Good news in Wisconsin! A local court overturned a notorious piece of anti-union legislation that was passed in 2011, at the instance of then-Governor Scott Walker. At the time, union protestors encircled the Statehouse to protest. Walker was unmoved. He celebrated the defeat of the state’s unions (excluding police and firefighters).
The Guardian writes:
As the labor movement braces for a second Trump term, union members and their leaders are celebrating a major victory over a controversial law that stripped public sector unions of collective bargaining rights.
In response to a lawsuit alleging that a notorious law passed by the former Republican governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker in 2011 is unconstitutional, a county judge ruled on Monday that more than 60 sections of the law and several sections of a follow-up law in 2015, Act 55, are unconstitutional.
Walker called the decision “brazen political activism at its worst” and Republicans plan an appeal.
Thousands protested the introduction of the law, which crippled unions’ funding and powers. Following the passage of Act 10, several Republican-dominated states pushed to pass similar legislation, including Florida which passed a similar law in May 2023 targeting public sector unions, and Iowa, which passed legislation that took away collective bargaining rights from many state employees in 2017.
Act 10 stripped collective bargaining rights from thousands of state employees in Wisconsin, limiting their ability to bargain solely on wage increases that cannot exceed inflation. It also forced public sector labor unions to annually vote, with a majority of members participating and voting, to maintain certification.
“We were kind of just demonized, not just teachers, but public sector workers in general,” said John Havlicek, a high school Spanish teacher in La Crosse, Wisconsin and former president of the La Crosse Education Association which represents teachers in the school district. “Teachers don’t go into it for the money but I also have groceries to buy and bills to pay and stuff like that. A lot of public sector workers, in my experience teachers, really felt like we were being scapegoated. It was really bad.”
The act has had a significant impact on union membership, pay and benefits. In 2010 Wisconsin had a union density rate of 15.1%. That number dropped to 8.4% in 2023.
The law also forced public sector workers to pay more for healthcare and retirement benefits, resulting in around an 8.5% decrease in their pay for workers making $50,000 a year.
An April 2024 report by the Wisconsin department of public instruction found teacher pay had declined from 2010 to 2022 by nearly 20% and about four out of every 10 first year teachers either leave the state or the profession after six years.
Public school funding also drastically declined in Wisconsin after Act 10 was enacted. Per pupil spending in Wisconsin out paced the national average by around $1,100 per student in 2011 and was $327 per pupil lower than the national average in 2021.
The verdict could be overturned on appeal. Stay tuned.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is great news that Walker’s anti-labor law has been overturned, but it is unfortunate that we are heading into another anti-labor administration for the next four years.
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Was that case in court for thirteen years before reaching that vedict?
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Lloyd,
I don’t know. It is unusual that a judge overturns a law passed more than a decade ago.
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It was good news in the fact that someone finally realized that Act 10 was poorly written. Which brings up a question of what happened to ALEC? I haven’t heard anything about them in years. Where they incorporated into the Heritage foundation? And just who is in charge and involved in that foundation? They seem to be running the show now!
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ALEC is very much alive and well and still plotting the expansion of their malevolent power in state legislatures.
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I was hoping for some good news but this might not be it.
Act 10 was challenged many times with no success but in 2023 a conservation officer brought suit because he was excluded from the exemptions (as Teachers).
The Judge said that state Capitol Police, University of Wisconsin Police, and state conservation wardens were “treated unequally with no rational basis for that difference” because they were not included in the exemption that Act 10 had created for other law enforcement and public safety employees. It exempted an arbitrary class of “public safety” unions from the law
Another thing I came across, was that one of Walker’s aides that help draft Act10 is now a State Supreme Court Judge
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Tim O,
But it’s still good news, isn’t it?
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The attacks on our unions began when the Republicans took over the state legislatures in states like Wisconsin and Michigan where the NEA was strong. They have been determined to destroy our unions, take away our bargaining rights. They passed laws to make us responsible for defending “freeloaders” who won’t pay union dues or even “representation fees” then do things that put them as risk of losing their jobs and teaching certificates. They also tried to create funding schemes to give state tax monies to private and religious schools! They changed our state pension systems from defined benefit to a 403b plan with the individual teacher funding most of it and bearing the total risk.
We have it practically difficult in Michigan because this movement to weaken or better yet end public education and turn it into a state funded system of for profit and sectarian schools is championed and funded by Dick and Betsy DeVos, their foundations and their state “think tank” the Mackinaw Center have a bottomless source of funding. To understand how bad it was in Michigan before ballot issues reformed redistricting and voting rights you just have to recall that after one election in which the Michigan GOP took total control of the state and most local government that Betsy was reputed to say that, “In Michigan we have the best elections that money can buy!”
When I began my career in 1966 there was a surplus of highly qualified teachers and good positions were hard to find. Today, very few students are enrolling in the teacher education programs, some universities in Michigan have closed their education departments, and there is a shortage of fully qualified teachers. The people who are to blame for destroying one of the finest public-school systems in the nation are the Republicans and the DeVoses.
It is wonderful to hear that at least in Wisconsin the tide may have begun to change. But this decision will be appealed and if they can figure a way to get it into the Federal Court System just imagine how the current Supreme Court of the United States will rule on this case.
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