While Gov. Scott Walker’s getting all the flack in Wisconsin for his anti-labor push, Democrats and union members should remember another name – Russ Decker.

Wisconsin State Journal, December 16, 2010 (pdf):

After 18 months, more than $100 million in concessions, and negotiations that were painfully close to completion, union leaders again find themselves back at the table — and they’re not happy about it.

When outgoing Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Wausau, reversed course Wednesday night and voted against union contracts for some 39,000 state employees, he doomed unions to continue talks that have already taken longer than any in recent memory.

Union leaders on Thursday expressed anxiety about future labor unrest and rage at the man they say has betrayed them. Decker, a former bricklayer with union ties, voted for the contracts in the Legislature’s joint employee relations committee hours before he cast the deciding vote against them in the Senate.

“Russ Decker is a whore,” said Marty Beil, executive director of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, which represents 22,000 state employees. “Not a prostitute. A whore. W-H-O-R-E."

Decker said the clock had simply run out for the current administration and the matter should be left to the next governor. Beil called the reversal a betrayal.

Behind the rhetoric is a palpable fear of what comes next for unions. New contract negotiations will have to run a GOP gantlet bracketed by Gov.-elect Scott Walker and a hostile Republican Legislature, both of which promise to take a hard line, demanding employees contribute significantly more toward their pensions and health care benefit.