In the mad race to the bottom that has gripped American politics, no sector has been more targeted and maligned than the government and its employees. Buffeted by the shellacking the Democrats sustained in 2010—largely because of their failure to make a serious dent in the appalling jobs picture—in January 2011, President Obama announced a  two-year federal-employee salary freeze. The policy was barely contested by the weak federal unions, so state and local governments—strapped for funds in the wake of the economic crisis—are massively following suit by instituting layoffs, salary cuts and freezes, and threatened pension and health insurance cuts. Some union leaders have registered words of protest and some public employees’ organizations are furiously lobbying legislators.  But contained by many state and federal laws that outlaw strikes by public employees—and also by their own timidity or resignation to the inevitable—public sector union leaders have taken it lying down. That is, until Madison.

When GOP Governor Scott Walker and his legislative allies moved in on Wisconsin public employees’ unions, they could not have anticipated the outburst of protest and militancy that greeted the legislation. Mass demonstrations at the state capitol building in Madison have been continuous, emulating the model exhibited by the recent Egyptian democratic movement against the Mubarak regime, an ever-escalating movement that brought down the dictator in ten days and helped inspire parallel struggles throughout the Arab world.  In Wisconsin—as anger and large demonstrations mounted, including school shutdowns across the state and occupations of the legislative chambers—the imminent passage of the GOP bill spurred Democratic senators to leave the state rather than provide the majority with the quorum needed to enact the legislation. In addition to reducing bargaining to wages, the bill outlaws strikes by public employees, a measure that is in effect in a number of other heavily unionized states (such as New York). But the Republicans found a legislative maneuver that permitted them to pass the bill without the presence of the fourteen Democrats, and the assembly quickly approved it. As of this writing, the governor is expected to sign the bill and make it law.

However, the story is far from over: union, student, and community activists promise to escalate the size and frequency of the protests; the president of Madison’s AFL-CIO has threatened a general strike among the area’s forty-five local unions; civil disobedience continues to strain the resources of law enforcement agencies; and—buoyed by public opinion polls showing strong sentiment favoring employees and their unions—Wisconsin Democratic strategists seem confident that there will be a backlash at the polls in 2012. Although Governor Walker is publicly defiant, reports have revealed that—as the protests roiled the Capitol—he was frantically seeking a compromise with his rivals, who rejected the overtures as inadequate.

National leaders of the important public employees unions—notably the American Federation of Teachers (AFT); the National Education Association (NEA); and the State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)—expressed their support for Wisconsin affiliates. And Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO president, issued a strong statement backing the demonstrators. Even a usually cautious President Obama came out for the right of public employees to bargain collectively with state and local governments. But the reactionary offensive against public employees is not likely to abate unless the scope of the opposition spreads. For it is clear that the Right is counting on organized labor’s traditional hesitation to engage in direct action, because for the past seventy-five years union leaders have harbored deep respect for the law and principles of labor peace. The question is whether the Right has accurately read the situation or whether Wisconsin will prove to be a watershed, reversing the long slide of unions in American life.

Of course the February and March 2011 events in Madison—when tens of thousands of public employees, students, and progressives demonstrated against Governor Walker’s plan to bust state unions—may change organized labor’s generally mild response to proposed funding cutbacks and abrogation of labor’s rights. The Madison uprising and early signs of a similar militancy in defense of the public sector in Ohio, Indiana, and elsewhere are immensely important. They present unions and their progressive allies with an opportunity to reverse the long slide suffered by the labor movement and liberals since the Reagan Revolution of 1980. But working people cannot rely on the now-routine AFL-CIO practice of pouring millions of dollars into Democratic-candidate campaigns. The Democrats—who are still strong supporters of collective bargaining—propose to enact harsh cuts in education, health care, and other services. They remain unwilling to revamp the tax system to pay for these public benefits and are, in the main, allies of financial capital. In order to change the scenario, labor needs a vision (and a program) of what a more equitable society would look like and what it takes to achieve it. This move would shift labor’s strategy toward independent political action and away from legalism. Thus, the significance of Wisconsin could be to revitalize an entirely new labor movement. Is it possible? Sure.  Is it likely? Not unless union leaders and members take the scales from their eyes.

