Can he talk his way out of this? (photo: WisPolitics.com via Flickr)

Scott Walker has been threatening public workers with layoff notices for a solid week, so another threat isn’t surprising. This time the deadline is tomorrow. Before it was last Friday. And then Tuesday.

So what is surprising? That there’s talk ofcompromise in the air.

Walker says he’s also negotiating with Senate Democrats to get them to return and vote on the bill. The 14 senators left town two weeks ago to avoid voting on the measure.

Walker says he won’t concede on the collective bargaining issue, but he may on others.

A tweet from the chief of the editorial board for the Wisconsin State Journal adds that union re-certification and dues in paychecks are “on the table.”

This is a significant pullback, actually, though I don’t think it’ll be enough for the unions. Let’s explain. The budget repair bill didn’t only strip collective bargaining rights from public employees. It set up a process where the unions would almost certainly be destroyed. Under the bill, the union would have to be re-