WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Massachusetts Monday struck down the Trump administration’s efforts to require a $100,000 visa fee for highly skilled immigrant workers, finding the policy is an unlawful tax.

Judge Leo T. Sorokin found the hefty fee placed on the H-1B visa by President Donald Trump exceeded his authority by creating a tax, something that falls under Congress’ authority.  

“The President has no authority to levy a tax unless such a power is delegated by Congress through statute,” Sorokin, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, wrote. “For these reasons, the Court finds that the Policy imposes a tax on H-1B petitions without the requisite delegation by Congress.”

The H-1B program allows a U.S. employer to hire a noncitizen worker in a specialty occupation for a maximum of six years, ranging from the technology industry to healthcare workers. At a minimum, visa applicants have to hold a bachelor’s degree.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement to States Newsroom that the agency disagrees “with this blatant judicial activism dismantling President Trump’s historic efforts for immigration reform.”

“The recent changes to the H-1B visa program, including the increased fee, are intended to address concerns about program integrity and the impact on the U.S. workforce,” the spokesperson said. “The policy aims to ensure that employers prioritize hiring U.S. workers, particularly in high-skilled fields. The Trump Administration remains committed to safeguarding opportunities for American workers and maintaining the integrity of employment-based visa programs.”

The suit was brought by 20 states: California, Massachusetts, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and Wisconsin. 

In September the Department of Homeland Security issued a proclamation requiring employers to pay a $100,000 fee for a noncitizen to enter the U.S. under a H-1B visa. 

Immigrants seeking green cards will have to return first to their home countries and wait despite years of potential backlogs, the Trump administration announced Friday. 

“An alien who is in the U.S. temporarily and wants a Green Card must return to their home country to apply,” Zach Kahler, a spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in a statement. 

The change would apply to workers on temporary visas, as well as to people living here illegally but hoping for legal status through sponsorship by relatives such as spouses or children who are U.S. citizens.

The immigration advocacy group FWD.us said the new policy “will create chaos and impose massive costs on immigrants who have lived and worked legally in the United States for many years” in a statement to Stateline. 

Business leaders said the move is disruptive to tech industries that rely on foreign workers who have temporary visas and sometimes hope for a green card and eventual citizenship.  

Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera and an adjunct professor of computer science at Stanford University, in an X post called the change “a capricious attack on legal immigration” that will “hurt families, leave us with fewer doctors, teachers and scientists, and hurt American competitiveness in AI.” 

“This is the worst imaginable way to disrupt important work for the country and pretend you’re fighting some loophole,” Silicon Valley venture capitalist Nick Davidov wrote on X, saying at least three large startups in his portfolio would be hurt by the policy. 

The so-called green cards represent a status called lawful permanent residence, a legal immigration status that can lead to citizenship. 

The administration’s intent, Kahler said in the statement, is to prevent temporary visitors from seeking permanent legal status while they’re in the United States. 

“Nonimmigrants, like students, temporary workers, or people on tourist visas, come to the U.S. for a short time and for a specific purpose,” Kahler wrote. “Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over. Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process.”

Those affected include many tech workers on temporary visas that might lead to green cards. 

“This includes top scientists in our universities, founders of billion dollar companies,” Davidov wrote in his post, referring to temporary visas such as O-1 (extraordinary ability) and H-1B (highly skilled specialties) visas that can lead to citizenship with employer sponsorship. FWD.us estimates H-1B visa holders and their families in the United States number about 1.3 million. 

People from India would have to wait through years of backlogs if they stopped working and went home to apply for green cards, and people from Russia would be unable to apply at all because there’s no U.S. embassy there, he noted. 

The USCIS announcement did refer to “extraordinary” circumstances that might allow continued processing of green cards in the United States but did not elaborate. 

According to a policy memo issued Friday, USCIS agents “must consider and weigh all the relevant evidence” and determine “if approval of the alien’s adjustment of status application is in the best interest of the United States.” 

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

Reading Time: 10 minutes

Click here to read highlights from the story

• Fidelity bonds protect businesses if an employee steals or commits fraud. 

• The state issues the bonds, and research shows they’re one of the most effective ways to persuade employers to hire people with criminal records.  

• But Wisconsin issues few fidelity bonds. 

• Experts are divided on the issue, with some saying the free insurance can’t hurt and might help. 

• Others say it doesn’t address all the concerns employers have or educate them about the benefits of giving people with criminal records a second chance.

For every 10 people released from Wisconsin’s prisons, just seven find jobs within two years — even as the state’s ongoing worker shortage leaves many employers scrambling to find the help they need. 

The struggle isn’t unique to Wisconsin. Formerly incarcerated people nationwide are far more likely to be unemployed than the general population. One reason: Though people with criminal records often outperform their colleagues, many employers worry they’ll be unreliable or even dangerous. 

That’s why, 60 years ago, the U.S. government began insuring employers against that risk, for free. 

The Federal Bonding Program, established in 1966, offers “fidelity bonds” to reimburse businesses for losses if the covered employee steals or commits fraud. 

Recent research suggests these bonds are one of the most effective ways the government can persuade employers to give jobs to people with criminal records. Those jobs have ripple effects.  Families become more financially stable, communities become safer — as people with jobs are less likely to commit new crimes — and taxpayers save money as fewer people return to prison.  

So why aren’t Wisconsin employers requesting these bonds? While some states issued hundreds last year, Wisconsin issued just three — even though an estimated 1.4 million Wisconsinites have a criminal record. 

Demand in the state is so low that when the federal government in 2019 offered Wisconsin $100,000 to spend on bonds, workforce officials used just $15,000.

