Kevin Drum makes a vital point about what's going on in Wisconsin:
Every single human institution or organization of any size has its bad points. Corporations certainly do. The military does. Organized religion does. Academia does. The media does. The financial industry sure as hell does. But with the exception of a few extremists here and there, nobody uses this as an excuse to suggest that these institutions are hopelessly corrupt and should cease existing. Rather, it's used as fodder for regulatory proposals or as an argument that every right-thinking person should fight these institutions on some particular issue. Corporations should or shouldn't be rewarded for outsourcing jobs. Academics do or don't deserve more state funding. The financial industry should or shouldn't be required to trade credit derivatives on public exchanges.
Unions are the most common big exception to this rule. Sure, conservatives will take whatever chance they can to rein them in, regulate them, make it nearly impossible for them to organize new workplaces. But they also routinely argue that labor unions simply shouldn't exist. This is what's happening in Wisconsin: Gov. Scott Walker isn't satisfied with merely negotiating concessions from public sector unions. He wants to effectively ban collective bargaining and all but do away with public sector unions completely.
It's obvious that the argument Scott Walker is making about this conflict being just about the budget is bogus and that he's trying to destroy the public-employee unions in his state (those that didn't endorse him in his campaign, anyway). But it's also important to understand that this is a key battle in a larger war. And the stakes in this conflict are much, much higher for the left than for the right. The workers have already said they'll accept paying more for their their health benefits and their pensions, and if Gov. Walker accepts that deal, the right's war on unions will have suffered a meaningful, but still temporary and non-fatal, defeat. Their war will go on -- it's very well-funded, and the corporate forces know they're winning.
If, however, Walker succeeds in taking away the right of government workers in Wisconsin to bargain collectively, it will be a monumental blow to labor, perhaps as important as Ronald Reagan firing the air traffic controllers in 1981, an event that effectively declared open season on unions in the private sector. Government is the last heavily unionized sector in the American economy, which is precisely why conservatives have been gunning for it for some time. If Walker wins this battle, his attempt to destroy the public-sector unions in Wisconsin will be followed in short order by similar efforts in other states with highly conservative governors who right now are watching Wisconsin very closely. If Wisconsin Democrats and the workers can hold on, those other governors will probably decide it's not worth the trouble to wage a frontal assault on collective-bargaining rights. But if they can't, Wisconsin will be just the first of many, and when it's over, the labor movement in America could be on its death bed.
