Replies

conservativejoy complained:
"The Public Safety Unions weren’t touched by Walker because they supported his campaign."

gov_bean_ counter agreed:
"Wait. I thought he was the ultimate public Union buster. /s"

Awwwwww, isn't that just toooo bad. ;-)

Great conservative strategy!

Scott Walker Wins the Accountants’ Primary - Wisconsin’s rock-solid pension system makes him presidential material The National Review ^ | April 2, 2015 | Brett Joshpe
[Excerpt. Full article posted to Free Republic behind the link.]

Walker’s Act 10 has made it likely that Wisconsin’s health will continue in the long term, and it has already reaped massive long-term savings. The act does many things, including increasing the required annual contributions of public employees (including Milwaukee public employees) to up to 50 percent of their pensions, or roughly 5.8 percent of salaries. It requires employee contributions of at least 12.6 percent of health-care costs. It prohibits public unions from engaging in collective bargaining on anything except wages, which are capped by cost-of-living calculations. (The act does, however, include a collective-bargaining exemption for police and firefighters because of the public-safety role that they play.)

Perhaps most important, public unions are now prohibited from automatically deducting union dues from employee paychecks, and they must annually recertify their union status by collecting the votes of at least half their membership base. To the labor circle, that is the existential threat that makes Scott Walker Public Enemy No. 1.

While Walker’s signature legislative achievement has rankled the unions, the oft-forgotten carve-out for firefighters and police officers has become somewhat of a blueprint for other Republican governors across the country. It also gives Walker a retort to the charge that he is against middle-class workers. In Milwaukee particularly, where Walker was the Milwaukee County executive before he ran for governor, he enjoys widespread support among union members, especially police and firefighters.

Republican governors from other states have taken note. First-term Illinois Republican governor Bruce Rauner, for instance, just proposed $2 billion in public-pension cuts but excluded firefighters and police officers. “Those who put their lives on the line in service to our state deserve to be treated differently,” he said. Michigan governor Rick Snyder included a carve-out for police and firefighters in a right-to-work bill last year.

That approach preserves the natural alliance that Republicans have with law-enforcement employees and firefighters, who often lean more to the right than their union leadership. Combined with aggressively tackling the stranglehold that public unions have long had over their members’ collective voices and the public coffers, the Walker formula seems increasingly to be a winning one. It could eventually take him to the White House.