MADISON, WI (WTAQ) – Governor Scott Walker did not introduce Wisconsin’s new right-to-work law — but he’s scoring lots of political points for it.
The National Conference of State Legislatures says there are almost 800 union-related bills in states around the country.
At the top of the AP list is Senate leader Scott Fitzgerald’s right-to-work bill that the Republican Walker signed Monday.
The report said Walker’s action “puts his defiance of organized labor even more at the center” of his potential GOP presidential campaign. It also said “the inability of unions to exact a price for the first round of legislation targeting them in 2011 is encouraging even more proposals to limit their power.”
Walker became the nation’s first governor to survive a recall challenge, after he virtually eliminated collective bargaining for most state and local public employee unions in 2011.
In West Virginia, a union political action committee spent $1.4 million to keep that state’s legislature Democratic last fall — to no avail. Now, Republicans in that state are pushing measures to expand non-union charter schools, and cut back requirements to pay higher union wages for public works projects.
In Michigan, GOP Governor Rick Snyder was re-elected last fall after he signed a right-to-work law in the face of the heavily unionized auto industry.
President Obama took aim at Walker’s signing of right-to-work, saying it was part of a coordinated assault on unions.
But Victor Joecks of the conservative Nevada Policy Research Institute says the message is out that limiting organized labor is possible — and the taxpayers appreciate that it’s better for their states.
(Story courtesy of Wheeler News Service)