Judge upholds Wisconsin collective bargaining reform

Back in 2011 Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took on the state’s powerful unions and the Wisconsin Legislature enacted a dramatic labor law reform. Several lawsuits filed since the bill passed claimed Walker’s overhaul was unconstitutional. These lawsuits have been percolating through the courts ever since. The latest decision comes from a federal judge, who has...

Back in 2011 Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took on the state’s powerful unions and the Wisconsin Legislature enacted a dramatic labor law reform. Several lawsuits filed since the bill passed claimed Walker’s overhaul was unconstitutional. These lawsuits have been percolating through the courts ever since.

The latest decision comes from a federal judge, who has ruled that Wisconsin’s controversial government union law is, in fact, constitutional. The ruling is welcome, but the judge showed he doesn’t really understand what collective bargaining is, or why so many states have had problems with it.

U.S. District Court Judge William Conley dismissed a lawsuit filed by various unions that sought to have the reform struck down. Under Wisconsin’s labor law reform, unions are allowed to only bargain over wages, which cannot be increased by more than the rate of inflation. Unions are expected to stand for recertification elections every year. The reform also gave Wisconsin government employees right-to-work protection, meaning that workers who opposed the union could not be forced to pay union dues or agency fees as a condition of employment. The reform package was the subject of intense protests in 2011 when it was introduced in the Wisconsin Legislature.

Judge Conley, who originally ruled in favor of the unions only to have his decision reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals, this time allowed the reforms to continue to be implemented, but in the process he indicated that he still doesn’t understand what the case is really about. One gets the strong impression that the judge sympathizes with the unions, and hated to go against them:

This difference is likely of no comfort to plaintiffs, but the First Amendment does not require an affirmative response from governmental entities; it simply requires the absence of a negative restriction … Under Act 10, general employees remain free to associate and represent employees and their unions remain free to speak; municipal employers are simply not allowed to listen.

Actually there’s nothing that says that government officials cannot listen to representatives of their employees. But it does say that as long as collective bargaining is in place, there are limits to what they can give.

There’s no such thing as a constitutional right to collective bargaining

This brings us to the part that is hard for union bosses, and union partisans in general, to understand. Government employees have the right to join a union. That union has the right to speak on members’ behalf, and to even make offers for them. But they have no right to expect any bargaining after that point, let alone a standard collective bargaining agreement.

To put it plainly, there’s no such thing as a constitutional right to collective bargaining. What the government does with union proposals is entirely up to the government: it can accept them, reject them, or ignore them.

That means if the state has a policy of not bargaining, or of only bargaining within strict limits, then that is the policy – for all government bodies. Unions are not entitled to a lengthy, highly formalized bargaining process.

But that does not mean unions are silenced or that they cannot get a hearing. They can still appeal to the regular political process by making their case to local officials and pursue employee interests – many of these unions already have lobbyists on staff.

Under Wisconsin’s labor law, unions are a lot less powerful, but that doesn’t mean they’re impotent.

Collective bargaining in government has caused problems in many states, Wisconsin and Illinois among them. Government unions have misused collective bargaining to distort policy, hike the cost of government and sometimes even to subvert state law. Forced union dues have given government unions clout that is far out of proportion to their support in the larger community.

Ultimately, the people of Wisconsin decided that government collective bargaining had become too damaging, and set about putting sharp limits on it. They were well within their rights to do so. It’s just a matter of time before Illinois will have to do something similar.