On March 9, Governor Scott Walker signed into law Wisconsin’s right-to-work legislation. Like other state right-to-work statutes, this law prohibits any private-sector Wisconsin employer from requiring that an employee be a member of, or pay dues to, a labor union as a condition of hire or continued employment. The law does not affect current collective bargaining agreements that contain union security provisions that require union membership and payment of dues, but does prohibit such provisions in any future collective bargaining agreement. Wisconsin joins Indiana and Michigan the most recent states – and significantly, states in the industrialized upper Midwest – to pass right-to-work legislation, bringing the total number of states having such laws to 25.