To figure out what’s going on, Wisconsin Watch spoke to economists, insurance experts, criminologists and workforce development officials, who ranged from enthusiastic to cynical about bonding. 

Some said the coverage limits may be too low to address employers’ worries, or that bonds don’t help when employers are worried about safety or a bad work ethic. Some said employers overestimate the risk of hiring people with criminal records and that education — not insurance — is the solution. But most said offering this free insurance can’t hurt and might help. 

In a worker-strapped state, is this insurance program a little-known lifeline or an irrelevant relic? 

Bonding basics

Imagine you’re a hiring manager who wants to offer a job to an applicant with a criminal record. If you’re in the same boat as many businesses, your commercial insurance may not cover any theft or other act of dishonesty if the employee in question has a criminal record. 

To fill that insurance gap, you contact your state’s bonding coordinator to apply for a six-month, no-deductible fidelity bond that will reimburse you for up to $5,000 in losses. In special circumstances, you can apply for additional coverage of up to $25,000. The state handles the paperwork and the $100 cost. 

The program boasts a claim rate of just 1%, meaning businesses in the program seldom report losses. At the end of the six months, you may now be satisfied that your new employee is trustworthy — or you can buy additional coverage. 

In Wisconsin, these bonds are the only incentive available to encourage what’s often called “second chance” or “fair chance” hiring.

“It is a unique tool to help a job applicant get and keep a job,” the state’s Department of Workforce Development says on its bonding webpage. “It is like a ‘guarantee’ to the employer that the person hired will be an honest worker.” 

The same bonds are also available to other job applicants whose background could make it hard to get or keep a job. That includes people in treatment or recovery for alcohol or drug addictions and people with little or no work history. 

In practice, the program is almost exclusively used for people with criminal records, according to program administrator Kevin Kulling. 

Wisconsin focuses much of its outreach effort on prisons, making sure people know how to take advantage of the program when they get out. The stakes are high: Of those released in 2023, nearly 1 in 3 were rearrested within a year and 1 in 8 ended up back behind bars. 

Recent research backs bonds 

Governments have tried a variety of ways to persuade employers to hire people with criminal records. 

Nationally, there’s the $2-billion-a-year federal Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which rewards employers for hiring people with felony convictions. But new research finds the tax credit doesn’t increase pay or hiring for the workers it’s designed to help. It expired in December but could be reinstated.

Meanwhile, a growing number of states have tried to boost job seekers by barring employers from asking about criminal records on job applications. In about a dozen states, public and private employers are subject to such “ban-the-box” measures. 

Evidence is mixed. Several studies find these laws reduce hiring for Black and Hispanic men, suggesting that when employers can’t check an applicant’s criminal record, they instead make assumptions based on demographics.

Enter the bond, a policy that predates the others by decades. In 1975, the U.S. Department of Labor commissioned a study of the then-new program. Participating workers reported major salary increases after joining the program, and a majority held on to their bonded job longer than one year. 

New evidence supports the program. In a 2023 article, researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research teamed up with an online hiring platform to survey businesses. The platform asked users about their willingness to hire people with criminal records and how that might change if the platform offered wage subsidies or insurance coverage. 

Researchers found employer willingness to hire someone with a criminal record rose 12% when offered up to $5,000 in crime and safety insurance. It would take an 80% wage subsidy to get the same result. 

Mitchell Hoffman, an economics professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara, co-authored that study. He said policymakers have often tried to solve these hiring challenges by trying to change the workers, like with training or therapy. This research suggests it’s possible to change employers’ behavior, too.

That matters, he said, because employers hold the cards. “If firms don’t want to employ people with a record, then it’s hard to move them to employment and to good jobs,” Hoffman said.

The findings are welcome news to Jen Doleac, executive vice president of criminal justice at the philanthropy Arnold Ventures and author of the book “The Science of Second Chances: A Revolution in Criminal Justice.” Doleac, who researches crime and discrimination, was surprised when she first learned about the Federal Bonding Program.

“It’s such a smart idea. Employers say they’re worried about the risk of hiring someone with a record. How do we deal with risk? We provide insurance,” Doleac said. A critic of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, she said the new research shows why bonds are a better bet. 

“Insurance just moved the needle more, and much more dollar for dollar,” Doleac said.   

Experts divided

Even in states issuing hundreds of bonds a year, that’s just a fraction of those released from prison annually, and a smaller share of all people with criminal convictions. 

“The total number of firms nationally that were involved, it seemed like a very small number,” Hoffman said. “There's interesting variation across states, but overall, just not that much usage.”

Just 27 Wisconsin employers participated in the program in the last five years, according to federal records obtained by Wisconsin Watch. Those businesses range from national retailers like Dollar Tree to smaller agricultural businesses like Rine Ridge Farms. 

Why haven’t bonds proven more popular? Wisconsin Watch asked more than a dozen Wisconsin businesses and industry groups about their experience with the Federal Bonding Program. Just one responded, and none agreed to answer questions. 

Hoffman thinks maybe employers just aren’t that worried, or that the risk they’re worried about isn’t covered by the bonds. They may worry the applicant will be unreliable or even dangerous, despite evidence to the contrary. In a 2021 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, more than 80% of business leaders said second-chance hires perform the same as or better than other employees. 

“If someone does something bad to a customer,” Hoffman said, that customer might sue, or customers might take their business elsewhere. Bonds don’t cover that risk. “That is very difficult to quantify. What is the cost of that sort of event?”

Another possibility, Doleac said, is that employers don’t know about the bonds. Some states may be doing more to get the word out than others, but marketing costs money that state workforce departments may not have.

The more likely explanation, she said, is that the process is too cumbersome for employers who are used to buying insurance that covers all their employees. Although job applicants and employers do not have to complete any paperwork to get a bond, employers still need to keep track of the policies that were issued to a specific employee. 

