Why Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Won’t Take Union Concessions

It would be very easy, and sane, for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to agree to concessions offered by public employee unions and declare victory.  They’ve agreed to accept wage and benefit reductions.  A poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner shows that 74% believe workers should retain collective bargaining rights. Even 47% of Republicans see it this way. The public is firmly with the workers and the right to collectively bargain. Yet, the governor is not willing to compromise as of now. Greg Sargent gives three possible reasons:

The first is that he really believes that rolling back employee bargaining rights — in addition to winning the fiscal concessions he himself asked for — is the only way to put the state on sounder fiscal footing. But if this were the case, he would have agreed to GOP State Senator Dale Schultz’s proposal to roll back those rights temporarily, until 2013. Walker didn’t do this either.

The second reason for rejecting the union compromise is that his goal is nothing less than to completely break the unions, pure and simple, as part of a broader drive to destroy one of the last institutions in American life battling the creep of inequality and defending the economic interests of the working- and middle-class. The third reason is that Walker’s intended audience is no longer his own constituents; it’s national conservatives who share the above goals and see any compromise as needlessly delaying the long-coveted “Waterloo” moment for organized labor that they suddenly sense is within reach.

It is obvious that this isn’t about budgets. It’s about union busting.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.