Attacks on Public Sector Unions – the Latest Chapter in Union Busting

By Jennifer Berkshire

In March 11, 2011, Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker signed legislation eliminating critical union rights for public employees. The battle now shifts to the courts. Below are comments on Wisconsin from Massachusetts teachers union activists. Fifty years ago, one in four U.S. workers was in a union. Today, one in eight is in a union, and roughly half of the 14-15 million current union members work for some branch of government. Only the public sector unions held steady in recent decades, while unionization in the private sector declined precipitously, with job flight overseas, the transformation to a service-based economy, and attacks on organized labor. And now those public sector unions are under attack. When, as in Wisconsin, you limit collective bargaining to base pay issues, prohibit dues check-offs, and require unions to face a yearly certification vote, you are union busting, plain and simple. The struggle against this deserves our full support.

"The Reason there is No Money is the Rich have it ALL!" A February rally in Boston in support of Wisconsin workers. (Photo by Jennifer Berkshire)

Billerica Federation of Teachers:
Two thousand teachers, nurses, fire fighters and other Massachusetts workers gathered in front of the Statehouse on a frigid February afternoon to show their support for union workers in Wisconsin. Why the show of solidarity for workers in a state more than 1,000 miles away? “What is happening in Wisconsin, given the type of nation we are, can spread like wildfire across the whole nation,” said AFT Massachusetts president Tom Gosnell. Unlike states like Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio, where Republican governors have all but declared war on union workers, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick was on hand for and supporting the rally.

Still, the presence of 100 Tea Party members, waving anti-union signs, was a vivid reminder of just how much hostility is directed towards public servants these days. Just three years ago the economy teetered on the brink of collapse, the result of a housing bubble, enormously magnified by complex Wall Street financial instruments. Fast forward to today and the origins of the recession have all but faded into oblivion, along with any ire towards the architects of the financial collapse. Instead, public hostility is now directed at public servants.

Tune into talk radio these days and you can be forgiven for coming away with the impression that the Great Recession was caused, not by bankers, but by teachers and their unions. Adam Bessie, an English professor at California’s Diablo Valley College, summed it up this way: The same people who imploded the economy have successfully misdirected the public’s justifiable anger away from themselves and towards teachers.

Billerica teacher Paul Gaudet:
While teachers seem to have been singled out for particular blame, hostility is directed towards virtually anyone who is employed by the public sector: faculty at public colleges and universities, librarians, even police and firefighters.

Coley Walsh, a lobbyist for AFT Massachusetts over three decades at the State House, says that the current attacks on people who serve the public are harsher than anything he’s seen before. “Hard-pressed taxpayers resent the fact that they’re paying for benefits for public employees that they don’t have themselves. You also have a powerful anti-government lobby that is using public anger to push for tax cuts and cuts in benefits and services.”

The combination of these two forces, says Walsh, is pressuring elected officials to adopt changes in policy that would have been considered extreme just six months ago. Case in point: New Hampshire, where members of the House of Representatives have just passed anti-union legislation aimed squarely at the teachers, nurses and other public sector employees in that state. The legislation, likely to be vetoed by NH Governor John Lynch, has been fiercely opposed by union members.

Lawrence Teachers Union president Frank McLaughlin:
In recent weeks, Republicans in Florida, Ohio and Indiana have introduced laws that would strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights. Idaho and Indiana are considering passing laws that would prohibit teachers unions from being part of deliberations about education policy. While no such measures have been introduced in Massachusetts, hostile rhetoric towards public employees in general and teachers in particular is on the rise. And the divisive tone of the debate only serves to drive a wedge between public sector employees and their private sector counterparts, says Diane Frey, a field representative for AFT Massachusetts who researches and writes about labor law. “The economy is being used as an excuse to take rights away from people, but the irony is that the rights we have as workers were created during the Great Depression. This is being represented as a fight between one group of employees that has something and another that has less, but the battle is really about something more fundamental,” says Frey. “Either we have rights or we don’t.”

Jennifer Berkshire is the editor of “the Advocate,” the statewide newspaper of the American Federation of Teachers, Massachusetts.