Protests in Wisconsin are long due and exciting, but Labor's top officials will want to temper the ranks and hold the movement back. The question is: will they be able to? Let's hope not.

Lee Sustar has a good article in Socialist worker about the protests in Wisconsin.  He writes:

"Several labor officials who addressed the rally focused on a simple demand--that Walker sit down and talk to unions, rather than try to steamroller them. Brad Lutes, a member of a local affiliate of the Wisconsin Education Association and an elementary physical education and health teacher in Sun Prairie, near Madison, led the crowd in chants of "negotiate, not legislate."

Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt also said in an interview that labor's objective with the protest was to pressure Walker to negotiate. Earlier, speaking to the thousands of union members and supporters, Neuenfeldt sounded the basic theme of solidarity00 that motivated workers to turn out from across the state."

One thing missing from Sustar's piece is any caution or warning about the intentions of the top labor officials.  The quotes he gives above are very revealing in that they are carefully chosen; I don't mean by Lee Sustar but by the officials that spoke them.

The bureaucracy that keeps a firm rein on anything that happens within the ranks of organized Labor chose these words in order to assure the employers that the issue is limited to one of negotiation only.  The employers should sit down and talk with them.  Of course, its important to keep our rights to bargain and sit down with the employers.  But this is emphasized by the Union hierarchy because the subject of those negotiations will be concessions and they agree with concessions. In a time when the employers are savaging all workers and the poor and when the anger that exists beneath the surface of society is trying to break out; why would we limit ourselves to "one simple demand."?

The overconfidence of some sections of the capitalist class due in a large part to the Union hierarchy's refusal to mount a real offensive against the attacks that have been going on for years,  is forcing people who have not previously ingaged in activism to step forward.  But this frightens the Labor hierarchy.

This places pressure on organized Labor's stifling bureaucracy and they have to appear to be doing something after years of business Unionism and collaboration with the employers.  It is no accident that there was no mention of any demands or program of action from the head of the state AFL-CIO. I am sure Lee Sustar would not have left that out.   Nothing must be said that might raise expectations and encourage workers and youth to demand more jobs, increase spending on education and infrastructure (without taking the money from other sections of the working class which is what the bosses will try to do as a means to divide us.)

No mention of ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are part of the reason the austerity measures are being enacted domestically, and using that money for social services. Nothing must be said that would increase expectations or encourage the newly active youth and other workers to go beyond forcing negotiations.

If they stop this legislation that will be a great victory, but to stop it so that the Union officials can go and sit down with the boss and hand over yet more concessions would be a setback.  The Union officials will do what they can to hold this movement back and confine it to their extremely limited needs.  After all, if collective bargaining rights are legislated away, their postion in the world is undermined.

The problem is that movements have a will of their own.  They might not be able to hold the movement back and limit it to what is acceptable to them and the Democrats who walked out of the state legislature today under the pressure and to con people in to thinking they are the party of the common man and woman.

Many of the protesters had signs referencing the  struggle in Egypt.  One lesson is that the struggle should be spread beyond Wisconsin and beyond simply education.  Build a generalized movement against the attacks and draw all sections of the working class behind the power of the Union banner.  Foreclosures, racism, prisons, jobs, transportation wages.  All these issues are limked.

I met a number of people this morning who know I write for this blog and don't generally say much but this morning they were thrilled about the developments in Wisconsin and the Middle east. "They're pushing us too far" said one woman.  Another, who has her own small business told me that "If Egyptians can do it surely we can."

Lee Sustar's article is  here