In a pair of new AP reports, state Sen. Jon Erpenbach’s (D) fears that the GOP would make an end-runn the AWOL Democrats and destroy collective bargaining rights for millions of state workers law appear to have been alleviated. Republican Senate leader Scott Fitzgerald said the majority won’t end collective bargaining while the Democrats are in town — highlighting a potential weakness in Walker’s GOP coalition.
Erpenbach had been concerned that Republicans would just pass the controversial collective bargaining provisions as an amendment to a non-fiscal bill, which only require a simple majority to pass. Democrats have been banking on the requirement that at least 20 of Wisconsin’s 33 state Senators be on hand for any vote regarding fiscal matters. With the 14 Democrats scattered across the Midwest, Republicans can only muster their 19 members for votes — which is too few to do anything fiscally but enough to do just about anything else.
Except the Senate GOP may have its own divisions to deal with.
Erpenbach told the wire service that there are around “five or six” moderate GOP state Senators “who have ties to organized labor” and therefore are less interested in wholesale union-busting than the Walker-types in Madison seem to be. One of the Senate’s moderates, Sen. Dale Schultz (R), floated a plan last week that would have kept collective bargaining in place over the long haul, but banned it for two years. That plan seemed to go nowhere when Walker (and the unions) said no way to the scheme.
But Erpenbach told the AP that the plan may be a sign that there is dissension in the GOP ranks, pointing to the handful of moderate Republicans — only three of which need to vote against their party to kill the Walker budget in the state Senate.
Now comes evidence that Erpenbach could be right. After he raised fears of the GOP going its own way and ending collective bargaining without the Democrats, the state Senate Republican leader told the AP the Senate won’t vote on collective bargaining unless the Democrats are in town. That means that if Walker wants to reform the way his state works with unions, he’ll have to get Erpenbach and his AWOL Democratic colleagues back to Madison.
