Wisconsin Supreme Court tells public workers: No raises for you.

This is what happens when working people fail to rely on our own strength and our own ability to defend and expand our economic and political rights.  The Wisconsin Supreme Court has overturned the ruling by a lower court that held up the implementation of the anti-Union anti-worker law in Wisconsin.

These judges, representatives of capital, have determined that workers can only bargain over wages and that raises will be limited to the rate of inflation unless voters approve larger increases says the Wall Street Journal.  Could you imagine the whining about communism and class war if profits were limited to the rate of inflation and could only increase through a vote of the public.  By legalizing this, the Supreme Court is saying that an increase in wages is only possible by voter approval because a raise equal to the inflation rate is not a raise at all. It is not even keeping even as it implies because the bosses determine the inflation rate in a way that is favorable to them and you've already spent that money by the time your COLA increase kicks in.

So Wisconsin public employees will now be required to contribute 5.8% of their salaries to their pensions and 12.6% of their health care premiums (gotta pay for those bombs). The employers are feeling very confident that their offensive against workers and our rights cannot be stopped as they have so far been given a free pass from the hierarchy that sits atop organized Labor.

The Union hierarchy diverted the show of strength that occurred in Wisconsin earlier in the year in to electoral activity, wasting time, resources and money in an effort to elect Democrats in to office to replace their Republican colleagues rather than confront the bosses in the streets, workplaces and schools through mass direct action and linking up all sectors of the working class under assault.  There is nothing more terrifying for the Labor tops than a victory and a resurgent conscious and militant rank and file as their privileged positions, jobs for life, obscene salaries and perks would immediately come under scrutiny and become a thing of the past.  But even this is secondary.  The main reason they refuse to mobilize the power we saw emerging in Wisconsin in to a real movement that could bring the US economy to a halt and throw back this offensive of capital, is that they see no alternative to capitalism.

The strategists of organized Labor accept the market and worship the laws of the system.  They accept that the boss has the right to make profit and own the workplace and what comes out of it.  They are wedded to this philosophy, the same  world view as the boss, so to challenge it would lead to catastrophe, to chaos-------workers have to sacrifice, have to do with less, have to compete with workers abroad earning peanuts---this is the only solution and the inevitable result of their way of looking at the world. Without an alternative to capitalism, no one is exempt from doing exactly what the present leaders of the workers' movement do.

The Wisconsin events were but another opportunity lost for the US working class.  There have been many such opportunities and there will be more.  The failure for these to materialize in to a generalized struggle out of which a mass movement arises and out of that an independent mass workers party, means that the way forward will be more difficult than it need have been, that workers have suffered  and will suffer more than necessary.  The main reason for the delay of such a movement is the role of the heads of organized Labor who have in one way or another suppressed such a development.  This combination of the Labor leadership and business through the Democratic Party infiltrates any potential independent  movement of the working class in order to temper it.  After the Seattle events, the Labor bureaucracy sent an army of trendy staffers in to the youth movement to direct it in to more harmless activity that is acceptable to the Democrats.

But there is cause for optimism as there have been powerful movements that have arisen throughout the world and here in the US.  The objective situation is the most favorable in decades in the aftermath of the present economic crisis.  We had the magnificent May Day strike of immigrant workers in 2006 and while it was to be expected the Democrats and the Catholic church would make every effort to co-opt and benefit from it, great lessons are learned through struggle; the same with Wisconsin and the youth and student movement that arose in response to the attacks on education. What is certain, and what history confirms in my opinion, is that the working class will fight---it will struggle to resolve the crisis and challenges we face.  These great upheavals may begin outside the organized working class given the stifling hold the bureaucracy has on the apparatus; maybe not, we cannot predict these things.

But we have faced harder times than this and at some point the dam will burst, the obstacle of our won leadership, or lack of it, will be overcome and our rich and militant tradition will emerge from the slumber its been in for a while.