Racine Labor Fest Focused On Ousting Republicans

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Thousands of people showed up to Racine Labor Fest at on Monday to celebrate Labor Day.

But the tone of the event focused more on fighting for their existence as many public employee unions have had their collective bargaining rights stripped by GOP state Legislators earlier this year.

Members collected signatures for pledges to recall Gov. Scott Walker, workers reminded them of a scheduled protest at Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Janesville) next speech, and people talked about solidarity, respect and fighting for what they believed in.

During the event, elected officials stabbed at newly created political wounds as they pointed to lost wages, lost benefits, lost bargaining rights and new voter identification rules. But Sen. Bob Wirch (D-Kenosha) also reminded the crowd of the unions’ success in helping him to keep his seat in a recall election and he issued the following rally cry.

“I got 58 percent of the vote. We sent a message out there, but we have to keep it going,” Wirch said. “There some people who have thick heads up there. We have to send a message to Van Wanggaard. We have to send a message to Robin Vos. And the message is this: working class people are not second class citizens out there.”

The crowd cheered.

But they also cheered when elected officials spoke about: recalling Gov. Scott Walker, the possibility of state Rep. Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) running for governor, ousting federal Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Janesville) and replacing him with Rob Zerban (D-Kenosha).

Mark Balwinski, of Caledonia, said he started getting angry with Gov. Scott Walker before he got into office when he pulled the plug on the KRM train, which he wanted. But he also felt deeply sympathetic to union workers when he had a family member sleeping on the floor of the State Capitol in Madison during the protests when Gov. Scott Walker stripped many of the union’s collective bargaining rights away.

Now he collects pledge signatures to recall Walker.

“We’re building a database of people who are willing to make a pledge to recall Walker,” Balwinski said. “When the time comes, we’ll have to have 540,208 votes and we’ll only have 60 days to do it. So we want to hit the ground running.”

For new retiree John Valko, the union he joined in 1974 is vastly different than the one he joined.

Valko was given the retired person of the year award. And after 37 years in the AFL-CIO at Case-New Holland, Valko sees the need for new members to get more involved in their unions. In 1974 Case had 3,7000 people in the union. About a year ago there were 347. Now there are 850 people.

“A lot of people, when they talk about unions all they hear is the baloney about the dues and they ask about what their dues get them. But what they don’t understand is what those dues dollars have gotten them,” Valko said. “I owe everything I have to unions. It didn’t jus fall out of a tree. Companies have no heart today. You are a number. And people need to wake up and get behind their union.”

But Valko also pointed out that unions act differently during negotiations than they did 37 years ago. They used to include workers at lunch tables screaming and hollering about what they wanted.

“You don’t get things done like that now and we’re training people to negotiate,” he said.

But John Lehman and his wife, Cathie Lehman, who were given the Mr. And Mrs. Solidarity award, said more people would be taking to the street to get their voices heard.

“When you limit collective bargaining rules, the role of the union is now in educating the public and going to the streets is what you have left,” he said.