I’m noticing that the media is being somewhat slow to pickup on the real story happening in Wisconsin and not spreading to Indiana and Ohio. It’s not about fixing state deficits or finances. It’s about busting unions, pure and simple.  As such, it’s part of an long-term effort that the right wing of American politics has been pursuing since the late 1960’s to increase the share of GDP that goes to profits and elite investors and to reduce the share of GDP/national income that goes to the middle class/working class.

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post is starting to get it, though:

The last time any elected leader made such a direct and brazen attack on the legitimacy of the union movement was when Ronald Reagan risked havoc in the skies by firing hundreds of striking air-traffic controllers and preventing them from ever getting their jobs back. This dramatic bit of union-busting became a turning point from which organized labor never really recovered – and, like the Wisconsin imbroglio, skillfully played off resentment of public employees whose pay and benefits exceed that of the average taxpayer.

But rather than playing Reagan to Wisconsin’s truant teachers, Walker overreached, refusing to give up his union-busting even after the unions agreed to his benefit-cutting demands. Now that he has allowed the unions to reframe the issue from one of greedy public servants to one of political revenge, Walker has single-handedly succeeded in bringing more attention, unity and sympathy to the union movement than it has had since . . . well, since Ronald Reagan took on the control tower. A mischievous columnist might even take this opportunity to speculate whether this is the beginning of the revival of labor’s fortunes

Pearlstein also observes how all the conservative talk about “running government like a business” is pure nonsense.  No sane business leader interested in building a long-term successful business would approach workers this way, something I can attest to from my own corporate and consulting experiences:

Back when I was working at Inc. magazine in the mid-1980s, we loved nothing better when approaching a public-sector issue than to ask how the private sector would handle it. Faced with the situation in Wisconsin, we would have called up Tom Peters or Peter Drucker and posed the example of a new chief executive brought in by the shareholders (i.e., the voters) to rescue a company suffering from operating losses (budget deficit) and declining sales (jobs). Invariably, they would have recommended sitting down with employees, explaining the short-and long-term economic challenges and working with them to improve productivity and product quality in a way that benefits both shareholders and employees.

Now compare that with how Wisconsin’s new chief executive handled the situation: Impose an across-the-board pay cut and tell employees neither they nor their representative will ever again have a say in how things will be run or get a pay raise in excess of inflation. A great way to start things off with the staff, don’t you think? Remember that the next time you hear some Republican bellyaching at the Rotary lunch about why government should be run more like a business.

This situation, both the efforts to bust the unions and the protests, which started in Wisconsin but has spread will, I think be a major turning point in U.S. political economy.  It’s too early to tell if which way things turn.  It could spell a determined u-turn back to the early 20th century and worse working conditions and wages share of GDP/GNI, or it could be the beginning of the reversal of the 1970’s-1980 conservative revolution (is that an oxymoron?)  and a return to progressive values.  Too early to tell.