Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) claims with a straight face that his so-called “budget repair” bill does not take away collective bargaining rights for public workers. Maybe he hasn’t read his own bill, because if had and still made that claim, he would be lying. My guess is he has read the bill.

So has Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein. He writes “Walker tries to sell the change in collective bargaining as modest.”  But, says Klein

The best way to understand Walker’s proposal is as a multi-part attack on the state’s labor unions. In part one, their ability to bargain benefits for their members is reduced. In part two, their ability to collect dues, and thus spend money organizing members or lobbying the legislature, is undercut. And in part three, workers have to vote the union back into existence every single year. Put it all together and it looks like this: Wisconsin’s unions can’t deliver value to their members, they’re deprived of the resources to change the rules so they can start delivering value to their members again, and because of that, their members eventually give in to employer pressure and shut the union down in one of the annual certification elections.
You may think Walker’s proposal is a good idea or a bad idea. But that’s what it does…[he] is trying to obscure his plan’s specifics behind misleading language about what unions can still bargain for and misleading rhetoric about the state’s budget.

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