Republican Gov. Scott Walker proposed sweeping national labor law reforms Monday that go beyond even the ones he instituted in Wisconsin in 2011 that brought him national attention.
But observers suggest that Walker’s thinking on the issue may not have changed much. What has changed is the political environment on the issue.
Reforms to labor laws that were thought to be political suicide just a few years ago are now seen as possible, partly because of Walker’s own success. That has given the governor the incentive to be bold and do what he had been thinking of doing all along.
“Taking on labor reform, especially in the Midwest, was thought to be a third-rail issue — touch it and die. Walker proved that the unions’ bark was worse than their bite,” said Vincent Vernuccio, a lawyer with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a conservative nonprofit in Michigan that focuses on labor issues. “Walker is seeing what is politically feasible and is taking it to the next level.”
Jason Stein, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and co-author with Patrick Marley of “More Than They Bargained For,” an account of the Wisconsin battle over Walker’s reforms, noted that Walker cosponsored a right-to-work bill when he served in the state legislature in 1993.
“It’s difficult for me to say how much his views have evolved and how much they are being stated more explicitly and openly,” Stein said.
Walker’s campaign argued he hasn’t shifted his thinking at all. Spokeswoman AshLee Strong said the issues were different at the federal level and Walker was adjusting to that reality. “There’s no real change,” she said.
The governor’s name has been linked with controversies over labor ever since protests erupted in the Badger State over his plan, ultimately adopted, to strictly limit collective bargaining by public-sector employees and to allow those workers to opt out of union membership. Labor unions were so incensed that they forced Walker into a recall election, which he won. Since then, his reforms have resulted in massive membership declines for the state’s public-sector unions.
However, he characterized the reforms at the time as limited and necessary to balance the state budget by saving money on labor costs. He rejected calls to pass a state right-to-work law, which would prohibit workers from being forced to join or support a union as a condition of employment. As recently as last September he said that was “not on my agenda.”
In March, though, Walker signed a state right-to-work law, making the Badger State the 25th in the nation to adopt one. Critics slammed him, with the watchdog group PolitiFact rating it a complete flip-flop. Walker currently ranks sixth in the Washington Examiner’s presidential power rankings.
He got even more ambitious Monday. He called for abolishing public-sector unions altogether, eliminating the National Labor Relations Board, the main federal labor law enforcement agency for the private sector, and making right-to-work laws the norm for private-sector workers in all states, among other changes that would limit union power.
Walker had previously indicated that he was open to right-to-work but that the timing wasn’t right. In a 2013 interview with the Examiner, he said, “What I heard from my employers — big or small or anywhere in between — in the state [after the protests and the recall election] was that things needed to cool down, things needed to get focused in the state.”
In his 2013 book about the reform fight, “Unintimidated,” he declared, “The unions like to paint collective bargaining as a civil right, like free speech. But collective bargaining isn’t a right, it’s a racket.”
Stein noted that Walker has often said his opinions on unions were mainly shaped by his clashes with them when served as Milwaukee county executive. “I do not recall him saying that his views on unions evolved over his first term as governor, and for my part I’m not sure I would make that assumption,” Stein said.
James Sherk, labor policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, argues that Walker has pushed a consistent theme: empowering individual workers. Most of his ideas involve transferring power from the unions to the workers themselves, allowing them to act as their own agents.
Sherk noted that during the Wisconsin fight unions there complained that workers would become “free riders” who would receive the benefits of union representation without paying dues. Walker’s reforms Monday address that by allowing unions to represent only dues-paying members. Non-members would have to negotiate on their own. That would eliminate the free-riding argument, forcing workers to decide if quitting a union was worth the loss of benefits and negotiating power.
“It is one of his most innovative reforms,” Sherk said.
Critics say there’s no mystery — the governor is just pandering. “Walker infamously caters to his donors. His donors hate unions. Walker obliges. He also believes this shows that he’s tough and earns him credit among Tea Party zealots, who are disproportionately small business people,” said Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal nonprofit Campaign for America’s Future. To the extent he’s shifted it is only because he trying to get some attention away from current front-runner Donald Trump.
Update: Walker spokeswoman Strong emailed the following to the Examiner:
