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Wisconsin’s freshman Republican Governor Scott Walker remains unswayed by major demonstrations against his budget proposal, which contains language that would end the collective bargaining rights of the state’s unions. For the eighth straight day protesters have amassed around the state, including Milwaukee and the capitol, Madison. Meanwhile the Democratic state Senators who fled Wisconsin in order to avoid a vote on the proposal, remain in neighboring states. The conflict has caught national attention with protesting union members, students, and affiliates from both the Republican and Democratic parties numbering in the tens of thousands over the weekend. Nationally, pundits and politicians, including President Obama, have weighed in on the subject lending credence to the claim that the fate of Wisconsin unions to collectively bargain will have repercussions that could be possibly felt in other swing states—including Ohio and Florida. In addition to revoking collective bargaining rights, Walker’s proposal is meant to remedy a $3.6 billion shortfall by increasing both salary deductions for union members’ pensions and healthcare premiums. However, his budget has a number of inconsistencies. Most notably is the exemption of public safety officers unions from the union-busting language of the proposal. Public Safety officers, of course, tend to vote Republican. And, as the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein reported, not only was the budget crisis not caused by the unions, but stripping the unions of collective bargaining will not in fact close the budget short fall. And, unions have already agreed to the increases in the percentage they are required to pay into their pensions. These incongruous applications within the proposed legislation, compounded by the fact that unions remain a major voter base for the Democratic party, have exposed Walker’s motives to be more political than fiscal.

GUEST: Mary Bottari, Director of the Center for Media and Democracy’s Real Economy Project and the editor of BanksterUSA.org.

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