A U.S. District Court of Western Wisconsin today struck down two key parts of Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10, the controversial legislation that revoked the collective bargaining rights of public employees.
Federal Judge William Conley in Madison ruled that the state cannot prevent public employee unions from collecting dues and cannot require they recertify annually. The collective bargaining bill established a system in which most of the public unions were required to have a majority of their members vote every year to recertify. Walker’s law also took away some unions’ rights to collect mandatory dues. Conley ruled that the state did not have the right to pick and choose which public unions could charge dues and how they would recertify. “So long as the state of Wisconsin continues to afford ordinary certification and dues deductions to mandatory public safety unions with sweeping bargaining rights, there is no rational basis to deny those rights to voluntary general unions with severely restricted bargaining rights,” the order read. Conley immediately enjoined the state from the vote requirement and set a deadline of May 12 to return to the automatic deduction of union dues for all members of public employees to give “already burdened” local and state governments time to adjust. For ongoing coverage, visit WisPolitics.com, a media partner of BizTimes.
