Democrats Need a Scott Walker
5th August 2015
In Thursday’s Republican debate, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will be the antiunion candidate. That will be the media snark. He signed (unenthusiastically) a right-to-work bill that applies to his state’s private-sector workers. He promoted (very enthusiastically) a law that all but ended collective bargaining for its public-sector workers.
Critics will ask: What does this have to do with being president? Unfortunately, everything.
Unions may not matter much in American workplaces anymore but unions represent the main political obstacle to just about every kind of reform: School choice. Entitlements. Pensions. Health care.
Even causes that wouldn’t seem union business prompt union opposition. Labor has been the chief obstacle to overhauling California’s notorious Environmental Quality Act—a reform supported by Democrats and environmentalists—because unions like using the law’s excessive paperwork burdens to threaten projects important to employers.
Big labor is behind a New Jersey state senator’s proposal last week for a trillion-dollar federal bailout of state and local government pensions—pensions that most federal taxpayers who would be paying for the bailout can only dream about.
Big labor is behind $15 minimum-wage proposals in major cities—a high-risk experiment for low-skilled workers, who may find themselves without jobs. But it will be a winner for organized labor. Not only will it raise costs for nonunion businesses. In Los Angeles, unions seek their own exemption so they can conspire with employers to substitute untaxed benefits for taxable wages, which strengthens the union’s hold on workers while shifting costs to other taxpayers.
As Miles Kimball, a University of Michigan economist who calls himself a “supply-side liberal,” wrote on his blog a couple of years ago: “Most unions are middle-class organizations that in their political activities are ready and willing to sacrifice the interests of the poor to benefit their members and their leaders.”