In a stunningly speedy political flip-flop, Florida Governor Rick Scott has completely changed his stance on whether or not unions should have collective bargaining rights. He's fallen in step with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's anti-union stance. What made Scott change his mind so fast? Well, for one, he had a 30-minute phone call with Walker on Wednesday.
In a post on Tuesday we noted that Scott told a Florida radio station he was fine with unions' rights to collective bargaining:
"My belief is as long as people know what they're doing, collective bargaining is fine," Scott said on WFLA Radio in Tallahassee.Just days later he seems to have pulled a political 180.
"Scott said what he means is that as long as the discussion is honest about what benefits employees are getting, he has no objection to public employees being members of unions," reports Saint Petersblog.
"If you didn't have collective bargaining, would it be better for the state? Absolutely," Scott told Bloomberg News in a wide ranging interview.
He went on to say that Walker and other Governors trying to curb collective bargaining rights are "absolutely doing the right thing."
Why the sudden turn? Well, Scott had a private 30-minute phone call with Walker scheduled for Wednesday. Though, it's not known what the two Gov. Scotts discussed.
Interestingly, Rick Scott was mentioned in a phone call Walker made with a journalist from The Buffalo Beast who was pretending to be David H. Koch (a billionaire who funds many Tea Party efforts, yeah, so much for that grassroots stuff).
"I talk to [Ohio Governor John] Kasich every day--John's gotta stand firm in Ohio. I think we could do the same thing with [Rick] Scott in Florida. I think, uh, [Ohio Governor Rick] Snyder--if he got a little more support--probably could do that in Michigan. You start going down the list there's a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big," Walker eagerly told the faux-Koch.
Walker obviously sees his battle as the first move in a bigger war on unions, one of the few political establishments left in America that represents the working class.
Apparently, he did "do the same with Rick Scott in Florida" and now Scott is in line. Of course, Florida is a right-to-work state, so there's only so many collective bargaining rights unions have as it is, but it will be interesting to see where Scott moves in this direction and how far he'll go to bring Florida in line with the political agenda of fellow billionaires like David Koch.
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