What made Wisconsin different? First of all, its long history of progressive politics and unions. Senator Robert La Follette was an independent candidate for President in 1924, and spearheaded progressive reform in the 1930s.  Milwaukee had a socialist government for decades and a socialist representative in the U.S. Congress. But there is another factor: for more than forty years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has had a vital student movement, especially within its Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA) that has been a training camp for a considerable portion of the state’s union leadership. The worker-student alliance was at the heart of the protest, reflecting the recent history of the labor movement’s reliance on student activists to fill its ranks. The Wisconsin experience should provide an object lesson to employees and their unions facing draconian funding cuts and serious attacks against their civil rights. The lesson is that labor cannot, in its present state, go it alone. It needs allies and—in order to forge alliances—it must broaden its vision to address issues such as education, housing, and universal health care. Will the AFL-CIO and its affiliates—in both the public and private sectors—take a leaf from Wisconsin, France, and Egypt, to call a series of local demonstrations, especially in the state capitals and major cities where the assault has taken its most flagrant forms? Will labor and its progressive allies fill the streets of Washington—not on a weekend, but as a national labor holiday during the week—to demand that the Obama administration take a more forceful stand?

And, most importantly, can the unions go beyond rights-based discourse? In labor history, employers—including state and local governments—initiated labor laws to restrain unions when they struck and undertook job actions outside the law. It might be useful to recall that industrial unions achieved huge successes before the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was finally implemented in 1938, and that the breakthroughs in public sector unionism in New York were brought about by precisely the same direct action that now engulfs Wisconsin’s Capitol. The famous teachers’ union strikes of the mid-1960s—that legalized union recognition—preceded the law, just as the fight in Wisconsin (if successful) will be won despite the law. In other words, collective bargaining is a way of regulating labor relations against mass uprisings. What is most hopeful about the events in Madison is that, for once, the unions are growing into a movement rather than remaining a series of insurance companies and grievance machines. That growth must be duplicated elsewhere if there is any chance of labor’s revival. The jury is still out.

The current malaise and potential reversal demand analysis and explanation. Why the bipartisan assault on the public sector and its unions? Why has labor’s response in the United States been so tepid until now? Who or what is responsible? How can the situation be reversed? First, I offer a brief history.

Public Sector Unions: From Nearly Zero to  Fifty Percent of Organized Labor
The great industrial union upsurge of the 1930s left many categories of workers behind, among them public workers. Until the late 1950s, perhaps only municipal transit workers in some large cities had won collective bargaining.  Federal, state, and local employees were explicitly excluded from the NLRA provisions and parallel state laws. As a result, the public workers unions were, in effect, legislative lobbies for higher salaries and better health and pension benefits in Congress, state capitols, and city halls. Their membership rarely, if ever, embraced a majority, although teachers’ unions—principally in the Northeast—had a significant impact, not only in economic terms, but also on educational policy.

What accounted for the weakness of unionism among public employees? Since the turn of the twentieth century—when the public sector slowly enlarged, but grew rapidly during the New Deal and after World War II—the culture of civil service dominated its mentality and practices, including those in non-profit private employment such as the health industry. The deal was this: in return for low salaries, employees were to be largely protected against the ups and downs of the economy and the job market. Their benefits were often equal to, and sometimes better than, those of counterparts in the private sector. And they willingly accepted the absence of union representation. Of course, some militant unionists—mainly of socialist and communist persuasions—insisted that the deal was unjust, that public sector workers deserved the same rights as private sector workers. But many progressive elected officials, New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia among them, vehemently disagreed. LaGuardia, a staunch advocate of labor’s rights and the candidate of the American Labor Party, lost no time putting down the few rebellions in New York City’s municipal ranks.

Things changed in the late 1950s. Many public workers became disillusioned with the old arrangements as the industrial unions, grabbing the opportunities offered by the postwar global economic dominance of U.S. manufacturers, made huge strides in wages, health care, and pensions.  An organizing fever spread throughout the country, not only among public employees in strong union areas such as New York, Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois, but also in California which had a relatively weak union tradition, especially in the state’s southernmost cities and towns. When the organizing subsided, public workers’ unions remained weak in the South and West, but by 1980 over a third of public employees were in unions. And—as industrial unions, whose membership peak was achieved in 1953, began their long slide—by 2000, the weight of public employees’ unions matched that of the rest of the labor movement combined. In 2011, they constitute more than 50 percent of organized labor, adding up to about eight million members.

