A longtime Wisconsin factory worker charges the United Steelworkers threatened to have her fired for seeking to leave the union.
It’s another brazen act by Badger State Big Labor, emboldened by a union-friendly governor and the prospects of the state Supreme Court taking a left turn, a worker’s freedom advocate tells The Wisconsin Daily Star.
Kerri Wenske has worked for decades at Essity, a Neenah, WI, manufacturer of consumer tissue and professional hygiene products. She filed federal charges last week against United Steelworkers Local 2-1279, alleging that a union official ordered the company to fire her after she exercised her right to terminate her union membership and cut off her dues deductions.
Wenske filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and is being represented free of charge by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
According to the complaint, United Steelworkers Local 2-1279 President Bill Kilishek, in the presence of a witness, told Wenske that she would “be terminated from her employment based on her decision to resign her union membership.” An International Union representative also showed Wenske a copy of a letter sent to Essity’s Philadelphia headquarters requesting the company fire the former union member, the complaint states.
Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, tells The Star the union backed down on Friday, recognizing that Wenske was well within her rights to leave the union and stop the dues it grabbed from her paycheck. He said the local’s union authorization card notes members can withdraw at any time. Mix said that was a “peculiar” mistake on the part of the union, which generally gives workers a slim window of time each year to end membership.
Kilishek or other union officials could not be reached for comment.
Liberals Smell Victory
The unfair labor practice charge against the Steelworkers is the latest example of Big Labor feeling freer to flex its muscle in Wisconsin buoyed by support from liberal Governor Tony Evers and the real prospect that pro-union liberals could take back control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
“You can’t watch over $6 million spent on a Supreme Court race and not think there are politics involved,” Mix said of the $6 million-plus in TV ads for the pivotal contest. Next Tuesday’s primary will winnow down the race from four candidates — two conservatives and two liberals — to two who will face off in the April election to replace conservative outgoing Justice Patience Roggensack. Conservatives currently hold a slim 4-3 majority on the court.
To date, liberal groups have spent $3.2 million on TV ads, while conservative groups have laid out about $2.8 million, according to AdImpact.
As of Tuesday, Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz, who is backed by Democrats, had raised an eye-popping $1.9 million since announcing her bid for the Supreme Court seat last year. She’s leading her three competitors by about a half-million dollars combined in the money chase. The vast majority of Protasiewicz’s campaign cash has come from out-of-state donors.
Liberals smell victory after more than a decade of being in the minority on the critical high court. The conservative majority has presided over key policy issues, giving wins to Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled Legislature on everything from political maps to limiting Democrat Gov. Tony Evers’ executive branch powers.
In its last term, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court issued more 4-3 decisions than at any time in the last 70 years, Marquette University history professor Alan Ball told Wisconsin Public Radio. The court’s three liberals nearly always stick together, but “swing vote” conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn has sided with the left in several key decisions, making the upcoming Supreme Court election all the more critical for those who favor a federalist approach to the law.
‘On the Prowl’
Among the conservative-passed laws in the crosshairs is Act 10, former Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s landmark legislation that curbed the outsized power of public sector labor unions — saving taxpayers billions of dollars in the process. Act 10 gives public employees the right to opt out of union membership and dues and requires unions to hold recertification votes every year. Consequently, Big Labor’s strength has diminished in the state that pioneered government worker collective bargaining.
But unions have a solid ally in Democrat Gov. Tony Evers, whose campaign has been generously funded by organized labor. The governor has repeatedly attempted to kill Act 10, prevailing wage reforms and Wisconsin’s right-to-work law through his budgets. He’s been checked by a Republican-controlled Legislature. But if the Supreme Court is led by liberals, it is certain that Act 10 would come back to the court and its fate would be very much in doubt.
Sources tell The Star that thousands of state employees have received emails from the American Federation of Teachers itching to get back into the state offices where they’ve been pushed out for years.
“Union officials are on the prowl for opportunities to strike down Act 10 and the right-to-work law,” Mix said. “They’re all emboldened by an administration that will look the other way. Despite a president who says he’s the most pro-union president ever, he is really the most pro-forced-unionization president in American history.”
In the private sector, the United Steelworkers and other unions have been pushing the envelope in large thanks to a pro-union National Labor Relations Board driving the policies of President Joe Biden, who early vowed to be the “most pro-union president’ ever.
Last month, metal workers at Latrobe Specialty Metals/Franklin Carpenter Technology in Franklin, PA, successfully voted Steelworkers officials out of their facility after the union chiefs tried to trap workers under a contract they voted against twice. The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation represented the employees in that case, as well.
Also last month, foundation attorneys spurred the NLRB’s prosecution of Steelworkers Local 832 for illegally seizing months of dues from Kentucky employee Melva Hernandez.
“Steelworkers union officials are continuing their nationwide campaign of punishing workers who disagree with the union’s agenda,”Mix said. “That Steelworkers chiefs tried to get Ms. Wenske – a veteran Essity employee – fired merely because she no longer supports the union demonstrates just how little they care about the free choice rights of workers and winning over employee support voluntarily.”
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Wisconsin State Capitol” by Bohao Zhao. CC BY-SA 3.0.
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