State’s high court to hear collective bargaining arguments in Nov.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear oral arguments next month in a legal challenge of the 2011 law stripping most public workers of nearly all their collective bargaining rights.

The court announced Thursday that it will hear arguments in the case of Madison Teachers, Inc. v. Scott Walker at 1:30 p.m. Nov. 11.

The plaintiffs in the case, the Madison Teachers, Inc. and Public Employees Local 61, which represents Milwaukee city employees, have challenged the constitutionality of the collective-bargaining law, known as Act 10.

The unions argued last year before Dane County Circuit Judge Juan Colas that parts of Act 10 violated workers’ right to freely associate with others and to equal representation under the law. The judge ruled parts of the law unconstitutional in a decision he handed down in September 2012. Specifically, the unions alleged that the law divided workers into two separate class, those who are represented by unions and those who are not, and treated each differently.

Most public employees, for instance, are barred by Act 10 from going through unions to bargain over anything except for pay increases needed to keep up with rises in the cost of living. Such restrictions do not apply to employees who bargain outside of unions.

According to a document released by the Supreme Court on Thursday, the state plans to argue that Act 10 does not infringe workers’ association rights, since nothing in the law bars them from joining unions; they have merely lost their right to gain an audience before state officials, which nothing in the state’s Constitution guarantees them.

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