BTL's Union Roundup column: Wisconsin Comes to Michigan

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Union Roundup: Wisconsin Comes to Michigan

As a phrase, it may not have the redolence of a Chester Himes’ title like Cotton Comes to Harlem – it lacks the darkly comic sense of history upending, or rebounding, on itself – but Wisconsin, it would seem, has definitely come to Michigan. And according to the Wolverine State’s budding film community, there’s nothing comic, darkly or otherwise, about it.

Wisconsin, of course, lies just on the yonder side of Lake Michigan from the state that shares its name. It’s a state that continues to occupy headlines as newly elected Republican governor Scott Walker – of college drop-out and Operation Rescue fame – amped up tax breaks for corporations upon taking office, declared a state budget crisis, and then decided the only possible solution for that crisis was to roll back the wages of state workers and teachers, and end their right to collective bargaining while he was at it.

And his isn’t the only state, and he’s not the only new governor, mounting what is, essentially, a rollback of 20th century labor gains, and an attack on unions. The pushback, and the size of demonstrations in Madison, have surprised everyone – potential victim, and victimizer, alike. How it will play out – whether this spark will give labor a renewed sense of itself (as something oppositional from the ownership class, which seems to have no ambiguity about what its own interests are), and who will win in these attempts to demolish collective bargaining rights, remains to be seen. We’ll have more on what role the coming labor struggles may hold for Hollywood’s unions in future columns.

But Walker’s colleague across the water, Michigan’s own newly elected Republican, Rick Snyder, is initially going after less controversial targets in attempting to solve his own state’s budget woes. Though his opening rounds of cuts were termed by state minority leader Gretchen Whitmer as coming on the “backs of our kids, working families, and our seniors. Contrary to his rhetoric about ‘moving all of Michigan forward,’ this budget picks out who he’s willing to leave behind.”

And among those left behind are film workers. Snyder proposes rolling back – as if they were collective bargaining rights – Michigan’s subsidies for film productions.

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http://www.btlnews.com/commentary/union-roundup/union-roundup-wisconsin-comes-to-michigan/