Democrats in the legislature literally fled the state to avoid a losing vote.
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Walker and Republican lawmakers overcame that opposition and put the measure now known as Act 10 into law.
“If there is a common mistake being made in Iowa this cycle, it’s that a number of campaigns have been too cautious in their Iowa strategies”, Robinson found.
Walker in 2010 campaigned on making public workers pay more for their benefits, but not on otherwise interfering with collective bargaining.
Scott Walker’s presidential bid is faltering and flailing, so he’s going back to what first raised him to national notice as governor of Wisconsin: attacking workers and their unions.
Walker hopes to end the union practice of deducting dues from public employees’ paychecks to fund political activities and to require existing federal unions to disclose and certify what percentage of dues are spent on political activities. Twenty-five states, including Wisconsin, already have such laws.
Lee Adler, a labor law expert at Cornell University, said Walker’s proposals would eliminate workers’ rights and make it more hard for people to join the middle class. States would have the ability to override that policy. Federal employees should work for the taxpayers not the other way around..
The governor adds that he won’t back down from battles in Washington.
The riders were mostly older men, such as Gary Gahan, 70, a retired financial planner from Merrimack, and Bob Letourneau, 72, a former state senator who works for the state Department of Safety.
Even so, Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at the Graduate School of Management at Clark University, said Walker is the unions’ worst nightmare because of his unyielding mission to weaken them.
In an attempt to kickstart his flagging campaign, Walker, who made his name nationally by taking on Wisconsin’s public sector unions, has come up with a new union-bashing ruse.
“Collective bargaining is not a right, it is an expensive entitlement”, he said, speaking with his sleeves rolled up, in between a pair of oversized construction vehicles and in front of a large American flag.
Walker’s opponents indicated they would be watching his speech closely and they are likely to react strongly to his ideas. “Because the sheriff there said they believe that the suspect that went after him did so just because he was in uniform”, Walker told host Jake Tapper. According to excerpts of the speech that his campaign forwarded to reporters, he will refer to his plan as necessary to “drain the swamp in Washington”. After making an early big splash with grass roots conservatives in Iowa and capturing an early lead in some national polls, Walker – like other traditional candidates – has been totally eclipsed by billionaire Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
Walker, 47, says he intends to be more aggressive in this weeks second GOP debate, while insisting he isnt concerned about his standing in the race. Walker is proposing a virtual wipe-out of union rights and any advances for workers under President Obama.
The NLRB, which oversees union elections and charges of labor-law violations, recently passed a series of rulings to smooth and speed the unionization process, as well as expand employers’ responsibilities towards contracted workers.
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“Many of the nation’s federal labor laws and regulations have stood as a roadblock to fairness and opportunity, and instead have created rigid, top-down workplaces that don’t really work for Americans”, he said in a statement released with the plan.
