Even before an independent agency created guidelines for state and municipal unions that want to continue to collectively bargain over wages, a prominent University of Wisconsin-based instructors’ union rejected recertifying with the state.
At its general membership meeting Aug. 18, the Teaching Assistants’ Association voted against seeking certification, citing high costs associated with certification votes and the ability to accomplish more as an unofficial union. In opting not to certify, the TAA lacks official recognition by the UW administration and all officially binding contracts.
Though decertification would limit the organization’s ability to bargain for better wages with the state, Pagac said winning higher salaries is merely one tool TAA has used to represent the rights of teaching assistants.
“Our union, like other unions, does more than just get our members a better paycheck,” Pagac said. “It fights to ensure democracy and dignity in the workplace, to advocate for graduate student worker concerns and interests at the [University of Wisconsin] and in our communities and to support working people in general.”
Under new rules recently laid out by the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, several election deadlines must be met by bargaining groups in order to be recertified by the state, according to a WEAC statement.
The groups of state and municipal employees must hold elections by Oct. 31 to be recertified, a rule that excludes state public safety employees and local law enforcement, fire and transit employees. According to the statement, the state will recertify the union if 51 percent of the union’s bargaining unit approves.
The new rules significantly weaken the ability to collectively bargain in a number of ways, TAA co-president Adrienne Pagac said in an email to The Badger Herald. For example, the pool of eligible voters in recertification elections has been expanded to include all of the individuals of a bargaining unit, rather than merely the members of the union who vote.
The TAA’s decision not to recertify is a part of a growing trend
among unions in the state, said University of Wisconsin political
science professor Charles Franklin.
A certification election every 12 months could be viewed as an
inefficient use of union resources, Franklin said, especially considering
unions can’t bargain over anything but wages, and even then bargaining
can only be made in regard to keeping up with inflation.
Franklin said the the strict union recertification process
established by WERC is a continuation of the anti-union policies of Gov. Scott Walker’s which are meant to give school boards and state institutions
greater financial flexibility.
Prior to the election deadlines, the bargaining groups must file election petitions, the statement said. If a bargaining unit fails to send a petition in by the required date, the body will no longer be certified by the state.
The petition and subsequent election deadlines will differ based on what type of employees the bargaining units represent.
The bargaining groups must also pay an election fee ranging from $200 for units with 100 members to $2,000 for groups with 3,000 or more members.
Pagac said partaking in the process of getting recertified would have unnecessarily diverted physical and emotional energy, as well as financial resources, away from the current responsibilities of the organization.
This is not the first time the union will not be certified by the state; the TAA lacked official recognition in the late 1960s as well as the mid-1980s, Pagac said.
She said the enactment of Act 10 and subsequent bargaining rule changes correlates with a mission that originated at the Capitol with the aim of weakening the bargaining rights of workers across the state.
“A union is a union because workers decide to be a union. Union members recognize that they are stronger when they stand together – that management cannot manipulate and/or exploit its workforce when those workers support one another,” Pagac said.
