Gov. Scott Walker's anti-union law has crippled organized labor in Wisconsin, with unions representing government employees struggling to keep their membership rolls alive and to stay relevant.
Workers are increasingly deciding that it's not worth it to keep paying membership dues after Walker's law, which stripped most unions of their collective bargaining rights and required most public employees to pay more for their health benefits and retirement savings, reports
The Washington Post.
"I don’t see the point of being in a union anymore," said technology teacher Dan Anliker, 34, a father of two in Reedsburg, a city north of Madison.
The law and its new requirements decreased his take-home pay by some 8 percent to 10 percent, and Anliker said he had to take on an additional 10 hours a week job to compensate.
"Everyone’s on their own island now," he told the Post. "If you do a good job, everything will take care of itself. The money I’d spend on dues is way more valuable to buy groceries for my family."
Four years ago, when Walker's anti-union law passed, the governor vowed that the rule would shrink labor unions' power while saving local governments money. Unions, meanwhile, warned that workers would lose their benefits and be forced to take new jobs or retire.
Since then, Walker's law has made him a star with the Republican Party and a front-running potential candidate in the 2016 race, while his state's unions are still scrambling to keep and to bring back their members.
At one community college in Moraine Park, union dues have been reduced from $59 to $36 a month, and in Milwaukee, government workers are planning a "remember" campaign to remind people of the benefits they enjoyed before the law.
Meanwhile, Walker has gained status as a leader not afraid of battles against liberal issues, and as a governor who has won
three tough races in four years, from his election to the office in 2010, his victory in the recall effort of 2012 — despite the millions of dollars spent by unions to defeat him — and his re-election by nearly 6 percentage points in 2014.
"We took the power away from the big-government special interests and put it firmly in the hands of the hard-working taxpayers," Walker said in a recent speech to Iowa Republicans, the Post reports. "That is what we need more of in this great country. The liberals don’t like that."
According to Walker's administration, his union law has helped local governments save some $3 billion, while also saving homeowners on their property taxes, and helping school districts make reforms that increased reading levels and graduation rates.
In addition, the law helped Republican lawmakers in the blue state challenge the state's overall labor movement through a push for right-to-work legislation that allows private sector workers to not pay union dues.
Meanwhile, reports the Post, the National Education Association's state membership has dropped by a third; the American Federation of Teachers, by 50 percent; and the state employees union, which at one point was 70,000 members strong, has gone down by 70 percent.
The decline could have a long-term effect on Wisconsin politics as well. In the past, unions were central to Democratic voting drives, but now they could be in a "very vulnerable position," said John Ahlquist, a University of Wisconsin political scientist who specializes in labor movements.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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