Even as the public sector—at all levels—expanded, revenues from business and the relatively high wages earned by unionized workers managed to support the welfare and administrative functions of the government, even in the midst of the permanent war economy. But 1960 witnessed the first signs of decline in America’s awesome manufacturing base. Some of the fall may be traced to the rise of off-shore production, at first mostly in Mexico and other Latin American countries, then throughout East and South Asia. Labor-saving technological innovation played an equally important role. Taken together, a half century later, America experienced the virtual collapse of its largest manufacturing bases: the garment and textile industries migrated from the North to the South, and then overseas; and the auto industry precipitously lost at least 70 percent of its one million jobs after 1980. More dramatically, the steel industry—which, in 1960, had six hundred thousand workers—now produces the same tonnage with less than one hundred thousand workers. The oil and chemical industries—whose plants produce more than they did fifty years ago—are at a third of their peak workforce of over a million. And even the traditional jobs- and income-producing defense industries have sharply reduced employment as labor productivity soared. The manufacturing labor force is now half of its 1960 levels. And today the non-union sector is larger, by far, than unionized manufacturing plants. Organized labor has been unable to make significant dents in the massive private-service sectors of retail and wholesale establishments, banks and insurance companies, or among engineers and other professionals outside of public employment. As a result, the steady, slow growth of unionized public employees has occupied a large space in the composition of the American labor movement, the most dramatic gains being in education, including higher education where 30 percent of the professoriate belongs to one of the three major unions, the AFT, NEA, and AAUP (American Association of University Professors).

The “downsizing” of union membership, compared to the size of the labor force, has helped produce a crisis of public revenues at a time when public employees were gaining ground. At the same time, states and localities anxious to keep business in town have granted substantial tax concessions.  Moreover, many states are enacting legislation to curtail union bargaining rights.  As exemplified by Wisconsin and Ohio, some would bar the right to strike and to negotiate with management on almost anything except wages. In Southern states (like Texas), public employees are denied all bargaining rights.  In states like New York, the labor relations law has—since the 1960s—outlawed strikes by public workers and imposes heavy penalties for violators. Combined with the false claim that the private sector can do it better, city and state governments have used their existing funds to outsource work that has traditionally been done in-house. In sum, the last half-century is marked by contrary movements: public employees’ struggle for full industrial citizenship and the erosion of the revenue base with which to keep these aspirations alive.

The Complacency and Possible Revival of Public Sector Unionism
Thirty-five years ago, the proverbial Welfare Queen served as the scapegoat for the urban fiscal crises. Then most public unions gave considerable ground in an effort to preserve their own gains. New York City’s District Council 37 (of AFSCME) agreed to fifty thousand layoffs— about 15 percent of the municipal government’s labor force, many of whom were so-called “provisional” workers. Today, however, permanent employees are being scapegoated and now, as then, have failed to build the alliances and coalitions with community organizations and progressive movements that might slow down, if not reverse, the fiscal massacre. The absence of a coalition to fight budget cuts and job losses reflects the isolation of the unions, and reinforces the perception (of large parts of the public) that unions are narrowly self-interested. This perception is undergirded by the recent decision of the Building Trades Council to join a business coalition aimed at reducing government costs by wage freezes and layoffs, if necessary, as well as by the silence of the public unions.

Why do unions in the United States appear relatively complacent? Part of the answer lies in their deep respect for the laws affecting labor relations. Legalism is an affliction that has rarely benefitted the workers’ cause. Organized labor seems unaware that laws purporting to give workers more rights usually carry responsibilities that are more onerous.  In many states, workers are barred from striking, but they still live under the sway of Democratic Party politicians who, decades ago, granted them the right to bargain collectively with the government. Many unionists feel comfortable with the no-strike arrangement. In New York, for instance, the state labor body has failed to include a proposal to repeal this shackling legislation in its labor law reform program, even when a Democrat occupies the governor’s chair. But there is a deeper cause of union passivity. Since the early 1980s, most have settled into doing business as usual. They are required to bargain for non-union workers but, under agency shop law, are able to collect dues from them anyway. Members view their unions as service providers rather than as instruments of mobilization. The unions may fight individual grievances and negotiate decent economic contracts, but to call upon their members to conduct collective political fights—including direct actions that might disturb the comfortable relationship the leadership enjoys with the employer—is well beyond the perspective, and therefore the capacity, of the union. In short, the member is now generally a client of the union rather than its owner.

