Thread by @benwikler

This is a tough anniversary for many Wisconsinites. Ten years ago today, Scott Walker signed Act 10 into law. Thread 1/
madison.com/ct/news/local/…

Act 10 divided our state. It hurt countless Wisconsin families. It damaged our schools, and hence our kids, and hence the future of everyone here. It disempowered workers. And by doing that, it helped Republicans politically. It achieved its goals.

Scott Walker’s strategy in WI, as he told billionaire GOP donor Diane Hendricks, was “divide and conquer”—break the public sector unions first, then go after the private sector ones. To break worker power and cement money power, and hence GOP control.

Act 10, sold cynically as a “budget repair bill,” dramatically slashed collective bargaining rights for most public employees.
wkow.com/2021/02/11/sca…

It eliminated bargaining for work schedules and conditions of employment, undercut wage negotiations, and ripped up other union rights.

Act 10 also required public employees to contribute more to pensions and healthcare costs, which meant a pay cut of thousands of dollars per year.
jsonline.com/story/news/pol…

The GOP pitched Act 10 as a way to “save taxpayers” billions of dollars. The state may have spent less on pensions and healthcare—but who was left with the bill? The workers. As a result, so many talented public servants wound up unable to stay in the careers they loved.

Through Act 10, Walker and the GOP created a teacher shortage in Wisconsin. Teacher pay dropped precipitously after Act 10, and schools, in general, went underfunded. College students choosing to major in education dropped by a third.
gazettextra.com/opinion/column…

Act 10 didn’t happen in a vacuum. Scott Walker did not wake up one morning and decide to go after unions and sign Act 10 into law on a whim. Act 10 was a result of decades-long work by the Republicans to empower the wealthy at the expense of working families.

Wisconsin has a long and rich history of organized labor and progressivism, embodied by “Fighting Bob” La Follette and the Wisconsin Progressive Party of the 30’s and 40’s. Our state passed labor laws that directly shaped FDR’s New Deal.
wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Articl…

In 1959, Governor Gaylord Nelson signed a law that made Wisconsin the first state in the country to recognize public-sector unions. As a result, it was a point of pride for the national anti-worker cabal to smash public unions in Wisconsin specifically.
nytimes.com/2014/02/23/bus…

And the history of pro-worker organizing in Wisconsin didn’t end with Act 10 in 2010. Walker’s assault on workers triggered a massive wave of protest and resistance—with more than 100,000 protestors at the State Capitol.
wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/…

The organizers who led that fight are among my heroes. I’m proud to have been among the flood of regular Wisconsinites who joined the protest and testified against the law. I was living out of town, but flew home with my friend Aaron Swartz to march.

Walker and the GOP won their bill and went on to do even greater damage. In 2015, they attacked private-sector workers as well, signing a so-called right-to-work law. But they didn’t achieve their core goal: breaking our spirit.

So many people who helped defeat Walker in 2018 and Trump in 2020 come from the labor movement—even specifically from education, and worked against Act 10 a decade ago. Their raw commitment keeps the spirit of solidarity alive.

And just this week, exactly ten years after Act 10’s passage in Wisconsin, the Democratic House majority passed the PRO Act, which would abolish anti-union right-to-work laws in the more than two dozen states that passed them.
npr.org/2021/03/09/975…

Republicans sometimes play-act that they’re becoming a worker’s party. But there’s no question: they’re the party of anti-worker billionaires, and Democrats are the party of working people. The right to organize is fundamental.

Today, we’ll keep working to advance the PRO Act—and in Wisconsin and nationwide, we’ll work to ensure that every worker’s rights are protected.

In the meantime, block off some time to learn more about Act 10 and the counter-movement it inspired.

Here are some good things to read and watch:

- Wisconsin Rising (movie): wisconsinrising.com

- Citizen Koch (movie): watch.citizenkoch.com

- The Fall of Wisconsin (book): wwnorton.com/books/The-Fall…

- We Are Wisconsin (book): goodreads.com/en/book/show/1…