Scott Walker, Scott Fitzgerald and the other leaders in the fight to reform Wisconsin’s out-of-date public sector union rules deserve America’s thanks. They stood up to their opponents’ blatant contempt for democracy, massive out-of-state funding directed against them and an attempt to impose mob rule in the state that seemed more appropriate for 1930s Europe than for modern day America. Yet they stood firm and achieved most of the reforms they needed to drag Wisconsin into the company of states like Colorado and Maryland in having flexible, responsive public sector working conditions.
Yet this is just the beginning. Public sector unions are a critical part of the left’s fundraising efforts. Cozy deals like Wisconsin’s where, even if you weren’t a member of the union, you still had to pay union dues to keep your job made leftist politicians’ lives much easier. With these funding sources under threat, they will now launch a cynical campaign around the USA to keep their “right” to garnish workers’ paychecks sacrosanct. Meanwhile, the few surviving private sector unions, like the United Auto Workers, are preparing to use their massive war chests to force firms into unionizing, based on the idea that non-union firms are “human rights violators.” (Vinnie Vernuccio and I write about the UAW’s plans in the current issue of National Review.)
This is likely to be a knock-down, drag-out fight, with every dirty trick in the unions’ arsenal (and there are a fair few) deployed to win this battle. Expect civil rights hypocrites like Jesse Jackson to be fully involved, and a fair amount of xenophobia about Chinese manufacturing to be scattered around. Every 1930s stereotype about government workers being underpaid and private sector workers cruelly exploited by their lack of Cadillac insurance (sometimes both arguments at the same time) will be bandied around. Nobel Prize winners who ought to know better will present the argument from authority and studies will be promoted that beg their own question.
Threats and intimidation too, and perhaps the odd pitched battle.
This is going to resemble, more than anything else, Britain during the Miner’s Strike, when the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) leader, Arthur Scargill, attempted nothing less than a coup d’etat against Margaret Thatcher, writing in the communist newspaper the Morning Star, “the NUM is engaged in a social and industrial Battle of Britain…what is urgently needed is the rapid and total mobilization of the Trade Union and Labour movement.” Mrs. Thatcher resolutely defended the rule of law against this insurgency, and was supported by moderate union members who were appalled at the actions of Scargill and his colleagues.
It is unfortunate that the voice of moderate union members (and those who have their wages reduced to feed the union beast) have not yet been heard in this dispute. However, we must remember the words of Mrs Thatcher:
[With] the hard Left operating inside our system, conspiring to use union power and the apparatus of local government to break, defy and subvert the laws.
Governor Walker, Leader Fitzgerald and their colleagues have shown Thatcherite courage in defying just such a conspiracy. We must pray that their counterparts elsewhere show similar resolve.
