I support reforming collective bargaining rights, for the reasons Josh Barro has outlined here at NRO:

So, while Wisconsin’s reform will make it easier to manage budgets in the state — especially municipal budgets, because most government workers are employed at the local level — the state will be operating within well-charted territory, not blazing a trail. Paul Krugman can stop worrying that this reform will make America “less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy,” unless he thinks places like Indiana and Virginia are third-world-style oligarchies.
That said, even if the national reaction was overdone, Wisconsin’s own public-employee unions have had good cause to be alarmed about this reform, because it will structurally reduce their power over the policymaking process in the long term. Some on the Left claimed that the bill was essentially punitive or mean-spirited, because Democrats were willing to cut deals to approve pension and health-benefit cost cuts this year, so long as Republicans would agree to leave collective bargaining untouched. But the reason that both Republicans and Democrats cared a great deal about the collective-bargaining reforms is that they will have significant effects on the terms under which public employees work — and the cost of government — in future years.

But it’s also important to keep the following from Eileen Norcross in mind:

About 25 percent of Colorado’s public employees are covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Public sector workers enjoy pensions that replace 90 percent of their salary. By contrast, fifty-two percent of Illinois’ public workers are covered by a collective bargaining agreement, and can expect 56 percent of their income to be replaced when they collect their pensions. As Mary Williams Walsh writes, “places with the most unionized workforces are not necessarily those with the most generous pension benefits.”

This is a very good to reason to support H.R. 567, a bill sponsored by Rep. Devin Nunes that mandates greater transparency for state and local pension programs. There is no silver bullet when it comes to improving how government works. Reforming CBR will make things easier for state and local officials seeking to reform rigid work rules and compensation systems, but that still means that state and local officials need to identify and implement new approaches that will deliver better results. That is going to be a trial-and-error process that will involve a lot of setbacks and failed experiments.

On an unrelated note, I do wonder what will happen next in Wisconsin. It is too easy to imagine the scorched-earth battle continuing, as labor and its allies campaign to elect a justice to the State Supreme Court who will declare the new legislation invalid, and those on the other side fight to keep it in place. Given the stakes — making state government in Wisconsin a bit more like what we see in states like Indiana and Virginia — it is telling that the battle has been so intense.