{"id":10939,"date":"2024-05-31T05:03:34","date_gmt":"2024-05-31T05:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=10939"},"modified":"2024-05-31T05:57:10","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T05:57:10","slug":"major-shift-in-state-supreme-court-could-allow-unions-to-wreak-havoc-on-wisconsins-budget-once-again-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=10939","title":{"rendered":"Major Shift in State Supreme Court Could Allow Unions to Wreak Havoc on Wisconsin\u2019s Budget Once Again, Experts Say"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/wisconsindailystar.com\/news\/major-shift-in-state-supreme-court-could-allow-unions-to-wreak-havoc-on-wisconsins-budget-once-again-experts-say\/gastarnewsstaff\/2024\/05\/31\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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by Will Kessler<\/h5>\n

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A legal challenge could upend a long-standing Wisconsin law that has successfully balanced the budget at the expense of curbing public unions in the state, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers\u00a0passed<\/a>\u00a0the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill, also known as Act 10, in 2011 in an effort to reduce the state\u2019s budget deficit primarily by limiting the power of public unions to demand higher compensation and benefits that had come to be a drag on the state\u2019s finances. A coalition of unions had their chance to\u00a0argue<\/a>\u00a0starting on Tuesday to a Wisconsin judge that the law was unconstitutional, despite previous legal objections and the law\u2019s success at solving key budgetary issues that had previously plagued the state, emboldened by a new liberal majority on the court that threatens to repeal the law, according to experts who spoke to the DCNF.<\/p>\n

\u201cWisconsin statute unconstitutionally discriminates against most public sector workers, denying their freedom to negotiate with employers on subjects beyond base wages and to be represented by a union without jumping through the hoops of burdensome annual recertification elections, the lawsuit asserts,\u201d the Wisconsin Education Association Association (WEAC)\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0in a press release following the initial filing of the suit. \u201cUnion members are filing the lawsuit now because of the dire situation that exists in our workplaces. Low pay, staffing shortages and worsening working conditions are hurting our ability to deliver public services to the communities that count on us every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The public employees opposing this law claim that it is in violation of Article 1 of the state\u2019s constitution which guarantees equal protection due to workers being classified as \u201cpublic safety\u201d employees, like police and firefighters, being immune from the restrictions in Act 10, according<\/a>\u00a0to the suit. The newest challenge is the first since the state\u2019s supreme court gained a liberal majority, with the law facing several other challenges since being put in place more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say it\u2019s not a very strong claim. The federal courts have already ruled on this claim,\u201d Lucas Vebber, deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), told the DCNF. \u201cThey challenged the federal constitution\u2019s equal protection guarantee, and they lost making similar arguments \u2014 not these exact points, just to be clear, but other plaintiffs have challenged it in federal court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vebber believes that the case could take months to years to resolve due to various motions and processes that can drag the process out.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy all accounts, Act 10 has been a success,\u201d David Osborne, senior fellow at the Commonwealth Foundation, told the DCNF. \u201cMy colleagues at the Commonwealth Foundation found that Act 10 resolved Wisconsin\u2019s $3.6 billion deficit without raising taxes and instead enabled historic tax cuts and credits for families and businesses. Then-Governor Scott Walker implemented the lowest state property taxes since World War II and enabled $8.5 billion in tax relief while in office. School choice soared, and costs are going down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The year before Act 10 was passed, the state had a $127 million budget shortfall that would add to the $3.6 billion structural deficit in the next year, with lawmakers pointing to the bloated salaries of unionized public employees,\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to the MacIver Institute. By reducing how much taxpayers contributed to government employees\u2019 pensions and insurance premiums and capping unions\u2019 abilities to bargain wages greater than the pace of inflation, Wisconsin was able to create a surplus and save a total of $16.8 billion from 2012 to 2023.<\/p>\n

The law also placed further restrictions on unions, requiring workers to vote to recertify the organization annually and banned government agencies from automatically collecting dues and PAC contributions from public workers\u2019 paychecks.<\/p>\n

\u201cAct 10 was also a success for public employees, who now have greater choice in which union officials represent them or whether to be a union member at all,\u201d Osbourne told the DCNF. \u201cAfter Act 10, many employees chose not to be represented by the same union officials who had previously represented them. And the union officials who\u2019ve remained have done so with relatively high levels of support from employees. In both instances, Act 10 has plainly made union officials more responsive and more representative of rank-and-file employees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the reforms in Act 10, the share of Wisconsin workers who were members of a union declined from 12.3% in 2013 to 7.4% in 2023, equating to around 112,000 fewer union workers,\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In\u00a0contrast<\/a>, the percentage of union workers in the United States has only declined from 11.3% to 10.0% in that same time frame.<\/p>\n

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Justice Alito is fed up! pic.twitter.com\/88a3taLLc3<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 29, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s only one thing that changed, and it is the thing that motivated them to bring the lawsuit, and that\u2019s the results of the Supreme Court election from April of last year,\u201d Daniel Kelly, former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice and current NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel, told the DCNF. \u201cSo when Janet Protasiewicz was elected, it shifted the balance of the court from being one that is concentrated on the text of the law toward being a group of jurors that are more politically oriented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Janet Protasiewicz won the race for the open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April 2023, beating out Kelly and giving liberals control of the court for the first time in 15 years,\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to NPR.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now the left has worked hard to flip the court and feels emboldened to overturn every good policy that has saved Wisconsin from the failed Gov. Doyle years that put us heavily in debt,\u201d Anette Olson, CEO of the MacIver Institute, told the DCNF. \u201cAct 10 has saved Wisconsinites $31 billion over the years. The bold reform in Gov. Scott Walker\u2019s first term of office saved Wisconsin taxpayers and helped open Wisconsin up for business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Large pension obligations that Wisconsin was able to cut with Act 10 have wreaked havoc on the budgets of other states,\u00a0particularly<\/a>\u00a0Illinois, which is projecting a $73 billion deficit for fiscal year 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a broader sense, it\u2019ll quickly have an impact outside the state, in the sense that there are really two competing schools of jurisprudence in our courts today,\u201d Kelly told the DCNF. \u201cSo to the extent that the court follows that, if they overturn Madison Teachers, Inc. v. Walker \u2014 which is the prior case on this issue \u2014 it\u2019s a signal to other courts that political activism on the courts is resurgent and kind of gives them aid and comfort in doing the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suit could also backfire on the unions due to the judge having discretion to strike down parts of the law to bring it into compliance with the Constitution. Vebber points out that the judge could decide to remove the distinction between general public unions and those exempt, putting the provisions on all government workers instead of repealing the act.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing we found in our research was that even accounting for inflation, school districts are spending less on health care today than they were prior to Act 10,\u201d Will Flanders, director of research at WILL, told the DCNF. \u201cThe implications of a full repeal are staggering, and I think it would send shockwaves not only across the state but also across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

WEAC, SEIU Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission did not respond to a request to comment from the DCNF.<\/p>\n

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Will Kessler is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
\nPhoto \u201cWisconsin Budget Repair Bill\u201d by Mark Danielson<\/a>. CC BY-NC 2.0.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
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The post Major Shift in State Supreme Court Could Allow Unions to Wreak Havoc on Wisconsin\u2019s Budget Once Again, Experts Say<\/a> appeared first on The Wisconsin Daily Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/wisconsindailystar.com\/news\/major-shift-in-state-supreme-court-could-allow-unions-to-wreak-havoc-on-wisconsins-budget-once-again-experts-say\/gastarnewsstaff\/2024\/05\/31\/ by Will Kessler \u00a0 A legal challenge could upend…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":3655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-daily-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10939"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10941,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10939\/revisions\/10941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}