Union Leader Minces No Words When Labor Issues Are at Stake

MADISON, Wis. — As executive director of the main union of Wisconsin state employees, Marty Beil is at the vortex of the hurricane here — and that makes some union members gulp.

A bear of a man, Mr. Beil has been known to use razor-clawed insults to maul government officials who anger him. When a former Democratic state senator took a job in the administration of Wisconsin’s new Republican governor, Scott Walker, Mr. Beil said he was engaging in “the world’s oldest profession” — prostitution.

And when the State Senate president, a Democrat whom unions had often endorsed, provided a pivotal vote in December to torpedo a contract Mr. Beil had negotiated with the departing Democratic governor, Mr. Beil called the man “a whore.”

Now, as Mr. Walker pushes a budget bill that would force most public employees to pay more toward health care and retirement benefits and largely eliminate their collective bargaining rights, many eyes are on Mr. Beil (pronounced beel) to see whether his combative style can win over a skeptical public and achieve results with a governor who is hardly a shrinking violet himself.