So, the wingnut governor of Wisconsin is looking to pass a law that will essentially make public sector unions illegal, and he's looking to use the National Guard to break heads, because, I guess that the Pinkertons are busy or something:
First Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) announced a state budget plan that strips state workers of nearly all their collective bargaining rights, cuts pay and benefits and says there will be no negotiations.
Today he took it even further: He announced he has alerted the National Guard to be ready in case state workers strike or rise in protest. He told the Associated Press he’s been working on contingency plans for months.
The last time the National Guard was used against public workers was the Memphis sanitation strike in 1968, just before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. The last time the Guard was called out in Wisconsin to quell a labor dispute was the 1934 Kohler strike by the UAW.
Obama should make it clear that he finds the use of the National Guard on a par with the actions of Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus with regard to school integration, and we would be inclined to Federalize the Guard, because using it to subvert the National Labor Relations Act is an inappropriate use of that resource.
The Obama administration has generally been ambivalent on organized labor issues, see the inactivity regarding the EFCA, but this is where a line needs to be drawn in the sand.
Not only is this a frontal assault on the idea of organized labor, but it is a blatantly partisan use of the National Guard.