Walker doesn't like what democracy looks like

When the voters of Milwaukee voted in 2008 on whether to enact an ordinance requiring businesses to provide a small amount of paid sick leave to all workers, they knew exactly what was at stake.

Corporate interests waged an aggressive campaign against the mandate that businesses operating in the city afford sick leave protections to employees facing family or health challenges.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on the campaign to block the measure.

Yet, when the votes were counted, 69 percent of Milwaukeeans backed the ordinance.

In a democracy, that would have been the end of it. But the corporate interests from Milwaukee and around the country were not about to let the will of the people get in their way.

It wasn’t that the Milwaukee ordinance was all that threatening to economic development. Indeed, there are piles of studies that show paid sick leave programs actually create more congenial and efficient workplaces — just as they increase the loyalty of employees.

What worried the corporate lobbyists was the prospect that the Milwaukee ordinance would become a model for sick leave initiatives in other communities. And, just as they in years past opposed child-labor laws, protections for women, anti-discrimination measures and all other demands placed on them by the states and communities where they operate, they opposed this one.

So the corporate interests sued to block the ordinance. But that gambit didn’t work any better than the electoral one.

In due order, the state Court of Appeals ruled that the sick leave measure was legally legitimate and needed to be implemented.

Then, finally, the anti-sick leave crew caught a break. Scott Walker was elected governor. Backed by the same powerful players that sought unsuccessfully to stop the sick leave ordinance at the polls and in the courts, Walker moved rapidly — in conjunction with new Republican majorities in the state Assembly and Senate — to thwart the will of the people by state dictate.

A law prohibiting local governments from mandating that employers provide paid sick leave and family leave (and voiding Milwaukee’s ordinance) was rushed through both houses of the Legislature and on Thursday it was signed by the governor.

Despite the fact that most Republican legislators were elected as explicit advocates for local control, they voted in lockstep to take away the right of citizens to establish simple, family-friendly protections for workers in their communities.

During what passed for a debate in the state Assembly, state Rep. Terese Berceau noted the acquiescence of her GOP colleagues to the demands of the anti-democracy lobby.

“You don’t want to look at anybody,” Berceau said to the Republicans. “It’s ‘Night of the Living Dead.’ It’s zombies.”

Speaker Pro Tem Bill Kramer, R-Waukesha, asked the Madison Democrat if she was calling Republicans zombies.

Berceau did not back down. “That would be a compliment,” she declared.

State Rep. Chris Danou, D-Trempealeau, was, if anything, blunter. Suggesting the logical extreme to which Walker’s agenda would take Wisconsin, he asked the Legislature: “Why don’t we just eliminate local government and rule everything from Madison?”

But Walker got his way. The bill passed on party-line votes in the Assembly and Senate.

At the signing ceremony, Walker claimed: “Patchwork government mandates stifle job creation and economic opportunity.”

That was a typically Orwellian statement from Wisconsin’s typically Orwellian governor.

The sick leave ordinance was not put in place by some government bureaucrat.

It was not put in place by government.

It was demanded by the people, via their votes.

That’s how democracy works.

Democracy and business can and do operate in harmony with one another. Responsible leaders understand this; indeed, they celebrate the creative relationships that develop between communities and enterprises located within their boundaries.

But Walker is setting up a conflict between democracy and economic opportunity. And he is saying that democracy must be thwarted if it gets in the way of corporate interests that happen to be major donors to his campaigns.

That’s where the truth is revealed.

This is not about economic opportunity. This is about pay-to-play politics, and Walker’s disdain for democracy — and for working Wisconsinites.

“The override of the Milwaukee sick days law is an assault on democracy, local control and working families,” says Dana Schultz of 9 to 5, the National Association of Working Women, which is the labor-tied group that led a coalition to pass the paid sick days law.

Schultz is right. But this is also about something else. The voiding of Milwaukee’s sick leave ordinance is part of a broader push by this governor and his Republican compatriots in Michigan, Ohio and other states to override — and, in the case of Michigan, eliminate — local democracy. It is an ominous trend that concentrates power in the office of the executive and makes the voters mere bystanders in the processes that define the character of their communities.