The mentality of union bosses is on display for all to see in fierce criticism underway of a Scott Walker TV ad showing him climbing a ladder out of a hole, making the point that his budget and tax cuts as well as his union reforms have brought the state out of a hole.

Meredith Clark of MSNBC portrays the panty-wadding as a serious criticism:

After stripping public-sector union members of collective bargaining rights in 2011, one might think that there wasn’t more the Republican governor could do to anger workers. But Walker, who is locked in a tight race Wisconsin against Democratic challenger Mary Burke, ran afoul of the president of a local steelworkers’ union over a recent campaign ad.

In the ad, Walker speaks to the camera from a deep hole. Jeff Kaminsiki, head of the United Steelworkers Local 2006, filed a complaint with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration over the unsafe working conditions depicted in Walker’s commercial. 

What did Walker get wrong? He’s not wearing any safety gear, such as a hard hat or safety glasses, and his ladder – which he climbs as a metaphor for his time steering state economic policy – isn’t positioned correctly, nor is it long enough to meet safety standards.

I bet he didn’t use a separate union member to position the ladder, two members of another union to plug in the lighting, and five guys to stand around, too.

I have to wonder if Wisconsinites are really concerned that by climbing a ladder exactly the same way nearly all homeowners would to clear the gutters, Walker has committed a heinous crime. Are union work rules and excessive safety regulations really that popular? The union bosses seem to be embodying the wasteful and punctilious regulatory posture that cripples so much of governmnt.