With the announcement Monday that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker would be running for the GOP nomination, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka issued a six-word statement.
“Scott Walker is a national disgrace,” Trumka said in a statement that went into no further detail. The comment, however, is not much of a surprise. Unions have long be at odds with Walker over labor reforms he spearheaded during his first term.
After months of speculation, Walker officially announced his run on Twitter and with a video. In the video Walker detailed his victory over special interests while governor, namely labor unions.
“We enacted big, bold reforms that took power out of the hands of the big government special interests and gave it to the hard-working taxpayers,” Walker stated. “And people’s lives are better because of it.”
It was that labor policy reforms Walker made in his first term that originally brought the wrath of national unions. The reforms, known as Act 10, significantly changed the collective bargaining process for most public employees within the state. It also required public unions to hold a renewal vote every couple of years to determine if workers still wanted them.
Labor unions and their supporters adamantly opposed the law and even tried to get Walker thrown out of office with a recall election in 2012. Walker, however, was able to overcome the attack and even won reelection during the 2014 midterm. Unions will likely try to defeat Walker again as he heads to the White House.
“It’s not been tough for us to get volunteers in Wisconsin because this guy is not only just an anti-worker governor in Wisconsin; he’s sort of like the poster child for that across the country,” Trumka said on the MSNBC show “Morning Joe” during the 2014 election.
Republicans in the legislature went a step further in the past year when they passed a law which banned mandatory union dues as a condition of employment. Though Walker wasn’t directly involved in creating the measure, unions blamed him anyways.
To get the Republican nomination, Walker will first have to beat Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul among others in the Republican primary.
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