Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker expressed confidence Monday that the state’s new right-to-work law, which prohibits private-sector unions from forcing non-members to pay them regular fees, will be upheld in court. A district court judge threw out the law Friday, arguing that it violated the state constitution.
Walker, who signed the law, compared the legal fight to the earlier one over “Act 10,” his 2011 changes to the state’s public-sector union rules.
“Just as Act 10 held up under several legal challenges, we believe that the Freedom to Work law will hold up in court,” The Republican Walker said in a tweet Monday. The case is expected to be resolved by the state supreme court, which has a 5-2 Republican majority.
Walker’s changes to state union laws have had a major impact on Badger State labor groups, which are major Democratic donors. Thousands of workers have taken advantage of their new rights to opt out, bleeding union treasuries in the process.
Right-to-work laws say that employees cannot be forced to join or otherwise financially support a union as a condition of employment, a common feature of most union-management contracts. Wisconsin became the 26th state to outlaw such contracts last year. Labor organizations hate the laws, and a coalition led by the state branch of the AFL-CIO labor federation filed suit against against it.
On Friday, Dane County Circuit Court Judge William Foust ruled that the law violated the the state constitution’s prohibition on taking property for public use without just compensation. It was a rather novel reading of the law since the state was not actually appropriating any union property or funds — the usual legal understanding of a “taking.” Rather, the unions were being deprived by a new state law of the ability to extract money from people who did not wish to be members.
Foust argued that was enough because the unions, which are required by federal law to represent all workers in collective bargaining with management, depend on the fees. “Their distinct, investment-backed expectation was that they would always have a right to collect fair-share payments from non-members as long as they were compelled by law to provide them with services,” he ruled, adding, “It is well-established that ‘public use’ encompasses much more than physical use of private property by the public.”
The Wisconsin AFL-CIO applauded the ruling: “Right-to-work has always been unjust, now it’s been proven unconstitutional as well. Right-to-work goes against the Wisconsin principles of fairness and democracy and hurts all of Wisconsin by eroding the strength of our middle class.”
State Attorney General Brad Schimel vowed shortly after Foust’s ruling to fight to restore the law. “We are extremely disappointed that the Dane County Circuit Court struck down Wisconsin’s right-to-work law, but we are confident the law will be upheld on appeal,” Schimel said.
Walker’s Act 10 extended protections similiar to right-to-work to public-sectors workers. The two largest public-sector unions in the state, American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Councils 40 & 48, went from having a combined 41,000 members in 2011 when Act 10 was passed to just over 12,000 by the end of 2014, according to Labor Department data. Over the same period, their budgets shrank from a combined $18 million to just over $5 million.
Last year, the two unions and a third, AFSCME Council 24, were officially dissolved and combined into a new group, AFSCME Council 32. It’s not clear how many of the three groups’ members remain, as it has yet to file any federal disclosure forms.
