest against the cuts proposed in education and access to health care for low-income families, she said.
Nationally, the marches were rallying against the increased deportations of noncriminal immigrants, she said.
A similar rally for immigrant and public worker rights was held Sunday in Madison beginning at 1pm at Brittingham park at W. Washington Avenue and Park Street.
The marches have become an annual event since 2006 when Wisconsin Congressman James Sensenbrenner, R-Menomonee Falls, introduced legislation that would make illegal immigrants felons.
The Milwaukee marches led by Voces have become among the largest in the country and were considered the largest marches in the state before the recent Madison protests against Walker’s budget-repair bill.