“It’s just too inconvenient and too much paperwork to keep track of,” Doleac said. She and her colleagues are exploring whether standard policies could include riders covering these workers, without a separate process or schedule. 

Meanwhile, some advocates for formerly incarcerated people worry that the bonds can backfire, making employers worry even more. 

Craig Coleman, a case manager for Forward Service Corporation, helps formerly incarcerated Wisconsinites get trained and find work. He doubts bonds will help them. 

“You’re saying to your employer, ‘If I steal from you, then you'll be reimbursed,’” Coleman said. “I’m not an HR person, but if I had someone come in with an insurance policy saying, ‘If I steal from you,’ that’s the end of the conversation. I'm not hiring you.”

Genevieve Martin of Talent Nova agrees. Before starting a website designed to help formerly incarcerated people prepare for the workforce, she worked at Dave’s Killer Bread, which built its brand on hiring people with criminal records. 

There, she trained more than 50 other companies on “fair-chance hiring,” teaching them that hiring people with criminal records isn’t risky. Talking about extra insurance policies undermines that message, she said.

“Rather than hiring the person because they’re the best person for the job, but they happen to have a record. Now we’re trying to say, ‘Here’s an insurance policy. Please do it,’” Martin said. 

The fact that Wisconsin employers seldom use fidelity bonds might even be a good sign. The state has unusually strong organizations that prepare applicants for work and match them with employers, said Josh Morby, who represents such groups as spokesperson for the Wisconsin Workforce Hub. If those organizations are doing their jobs well, employers will trust their participants — no insurance policy necessary. 

“Wisconsin employers are looking for candidates who are screened, prepared and supported so hiring justice-impacted talent becomes a reliable workforce solution, not a risk,” Morby said in an email.

Wisconsin bond use lags 

The bonding program’s popularity varies among states, according to data Wisconsin Watch obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration. In 2025, New Jersey issued 277 bonds, and Washington, D.C., issued 192. 

Meanwhile, 12 states didn’t issue any in 2025. 

Wisconsin Watch requested interviews with workforce officials in New Jersey, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia to learn why employers there are using more bonds. None responded. A U.S. Department of Labor spokesperson also declined an interview. 

One possible explanation for the higher numbers is that those states have higher unemployment rates. But Wisconsin’s unemployment rate was at a historic low in 2018, when the state issued 27 bonds, more than 12 times as many as it did in 2025. 

In 2019, Wisconsin workforce officials requested the maximum $100,000 federal grant to buy more bonds. They said they planned to buy 1,000 bonds over four years, plus more with other funds. They estimated more than 5,500 Wisconsinites with criminal records were eligible. The bonds, they said, would help break “the cycle of recidivism.”

But the COVID-19 pandemic — which shuttered businesses and locked down prisons — derailed the state’s plans. 

“With the unemployment rate at an increased rate in Wisconsin, many recruitment efforts for employers to use Fidelity Bonds (have) slowed,” officials wrote in each quarterly grant report from April 2020 to February 2021.

When the grant period ended in 2023, Wisconsin had issued just 59 bonds. Officials wrote that, despite their outreach efforts, their bond numbers were “extremely low.”

The bond’s popularity has since further waned. In each of the last two years, Wisconsin issued no more than three bonds. Department spokesperson Haley McCoy attributed that to the state’s tight labor market. 

“Given the strong demand to fill vacant positions, employers have not needed the added incentive of fidelity bonds to hire justice-involved employees during this historically strong economic period,” McCoy wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch.

Asked whether the Department of Workforce Development plans to make any changes to Wisconsin’s bonding program, McCoy said the bonds are “just one tool in the toolbox that can help a job seeker secure a job.” 

“We’ll continue to work with our partners to provide opportunities and prepare job seekers and workers for their next opportunity in Wisconsin,” McCoy wrote.

From a job market ‘hidden force’ to a lever against bias

Meanwhile, Arnold Ventures researchers are trying to figure out how to get more businesses across the country to use federal fidelity bonds or something similar. 

Criminal justice director Carson Whitelemons has been studying ways to improve the federal program. But she said just trying to understand how bonding works and how it fits with existing business policies can be “incredibly difficult.”

“Even for business owners who are trying to ask their insurers what is covered and what is not covered, it's not always clear, and often that realm of uncertainty, I think, is what makes employers cautious,” Whitelemons said.

But it’s not just about bonding. The work is part of a new effort she’s organizing with experts from a variety of fields, trying to understand the biases that can keep people from getting all kinds of coverage and how to fix them.  

“(Insurance) is such a powerful lever in terms of what people feel safe or empowered to do, what they feel protected from. This has come up again and again in terms of different issues in the United States, in home ownership and redlining — insurance is often this hidden force, especially in areas where there is stigma or discrimination.”

Hoffman, the HR economist, said if more employers use bonds, that could help dispel misconceptions about people with records. 

“Employers … think they’re less productive than they actually are,” Hoffman said. That’s not the problem bonds are designed to solve, but if bonding gets more employers to hire these applicants, the experience may change how they view similar applicants in the future, he said. 

Meanwhile, officials from Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections will continue teaching prisoners about these seldom-used bonds and encouraging them to pitch the opportunity to their potential future bosses — for better or worse.  

Hongyu Liu is a data investigative reporter for Wisconsin Watch. Email him at hliu@wisconsinwatch.org. 

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.

‘Second chance’ bonds show promise. Few Wisconsin businesses use them is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A Milwaukee alder is throwing his hat in the ring to seek the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, saying that he’s been told he’ll get aggressive financial support in challenging the Republican incumbent.

