Wisconsin's anti-union law upheld

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and CNN Senior Political Analyst David Gergen discuss reinstatement of Wisconsin's law that curbs collective bargaining rights.

Wisconsin's top court Tuesday reinstated a contentious law that curbs the collective bargaining rights of most state employees. Opponents of the law said the fight will now be taken to those who supported it.

The state's Supreme Court, by a 4-3 vote, set aside a ruling by a lower court judge who had placed a permanent injunction against the law. The court ruled the state Legislature did not violate the state's constitution when it passed the legislation.

The ruling was a major victory for Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who pushed for the bill over a chorus of angry teachers, union members and others who said it was an attack on worker rights.

"The Supreme Court's ruling provides our state the opportunity to move forward together and focus on getting Wisconsin working again," Walker said in a statement.

The Wisconsin AFL-CIO criticized the ruling.

"The inability of the Wisconsin Supreme Court to separate partisan politics from the well-being of Wisconsinites is the latest indication that citizens do not have a voice in this state," it said in a statement. "And the only way for Wisconsinites to repair that voice is to take back the Senate this summer, stop Walker's unbridled assault on working people and take back the statehouse in 2012."

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And here's a transcript of the exchange as seen in the video:

REICH: The reality of the economic moment does give more force and effect and to some extent more legitimacy to governors who are seeking to break public sector unions and also governors such as in New Hampshire and Missouri that are going after private sector unions, and saying no, we're going to make this a so-called open shop state and you don't have to join a union if you don't want to, even though it's a unionized organization and a unionized plant.

But this is undercover of a much broader agenda here. And the agenda has been going back years and years. I mean, unions, public sector and private sector unions, have been the backbone of the middle class, the working class, and the Democratic Party.

Republican efforts to undermine unions - and they've looked for this opportunity, this is the opportunity they have been seeking to put people against people, working people against people who are other working people. Whether it's unionized versus non-unionized or public sector unions versus non-public sector unions, or to some extent immigrants against native-born.

I mean, this whole approach that we are kind of a poor nation, we are scrambling after crumbs, if you get something and that means less for me, without recognition that we are richer than we've ever been, the GDP is higher than it was before the great recession, but most of the gains of economic growth certainly over the past 30 years, Eliot, have gone to the top 1 percent.

This is a deflection of the big picture and the big debate that we ought to be having in this country about what has happened to the gains of economic growth.

SPITZER: David, let me give you a chance to respond to that. I mean I think Secretary Reich makes a fascinating point about the distribution of income and the accretion of wealth over the last 30 years, certainly.

The question is, is there something, is there a train of thought through the Republican agenda that would permit you to see this is part of a coherent whole, or is this, as you just suggested, perhaps a bridge too far politically that's going to cost them in the long run?

GERGEN: Well, look, I'm very sympathetic with the argument that we have a lot of inequities in this country and it's really - we've got to deal with this question about the rich pulling away from the middle class and the people of the middle class going downhill.

That - we must have more equality of opportunity. And I do agree with Bob Reich that it's very, very important for lower middle income people, middle-class people, to have an equal shot in life. I think - and frankly I'm among those who'd say let's go back to the Clinton tax levels, which were higher on people at the high end.

Having said that, it is also true that in too many states there has been this kind of complicit or implicit kind of bargain that's gone on between Democratic legislatures that have given - you know given major benefits to unions in exchange for votes. And we all know that goes on.

And you know, with these states that are hard pressed I think it's not unreasonable that a Chris Christie could come in and say, you've got to find some way to have some givebacks here. A lot of these contracts, you know, simply are unsustainable in this current economic environment.