Labor & Employment Law

Wisconsin Republicans Get Special Welcome in Washington

By Mike Hall

Fresh from stealing workers’ rights to bargain for good, middle-class jobs, Wisconsin’s Republican state legislators were met by hundreds of  protestors tonight in Washington, D.C.

The lawmakers are in town for a big corporate $1,000 a head fundraiser to help fill their recall election campaign coffers now that they have done the bidding of the CEO’s who backed the assault. Most face recall elections organized by angry Wisconsin voters after the senators voted to strip collective bargaining rights from teachers, nurses, snowplow drivers and others.

They expected to quietly schmooze with their corporate friends at the lobbying firm the BGR group, the  lobbying firm founded by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R).

But hundreds of members of the Metropolitan Washington Council AFL-CIO and  progressive allies overflowed the sidewalks to the point where police were forced to shut down the block. Demonstrators  also took over the atrium of the building  where BGR is housed.

Jonathan Backer, who traveled from Kenosha, Wis., for the protest told ABC News.

It?s such a good representation of what?s wrong with our democracy right now.  There?s so much corporate power in our democracy where literally seconds after one of the worst anti-labor decisions that?s ever happened in the Midwest, you?ve got a big fundraiser going on here, right here in D.C. 

Click here,  here and here for photos and here and  here for videos.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on March 16, 2011 (boomark / email).