The announcement is getting pushback from a Democratic Party-aligned union group that has endorsed another Democrat in the district.

The newest entrant, Peter Burgelis, said that he was first approached a few months ago by Democratic “party members, not party leadership, but people that care about our state” who didn’t think any of the other 1st District Democrats could beat four-term U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville). He formally entered the race Sunday.

“What it will take to get him out of office is someone who can raise attention nationally, raise money on a national level and attract national attention to the race, that makes this the top 10 race for Democrats to support,” Burgelis told the Examiner Monday.

Burgelis is a mortgage loan officer who was elected to the Milwaukee County Board in 2022, then ran for and won a Milwaukee Common Council seat in 2024. He doesn’t live in the 1st CD and acknowledged in an interview Monday that could make him a target in attack ads.

He said he decided to enter the race after looking at the fundraising data for the other Democrats who will be competing  in the August primary to challenge Steil.

“What I was hoping to see in the first quarter financial report is one of the candidates break out strong with a war chest that would be able to go to bat against Bryan Steil, attract national attention, attract national money, and there just wasn’t anyone that did that,” Burgelis said.

A crowded primary field

This year’s 1st CD Democratic contest has drawn more hopefuls for the nomination than any year in recent memory. Until Burgelis’ entry, the contest had appeared to coalesce around four people.

Among those four is emergency room nurse Mitchell Berman, who announced his candidacy in August.

John Drew, a retired United Auto Workers union leader who chairs the UAW’s statewide political action council, told the Examiner Monday that the council endorsed Berman after distributing questionnaires, conducting interviews and assessing the campaigns of the Democratic hopefuls.

Berman’s background as an ER nurse and as a union member helped drive the endorsement. “He’s somebody who cares deeply about the issues that affect working people,” Drew said. “And we saw that he was running a strong campaign. He was raising more money than any of his opponents, and we felt he was the best candidate to take on Bryan Steil.”

Federal Election Commission reports filed through March 31 show that Berman has collected a total of $426,671 and spent $286,071, with $146,600 on hand. The nearest competitor, Randy Bryce, has collected $45,618 and spent $36,854.

Burgelis, however, told the Examiner Monday that he considers Berman’s fundraising and cash on hand too far behind Steil, who has more than $5.5 million on hand, to make him competitive in the November election.

Burgelis’ opening campaign salvo largely echoes the issues that the rest of the Democratic field in the 1st District — as well as in Wisconsin and nationwide — have been centering in the approaching midterm elections

“Gas is up, groceries are up, healthcare, utilities — everything’s more expensive because of Bryan Steil’s votes to promote the Trump agenda,” Burgelis said. “They’re cutting Medicaid and food assistance in exchange for trillion-dollar tax cuts. That’s not something Wisconsin voters support. Bryan Steil is in it to benefit his billionaire buddies.”

Recruited by former Democratic chair, other insiders  

Burgelis said he was first approached a few months ago, by “a number of people,” including former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate.

He said initially he was asked if his aldermanic district overlapped with the 1st CD. Burgelis said the congressional district is about a mile away.

“Months later the conversation came back to — ‘We need someone who can win and beat Bryan Steil. No one’s coming out of the pack,’” Burgelis said. He added that he was told that the upcoming quarterly fundraising reports “aren’t going to be strong enough,” was asked, “would you consider running?” and decided to enter the race.

“I had conversations with many Democrats and other political leaders before making my decision to run,” Burgelis told the Examiner. “I got broad agreement that someone with a successful political record and who could attract national attention and national money would be needed to beat [Steil].”

He said, “The opportunity to flip the seat and attract national attention and national money is now. Nobody running now can do that.”

Asked about his role in recruiting Burgelis, Tate said in an email message, “Peter asked me about running a while back and I encouraged him to do so. He’s a hard worker, a good progressive, and we need a strong candidate to take on Steil. I don’t have any other color or the like to add.”

Burgelis said his review of past election results gave him confidence that the seat could be flipped to the Democrats.

“The residency thing, I think, is certainly something that a GOP campaign ad is going to harp on in November and October,” Burgelis told the Examiner. “But right now, the goal for Democrats is to get the best candidates through the primary.”

An Urban Milwaukee report April 21 that Burgelis was considering the race noted that Wisconsin law requires members of Congress to live in the state, but does not require them to live in their district.

“The congressional district is a mile from my aldermanic district, and people and neighbors in my district care about the same things that everyone else in Southeastern Wisconsin cares about — life is unaffordable anymore,” Burgelis said.

He said the absence of local elected officials or state lawmakers from the district in the race tells him that “no one sees that they can bring in the national attention or national money needed to have a successful race against an incumbent Republican.”

Drew, the UAW leader, said he spoke with Burgelis after first learning he might run and asked the alder to walk through his reasoning. Burgelis didn’t convince him, however.

“I thought it was a terrible idea,” Drew said. “It seemed like for party insiders a chance to install a manufactured candidate instead of looking at people in the 1st CD — like Mitch Berman — who live there, who are organic candidates, who have a great profile.”

Berman has “dedicated time to campaigning for that office,” Drew added. Ignoring that is “an indication that there are people in the Democratic Party that have not learned anything from our defeats — that a working class candidate who is fighting for bread and butter economic issues is the type of candidate we need to win, not only the 1st CD but in general.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

This report was updated at 1:35 p.m. 4/23/2026.

Employees of two Wisconsin clinics operated by Rogers Behavioral Health voted by large majorities in favor of union representation Wednesday after more than two months in which the mental health nonprofit had campaigned heavily against the union.

