Wall Street Journal: With Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker maintaining a hard line on his budget bill and Democratic senators refusing to return to Madison to vote, attention is turning to a group of moderate Republican senators to negotiate a compromise to the stalemate that has drawn thousands of protesters to the state capital for a sixth straight day.
The proposal, written by Sen. Dale Schultz and first floated in the Republican caucus early last week, calls for most collective bargaining rights of public employee unions to be eliminated – per Mr. Walker's bill – but then reinstated in 2013, said Mr. Schultzs's chief of staff Todd Allbaugh.
"Dale is committed to find a way to preserve collective bargaining in the future," said Mr. Allbaugh in a telephone interview.[...]
Mr. Schultz was first elected to the state senate in 1991 and was the Republican majority leader in 2005 and 2006. He earned a reputation for working across party lines and was endorsed in his 2010 re-election bid by the state's largest teacher's employee. He won with nearly 65 percent of the vote. [MORE]
Of course Sen. Dale Schultz is committed to finding a way to preserve collective bargaining rights, because he has been bought and paid for with union cash.
Thankfully, it appears that Schultz's efforts won't go far enough to satisfy the unions. Ed Morrissey from Hot Air explains why:
I doubt that unions will agree to such a compromise, even if Walker was willing to go along with it. Once they give up comprehensive collective bargaining, the genie will have escaped the bottle. It would act as an admission that unions have helped create insurmountable budget problems, an admission that will encourage other states to pass similar restrictions on public-sector unions.
Besides, the biggest problem for Democrats in this bill isn’t the collective bargaining but the open shop law. If Wisconsin makes union dues voluntary and forces the union to collect them instead of having the payroll deduction from the state, organized labor will lose most of its political clout in the state. The unions need that money to donate to Democrats in elections, and they know full well that most workers won’t enthusiastically contribute those dues on their own. Once they have the money, workers will want to keep it, and unions will have to scratch just to gather operating funds.
The Democrats who fled the state didn’t do so to protect workers. They did it to protect their campaign fundraising. If Republicans back down while the public gives them this much support, they won’t get another chance to free workers from forced dues payments and involuntary union membership as a prerequisite for public service.Mr. Schultz is clearly looking out for his campaign contribution for the next go around. Disgusting!
Via: Memeorandum
Via: Hot Air