When tens of thousands of union members and supporters flocked to the state Capitol a decade ago, they warned that Gov. Scott Walker’s collective bargaining bill could redefine organized labor in Wisconsin. They were right.
Walker, a freshly sworn in Republican, formally introduced the plan on Feb. 11, 2011, describing it as a “modest” change aimed at shoring up the state budget. But the bill he introduced went well beyond financial concessions. It effectively eliminated long-held bargaining rights for a wide range of state and local government employees, from teachers to clerical workers to prison guards.
Two days after Walker spoke, dozens of teachers from around the state gathered on the Capitol Square in Madison for one of the first protests against the law now known as Act 10.
“We could lose this fight,” said Charles Patten, who was then a teacher in Wausau. “We must help our neighbors, all of the citizens of Wisconsin see that union rights are every worker’s rights.”
Four days later, the crowd swelled to thousands, as so many teachers packed the Capitol building that it was hard to move inside.
“Life will probably never go back to normal unless this gets killed,” Whitewater math teacher Diana Callope said of Walker’s bill in 2011.
The crowd in the Capitol building let out a deafening cheer that day when it learned that Democratic state senators had left Wisconsin to prevent a vote on Walker’s bill. Protesters slept on the building’s marble floors that night for a round-the-clock occupation. Chants and drumbeats echoed off the walls of the rotunda day and night. For weeks, the eyes of the world were on Wisconsin.
Then eventually, the drama ended. Republicans passed Walker’s bill without the help of Democrats. It survived multiple court challenges, and it changed the face of the state where public sector unions were born.
Ten years later, organized labor forges on in Wisconsin, but being part of a union means something different than it used to.
There are fewer union members, they carry less political clout, and those who remain are limited in what they can bargain for.
For many union members who experienced the protests firsthand, they remain a seminal moment, even though the outcome wasn’t what they had hoped.
“That was kind of an inspiring thing, just to walk into the Capitol and see massive numbers of people there kind of on my behalf, I found that to be pretty incredible feeling,” said Callope in a recent interview reflecting on the 10-year anniversary of Act 10. “At the same time … I found it to be the first time in my career that I really felt like there were a lot of people who just don’t like teachers.”
For others, the outcome of the Act 10 fight for unions overshadowed everything else.
“I think those protests, while it was cathartic for us, were largely inconsequential,” said Patten, who has since left Wisconsin and now teaches in California.
“We didn’t change anything,” he said. “We just made a lot of noise.”
Union Rights Diminished
Before 2011, public sector unions in Wisconsin had the power to collectively bargain over a wide range of issues, like salary, benefits and working conditions.
Now, most public sector unions can only bargain for a raise that’s no higher than the consumer price index.
Before they can even negotiate that, they have to jump another hurdle. Just staying organized requires unions to hold annual recertification votes where a majority of all members vote “yes”, not just a majority of members who are present. The practical effect is that workers who don’t vote are counted as a “no”.
A decade ago, public sectors unions would withdraw dues directly from workers’ paychecks, and everyone paid. Today, union dues are optional.
Callope, who still teaches in Whitewater, is currently the vice president of her local teachers union. She said her district has had overwhelming success at getting teachers to recertify. But some teachers, even if they support the union, don’t pay dues.
“A lot of it’s financial,” Callope said. “That’s the no. 1 reason people tell us they can’t do it because they can’t afford to have anything else taken out of their paycheck.”
Callope said there’s still a value to her union, even though it doesn’t have nearly the same leverage that it once did.
“It’s not bargaining,” she said. “But it is having the ability to talk with your administrators and your school board and be part of conversations.”
But when it comes to salary, Callope said the best way for a teacher to get a raise is to leave and go to a different district where the pay is higher. In some cases, that means leaving Wisconsin altogether.
For Patten, who grew up in Wisconsin and taught in Wausau for several years, moving to California meant his income more than doubled.
