X-pst from GD- bit of history on use of milita against WI workers

[HereSince1628]

A bit of backstory on the use of National Guard against Workers in Wisconsin

Edited on Sun Feb-13-11 08:03 AM by HereSince1628
Scott Walkers decision to break state worker's unions using intimidation of National Guard force is part of the bloody history of Labor in Wisconsin. Walker's rhetoric plays like poetry on Capitalist s' ears and harkens to their joy when Ronald Reagan crushed the Air Traffic Controllers union. But once again words of limiting workers right to negotiate stir anger, an anger that in Wisconsin swept Progressives into Congress and left Socialist politics in power in Milwaukee for over 70 years.

We see again venemous class hatred against workers benefits in Walker's need to deny internationally recognized Human Rights to collective bargaining. The greed of the Gilded Age has returned to America. In the midst of employement recession the robber barons perceive a political window. Through it they intend to turn worker upon worker and mete out long held vengeance in the form of rolling back the last century's successes in better treatment of workers.

Negotiation of benefits as well as for salary is essential for fair treatment of labor. A power drunken Gov. Walker can't be allowed to take it away by a dictatorial fiat. People died at the hands of militia while striking for better working conditions that had nothing to do with salary. And while Democratic leaders in Washington seem to have forgotten, Labor and the people who respect labor have NOT.

In Wisconsin, they died on May 5th, 1886, behind a red, white, and blue banner with the face of a clock with hands set at 8:00, because industrial executives and business leaders pushed Gov. Rusk to order the militia to put down their protest for an eight hour workday. You may remember the Haymarket and Pullman riots of Chicago, but there also was blood in the streets in Milwaukee when units of the Wisconsin Militia fired on iron and steel workers protesting for a workday that most Americans now enjoy but take entirely for granted.


http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-9244-bay-view-m...

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When the Eight-Hour League movement swept the nation in 1886, Milwaukee’s work force was all ears. Most Milwaukee employers resisted the demand for a shorter day, especially without a cut in pay, setting off a string of strikes. On May 3, 1886, an unplanned general strike brought the entire city to a grinding halt. A tidal wave of factory workers surged through the Menomonee Valley, intent on shutting down any plants that were still open. One wouldn’t heel: the massive iron plant in suburban Bay View, then called the North Chicago Rolling Mill Co.

On May 4, nearly a thousand laborers, most of them Polish immigrants, met at St. Stanislaus Church to march on the lakeshore plant. The mill’s laborers walked out when the marchers arrived, but the skilled workers, who had just recently ended a long strike, continued to work. When the company showed no sign of closing the plant, the marchers sent a delegation inside to chat with the mill executives. Meanwhile, Gov. Jeremiah Rusk called on the state militia—as they began arriving at the mill, shortly after the workers, they were greeted with a storm of stones and garbage. When the meeting inside proved futile, the strikers warned that they would be returning.

The next morning, May 5, the Poles regrouped at St. Stanislaus. Lined four abreast and numbering 1,500, they marched to the mill. When Rusk was informed by telephone that a large crowd was headed toward Bay View, he allegedly said, “Very well, sir. Fire on them.” The captain of the Sheridan Guard, a primarily Irish militia company, ordered his troops: “Pick out your man, and kill him.” As the strikers turned south on Bay Street, the militia commander, Maj. George Traeumer, ordered them to disperse. From a distance of about 200 yards, it was doubtful the strikers saw him, let alone heard him. When they continued to advance, Traeumer ordered his troops to open fire