http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/253531-walker-unveils-assault-on-laborSeptember 14, 2015, 10:24 am
Walker unveils assault on labor
By Ben Kamisar
Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) is proposing the elimination of federal employee unions as part of broader package of policies aimed at curbing the influence of unions across the country.
Walker rocketed to national prominence on the back of his own anti-union policies back in Wisconsin, so he’s looking to elevate that push to the national level as he works to rebound from slipping poll numbers.
The plan, released Monday morning, includes shuttering the National Labor Relations Board, a government agency that protects employee’s ability to join unions and rules on unfair labor allegations. 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.
It also calls for a federal “Right to Work” law, a measure that prohibits compelling employees to join a union. Opponents of the policy criticize it for impeding collective bargaining rights.
“Any economic plan that does not bring our federal labor laws into the 21st Century is incomplete,” he will say.
“To grow the economy at a higher rate, requires a comprehensive approach and reform of the labor unions is a key part of the plan.”
States would be allowed to pass a law to overrule the national “Right to Work” presumption under Walker’s plan.
“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.
“This will not be easy. Many—including the union bosses and the politicians they puppet—have long benefited from Washington rules that put the needs of special interests before those of middle-class families.”
The plan would also halt the practice of automatically taking union fees out of federal workers’ paychecks, bar unions from spending fees for political purposes, repeal the Obama administration’s labor regulations, and repeal a 1930’s law that forces the government to pay federal contractors the “local prevailing wage,” as determined by the Department of Labor.
The anti-union push mirrors the direction he’s taken Wisconsin, which has drawn both praise from supporters and the deep ire of critics. Walker helped shepherd a budget bill that restricted collective bargaining rights through the legislature in 2011, setting off wide-scale protests.
That prompted a 2012 recall election, which Walker won, and protestors continue to target Walker while he’s out on the stump.
Democratic National Committee spokesperson TJ Helmstetter panned the plan as “desperate and disgusting,” and amounts to Walker’s Wisconsin record “on steroids.”
“By seeking to dismantle unions – the backbone of the middle class that gave us weekends, paid vacations, and child labor laws – Scott Walker is again placing his political ambitions and the demands of his billionaire benefactors ahead of middle class Americans,” he said in a statement.
Walker has been battling slumping poll results over the past few months. He dropped from first place to tenth place in Quinnipiac University’s Iowa poll over a span of two months and now sits at seventh place nationally and in New Hampshire, according to RealClearPolitics’ average of recent polling.
--This report was updated at 11:08 a.m.