In West Allis, employees voted 53-4 in favor of joining the National Union of Healthcare Workers. In Madison, the vote to join the union was 26-4. The votes were supervised by National Labor Relations Board officials at both clinics.

Employees at the two clinics “are ready to negotiate contracts that would provide better pay, protections to ensure safe staffing levels and more time to care for individual patients, as Rogers workers secured in California after joining NUHW,” the union stated in a press release Thursday.

The union represents Rogers employees at three facilities in California, where contracts have been negotiated, and one in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where contract negotiations are underway. “While contract negotiations are still ongoing in Philadelphia, the contracts Rogers agreed to for workers based in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego are among the best in the industry,”  the union statement said. “They include strong raises, limits on caseloads, and guarantees that no jobs will be lost to new technologies, including artificial intelligence.”

Rogers, based in Oconomowoc, said in a statement released Thursday, “We acknowledge the union election outcomes in Madison and West Allis Lincoln Center. We are evaluating our next steps in support of our system of care. We are committed to our patients, our people, and the integrated care that has made Rogers a trusted provider across Wisconsin since 1907.”

The union said in its press release that during the West Allis election Wednesday, Rogers management “prohibited NUHW’s representative from entering the facility and then suspended a worker who had agreed to serve as the union’s observer.”

Federal labor law procedures call for representatives from management as well as the union to observe the vote count. The absence of a union observer “could have resulted in the ballots being impounded and not immediately counted,” the union press release stated.

A second Rogers employee volunteered to serve as the union observer for the count “over the objections of Rogers’ representatives,” the NUHW stated, adding that Rogers did not attempt to stop ballots from being counted at the Madison clinic.

The workers involved were among three employees fired shortly after workers announced their petition for a union. The union has filed unfair labor practice charges over the terminations, claiming that the three were fired in retaliation for their support for unionization, which is illegal under federal law.

Rogers has declined to explain the firings, citing employment confidentiality, but said that it has not violated any laws.

Rogers Behavioral Health issued a follow-up statement Thursday about the voting conflict in West Allis. According to the statement, “individuals who are no longer employeed by Rogers had illegally entered the facility,” and Rogers contacted local police.

The next step will be for the National Labor Relations Board to certify the results. But a federal lawsuit challenging the agency is still pending. In addition, Rogers said in public statements as well as in communications to the workers before the vote that the company would not begin bargaining with the union until all its appeals have been exhausted. 

The nonprofit campaigned actively against unionization, telling employees that a union would not have been in the interests of the staff, the patients or the organization. In a final letter distributed on Monday, Rogers urged employees to vote no and made statements that the organization had made mistakes and wanted to be given another chance to improve relationships with the staff without a union.

Union supporters welcomed the outcome of Wednesday’s votes.

“We are thrilled with the overwhelming victory,” said Stephani Lohman, a nurse practitioner who was among those active in the union organizing campaign and was one of the three fired employees. “Over the last few weeks Rogers has shown us exactly why we need a union by running an aggressive anti-worker campaign, trying everything in their toolbox to intimidate and demoralize us, but it failed spectacularly because it was so cruel and wicked that it drove everyone to support the union.”

According to union supporters, the union campaign began late last year after changes at Rogers that included clinicians being reclassified from salaried to hourly, which resulted in schedule changes that increased patient volumes for staff members and reduced individual patient care. The organization increased caseload caps, “forcing caregivers to be responsible for far more patients than previously,” the NUHW said in its statement.

This report has been updated with additional information and comments Thursday from both the National Union of Healthcare Workers and from Rogers Behavioral Health. 

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

A federal judge in Milwaukee rejected a bid from Rogers Behavioral Health Tuesday to block a pair of union elections scheduled for Wednesday at Rogers mental health clinics in West Allis and Madison.

The decision sets the stage for votes to go forward at both clinics. About 35 employees at Rogers’ Madison clinic and about 68 at the West Allis clinic will vote Wednesday on whether to be represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers.

Rogers, based in Oconomowoc, had argued that the union election should cover all 13 Rogers facilities in Wisconsin — not just the two where employees had actively organized. But in a direction of election issued April 14, the NLRB regional director whose jurisdiction includes Wisconsin said those two clinics alone were each appropriate bargaining units.

On Monday, Rogers lawyers filed a lawsuit to block both elections. U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman denied the mental health nonprofit’s petition for a temporary restraining order Tuesday after an online hearing that ran a little more than 40 minutes.

“I don’t think that they’ve established unconstitutional irreparable harm,” Adelman said of Rogers’ lawyers.

The Rogers lawsuit echoed a recent line of legal challenges that have sought to unravel the National Labor Relations Board — the 91-year-old agency created under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as part of his administration’s New Deal to secure rights for workers and help the U.S. recover from the Great Depression.

One of Rogers’ lawyers, Aron Karabel, argued that the members of the NLRB itself as well as the regional director who issued the union election order are unconstitutional because they aren’t subject to dismissal by the president, violating the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution.

Similar arguments have been made by other businesses, including Amazon and SpaceX, but the U.S. Supreme Court has not endorsed the claim.

Karabel’s colleague, Hannah Fitzgerald, argued that under Wisconsin law, the NLRB regional director had engaged in “tortious interference” with existing employment contracts for some of the Rogers employees who would be included in the union election bargaining unit. For that reason as well as other reasons, the election could cause “irreparable harm” to Rogers, Fitzgerald asserted.

Representing the NLRB, lawyer Craig Ewasiuk said that a Supreme Court ruling 82 years ago established that individual contracts “may not be availed of or to defeat or delay the procedures prescribed by the National Labor Relations Act” to further collective bargaining.

“The Supreme Court has spoken unambiguously on this question, and you simply can’t bring tortious interference acts against the NLRB for running elections,” Ewasiuk said.

