Thousands in U.S. rally for unions

From Madison to Miami, protesters blast bill limiting bargaining rights

People opposed to the governor’s bill to eliminate collective-bargaining rights for many state workers protest Saturday outside the Wisconsin Capitol.
People opposed to the governor’s bill to eliminate collective-bargaining rights for many state workers protest Saturday outside the Wisconsin Capitol.

— Thousands of people took part in rallies in support of unions around the nation Saturday, including in the Wisconsin capital, where a political stalemate between the Republican governor and Democratic legislators over curtailing the power of unions led to similar battles in other states in the past week.

The tens of thousands of people who filled the square around the Capitol on Saturday rivaled the largest of the demonstrations that have taken place since Feb. 15 over Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to limit the collective-bargaining rights of public-sector unions and to require public workers to pay more for their health insurance and pensions.

“We’ve had bargaining for 50 years, and he’s trying to destroy it in a week,” said Al Alt, a teacher from Waukesha who was among the protesters.

Democratic members of the Wisconsin Senate and the Indiana House of Representatives remained sequestered in Illinois on Saturday to avoid being forced by the state police in their home states to attend legislative sessions in which bills limiting unions would be passed by Republican majorities.

Democrats are outnumbered in those chambers and are seeking to block the legislation by denying Republicans a quorum. The Democrats have said they will not return until Republicans drop the bills.

Republican governors and state lawmakers say the benefits and bargaining power of public workers must be trimmed to reduce deficits that may reach a combined $125 billion in the next fiscal year.

http://www.arkansas…">Wisconsin protests

Under a light snow in Madison on Saturday afternoon, demonstrators chanted, “This is what democracy looks like” and “Scott Walker’s got to go!”

Many of the placards protesters carried were directed at Walker’s relationship with Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who have bankrolled conservative causes and Republican politicians, including Walker’s election campaign last year.

In Miami, about 150 people took part in a rally at Bayfront Park in solidarity with public employees in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

Many pickets expressed concern that Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, might try to strip away the few protections unions have in Florida. A bill in the Legislature would block union dues from being automatically deducted from paychecks.

Elsewhere in the country, the unions were joined by allies from causes they describe as progressive and from past Democratic Party campaigns, including those who worked for the election of President Barack Obama in 2008.

“This really is about collective bargaining and the rights of all people to work and support themselves,” said Thomas Cannady, an organizer at a Washington rally led by MoveOn.org, an advocacy group formed to oppose the Iraq war.

Protesters numbering an estimated at several thousand in New York City aimed much of their vitriol at the legislation backed by Wisconsin’s governor. Participants at City Hall Park held signs that said “Wake Up! We are all Wisconsin” and wore the yellow cheese-heads favored by fans of the Green Bay Packers.

MoveOn.org took the lead in organizing protests that it said would be held in all 50 state capitals and in cities from Boston to Los Angeles. The Sierra Club, Health Care for America Now, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force were among participants.

The protest in Madison on Saturday was loud but peaceful, and the police have described the demonstrators’ behavior as “exemplary” as protesters have gathered and slept throughout the public areas of the Capitol for days.

But the sleepovers will end today, when the Capitol police say they will instruct demonstrators to leave at 4 p.m. for cleaning and maintenance of the building. Mattresses, chairs, cooking equipment and other gear the protesters have used are being removed.

Some demonstrators said they expected at least some protesters to resist having to leave the building, and union officials are unhappy with the decision. Alex Hanna, a co-president of the Teaching Assistants’ Association, called the move “undemocratic and obviously politically motivated.” Information for this article was contributed by Richard A. Oppel Jr., Timothy Williams and Erik Bojnansky of The New York Times and by Holly Rosenkrantz, Matthew Robinson, Stephanie Armour, Anthony Palazzo, Esme E. Deprez and Jennifer Nesbitt of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 7 on 02/27/2011

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