Class War: Union Bosses vs Public Sector Workers

[Modern School]

While Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has been doing everything in his power to destroy the public sector unions, the leaders of those unions have been doing everything in their power to comply, including selling out their own members, in a desperate attempt to preserve their six-figure incomes. They have been madly pushing through contracts that cut workers’ pay and benefits in hopes of beating a deadline that would preserve their right to continue automatically collecting dues from paychecks. According to the WSWS, the average Wisconsin public sector worker will lose $4,000 per year as a result of the cuts. (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/sell-m25.shtml)

The WSWS has just published some of these union bosses’ salaries. Their large incomes relative to those of their members should lay to rest the delusion that they share the interests of their union members. The average Wisconsin public sector worker earns only $51,000 per year (not counting the $4,000 cut), while their union leaders earn in excess of $100,000 each, not counting the thousands more many receive in perks and other benefits.

* Marty Beil, Wisconsin Public Employees Union (WPEU) executive director, $162,000 in 2008
* Rick Badger, Wisconsin AFSCME executive, $133,000 in 2009
* Gerald McEntee, national president of AFSCME, $480,000 in 2009
* Mary Bell, Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), $173,466 in 2008
* Dan Burkahlter, WEAC’s Chief Executive, $242,807,
* Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association (NEA), $397,721 in salary and benefits.
* Rose Ann De Moro, executive director of National Nurses United, $293,000 per year.
* Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO President, $283,340 last year
* Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president, $620,000 from two jobs in the same union.
* AFT has nearly 100 officials who earned over $400,000 each

WSWS correctly points out that Wisconsin’s public sector union bosses served as the ruling elite’s bulldogs by demanding that all workers return to work after Republicans pushed through a modified version of the union busting bill. This version of the bill slashed workers’ pay and benefits and cut funding for social programs, but left intact collective bargaining and the automatic payroll dues collection (the only issues that affect the union bosses’ salaries). The union bosses argued that they could best continue the fight through the election process.

This has been the historic role of union bosses: to serve as capitalism’s enforcers. Their financial interests are so much more closely tied with those of the ruling elite that they routinely sell out their members in order to protect their own status and income. The tragedy and irony is that Walker had done more to organize and mobilize workers than any union boss has done in generations and the unions wasted the opportunity. Tens of thousands of workers were in the streets, skipping work in a de facto strike, occupying buildings, and they were willing to continue to doing so. The momentum and sentiment were there. People were talking about a General Strike. All the unions had to do was provide the support. Instead, they allied themselves with the class enemy of the workers and crushed the movement.

The lesson is that class conscious union activists and organizers need to do a much better job organizing from the ground up, not only in opposition to the bosses and politicians, but in opposition to our own union leadership.

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/

[ChiciB1]

1. You Need To Cross Post This At General Discussion... Getting NO Traction Here.

I realize this IS a LABOR topic, but all the Union coverage is too, and most of it is posted over there. THIS is quite an eye-opener and needs more exposure at a bigger forum!

[Omaha Steve]

2. From the article (it is wrong)

The rush was to have a valid contract BEFORE the law takes effect. The law CAN NOT invalidate any contract. So things like working conditions, seniority, and everything else remain in force for the life of the contract.

Omaha Steve

"As the union executives made clear again and again, they agreed to all the financial demands being made of workers. “I remind you that weeks ago we accepted the financial concessions the governor asked for to help solve our state’s budget crisis,” Wisconsin Education Association Council head Mary Bell wrote in a March 14 article for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

What the union executives opposed was the bill’s attack on their financial sustenance in its abolition of the automatic dues-check off. But Walker’s law cannot override contracts already in place. Hence the rush to put in place new union contracts before the law goes into effect.

This underscores the fact that workers are not just pitted against Walker and the Republicans, but the unions and the Democrats."

[Modern School]

4. Existing Contracts Trump Wisconsin Law

You are correct, Steve, existing contracts stand, despite the law. I don't think I said anything to the contrary, although perhaps I could have been more clear that this is why the unions rushed them through. I can also understand the strategy. It was an expedient.

My point was to critique this strategy.

True, working conditions, class size, etc., are all important and it is great the unions will be able to continue to negotiate these things. But pay and benefits have been stagnant or declining for years. The budget crises were not caused by public sector workers, but by tax cuts and subsidies for the rich and their corporations, combined with the greed and stupidity of the financial sector that caused the financial meltdown. It is their crisis and they are the ones who can and should pay, not public sector workers.

To make this happen, however, is much more difficult than convincing members to vote a certain way. The Democrats, even if they win, are not going to restore workers' pay and benefits or voluntarily increase taxes on the rich. This struggle requires protracted, organized and militant strikes and street protests that bring business as usual to a standstill, forcing the bosses and politicians to concede to workers (rather than the other way around). The unions have not only forsaken this strategy, but actively rallied against it. This is unfortunate since the momentum was already there.

The union bosses chose to concede their members' wages and benefits because it was easier, because it did not harm their own income, and most of all because they believed it to be the most expedient way to maintain their existence as union leaders. If they were concerned about the legality of a general strike, which could result in prison or large fines for union officials, they could simply be neutral: don't condone it, but at the same time, don't hamper it. On the other hand, a fighting union does what is necessary, despite the law. Thousands of union activists have been sent to prison, deported, beaten and even killed fighting for their rights and their well being, often in spite of unjust laws.

[Omaha Steve]

3. Well I sent some comments to the writer of the article

I'll be waiting to see if he replies.