A Wisconsin appeals court upheld the state’s right-to-work law Tuesday, the second time in two months that Badger State unions have seen their legal challenges to the law rebuffed in court.
The unions had argued the law, which prohibits workers from being forced to join a union or pay a regular fee to one as a condition of employment, was unconstitutional. The court ruled that the issue had been long settled.
“The unions have no constitutional entitlement to the fees of non-member employees,” Judge Mark Seidl wrote for the court.
Republican Gov. Scott Walker applauded the ruling and defended the purpose of the law. “The purchase of any service should be voluntary and not coerced. Wisconsin’s right-to-work law protects freedom, not special interests. I applaud the court in affirming the constitutional right of all Wisconsin workers to be free to choose whether they want to join a union or financially support a union.”
Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, who defended the law before the court, said they were “vindicated.”
The law, signed by Walker in 2015, prohibits what unions call “security clauses,” provisions in union-management contracts that ensure payment from all workers, even non-members. Unions argue that they are owed the fees because all employees benefit from the labor group’s collective bargaining. They dislike right-to-work laws, which are associated with membership declines and depleted treasuries.
The unions, led by the state branch of the AFL-CIO labor federation, argued in court that the law amounted to an unconstitutional taking of property from them. The court rejected that argument, stating: “The unions may be required to expend resources to represent employees in a bargaining unit who do not pay fees or dues to the unions, but this result does not constitute a taking.”
A similar federal lawsuit against the Wisconsin law was rejected by the appeals court on the same grounds in July.
Mark Mix, president of the National Right To Work Foundation, said that the constitutionality of the laws was a “long settled question” and that Wisconsin union leaders “should stop wasting taxpayer dollars and workers’ dues money in their desperate attempt to restore their power to have workers fired simply for refusing to pay money as a condition of employment.”
The Wisconsin AFL-CIO did not comment on the ruling.
Right-to-work laws were explicitly allowed by Congress in 1947. Wisconsin was the 25th state to adopt such a law and was part of a recent revival of interest in them. Currently 27 states have the laws, five of them adopted since 2012. Another state, Missouri, passed a law but it is on hold pending the outcome of union-backed voter referendum next year.
