Walker: Lawmakers Should Wait Until Budget’s Passage Before Acting On Right-To-Work

Gov. Scott Walker says he still hopes lawmakers don’t bring up right-to-work next session, but if they do, he says they should wait until after the budget has been passed.

Speaking to reporters for the first time since Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said the Legislature needed to deal with right-to-work right away next year, Walker said he still thinks the issue would be a distraction. Right-to-work laws ban mandatory union shops in the private sector, which could reignite protests at the state Capitol.

Walker said he would lay out an aggressive agenda as part of his budget early next year, which he said he’d like legislators to focus on.

“Certainly from a timing standpoint, my preference is that they don’t bring it up at all this session because I think it is a distraction — but at a minimum, at least not at the beginning, when I think there’s plenty of other things they’re going to have their hands full with,” said Walker.

Walker still would not say whether he’d sign or veto a right-to-work bill. He authored a right-to-work bill himself as a state legislator in the 1990s.