MADISON, Wis. — For decades, states in the South, the Great Plains and the Rockies implemented policies that prevented organized labor from forcing all workers to pay union dues or dues. But the industrial Midwest resisted.
Those days are over. After a wave of Republican victories across the region in 2010, Indiana and then Michigan enacted so-called right-to-work laws that advocates said strengthened those states economically, but labor leaders left behind a trail of weakened unions.
Now it's Wisconsin's turn. On Monday, Governor Scott Walker — who in 2011 succeeded in cutting collective bargaining rights for most public sector workers — signed a bill that makes his state the 25th to adopt the policy and has given new impetus to the business-led movement, supporters say .
“This freedom-to-work legislation will give workers the freedom to choose whether or not to join a union and employers one more compelling reason to consider expanding or relocating their business to Wisconsin,” said Mr. Walker.
Even before the Legislature approved the measure on Friday in a fast-track process, Mr. Walker's political supporters were fundraising for the issue, saying of the bill in an email to donors: “You know how it is: It threatens the power they crave. the big government labor bosses and they'll go after him with everything they've got.”
Democrats say Mr. Walker's real motivation is more about politics than job creation: to break up a declining union movement in Wisconsin and strengthen his position as the conservative choice for the Republican presidential nomination next year. And beyond Mr. Walker's prospects, they say, new laws across the region are intended to help Republicans create a favorable electoral map for 2016 by weakening labor groups that have traditionally provided brains and money to Democratic candidates. in critical states.
“It's designed to drive down wages and help them win elections in the future.” Michael Sargeant, executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, he said of the passage of the measure, almost entirely along party lines, in Wisconsin. “That's what it's all about.”
President Obama issued a statement calling the measure “a new anti-labor law” and directly criticizing Mr. Walker. “Wisconsin is a state built by workers, with a proud pro-worker past,” he said. “So even as his governor claims victory over working Americans, I would encourage him to try to win over working Americans — by taking meaningful action to raise their wages and give them the security of paid leave.”
Fights over union dues are emerging in other states. Republican lawmakers in Missouri and New Mexico are weighing similar measures. In Kentucky, where a divided legislature and a Democratic governor are blocking a statewide bill, leaders in more than a dozen counties have approved or are weighing measures, officials there said Saturday, and efforts in six other counties await final approval .
And in Illinois, a long-Democracy region with Democratic supermajorities in the legislature, the new Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, announced an executive order barring state employees who choose to leave unions from being forced to pay dues based on a constitutional argument, offering a new model for states where divided partisan politics have slowed right-to-work policies.
Federal law already allows workers to opt out of unions. But these laws go further, allowing workers to pay no fees to them. Unions argue that wages are fair to non-union members who still benefit from negotiated contracts, and that without a demand, their membership, financial support and very existence are threatened.
The results of such measures are hotly debated, with dueling experts and research papers.
In Michigan, the proportion of workers in unions has declined to 14.5 percent from 16.6 percent before the changes. But in Indiana, union membership rose to 10.7 percent from 9.1 percent in 2012, a statistic that some labor experts say shows how difficult it is to measure the effects of such measures given other factors.
In Wisconsin, the percentage of workers in unions it fell to 11.7 percent in 2014 from 14.2 percent in 2010, before Mr. Walker took office.
Central to the new momentum behind the laws were sweeping Republican victories in state elections in 2010, when the party gained full control — in chambers and the governor's office — of states that included Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana. The Republicans did more profits in 2014which now controls 68 of the 98 chambers across the country and the most state legislative seats since 1920. But it was the 2010 victories that sparked a new flood of right-to-work legislation in the Midwest that had rarely been seen before.
Soon after taking office, Mr. Walker pushed for a bill that would have limited collective bargaining for most public sector workers and removed requirements to pay dues if they chose not to join the unions that represented them. Republicans elsewhere followed suit, but not all of these measures passed. Ohio, where Republicans had taken sole control of state government, passed a measure limiting collective bargaining, but it was rejected months later in a statewide ballot measure.
Then, for right-to-work advocates, came an even more memorable turn: In November 2012, voters in Indiana (where a law was repealed in the 1960s) re-elected Republican legislative majorities even after Labor leaders they promised to defeat them. to pass a right-to-work law earlier in the year. On election night, voters in Michigan rejected a labor-backed ballot measure to enshrine collective bargaining rights in the State Constitution.
“The combination sent a clear message to elected officials in the region: You can end forced contributions by passing right-to-work, and voters will reward you for it,” said Patrick Semmens, a spokesman for the National Right to Work Committee. who has kept a copy of The Indianapolis Star outside his office since the day after the law was passed there.
A month after the 2012 election, the Republican-controlled Michigan legislature, the cradle of America's labor movement, passed a right-to-work measure that was promptly signed by Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican who had said that the issue was not on his agenda.
Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, called it “a concerted effort by people who have a lot of wealth and power to get more wealth and power.”
“They've had these plans for a long time and now they've come to fruition,” he said.
In Madison, politics has been nearly impossible to separate from the discussion of policy in recent weeks. For many Democrats, the issue has become a heated, highly partisan battle over Mr. Walker, his conservative policies since 2011 and his flirtation with a presidential run.
“It's about union busting” Spokesman Chris Taylor, a Democrat, said during an all-night debate last week. At another point, Robin Vossthe Republican House speaker, said Democrats were suffering from “Walker derangement syndrome.”
In other states, where the debate is complicated by divided party control, leaders watched closely. In New Mexico, where a right-to-work measure passed a new Republican-controlled House last month, Democrats said they expected to see the measure disappear in a Senate committee still held by Democrats. “This is all about union busting,” said Sam Bregman, chairman of the New Mexico Democratic Party.
In Missouri, Republican lawmakers said they worried they might fall behind their Midwestern neighbors now that all that had changed. A measure that had been stalled for several years passed the state House last month, and a Senate committee is expected to send it to the floor in a few weeks. Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, has suggested a veto is likely, and Republicans say an override would be difficult.
“But when you see a Wisconsin, a Michigan, when they can do it there,” the senator said Mike ParsonsRepublican, “is it too hard to sit here in Missouri with things here and we can't do it?”
