Van Hollen seeks stay in Act 10 order

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The Wisconsin Attorney General is calling on the state Supreme Court and court of appeals to allow school union elections to go forward despite a Dane County judge’s order to the contrary.

The office of Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen issued a news release Friday asking for a stay of a contempt order issued by Dane County Judge Juan Colas on Monday. The order called on two commissioners of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, James Scott and Rodney Pasch, to abide by Colas’ 2012 ruling that parts of a law stripping most public workers’ of collective bargaining rights were unconstitutional. The commission regulates various matters concerning relations between labor and employers.

Among other things, Colas demanded on Monday that the commissioners pay heed to his ruling on a provision that would require public unions to hold annual recertification elections.

Under the provision, only unions that are certified in one of those elections can continue bargaining with employers. To be certified, a union has to win votes from 51 percent of the employees it could represent, rather than a majority of those actually voting.

The contempt order threatened to cancel recertification elections that were scheduled to take place Nov. 1. According to the release from Van Hollen’s office, the elections could go forward on that day if Van Hollen’s request for a stay were granted by Tuesday. Alternatively, according to the release, the elections could still occur this year if the stay request were granted by Nov. 4.

Van Hollen’s office said that denying the stays would deprive public workers of their right to take part in recertification elections.

“Those elections are designed to ensure that municipal employees within a collective bargaining unit have the opportunity to choose, on an annual basis, whether they wish to be represented by a collective bargaining agent and who that agent should be,” Van Hollen said in the release.

The case Colas issued his ruling in was brought by the Madison Teachers Union and a union representing Milwaukee public employees, as well individual members of each group. The state Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case on Nov. 11.

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