Unions wonder: How can we save collective bargaining?

Art Pulaski, the chief officer of the California State Labor Federation, said the Wisconsin standoff could encourage some Republican governors to take a harsher stance in bargaining. “But for those with a more moderate stance, those not tied to the Republican strategy, I think they’re going to hold back, and say: ‘Wait a minute. The response is so vigorous and spontaneous and strong, we have to be careful how far we go on this,’ ” he said.

But focusing national attention on public employees’ benefits could put unions on the defensive in many states. Thomas A. Kochan, a professor of industrial relations at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he thought unions were increasingly recognizing reality. “There has to be a new bargain in the public sector on pension costs and health care costs, and to get out front on it,” he said. “That helps them take that issue off the table and to focus on the issue of worker rights and the attack on unions.”

Anti-union groups, seeing this as their moment, are urging governors not to settle for economic concessions. Tim Phillips, head of Americans for Prosperity — a conservative, free-market advocacy group that was created and financed in part by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch — said Mr. Walker should push for a “complete victory.”

“If you just did the cuts to pension and benefits without the changes to collective bargaining,” Mr. Phillips said, “it helps in the short term, but over the long term, benefits will creep back up again.”