In a sense it’s an odd fixation for a presidential candidate, given that union membership is at just 11.1% of all wage and salary workers, the overwhelming majority of whom work in government.
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“I fear what happened when he decided to run for president is he decided to act like a politician instead of a leader”, said Rick Esenberg, founder of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative think tank and legal organization based in Milwaukee.
“We won in a blue state like Wisconsin, and not just on the ballot three times, but if our ideas can win and they actually work there, in a blue state, then I believe there’s no doubt we can apply that same measure to America.”
Walker unveiled a sweeping plan to curb unions.
Bob Denoto, a 53-year-old electrician and union recruiter, was in Las Vegas from New York for a union conference and chose to stop by Walker’s event.
Walker plans to call the NLRB a “one-sided proxy for the big union bosses – often at the expense of taxpayers and workers”, according to excerpts of a Monday afternoon speech at a Las Vegas town hall.
“I know what the union has given me and my family”, he said.
Gov. Scott Walker has dug up a press clipping from his past to emphasize that he can beat tough political odds: a Time Magazine article from 2011 that he says dubbed him “Dead Man Walker” after he signed collective bargaining restrictions in Wisconsin.
“We had a great debate prep”, Wiley said.
The reaction from labor groups and Democrats, their traditional political ally, was fierce.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, seeking to bolster his bona fides as the leading anti-labor crusader in the Republican presidential field, announced yesterday an ambitious plan to gut workers’ rights nationwide. “He attacks workers”.
Walker has gone from frontrunner to long shot, and while the issue may not hit home with all voters, it will resonate well with those who despise the corrupting power of labor unions.
Walker is hoping a union fight revives his stalled campaign, which has lost steam in the midst of the Donald Trump surge. “This is desperate action on the part of a very desperate candidate”. Bernie Sanders, said Walker’s plan would only make rich people and corporations even wealthier.
“You engage when you can and see where the opportunities are”, Wiley said.
While Walker could enact some of the proposals via presidential executive order, others would require an act of Congress or changes in federal regulations. States that want to take this freedom away from their workers would have to affirmatively vote to opt out of right-to-work status.
“Mr. Trump, we don’t need an apprentice in the White House”, Walker said.
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Forbidding union organizers to access the personal information of its members.