Karabel argued that Rogers’ case was not about collective bargaining — which would prevent the federal court from acting until after final action by the NLRB — and for that reason, the court was an immediately appropriate venue.

The NLRB lawyer rejected that argument. ‘’The employer is essentially trying to stop the board’s proceedings from resolving this underlying labor dispute,” Ewasiuk said.

Staunch resistance to the union

Rogers Behavioral Health has mental health clinics and hospitals in 10 states. Employees are already represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers at four clinics — three in California and one in Philadelphia, Pa. — and at three of those, the union was recognized voluntarily.

But in its home state of Wisconsin, Rogers has taken a much different posture.

Three employees were fired shortly after the union campaigns went public, according to the union, and the NUHW has filed unfair labor practice charges claiming the firings were illegal retaliation for union support.

Rogers has declined to discuss the firings as confidential personnel decisions but has stated they were not in violation of any laws.

From when employees first notified Rogers management of their desire for union representation, however, Rogers has posted notices and issued statements declaring that the mental health nonprofit doesn’t want  union representation for the West Allis and Madison employees.

“Many of your colleagues, your leaders, and I strongly believe that this union is not in the best interests of you, your family or our patients,” said one notice, stating it was from clinic leaders but without a name attached, that was shared with the Wisconsin Examiner. “We believe you should vote no and allow our team the opportunity for positive and direct collaborations.”

In March, Rogers’ executive director of marketing and communications, Maureen Remmel, responded to a question from the Examiner about the difference between Rogers’ responses at its California and Pennsylvania clinics and its handling of the union campaigns in Wisconsin

“While we work in good faith with the NUHW in California and Pennsylvania, our integrated system in Wisconsin is different,” Remmel said in an email message  March 17. “A direct relationship with our Wisconsin team members best serves employees, patients, and the company.”

At an NLRB hearing in February to establish the appropriate bargaining units for the Wisconsin clinics, Rogers’ lawyer argued that flexibility across multiple facilities was important and necessitated allowing all 13 Wisconsin locations to vote on union membership.

A statement attributed to the organization as a whole that Remmel sent April 16, after the election order was issued, asserted, “A union is not right for Rogers Behavioral Health in Wisconsin because it jeopardizes our ability to work together to solve problems quickly and flexibly.”

Jennifer Hadsall, the NLRB regional director, wrote in her analysis that there was little evidence of “functional integration” across the system to overcome the presumption that the two facilities where employees had organized were by themselves appropriate bargaining units.

Hadsall also rejected Rogers’ argument that certain employees were supervisors and therefore not eligible to be part of their facility’s bargaining unit.

Professional consultants

Starting in early February, Rogers has hired consultants to assist in managing its response to the union campaigns, according to LaborLab, a nonprofit based in Helena, Montana. LaborLab monitors the industry of consultants who advise and assist employers in responding to union drives.

Under the federal Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, employers and the consultants they hire to persuade employees “directly or indirectly” about unionizing must regularly file reports with the federal government. Employers file LM-10 reports and consultants file LM-20 reports as well as LM-21 annual financial reports.

While advocates for greater disclosure complain that those reports are often late or incomplete, they offer some information about those businesses.

LaborLab has identified three consultants working for Rogers since early February, when pro-union employees in Madison and West Allis petitioned for voluntary recognition. Two were identified through their LM-20 reports and one was named by union supporters during a radio interview with WORT-FM, the listener-sponsored community radio station in Madison.

LaborLab has estimated the consultants’ fees total about $50,000 a week, or more than $325,000 through April 1. Those don’t include the cost of attorneys representing the business on legal matters connected with the union campaign or “internal costs” that LaborLab’s calculations impute to employees assigned to directly address the union organizing effort.

“It’s hard to be precise because there are a lot of variables in these campaigns,” said Teke Wiggin, LaborLab’s strategic coordinator. “But we think that workers should have some general sense of how much is being invested in these campaigns.”

Wiggin said in an interview that some consultants interact only with corporate managers and executives, while others hold meetings with employees themselves, an action that requires disclosure in federal reports.

“They take arguments that have been crafted by industrial psychologists to sow as much fear and doubt about the value of unionization as possible,” Wiggin said.

In a letter sent to Rogers Feb. 25, 20 local and state elected officials criticized the organization for having “hired union busters” and urged the organization’s CEO to “immediately stop wasting patient care dollars on union busters paid to try to intimidate workers from organizing.”

Rogers did not respond to a question from the Examiner about its use of consultants in the organizing campaign.

In a response to the elected officials that was signed by “Rogers Behavioral Health,” the organization said it has “retained consultants to better understand and address the concerns shared by our employees and to raise awareness about their rights and the election process.”

Messages to employees

In a media statement April 16 after the election was scheduled, Rogers reiterated the organization’s position that a union was not the right choice for its employees and its intention to appeal the regional director’s finding after the election.

The day before, Rogers management emailed employees with a similar message, stating, “We are disappointed and disagree with this decision and are appealing to the full NLRB in Washington, D.C.”

The final line of the message was, “Regardless of the election outcome, bargaining will not start with the union until all appeals have been exhausted.”

The Wisconsin Examiner was provided screenshots of the message.

Employees involved in the union campaigns said that shortly after it landed in their inboxes, that message was remotely deleted, possibly because it was recalled.

On Monday, Rogers distributed another letter at both the West Allis and Madison locations that took up about a page and a half.

“We want to be direct with you today: change is coming to Rogers,” states the letter, photos of which were shared with the Examiner. “You will see it. We are working on it. That is why we are asking you to vote no on Wednesday and allow leadership 12 months to demonstrate to you, your colleagues, patients and families our commitment to making Rogers better than ever.”

