Posts tagged Wisconsin
Wisconsin Painter Files Federal Charges Against Painters and Trades Union for Unlawful Forced Membership, Dues Deductions
June 30, 2026 // Caryn Johnson, an employee of Olympic Companies, has filed charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) District Council 7. The charges state that IUPAT union officials unlawfully coerced her into formal union membership and dues payment by claiming, contrary to federal law, that both were mandatory conditions of her employment at Olympic.
Opinion: Sizable sick leave payouts cost Minnesota county $2 million each year
June 29, 2026 // The high payouts are a vestige of past labor agreements with the handful of unions that represent the county's 1,850 employees. "If you're maintaining an antiquated policy that's really kind of a leaky sieve in terms of generosity—and you're paying out some really excessive payouts in this kind of regard—that's by choice," said Leonard Gilroy, vice president of government reform for the Reason Foundation, a national Libertarian policy group.
Wisconsin Painter Files Federal Charges Against Painters and Trades Union for Unlawful Forced Membership, Dues Deductions
June 24, 2026 // IUPAT union bosses lied to worker, claiming union membership and dues payment authorization were mandatory for employment
Report: The diminishing power of teacher unions
May 29, 2026 // The result is A Crowded Table: Teacher Union Strength in 2026. Building on our original study, the authors set out to gauge teacher union strength in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.). Collectively, the 59 measures—which include 29 new measures that were not in the original report—seek to quantify union strength in five key areas: Resources and Membership; Involvement in Politics; Labor and Bargaining Policies; Policy Wins and Losses; and Perceived Influence, which draws from an original survey examining how stakeholders in each of the 50 states and D.C. perceive teacher union strength today. The states with the strongest teacher unions are Vermont, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Hawaii. The states with the weakest teacher unions are Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Mississippi. (See our interactive table on the report website for the overall rankings alongside the rankings for each of the five areas.)
Clinicians push to unionize amid staffing, burnout concerns
May 25, 2026 // Among the most recent efforts in May are the more than 73% of the 870 nurses at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, Wis., who signed cards supporting unionization. The group filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board on May 1 and is awaiting an election date. Nurses involved in the effort said they want a stronger voice in decisions affecting staffing, retention and working conditions.
Federal labor official schedules union elections at West Allis, Madison mental health clinics
April 20, 2026 // In the April 14 order, Regional Director Jennifer A. Hadsall rejected Rogers’ position that the election should include all 13 Wisconsin Rogers locations. Hadsall instead directed elections at the West Allis and Madison clinics, where a majority of employees had signed up with the National Union of Healthcare Workers, according to the union. Union supporters at the Wisconsin clinics have said they decided to seek union representation in response to increased caseloads, changes in how employee productivity was measured and a reduction in individual time that therapists and other providers could spend with patients.
Wisconsin Reined in Public Sector Unions. Now Those Reforms Are in Jeopardy.
April 12, 2026 // According to a recent analysis by the Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR), Wisconsin has seen the sharpest decline in union membership rates of any state in the country over the past 40 years. While the number of union members has declined nationwide in recent decades as America has transitioned to a more service-based economy, Wisconsin's decrease has been particularly notable, especially since it historically had been one of America's most unionized states. Act 10 played a large role in the drop. Wisconsin's public sector union membership rates saw "by far" the largest decline—at close to 29 percent—of any state, according to CEPR's report. "Wisconsin's steepest losses," the report notes, "coincided with the 2011 passage of Wisconsin Act 10."
Opinion: Unions are on a comeback. Americans are paying the price.
April 2, 2026 // So far, the union comeback has mostly been confined to courthouses and state legislatures. Membership hardly budged last year, rising from 9.9 percent of U.S. workers in 2024 to 10 percent in 2025. Yet if more states continue to mandate collective bargaining for public-sector workers — or decide to repeal right-to-work statutes for the private sector — rates can be expected to rise in those jurisdictions. If workers at a unionized shop are forced to pay dues regardless of their membership status, more will opt in as the financial incentive to remain unorganized slips away.
Wisconsin saw steepest decline in union membership over 40-year period, report finds
March 30, 2026 // . “The only thing they could bargain on was their pay, and that was limited by law to never exceed the rate of inflation.” All of that, paired with a new requirement for every union to hold a recertification vote every year, means “many, many public-sector unions simply vanished,” Heywood said.
Op-ed: The $921M Special Interest Machine That Controls California
February 21, 2026 // The California Policy Center’s analysis lays it bare: California’s public sector unions collected $921 million in 2018 alone. That’s not campaign contributions—that’s annual revenue. The prize they’re protecting? According to Govern For California, state and local governments spend $240 billion per year on public employee compensation and benefits.