As the Wisconsin protests have continued and spread to Indiana and Ohio, with solidarity rallies held in Sacramento and elsewhere, the strategy of Republican Governors becomes clear: cripple public unions. If there was ever any doubt about this goal, it was dispelled by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s conversation with a newspaper editor (impersonating billionaire conservative campaign contributor David Koch) in which Walker discusses their anti-union strategy. This conservative effort has important implications for the Sacramento area.
Not coincidentally, the effort follows a long decline of unions. In 1945, according to the Department of Labor, unions represented 34% of private employees, 10% of workers in the public sector. This is now reversed: 7% of private, 36% of public workers – the overall number of union workers declining from one in every three in 1945 to one in every eight today. Crippling public employee unions, in the guise of balancing state government budgets, could well put the finishing touches on unions.
How is this important to Sacramento? Our area is currently more
