Is the union movement making a comeback?

[alp227]

by Nelson N. Lichtenstein (MacArthur Foundation professor of history and director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara)

In a stunning achievement for unionists and Democrats, critics of the Wisconsin governor Scott Walker marshaled over a million signatures for a petition that has made it possible for Walker to lose his office in a recall election this spring. If so, that would be the first successful gubernatorial recall in Wisconsin history and only the third in that of the United States.

Walker blundered last year by pushing through the state legislature a hugely unpopular law that cripples public-sector collective bargaining and thereby suffocates most government unions.

Coming on the heels of the November referendum in Ohio, which overturned a similar Republican-sponsored law, it's clear that the American trade union movement is not yet dead. Indeed, the defense of these venerable institutions retains the capacity to put thousands in the streets and mobilize millions of voters, not all of whom are card-carrying unionists by any means.

full: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/21/opinion/lichtenstein-union-wisconsin/index.html

[Scuba]

1. While unions are feeling some much needed love here in Wisconsin, it's a mistake to think ....

... that the fight here with Walker is just about unions.


It's much, much more than that.

[Doctor_J]

3. No kidding. What an assinine article

union membership is at historic lows, and so is the size and power of the middle class. Anti-union legislation is in progress across the country. and, as Scuba says, the union movement is but a tiny piece of the Walker recall.

Edit: I just noticed that this was posted at cnn, a far right organ which would of course try to drum up a "unions are coming" lie.

[doc03]

2. Not that I can see n/t