All too often, modern stage-managed, focus-group-fashioned politicians will studiously avoid taking firm stands on contentious policy issues. This usually results in campaigns where, to the casual voter, even ideologically opposite candidates appear to be separated primarily by choice of hairstyle and yard sign design.

 

Refreshingly, it appears upcoming Washington elections actually will see something approaching a duel of ideas. There looks to be one policy fight that it will be impossible for either Democratic or Republican politicians to duck: the place of collective bargaining in the 21st-century American economy.

 

The battle lines were drawn when Scott Walker, the Republican governor of Wisconsin, launched his campaign to limit the collective bargaining rights of state employees in 2011, a crusade which fellow Republican elected officials across America and especially the Midwest rushed to join.

 

Some Democratic analysts initially dismissed these proposals as political PR stunts that never would result in actual legislation, a war dance to earn the approval and donations of the anti-union elements of the Republican base.

 

But then Democrats received their wake-up call: Republicans proved their sincerity by passing stringent anti-collective bargaining bills through both the Wisconsin and Ohio state legislatures. This erosion of worker rights naturally resulted in furious opposition from Democratic politicians, grass-roots progressives and labor groups across the Midwest … and Washington.

United to fight

Nothing unites Washington Democrats like the fight to ensure that average workers can negotiate a New/Fair/Square Deal from their employers. As the elected chairman of Clallam County’s Democratic Party, I have received more e-mail over the past three months about Wisconsin than I have regarding all local issues combined. I have been asked to chip in to finance pizza deliveries to protestors in Madison’s state capitol so often that I began to wonder if my Sicilian last name was getting me ethnically profiled.

 

The battle has dominated the policy debate in Washington, D.C., for most of 2011 and Washington’s Democratic representatives have been in the vanguard of the pro-labor forces. “Labor serves as the guardian of the American dream and working men and women are the ones who will power our economic recovery,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell in response to a request for a comment for this article. Cantwell faces re-election in 2012. “We need to work together to create family-wage jobs and reject cynical attempts to divide Americans.”

 

And now the frontline has been extended to Washington: State Senate Republicans have introduced in this session such bills as SB 5439, which would repeal collective bargaining rights in Washington, and SB 5870, which would reject Gov. Gregoire’s budget-cutting collective bargaining deal with state employees.

Bargaining rights a common theme

I would have attended the April 8 Washington State Labor Council’s rally on the steps of the capitol in Olympia — if I hadn’t had to prepare to host state Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz in Sequim the next day to discuss the same issues. The state party already is focusing on the anti-labor record of likely Republican gubernatorial candidate Attorney General Rob McKenna, by taking out an ad in The Olympian on March 22 that said, “If you like what Governor Scott Walker is doing in Wisconsin … you will love Rob McKenna as Washington State’s Governor.”

 

Democratic officials are equally ready to make collective bargaining rights a cornerstone of upcoming campaigns.

 

State Rep. Kevin Van De Wege of Sequim, a former leader of the local firefighters union with a 96-percent pro-labor lifetime voting record according to the Washington State Labor Council, faces re-election in 2012, and he promises to make it an issue. “I’m definitely going to ensure that Republicans have to answer for their anti-worker policies,” Van De Wege says.

 

Steve Tharinger, who also faces re-election as state representative in 2012, is equally uncompromising. “The influence of unions and collective bargaining brought American workers the weekend, the eight-hour workday and the end of child labor,” says Tharinger. “That’s the sort of record I feel very comfortable defending.”

 

State Sen. Jim Hargrove of Hoquiam, who represents all of Clallam and Jefferson counties and parts of Grays Harbor, agrees. “I believe collective bargaining is a fair way to balance the power of the employer and the ability of the individual to get a fair wage,” says Hargrove. “I would not support eliminating collective bargaining in this state.”

Time to step up

The Republicans don’t appear to be backing down, either. In fact, I don’t think they have a choice to give battle on this issue. It is hard for me to conceive of how a pro-union Republican can get through a primary in the post-Walker, post-Tea Party era.

 

So, the battle over workers’ rights is inevitable and it will be fought on the Olympic Peninsula. I say this both as a prediction and, in my official Democratic Party capacity, as a promise.

 

Regardless of where you stand on such issues, this is a cause for celebration: It appears that some of our upcoming elections may be decided on actual policy debates.

 

 

Matthew Randazzo V is chair of the Clallam County Democratic Central Committee.