American labor has been fitted comfortably into the major institutions of the Democratic Party and the state. Union members, no less than leaders, have bought into the proposition that loyalty to the Party will ultimately pay off; or, if disaffected, they have accepted the notion that the best that can be hoped for is the mitigation of disasters. But the current situation is an ongoing disaster because Democrats, no less than Republicans, are aligned with big business and—given the subordination exhibited by organized labor—do not hesitate to promise fiscal austerity for workers while proclaiming that taxes cannot rise because such increases might antagonize or otherwise hurt business interests. Thus even at the ideological level, the labor movement seems unwilling to challenge the neoliberal value system that now informs the Democratic Party’s orientation. It has been silent, as every major erstwhile liberal politician joins the conservative mantra that what is good for business is good for the country.

For these reasons, the unions are unwilling to wield their best weapons: to employ tactics of resistance and, in the longer run, to create independent institutions and a political party of their own, holding both parties responsible for their welfare.  If public employees’ unions remain tied to the past—when they arguably shared in some of the benefits of U.S. global business hegemony—they are bound to lose a lot of ground. Which brings us back to the lessons of the uprising of Wisconsin state employees and their student and community supporters. Lesson number one: direct action, rather than lobbying, became the preferred approach of the unions. This took the form of mass demonstrations, walkouts (such as those that have been conducted by teachers at the municipal level), workplace occupations, occupations of legislative chambers, and the refusal of the Democratic minority to be present to vote on the governor’s anti-union program. Lesson number two: the participation of students and community groups in the workers’ fight has contributed to its relative success in calling attention to the struggle. Lesson number three may or may not be learned: collective bargaining is not an irreversible feature of labor relations. As the history of the labor movement amply demonstrates, many of the most dramatic gains in workers’ organization were accomplished before the labor relations law was finally made legal by the Supreme Court in 1938. In short, whether or not the current rash of public-worker mobilizations against the brazen attempt to shackle unions in many states is thwarted, workers may need to build unions outside the protection of the law. In fact, this “protection” frequently means that workers and their unions are closely controlled, prevented from taking direct action, and—in effect—have made the unions instruments of state and local governments because they are responsible for regulating their members. While states like New York and California are not likely to follow Walker’s lead, the aggressive anti-union administrations in Michigan, New Jersey, and Ohio signal that the Right intends to take no prisoners.

It is also important to note that the Wisconsin and Ohio union struggles are about elementary rights, not about the severe cutbacks. New York and California have Democratic state administrations and their governors sound increasingly like conservative Republicans: they have conducted layoffs, reduced education and other vital services, and now promise unrelieved austerity.  So far, there is little indication that the unions are prepared to mount the barricades to fight for a progressive tax system that can finance services, take militant action to reverse anti-strike laws, and build the coalitions that can win.

It may be too extreme to conclude that many unions have become sewn at the hip to workers’ adversaries. Labor is suffering from what might be termed lesser-evilism. No matter what the Democrats promise or implement in the way of severe penalties against workers, it is always possible to argue that things would be worse under the Republicans. This formula—which has produced a veritable neutering of the liberals and the labor movement—seems to preclude either from drawing a line in the sand. Short of sporadic verbal protests, there exists no strategy to combat the enormous costs public workers are being asked to shoulder. Perhaps the two glaring examples were AFL-CIO endorsements of California’s Jerry Brown—who openly warned of the hard choices his administration would face, including layoffs and wage freezes—and New York’s Andrew Cuomo, whose campaign of promised austerity resembled New Jersey’s successful Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie’s.  It is up to labor to devise a program of alternative proposals and a series of actions that would make Obama, governors, and mayors cease taking its legions for granted. Absent such an outcome—and absent an aroused rank and file that overcomes the pervasive cynicism—we can only foresee a bleak future.