Cruz benefits from Walker’s union battles

After the endorsement, AFL-CIO spokesman Josh Goldstein charged that Cruz was “aligning himself with a disgraced politician whose career was built on attacking working people.” Those are practically fighting words in the Badger State, which has a long pro-union history.

But as of this week, Cruz wasn’t hurt. He led 40-30 percent according to a Marquette University poll out this week.

Cruz can thank Walker for radically shifting the state’s politics by stripping unions of much of their power through his 2011 reforms to public-sector labor rules and his adoption last year of a state right-to-work law.

The two largest public-sector unions in the state, American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Councils 40 & 48, went from having a combined 41,000 members in 2011 to just over 12,000 by the end of 2014, according to Labor Department data. Over the same period, their budgets shrank from a combined $18 million to just above $5 million.

Last year, the two unions and a third, AFSCME Council 24, were officially dissolved and combined into a new group, AFSCME Council 32. It’s not clear how many of the three groups’ members remain, as it has yet to file any federal disclosure forms.

Council 32 spokesman Bob Allen said he did not know how many members the new organization had and declined to give a ballpark figure. “I wouldn’t even hazard a guess,” he told the Washington Examiner.

Other unions have seen sharp declines. Service Employees International Union Healthcare Wisconsin saw its membership shrink from 8,000 in 2011 to just over 3,000 last year, according to its federal fillings.

The shift largely represented workers voting with their feet and leaving the unions, an option most workers did not have prior to Walker.

That’s been a blow to Democrats in the state. Labor unions have long been a major source of campaign funding as well as assistance in get-out-the-vote efforts. That’s made Walker a hero to many Republicans.

A Marquette University poll released Wednesday found that 80 percent of Wisconsin Republicans approve of the job Walker is doing and only 17 percent disapprove. Those numbers mean Walker’s endorsement is given serious weight among primary voters. The poll found that Walker’s fans split 45 percent for Cruz, 27 percent for Trump and 18 percent for Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Among all voters, Walker’s approval rating is just 43 percent.

“Walker’s approval ratings remain high among Republicans, so in a primary an endorsement could still help Cruz,” said Jason Stein, political reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and co-author of More Than They Bargained For, an account of Walker’s battles with state unions.

The governor’s 2011 reforms limited public-sector union collective bargaining to wages, ended automatic dues deduction from workers’ paychecks, allowed workers to opt out of being a member, and required unions to submit to annual recertification votes to ensure they still had the support of a majority of members, among other changes.

The reforms meant those workers were still free to support or form unions but the unions could no longer rely on automatic support from workers who didn’t have an interest in joining.

The right to work law Walker signed last year did essentially the same thing for private-sector workers: They would no longer be required to join or otherwise support a union to keep their job.

Earlier this year, Walker signed an overhaul of state civil service rules for hiring and dismissing workers. It shortened the procedure to fire poorly performing employees, among other changes.

Some public-sector workers presumably quit their unions because limiting collective bargaining to wages meant they just couldn’t do much for them anymore. Others likely never wanted to be members in the first place and were glad to have the right to opt out. When Walker faced a 2012-union organized recall vote, he won 28 percent of the union vote, indicating that many members were glad to have the options he gave them.