Skip to main content

Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Upholds Wisconsin's Right to Work Law


Yesterday, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Wisconsin's right to work law, marking a major victory for Republican Governor Scott Walker and pro business groups in the state.  The law, originally approved in 2015, ended the ability for unions to establish labor contracts that required all employees in certain jobs to pay union fees even when those employees did not belong to the union.  

Two local affiliates of the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) sued over the legality of the law on the grounds that it violated federal labor laws and a portion of the Fifth Amendment (arguing that the right to work law prevented unions from collecting payment for services they were legally required to provide to non-union employees).

In September of 2016, U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller upheld Wisconsin's law on the grounds that it was similar to Indiana's lawful right to work law and therefore not in violation of federal labor law or the Constitution.  Judge Stadtmueller subsequently dismissed the lawsuit and the two IUOE affiliates appealed.  In its decision yesterday, Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Joel Flaum wrote that no compelling reason was given to revisit the ruling upholding Indiana's right to work law.  Consequently, there were insufficient grounds to contest Wisconsin's right to work law and the dismissal from the lower court had been proper.  Interesting to note that the Seventh Circuit's decision was unanimous with Judge Michael Kanne and Judge Frank Easterbrook joining the decision.

After the Seventh Circuit's decision was announced, the union's attorney Scott Kronland maintained that while he believed the Court's decision was improper, the union was still considering what to do next.  Although they might seek to have the United States Supreme Court rule on the case, I find it hard to see how the Supreme Court would take this up.  With as busy as the Court's docket is, and a possible upcoming conservative tilt to the Court's makeup, I do not think this case is likely to proceed further.


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies in the state, to per
Post a Comment
Read more