Dues Collection Law Overturned
Labor unions and their supporters rallied in the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol.
Cynthia Brown is the publisher of American Police Beat and the Site Administrator of PubSecAlliance.
We’ve had so little good news lately, I wanted to get this info out to you as soon as possible. A judge has overturned the Wisconsin law barring unions from automatic dues collections. The case the unions made in court is pretty interesting. While this applies to private sector unions, arguments made by union attorneys that were successful can be used by your attorneys as well. The recent Supreme Court decision allowing the current practice—whereby the city, county, or state automatically collects dues from your members and passes that money on to you—to stand is very encouraging. But the vote was tied 4 to 4. The people who are trying to destroy collective bargaining rights and your contracts will be back. This decision should help bolster your arguments when the issue inevitably resurfaces. – Cynthia Brown
Via the New York Times:
In Victory for Unions, Law on Dues Is Struck Down in Wisconsin
By Monica Davey and Julie BosmanA Wisconsin law barring unions from requiring workers in the private sector to pay the equivalent of union dues was struck down late Friday after a judge deemed it a violation of the state’s Constitution.
Democrats and union leaders in the industrial Midwest, a region where organized labor has been weakened by a series of new laws in recent years, cheered the ruling, but its fate almost immediately seemed uncertain. Republican leaders in Wisconsin, where a conservative bloc holds a majority on a sharply divided State Supreme Court, pledged to appeal the lower court’s ruling and said they felt confident that the law would ultimately stand.
The law, which was pressed through Wisconsin’s legislature in March 2015 by Republican leaders and signed by Gov. Scott Walker as he was preparing to run for president. It made Wisconsin the 25th state to adopt such legislation, following closely behind Indiana and Michigan. In Wisconsin, the law went into effect immediately, over the objections of labor leaders, who argued that the measure was meant to weaken their power and would lower workers’ wages.
In his ruling, Judge C. William Foust of Dane County Circuit Court agreed with three unions that had contested the measure, saying that the law amounted to a taking of their property without just compensation. The unions — local chapters of the International Association of Machinists, United Steelworkers and the A.F.L-C.I.O. — contended that the law added up to a seizure of their property since they were now required to provide union benefits like collective bargaining to workers who opted not to pay the equivalent of dues.
“Labor is a commodity that can be bought and sold,” the judge wrote in his ruling. “A doctor, a telephone company, a mechanic — all would be shocked to find they do not own the services they perform,” he said, adding later: “Unions are no different; they have legally protectable property interest in the services they perform for their members and nonmembers.”
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