Last Friday, Wisconsin State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald introduced a "right to work" bill and announced he would call an extraordinary session this week to pass it. Within hours, Governor Scott Walker, who as recently as December had maintained that pushing right to work would be "a distraction" from his legislative agenda, announced that he would sign the bill.
On Saturday, Jason Stein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that provisions of the Wisconsin draft bill are strikingly similar to the ALEC model bill on the topic. (The text of the Wisconsin bill is here, and the ALEC model is here.) Today, Stein reports that Senator Fitzgerald started drafting his bill in mid-December — apparently despite Walker's assertion it would be a distraction — and looked to Michigan's right to work law as a model. (24 states have enacted right to work laws.)
A long article up at Bloomberg News lays out how Governor Walker has managed to get within reach of this major legislative victory, despite — and perhaps partly thanks to — years of declarations that he'd never get to this point. Among other things, the article suggests Walker may have been playing a long game of "divide and conquer," as he said on video to a major donor who asked him if Wisconsin would ever become a right to work state.
Wisconsin's union leaders have called for protests at the Capitol building tomorrow and Wednesday, but some have apparently acknowledged that the bill is fated to pass. This is part because, unlike the 2011 bill that undid collective-bargaining rights for public-sector unions, the right-to-work legislation has no fiscal provisions that require a three-fifths quorum to debate and pass. In 2011, that requirement allowed Democrats to temporarily block the legislation by fleeing to Illinois.
Of course, all of this comes at the same time as a new biennial budget bill has sparked debates in Wisconsin, and Walker is receiving national attention as a serious contender as an (all-but official) candidate to be the Republican presidential nominee. Union leaders have suggested that right-to-work is being used as a distraction from the budget bill, which among other things proposes to cut $300 million in funding for the state university system.
Although achieving such policies through a "divide and conquer" strategy might help Walker maintain his current lead among the most conservative voters, it remains to be seen whether, should he ultimately become the Republican nominee, such a hard-line reputation would continue to be a benefit, or turn into a major liability.