In Victory for Unions, Law on Dues Is Struck Down in Wisconsin

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/09/us/wisconsin-law-union-dues-scott-walker.html

Version 0 of 1.

A 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.”

For some in Wisconsin, where union membership numbers have fallen precipitously in recent years, the measure was only the latest contentious chapter in a set of moves led by Mr. Walker and his Republican-held capital. Historically a stronghold of labor, Wisconsin has lost tens of thousands of union members, leaving the state with a smaller percentage of union members than the national average, federal figures made public this year show.

Soon after taking office, Mr. Walker pushed for a bill that cut collective bargaining for most public sector workers and removed requirements that they pay fees if they chose not to join unions that represented them. The law from 2015, found unconstitutional in Friday’s ruling, applied to the private sector.

Democrats, who had vehemently objected to the right-to-work law, hailed the ruling. Representative Peter Barca, the Democratic minority leader in the Assembly, said in a statement that Wisconsin’s economy has suffered since the right-to-work law was signed.

“Middle class Wisconsin workers are in crisis and so-called ‘right to work’ laws have been shown to drive down wages and economic growth,” he said. “The extreme right-wing Republican agenda has been incredibly harmful to working people and businesses in Wisconsin.”

Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the Wisconsin State A.F.L.-C.I.O., said he viewed the decision as a “needed check on Scott Walker’s attacks on working families.” He added: “Right to work has always been unjust, now it’s proven unconstitutional.”

But Republicans, including the state attorney general, Brad Schimel, seemed confident that the ruling will not hold.

“Once again a liberal Dane County judge is trying to legislate from the bench,” Robin Vos, the state House Speaker, a Republican, said. “No one should be forced to join a union or pay union dues as a condition of employment.”

Governor Walker said: “We are confident Wisconsin’s freedom-to-work law is constitutional and will ultimately be upheld.”

Even some Democrats seemed to agree that the ruling might only be temporary.

Carolyn Fiddler, the national communications director for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said that while she considered the ruling a “positive move for working families in Wisconsin,” the conservative state Supreme Court was likely to uphold the law.

“It seems extraordinarily unlikely that this ruling will stand in the long term,” she said. “Higher courts will probably negate this in some fashion. It seems likely that Scott Walker’s anti-union Wisconsin will effectively remain in existence in the long term.”