Notes on Politics, Elections, Tax & $pending (outcomes?) and Wisconsin Act 10
Zoey Elwood (Wisconsin Watch)
Act 10 largely eliminated collective bargaining for most public employees and required public workers to contribute more toward their pensions and health insurance. It also put stricter certification requirements on unions, making it more difficult for them to remain certified.
The changes did not apply to public safety unions representing police and firefighters, which is one of the key issues being raised in the latest court challenge.
Before Act 10, public employees could bargain over wages, vacation days, pensions, mandatory breaks, promotions, contracts and other work-related issues.
Jason Stein, president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, said local governments, state agencies and school districts were required to sit down and bargain with unions over these subjects. If disputes arose, they would go to arbitration and mediation. Act 10 significantly changed that process.
“There were these very real obligations that the state had to, and the local governments had to interact with these unions,” Stein said. “Now that’s — for many public employers — that’s not the case.”
He added that government bodies can now unilaterally adjust healthcare benefits, giving local government employers an “upper hand” in changing some working conditions.
Act 10 also required unions to hold recertification elections every year. To recertify, unions had to receive a majority vote from all members, including those who did not vote.
Stein noted that contrasts with most democratic elections, where a candidate needs a majority of the people who actually show up to vote. Under Act 10’s union recertification requirement, however, nonvoters are counted as “no” votes.
Stein said that made it difficult for unions to pass the annual recertification votes, causing many local unions to disband. He also noted that the only permitted subject of collective bargaining under Act 10 is a base wage increase up to the rate of inflation, diminishing the value of union membership.
“So, it was tough to recertify your union to be the official bargaining voice for the employees, and then if you did that, there wasn’t a lot that the union could actually bargain for,” Stein said. “As a result of that, many unions didn’t even try to recertify; they just disbanded.”
Wisconsin’s public sector union membership rate fell by nearly 29 percentage points between 1985 and 2025 — the largest percentage decline of any state, according to a report from the Center for Economics and Policy Research. The report shows a significant drop coinciding with Act 10’s passage in 2011, with the public union membership rate falling from 46.6% in 2010 to 18.5% in 2025.
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WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Notes & Links on Wisconsin Act 10.