Under federal labor law, if a majority of employees vote against a union in a representation election, the employees must wait at least 12 months before seeking a union again.

The members of Rogers’ leadership team “have heard you,” the letter states. “We know that there are things we can do and must do better.”

The letter’s final paragraphs reiterated both the vow to improve relations and a plea to vote against the union.

“The leadership team is committed to doing better. Today we are asking you to please give us 12 months. Vote ‘no’ in the upcoming election and give us a chance to show our commitment in action. If we do not come through for you, the law gives you the right to hold another election. Rogers will honor your choice in that election.

“Please vote ‘no’ on April 22. Vote to hold Rogers leadership accountable.”

Federal court records show Rogers filed its lawsuit to block the vote the same day that employees received that letter.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Employees of two Wisconsin mental health clinics, both part of a national mental health nonprofit based in Oconomowoc, will vote next week on whether to join a union after what has become a highly contested campaign.

Almost two months after a four-day National Labor Relations Board hearing, the NLRB’s Minneapolis-based regional director this week ordered the elections at the clinics, operated by Rogers Behavioral Health in West Allis and Madison.

In the April 14 order, Regional Director Jennifer A. Hadsall rejected Rogers’ position that the election should include all 13 Wisconsin Rogers locations. Hadsall instead directed elections at the West Allis and Madison clinics, where a majority of employees had signed up with the National Union of Healthcare Workers, according to the union.

Union supporters at the Wisconsin clinics have said they decided to seek union representation in response to increased caseloads, changes in how employee productivity was measured and a reduction in individual time that therapists and other providers could spend with patients.

“All of the changes were about increasing the number of patients that were coming into the building,” Stephani Lohman, a nurse practitioner, told the Wisconsin Examiner earlier this year. “It did not seem to have a cohesive plan and no plan would be communicated.”

The NUHW is based in California. After employees at a Rogers clinic in Walnut Creek, California, organized in 2023 and elected the union to represent them in 2023, they negotiated their first contract in 2024.

Employees at two other California clinics and at a clinic in Philadelphia also joined the union, which those three clinics voluntarily recognized.

Union supporters at the West Allis and Madison clinics each sought voluntary recognition of the union after organizing over the past year.

In Wisconsin, however, Rogers declined voluntary recognition, and the employees then filed petitions with the NLRB for union elections.

Lohman worked at the West Allis clinic, known as Lincoln Center, and was among those active in organizing the union. She said she and two other employees were fired after submitting the petition to be recognized. The union has filed unfair labor practice charges claiming that the three firings were in retaliation for union organizing, which is against the law.

In response to an inquiry in March about the firings, Maureen Remmel, Rogers’ executive director for marketing and communications, told the Wisconsin Examiner via email, “We do not comment on confidential personnel matters and have acted in compliance with applicable law.”

Hadsall held a hearing that took place Feb. 23 through Feb. 27 at the NLRB’s office in Milwaukee, where Rogers’ lawyers argued for a bargaining unit of 1,383 employees encompassing all Rogers locations in Wisconsin — three hospitals in the Milwaukee area and 10 outpatient clinics around the state.

Rogers had “a heavy burden” to overcome the presumption that a single facility is an appropriate bargaining unit, Hadsall wrote in her order this week, and she found that management had  failed to do so.

The evidence in how Rogers is organized and supervises its employees was insufficient to overcome a general presumption in U.S. labor law — that a union bargaining unit representing a single health care facility in a larger network or organization is considered appropriate.

Evidence in the case showed that neither of the two clinics had “lost their separate identity such that a single-facility union would be inappropriate,” Hadsall wrote.

Union elections for about 68 employees at the West Allis Lincoln Center clinic and about 35 at the Madison clinic are scheduled for Wednesday, April 22.

For employees at both clinics who have been seeking union representation, the decision was welcome news.

“I’m thrilled and beyond thrilled,” said Erin Quinlan, a behavioral health specialist at the Madison clinic. “It really just vindicated how firm our stance is and how confident we feel about organizing a union and doing so for the Madison clinic.”

Lohman said she and other West Allis employees who have been seeking union representation were pleased as well.

“I’ve just been feeling really overjoyed,” Lohman said Thursday. She and the other fired employees will be able to vote in the West Allis union election, she said.

Rogers Behavioral Health has announced the organization will appeal the order to the full NLRB in Washington, but that will not forestall next week’s voting.

“We are disappointed with the NLRB regional office’s decision to allow separate bargaining units given that Rogers Behavioral Health operates as one unified system across Wisconsin,”  Rogers said in a statement, which Remmel delivered via email. The statement asserted that patients “can move seamlessly between different levels of care, supported by providers who collaborate across locations.”

In her order, however, Hadsall found that there was not sufficient evidence of “functional integration” across the system to overcome the presumption that a single facility is appropriate for a bargaining unit.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Reading Time: 5 minutes

On a rainy Friday afternoon, I walked into the Manitowoc County Jail. I asked tentatively into the metal box at the door: “I’m here to see Randy Curtis?”

I was there to deliver a simple message. What I stumbled into was something much larger, a reality I had not previously fully understood.

Randy had missed a few shifts without calling in. His supervisor looked for him where we sometimes do when an employee disappears without a word: the inmate list at the county jail. Sure enough, there was his name.

Randy is a knockout pourer at Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, doing hard physical work for $27.53 an hour – good money, the kind that, if you’re careful and nothing goes wrong, can be the beginning of something. He had spent years rebuilding his life in Manitowoc after a troubled young adulthood in Milwaukee. He had a girlfriend. He was saving for a car. Then an old legal matter surfaced, along with a small claims debt.

