As a result of the recently passed union legislation, University of Wisconsin officials who belong to labor organizations will
officially no longer have dues taken out of their paychecks by their employer.

In accordance with the official implementation of the budget repair bill in June, the
UW System announced it will cease to collect dues from its employees’ earnings for
the funding of labor organizations beginning in August, UW System spokesperson David
Giroux said.

Giroux said it is not entirely clear if the budget repair bill, the controversial legislation
which sparked protests at the Capitol last February, requires the UW System to stop
collecting dues for groups that do not engage in collective bargaining.

“It does seem like the intent was never to stop collection of dues for employee
organizations that do not take a role in collective bargaining,” Giroux said. “We’re hoping
that that could be clarified in some way.”

The repair bill restricts an employer from collecting labor organization dues from a
general employee’s earnings, Giroux said. He said a “labor organization” is any network
of employees whose goal is representing itself in collective bargaining with the State.

This would include unions acting on behalf of UW classified staff and faculty as well as
any affiliated local unions, he said.

Some employee organizations are still trying to better understand the full implications of
the new legislation, including PROFS, a non-profit organization that campaigns on behalf
of UW-Madison faculty, PROFS President Joe Salmons said.

“I think the key point is that we’re talking to people about clarifying exactly what is
intended. It’s not clear, to me at least, what was intended by the legislation,” Salmons said.

The Teaching Assistants’ Association is one of the groups the UW System will no longer
collect dues from, TAA Co-President Adrienne Pagac said. TAA is the oldest graduate
student worker union in the country.

Pagac said the prohibition of dues collection will require organizations to spend more
time and resources attempting to manage dues on their own.

Payroll departments, who are keenly familiar in general deductions from employee
paychecks, she said, are better at ensuring dues will be taken for employee organizations.

Pagac said while TAA would prefer the UW System collect its dues, it has come up
with ways of collecting dues on its own.

“We have already devised our own dues collection procedure that we will implement
in the fall,” Pagac said. “We will continue to advocate on behalf of graduate student
workers on campus and to fight for and support the interests of working people here in
our community and beyond.”

These changes will likely be seen in paychecks for classified staff in late August and for
unclassified staff in early September, Giroux said.

Salmons said before PROFS makes any changes it would like to see more specifically how the organization will be affected.

“We got a whole set of ideas of what we would do if it came to that. But again we are not
going to start doing things until the interpretation is clear,” Salmons said.