(CNN) -- In a stunning achievement for unionists and Democrats, critics of the Wisconsin governor Scott Walker marshaled over a million signatures for a petition that has made it possible for Walker to lose his office in a recall election this spring. If so, that would be the first successful gubernatorial recall in Wisconsin history and only the third in that of the United States. Walker blundered last year by pushing through the state legislature a hugely unpopular law that cripples public-sector collective bargaining and thereby suffocates most government unions. Coming on the heels of the November referendum in Ohio, which overturned a similar Republican-sponsored law, it's clear that the American trade union movement is not yet dead. Indeed, the defense of these venerable institutions retains the capacity to put thousands in the streets and mobilize millions of voters, not all of whom are card-carrying unionists by any means.
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Over a million signatures have been submitted to recall Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin
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Nelson Lichtenstein: It's clear that the American trade union movement is not yet dead
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He says that the fate of unionism is all about class power and income distribution
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He says that people are realizing the importance of unions and are fighting on their behalf
Meanwhile the strike has practically vanished from the @placeholder landscape - there were at least ten times more each year in the 1970s - and the negotiation of a new union contract, in both the public and private sectors, is considered a labor victory if the workers escape without too many givebacks.