Thank You in Madison! Now a greater challenge lies ahead.
The defiant and dynamic action of Wisconsin's public employees raises the possibilities for workers across the country. It is also heartening that private sector union members are actively supporting and refusing to be divided. However, defending the interests of unionized workers, particularly during a depression, has historically required united action of the employed and unemployed. Corporate power is unrelenting in its effort to manipulate 40 million (the real number) unemployed, underemployed, uncounted, and increasingly desperate workers as a wedge to drive down wages and break unions. Yet organized labor has blindly failed to recognize and act on the necessity to organize and mobilize this potentially powerful natural ally. This crucial challenge, more than any other, will make or break the future of all working people in the coming period.
Some are now calling for a recall election. But we need to remember it’s because of decades of over-reliance on a corporately-tilted political process that union power has deteriorated in the first place. The recall opportunity has been created by mass action, not the other way around. Perhaps the optimum use of union resources and energy is something like 2% for electoral politics, 98% for building mass action (with a major emphasis on organizing the unemployed).