Behind closed doors, Scott Walker, the Republican who has been governor for about six weeks, calmly described his intent to forge ahead with the plans that had set off the uprising: He wants to require public workers to pay more for their health insurance and pensions, effectively cutting the take-home pay of many by around 7 percent.
He also wants to weaken most public-sector unions by sharply curtailing their collective bargaining rights, limiting talks to the subject of basic wages.
via NYTimes.com – Public Workers in Wisconsin Protest Plan to Cut Benefits. The second part doesn’t make a lot of sense as far as a partial solution to solving the deficit, the collective bargaining wouldn’t reduce any current state payments to employees. It seems more designed to just weaken the unions to hurt the workers more in the future but not actually solve a problem this year. The article goes on to cite other states considering similar bills, that weaken the collective bargaining powers of state employees.