Tuesday's recall election for anti-union governor Scott Walker has electrified liberals and centre-leftists of all stripes around the United States. From the Democratic Party establishment to liberal/progressive union-supporting networks activists on the moderate left have poured much of their time and energy into the effort to defeat Walker's corporatist administration.
And yet, what does it say about the nature of the labor movement in the United States if it relies on elections like these to find relevance? Some would argue it is part of the tradition of the modern Democratic Party to support trade unionism, but the most prominent Democrat and liberal in the country, President Obama, has remained virtually silent on the whole debate. Further some are decrying that a victory for Walker in the recall would be a major setback for labor in general.
The nature of American business unionism that has attached itself to the apparatus of the neoliberal Democratic Party shows the powerlessness of workers in America today. While unions can defend workers from unfair hiring and firing as well as defend them from harsh cuts in meager benefits, unions on the whole do not usually question the nature of the wage system that perpetuates dire situations for working people the world over. It is about paying dues, setting up shop at industries, and negotiating meager wages with millionaire owners of capital.
What American workers need, like all workers of the world, is a movement of working people with a horizontal power structure, where there is no need for stewards or union bosses, where all workers function through a direct democratic system to not only make more wages than the minimum but to make living wages to have a decent life. And if there is one American attribute that can be applied to this, it is self-initiative, workers cannot rely on business unions and corporate Democrats to stand up for them, only workers themselves can stand up for economic equality. Thus, we must take the Wisconsin situation and not fetishize the electoral circus create by liberals, workers must look at the blatantly anti-worker sentiments of Walker and stand up to it like in the beginning: mass strikes and protests, and go further with worker occupations. If the labor movement is to survive and really help the working people of America it must distance itself from electoralism and regain the militancy of its past.
