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REPUBLICAN CONVENTION PUTS SPOTLIGHT ON WISCONSIN GOP’S ANTI-UNION
AGENDA  
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Kalena Thomhave
July 12, 2024
Capital & Main
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_ State Republicans devastated unions, but union electoral power is
crucial to defeating Trump. Now there is heightened union support
across the country and increased labor activity in Wisconsin. Can
Democrats seize on renewed enthusiasm for unions? _

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NEXT WEEK, Teamsters union President Sean O’Brien will speak
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the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin — a key battleground
state where Republicans led a prominent attack on labor unions more
than a decade ago. 

“There’s always a threat to organized labor, so we want to be
proactive and make certain every candidate — not just President
Biden — understands how important our issues are,” O’Brien said
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a meeting with Biden in March.

It will be the first time a Teamsters president has spoken at the
Republican convention. O’Brien’s presence at the convention in
Madison highlights the dissonance in the party’s approach to union
members, many of whom are the working-class voters they now depend on.

Unions have historically
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Democratic candidates and gotten out the vote for them while threats
to organized labor are typically mounted
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Republicans. The state that is hosting the convention is a poster
child for the right’s attacks on organized labor.

Earlier this month in Wisconsin, the Teamsters and other
unions scored a legal victory 
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Act 10, the Republican-backed 2011 state law that stripped public
sector workers of their collective bargaining rights, when Dane County
Circuit Court Judge Jacob Frost struck down part of it.

“Thousands of public sector workers in Wisconsin are under attack by
their own state government,” O’Brien said in a statement
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the lawsuit was filed in November. 

Some labor leaders believe that years of Republican assaults on
organized labor may have energized working-class voters in Wisconsin
to support Democrats, even those who aren’t union members but share
similar values. To build on this sentiment, unions are making
substantial investments to mobilize working-class voters in Wisconsin
and elsewhere.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) committed $200
million
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engage voters in battleground states in the upcoming presidential
election, a record political investment for the union, it said. The
union intends to turn out working-class, multiracial voters to elect
local and national leaders who support labor. In April, the
union endorsed
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Joe Biden for reelection. The union is explicitly targeting voters
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have never voted or are less likely to vote, and its members started
knocking doors in September last year. According to the union, similar
organizing in 2022 increased turnout among voters the union contacted
by 27%
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The union will mobilize volunteers such as Mary Jorgensen, a nurse
leader with SEIU Wisconsin at the University of Wisconsin hospital
system in the state capital of Madison, whose union lost recognition
in 2014 because of Act 10, which former Republican Gov. Scott Walker
championed. Jorgensen said that nurses at UW Health face short
staffing and high turnover in part because of the law’s effects. She
will knock on doors to rally support for Democrats, even as she
campaigns to win back her union. 

Walker is one of 41 delegates to the Republican Convention in Madison.
As governor, he made it his mission to drastically curtail the power
of public sector unions. Act 10 allows workers to bargain only for
wage increases tied to inflation and prohibits public sector employers
from collecting union dues.

“The world changed for us after Act 10,” said Rick Korducki, a
retired school psychologist in Milwaukee who was a member of the
American Federation of Teachers. As pay declined, benefits became more
expensive, and teacher turnover
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Korducki said. “There was a change in morale” among the school
workforce, he added. “Educators just felt less valued.”

A few years after Act 10’s passage, state Republicans shifted their
target to private sector unions, passing a so-called
“right-to-work” law in 2015. It was the second part of what
Walker described [[link removed]] as a
“divide and conquer” strategy to weaken unions in the state. 

Following the enactment of the laws, unionization rates in Wisconsin
plummeted by nearly half, dropping to 7.9% of the workforce in 2021
— below the national average of 10.3 % and part of the largest
unionization decline
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any state in the past two decades, according to the Wisconsin Policy
Forum, which describes itself as a nonpartisan independent statewide
policy research organization. Last year, union membership marginally
rebounded
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Wisconsin after a few years of labor protests and new unionization
campaigns. 

Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential win and Biden’s razor-thin 2020
victory margin in Wisconsin have both been linked to the decline in
labor unions, as states like Wisconsin were once considered part of
the Democratic Blue Wall — a coalition of traditionally
Democratic-voting states crucial for the party’s national electoral
strategy. Walker understood the political threat posed by unions,
which typically provide funds and boots on the ground in support of
Democrats, said Steve Rosenthal, president of  The Organizing Group,
a private political consulting firm, and a former political director
of the AFL-CIO.

“Republicans like Walker have a much better appreciation for unions
politically than the Democrats do,” said Rosenthal. While
Republicans attack labor unions because of the party’s traditional
allegiance to business interests, Rosenthal said, “it’s also
because they understand the collateral damage it does to Democrats.”

For instance, right-to-work laws — which allow workers to benefit
from union representation without paying membership dues, straining
union coffers — reduced Democratic vote shares at the county level
in presidential elections by 3.5%
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compared with neighboring counties without such laws, according to a
2018 working paper by researchers at the National Bureau of Economic
Research.

Jorgensen, a Biden supporter, views the upcoming November election as
“tied very closely” to the fight for workers’ rights. She is
optimistic that the effort will be bolstered by new district maps that
resulted from a recent state supreme court ruling mandating fairer
representation. 

Wisconsin’s previous district maps were widely criticized
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being heavily gerrymandered to favor Republicans, and the new, more
competitive maps
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Democrats a better chance to flip the state Legislature. This change
could be instrumental in helping nurses fight for union recognition
since the state governs
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sector union organizing.

Jorgensen thinks that “Biden loves the working class.” Since
taking office, Biden has pursued policies
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at strengthening unions, increasing funding for the long-beleaguered
National Labor Relations Board, which conducts private sector union
elections and enforces labor law, according to the Center for American
Progress Action Fund. Trump, on the other hand, allowed vacancies at
the board to go unfilled
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except when he appointed
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lawyers. And Biden became the first sitting president to ever join a
picket line when he rallied with striking United Auto Workers last
year.

But there are headwinds for Jorgensen and other union members who
support Democrats, including the concerns swirling
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the viability of Biden’s candidacy following a disastrous debate
performance last month. 

In addition, weaker unions have fewer members — and fewer resources
— to devote to electoral battles. The American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees, a union of public workers that was
founded in Wisconsin, has significantly fewer members than it once did
— a March 2024 filing [[link removed]] by the
union’s Wisconsin state council reported 4,285 members
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down from nearly 63,000 members
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2010. 

Meanwhile, Trump has had some success
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drawing support from union members. Trump received 40% of the votes
from Wisconsin households with union members in the 2020 election,
according to exit polling
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One facet of his attempt to appeal to union members, and working class
voters more broadly
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has been his attack on immigrants. At a June rally in Racine,
Wisconsin, Trump stat
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there was “mass entry into our country and the unions are getting
absolutely killed by it.” 

The narrative around Trump suggests that he stands apart from other
Republican presidential candidates in drawing support from union
voters. But Mitt Romney won 40%
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household vote nationally in 2012. Even in 2016, Trump only
performed 3 percentage points better
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union households nationwide than did Romney in the previous
election.  

Now there is heightened
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support across the country and an increase
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new union organizing and labor activity throughout Wisconsin. Could
Democrats seize on renewed enthusiasm for unions?

Building more Democratic power in the state could lead to statewide
labor wins, such as repealing
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right-to-work law and Act 10. After winning back the state Legislature
in 2022, Democrats in Michigan quickly repealed
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right-to-work law that was passed by state Republicans in 2012. 

In Wisconsin, flipping the state Supreme Court from a Republican to a
Democratic majority encouraged unions to file
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Act 10.

In November, “We have a shot at rebuilding what [made] Wisconsin a
great state — minus the weather,” said Mike Tate, former chair of
the Wisconsin Democratic Party who currently works as a consultant.
When unions were strong, he said, Wisconsin “had this huge middle
class.”

_Kalena Thomhave is a writing fellow at The American Prospect._

_Capital & Main is an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports
from California on the most pressing economic, environmental and
social issues of our time.  Winner of the 2016 Online Journalist of
the Year prize from the Southern California Journalism Awards and a
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