Sorting the winners from the losers in Wisconsin union battle.

 St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Board, March 11,011

Wisconsin’s Republicans have succeeded in stripping state employees of collective bargaining rights and imposing other stringent requirements on public employee unions. So what’s next?
Was this Pearl Harbor for America’s beleaguered labor movement, a sneak attack that will energize the working class? Or was Wisconsin the right-wing juggernaut’s version of Poland, the first victim of blitzkrieg?
Using a deft (albeit possibly illegal) maneuver last week, Wisconsin’s Senate Republicans passed GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union bill, dropping any pretense that it was a deficit-reducing effort.
Senate Democrats, who, in a deft political maneuver of their own, had fled the state three weeks ago to block passage of the bill, were left with a longshot legal challenge to the GOP maneuver as a violation of the state’s open meeting law. Mr. Walker appears to have his victory. His challenge will be to keep it from turning Pyrrhic.
Richard Trumka, president of the national AFL-CIO, chortled last week that the union organization should give Mr. Walker its “Mobilizer of the Year” award. The Wisconsin showdown has energized labor unions, both in the public and private sectors, Mr. Trumka said.
The month-long battle over Mr. Walker’s bill, featuring daily rallies at the capitol by union workers and sympathizers, has focused public attention on efforts by conservative political groups to undermine the economic condition of the middle class, Mr. Trumka told people assembled at a jobs rally in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
“This is a debate we’ve wanted to have for 20 to 25 years,” he said. “Well, guess what? Suddenly the debate came to us.”
Polls taken during the Wisconsin debate have shown strong support, even among independent voters, for collective bargaining rights — even for public-sector unions. The polls show strong opposition to cutting public employees’ pay to balance budgets.
But the labor movement, particularly the AFL-CIO unions, no longer is the potent force it once was. Unions will have to remember how to hustle if they are to press whatever advantage Mr. Walker has given them.
And then there’s this: The Wisconsin bill eliminates two key labor weapons: automatic dues checkoff and automatic union recertification. If that pattern spreads, labor will be fighting with its hands tied behind its back.
Meanwhile, the anti-labor movement has huge war chests, swelled since last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows corporations to contribute unlimited amounts, often anonymously, to independent political groups. But they’re only acting in workers’ interests, you understand.
Grover Norquist, the founder of American Taxpayers for Reform, told the National Journal that Wisconsin union members are going to like not handing over to “union bosses” the $500 each year that they’ll save in union dues.
Perhaps. But nationwide, union members make an average of $200 more a week than non-union members, so union dues are a bargain.
As to union bosses, it’s true that Mr. Trumka made $238,975 in 2009 roughly four times what the average union member made. But the average Fortune 500 CEO made 344 times what his average worker earned. By that standard, union bosses are pikers.
Unions helped create America’s middle class. Their decline over the last three decades precisely parallels the huge decline in the percentage of financial wealth held by the middle class. Redressing that is going to require a very long war. Wisconsin was only the first battle.