The labor movement had better do some deep soul searching, and fast. Although the defeat in Wisconsin is the horrible end to a local drama, the corporate winners hope to turn their victory into the beginning chapter of a national novel. The opening sentence was perhaps written recently in San Diego and San Jose, where voters agreed to cut union pensions to resolve a budget deficit, a corporate solution backed by a Republican mayor and a Democratic mayor respectively, and soon to be expanded nationally.

There can be no mistaking the dire consequence of these events; the anti-union forces are not merely celebrating a tremendous victory, but organizing for new ones. Unless the labor movement educates and re-organizes its forces quickly, the recent losses will serve as a catalyst for union busting on a national scale, unseen in modern times. As the recession lumbers on - and likely intensifies - the wealthy will continue to shift all blame, away from themselves, towards unions that will be targeted for destruction.

The Kansas City Star recently gave a small glimpse of the future challenges for unions:

"Upcoming battles will test just how far the economy will force unions to bend. New Hampshire will probably face a right-to-work measure when its Democratic governor steps down; Iowa is looking to require state workers to pay more on their health insurance premiums; Pennsylvania legislators plan to substitute 401(k)s for defined benefit plans for state employees."

The complete list of upcoming anti-union legislation nationwide would probably cover all fifty states.

The nation's anti-union environment was already at a fever pitch. President Obama has, contrary to expectations, served over the most anti-union political climate since Ronald Reagan. The President of the nation's largest teachers’ union, Dennis Van Roekel, summarized teachers’ experience with the Obama Administration:

“Today our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, anti-student environment I have ever experienced.” He was referring, in part, to Obama's anti-union Race to the Top education program and his promotion of charter schools.

Many within the union movement wrongly blame Republicans exclusively for labor's plight. But no fewer than eleven Democratic governors in the past two years have targeted and attacked the public sector unions in their states, blaming labor for the budget deficits caused by the recession, itself caused by the banks and corporations. More than 600,000 public sector jobs have been lost since 2009, many of them union jobs. The re-emerging recession will re-impose this budget deficit challenge for unions for years to come. Will unions learn from their mistakes?

Instead of alerting workers to the new anti-union actions of the Democrats, union officials have miseducated their members by focusing rage solely on the Republican governors of Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, etc. As bad as these governors are, they don't exist in a political vacuum. The Republicans have been given new life by the new anti-labor attitude of the Democrats; instead of mounting a vigorous defense of these Republican-targeted unions, Democrats have also been busy steamrolling unions across the country, while cynically pretending to "respect collective bargaining rights" at the same time.

In order to maintain their friendship with the union-attacking Democrats, labor leaders made an artificial, suicidal distinction between fighting to maintain bargaining rights