For Wisconsin's schools, Scott Walker's new budget is a blueprint for abandoning public education. In Milwaukee, in addition to insufficient funding, the budget includes a "takeover" plan that increases privatization and decreases democratic control of the city's public schools.
Manitowoc Company in northeast Wisconsin is a preview of the future for what workers will face as states pass "right-to-work" legislation. Over 200 workers went on strike there four years ago. Workers say they think the company set up the workers and union to set the stage for right-to-work and other antiunion laws.
Wisconsin has joined a host of other states whose right-to-work laws emulate "model legislation" produced by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) describes ALEC as a "bill mill" supported by several conservative foundations and dozens of high-profile corporations, like Koch Industries and ExxonMobil. So-called 'Right-to-Work" favors corporations at workers' expense.
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Democrats assert that Gov. Scott Walker’s real motivation for signing the right-to-work legislation is more about politics than job creation: breaking a dwindling union movement in Wisconsin and boosting his standing as the conservative choice for the Republican presidential nomination next year.
UPDATE, March 6: The "right to work" bill passed Wisconsin's Assembly at 9 a.m. in a party-line vote, 62-35. It's headed for Governor Scott Walker's promised signature March 9.
The vote followed 20 hours of testimony, begun at 1 p.m. yesterday. But just minutes in, after a "People's Mic" action by labor supporters, officials had police clear the Assembly gallery. The hearing continued without public observers, just media. -Editor.
It’s been a harsh several weeks in Madison, Wisconsin for demonstrators against the governor and legislature, worse for the Progressive Era reforms being swiftly eliminated, one after the other. For those who aren’t following life in the Flyover regions, Right To Work passed the state Senate and is moving on to the Assembly, this coming week. With Republicans in charge, passage is all but certain.
“[Right-to-work] is going to bring everybody down,” said Russ Krings, the directing business representative for the Milwaukee union International Association of Machinists District 10, during a press conference with other labor leaders on Monday. “It’s going to affect not only the union families and nonunion families. It’s going to affect all the businesses that we go and spend our money at. This is going to bring the economy down."
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