It is not uncommon for our employees to find themselves in jail. Often it’s a DUI, delinquent child support or drugs. The ones who don’t have money for bail spend weeks or months awaiting resolution. Usually in these situations we let the employment relationship expire.

But Randy’s supervisor called me: “We have to keep his job for him.” Of course we would. But how would we let him know? I pictured him in that cell, cut off from the outside world, assuming he had lost his job and maybe his apartment and girlfriend too, watching his precarious new life crash down.

I went to tell him myself.

The corrections officer was polite but matter-of-fact. I could not see the inmate in person. To speak with him, I would need to create an account on a third-party video service, deposit money, schedule a window and wait.

I am a CEO. I work on computers all day. It still took me the better part of an hour to figure it all out.

The service was called CIDNET, operated by Encartele, a corporation in Nebraska. The site defaulted to a purchase of 150 megabytes at 30 cents per megabyte. That’s $45, before a “Data Security Token” fee and a 5% merchant surcharge on top. I put $10 on the account, enough for a few minutes. On Sunday evening I logged on, saw Randy on a small screen and quickly told him his job was waiting. He looked relieved.

I want to be fair. Someone has to pay for that infrastructure. The same logic applies to bank overdraft fees and payday loan rates. Even the $2.59 Snickers bar in our plant vending machine, nearly four times what my family pays at Costco, is bought by a worker without the time or transportation to shop elsewhere. Each of these charges is, on its own terms, defensible. Together they amount to something else: a compounding tax on not having enough.

Being poor, it turns out, is expensive.

Randy made it through. Another of our employees didn’t fare as well.

I’ll call him Michael. He had spent his entire life in America, brought here as a small child. He was a DACA recipient – a “Dreamer” – tantalizingly close to getting his papers in order for permanent residency, but first he had to navigate old speeding tickets, lawyer fees, court dates and filing costs. He had a newborn and two toddlers at home. He could not even afford a cellphone. Outside of work, he reached me through Facebook Messenger when he could find Wi-Fi.

The fees accumulated the way fees do: the lawyer, the filings, the court dates that cost him wages he couldn’t replace, the paid leave that drained away appointment by appointment. Everything was a small thing.

But Michael had no margin for small things.

The weight of it followed him onto the shop floor. He grew distracted, made mistakes — costly ones in a manufacturing environment — and we had to let him go. I think about that a lot.

The word I keep coming back to is margin. In business, margin is everything. The difference between a company that survives a bad few years and one that doesn’t is not always the size of the problem. It is the cushion beneath it.

Families have margins, too.

A salaried employee who gets a DUI posts bond and goes home. She takes a long lunch for a dental appointment and loses nothing. When life disrupts her, it disrupts her. When life disrupts Randy or Michael, there is no category called disruption. There is functioning, and there is collapse. A car breaks down, the flu strikes, child care closes unexpectedly — attendance points rack up, the job is suddenly in jeopardy, and the carefully assembled structure of a life starts to come apart.

What I find remarkable is not that Randy and Michael sometimes stumble. It’s that they hold everything together as long as they do, maintaining a level of daily discipline against a backdrop of distress that most of us will never be tested to match.

My 8-year-old and I have been reading about black holes. The closer you get, the more energy you need to escape – until escape becomes physically impossible. That is what I witnessed. Not a failure of will. A gravitational pull that compounds with every setback, every fee, every missed day. 

There is a threshold, call it escape velocity, below which the system’s small relentless extractions become unsurvivable. My former college professor Lisa Dodson, who spent years embedded with low-income workers across the country, calls this the “house of cards” – the architecture of poverty where there is no redundancy, no reserve, no margin for the ordinary turbulence of a human life.

So what can we do? At Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, we’ve introduced daily pay so workers can access wages as they earn them rather than waiting two weeks. We offer $400 per month in child care reimbursement, structured specifically to help newer, younger employees.

Most traditional benefits – vacation time, tenure-based wage levels, pension plans – naturally favor workers already on solid footing. Our most expensive benefit, health care, is the one our youngest and lowest-paid employees use the least. We can design benefit structures with that reality in mind, and we are trying.

These are imperfect responses to a structural problem. They are what one employer can do.

On policy, cash bail reform deserves serious attention. In theory, judges already weigh risk when setting bail. In practice, a $500 bail amount means freedom for one person and months in jail for another. A system that makes that distinction irrelevant might have kept Randy’s life from nearly unraveling.

The full set of public policy answers is beyond my grasp. But what I do know is that the national conversation about affordability — housing, gas, airfares — is largely about the middle class. Randy and Michael aren’t worried about buying a house. They are fighting for the basic foothold that most of us take entirely for granted.

My parents came to this country with very little and found the American Dream to be real. I believe it can still be real. Randy believed in it enough to leave Milwaukee and start over in a city where no one knew him. Michael believed in it enough to show up every single day while his entire future hung on a bureaucratic decision somewhere.

Just this week, JPMorgan Chase announced its “American Dream Initiative” aimed at strengthening small businesses, homeownership and economic mobility – a recognition that the American Dream is not self-sustaining and requires constant effort from institutions large and small.

At our holiday party earlier this year, my wife and I spotted Randy across the room — arm around his girlfriend, at a table full of co-workers, dressed in his best, laughing. 

Michael messaged me last week. He’s been out of work for two months, getting by on his wife’s income. He said he’s going to reapply at the foundry. When he does, we’ll take him back.

Neither story is finished yet. They haven’t reached escape velocity. But they are defying gravity, every single day.

Sachin Shivaram is the chief executive officer of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry in Manitowoc.

Opinion: How poverty’s gravity pulls workers under is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.