About 30 members of the American Federation of State, County...

About 30 members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, stand in the cold protesting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walkers attempt to break the state's unions. (Feb. 19, 2011) Credit: AP

As organized labor hails an unprecedented moment of unity playing out amid a sea of supporters marching in Madison, Wis., union officials elsewhere are quietly wringing their hands about the risks of a high-stakes and historic loss against Gov. Scott Walker.

The six days of protests against Walker's bill to curb collective bargaining rights have mesmerized cable news viewers and shown a fighting spirit and cohesion that labor groups have rarely displayed during 12 months of serving as public enemy No. 1 in the eyes of tea party insurgents and newly empowered budget cutters.

Yet, that sense of determined harmony comes at a potentially steep cost, and with no clear endgame. Some strategists and labor officials watching the protest from the outside are beginning to fret that a large-scale defeat in Wisconsin will have a devastating ripple effect, weakening labor state by state throughout the rest of the country.

"Some of the labor people are saying, 'It's the beginning of the fight back,' " said a top labor official. "But if the labor movement rallies and gets run over in Wisconsin, it opens [the gates] in every state" for governors to start pushing harder to curtail labor rights.

"Not every state's going to roll back collective bargaining," added the official -- who, like many, spoke off the record to avoid undermining the protests. But, the official said, a Walker victory could open the way to union losses on various fronts, like benefits.

Many strategists and even some labor officials argue that the genuine passion and emotion being felt and displayed on the ground in Wisconsin is obscuring a central problem: Unions still haven't figured out even a semblance of an effective public relations strategy.

That includes, in many places, not taking steps that could help them. One way would be to offer small concessions, where they could "dress up something that looks like a sacrifice and say, 'Here's what we're doing,' " another labor leader lamented.

To be sure, as many labor officials quickly point out, the fight in Wisconsin and in a handful of other states is on a scale that requires a new strategic playbook - it goes much further than fights over pensions and benefits, which have been the hallmark of most union-versus-government battles in states like New Jersey, California, Indiana and Minnesota.

"Labor could not have walked away from this," said Norman Adler, a longtime lobbyist for public-sector labor unions in New York. "Whether there are risks or not . . . if they lose, they just have to reconfigure their tactics and move on."

He added, "Whatever happens in Wisconsin, this is going to be replicated elsewhere. The unions can't back off of this - it would be like hiking up a white flag. And that's why a lot of private-sector labor.  Nobody can risk losing true collective bargaining."

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