After years of wage freezes, a union representing 225 UW System trade employees negotiated a 1.81% raise for this year, which ended up being less than the 2% raise their non-union colleagues received.
The seemingly bizarre inversion of what union membership has historically meant for workers highlights the new world under Act 10 and raises questions as to why public employees even bother unionizing any more.
Act 10 severely limited collective bargaining for the majority of public employees and decimated the number of unions through annual recertification votes and other obstacles. But those unions that still exist a decade later are finding ways to survive and even grow their numbers.