Scott Walker is trying to revive his campaign by doubling down on the issue that made him famous
Walker is unveiling a series of proposals to significantly reduce the scope and influence of those unions.
He even pledges in his plan to work with Congress to outright "eliminate big-government, federal unions on behalf of the American taxpayer."
"Big-government unions should have no place in the federal workplace, and I will reform the law to prohibit them," his plan says. "I will stand in solidarity with any governor, Republican or Democrat, who fights the big-government special interests in their state and takes on collective bargaining reform."
Walker is also proposing to eliminate the federal agency that oversees labor practices, implement new transparency rules for union expenditures, and expand so-called right-to-work laws that weaken unions by empowering those who don't want to pay union dues, among other things.
The Wisconsin governor's campaign has recently struggled to find traction since real-estate mogul Donald Trump came into the race earlier in the summer.
Walker was long viewed as a front-runner to win Iowa, for example, but Trump and another political neophyte, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, have surpassed him in public polling. A Quinnipiac survey released last week put him in ninth place in the Hawkeye State, crumbling from 18% support in July to just 3% in September.
His Monday speech is a return to what made him an early favorite in 2016.
Walker burst onto the national scene during his 2012 recall race, in which he was opposed by national unions furious at him for curbing the collective-bargaining rights of Wisconsin state workers. His contentious electoral battles, including his 2014 re-election race, earned him favor from conservative activists who strongly backed his efforts.
The national Democratic Party is already lacing into Walker before his speech.
TJ Helmstetter, a Democratic National Committee spokesman, declared that it's "desperate and disgusting that Scott Walker would seek to revive his flailing campaign on the backs of middle-class workers and families."
"By seeking to dismantle unions - the backbone of the middle class that gave us weekends, paid vacations, and child labor laws - Scott Walker is again placing his political ambitions and the demands of his billionaire benefactors ahead of middle class Americans," Helmstetter added.
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Walker, of course, views his proposals differently. According to excerpts of the speech that his campaign forwarded to reporters, he will refer to his plan as necessary to "drain the swamp in Washington."