Job centers help people who are looking for work, including people who must conduct work searches each week to receive unemployment benefits. A bill to change the unemployment insurance rules has divided lawmakers despite being offered by the joint labor-management Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

This report has been updated

A bill that would boost Wisconsin’s top weekly jobless pay while penalizing people who receive federal disability pay is heading to the Assembly floor — so far with only GOP support. 

On Wednesday, Gov. Tony Evers’ communications director said the governor will veto the measure if it reaches his desk.

The legislation, AB 652, would also impose several previously vetoed changes to the state’s unemployment insurance (UI) law. It passed the Assembly’s labor committee Tuesday on a 6-3 vote, with all committee Democrats voting no.

The bill came from the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council. With equal participation of labor and management, the council negotiates changes to the state’s unemployment insurance law every two years.

The council historically has been credited with giving neither side a lopsided advantage in revisions to the unemployment insurance system. The bill that the body offered for the current legislative session, however, has become problematic for some of the council’s staunchest advocates.

“I simply cannot vote for this particular bill as written,” said Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) at Tuesday’s vote by the Assembly Committee on Workforce Development, Labor and Integrated Employment.

The measure would increase the maximum jobless pay for the first time in 12 years — to $395 a week from $370.

It would also formally repeal a 12-year-old ban on unemployment benefits for people who receive federal Social Security Disability Income. At the same time, however, it would cut an SSDI recipient’s jobless payments by the equivalent of half their weekly disability income.

A federal judge ruled in July 2024 that Wisconsin’s ban violated federal laws protecting people with disabilities.

In 2025 the judge ordered the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development to stop denying jobless pay for SSDI recipients. The department was also ordered to review the cases going back to 2015 of people denied unemployment insurance due to the ban and make payments to those who were otherwise eligible.

Sinicki has long championed the role of the UI advisory council in revising the state’s UI laws, criticizing changes Republicans have proposed that didn’t go through the joint labor-management body.

Despite that, she’s been an outspoken critic of the UI advisory council’s current bill since it was introduced in November, and reiterated her opposition Tuesday because of the SSDI penalty.

Sinicki described an autistic constituent who works “a few hours a day” at a library. “She counts on that money. If she loses that job, she’s out that money,” Sinicki said. “We’re talking about a very small amount of money. It’s not saving the state millions and millions of dollars” to claw it back.

She predicted the bill would run afoul of the court order blocking the SSDI ban.

Sinicki also criticized “the paltry $25 increase” in the maximum weekly benefit.

“When you look around at the states around us, most of them are paying out twice as much as we do here,” she said. “And I just think it’s a slap in the face.”

State Rep. Paul Melotik (R-Grafton), the committee chair, defended the legislation.

“This is increasing what people are getting when they claim [unemployment],” Melotik said. “And it also is legal based on what the agreed-upon deal has been.”

In addition to its SSDI penalty, AB 652 would write into the state’s UI law changes that were in previous bills Evers has vetoed — two of them in the current legislative session.

Those provisions would penalize unemployment insurance recipients accused of “ghosting” job interviews or failing to show up for an offered job; increase the scrutiny of recipients’ work searches; impose new requirements for applicants to prove their identities; and require DWD to follow specific steps, including checking databases that track death records, employment records, citizenship and immigration records, to confirm the identity of a UI applicant.

In vetoing previous UI-related bills, Evers has cited in part the failure to put them through the advisory council process. Asked via email Tuesday whether Evers would veto the bill if it passes both houses, Evers’ communications director, Britt Cudaback, replied Wednesday morning: “Yes.”

DWD “has a number of concerns with the UIAC agreed upon bill package,” according to written testimony the department filed with the committee at a November public hearing on the bill.

Rachel Harvey, DWD’s legislative director, wrote that the bill’s $25 increase in the top weekly benefit from the maximum set in 2013 amounts to less than 7%. The increase “remains far below the maximum weekly benefit rate in neighboring states,” she wrote.

Harvey wrote that the testimony was provided “for information only,” but showed no enthusiasm for the legislation.

“The bill package includes reductions of Ul benefits for recipients of SSDI, multiple provisions previously vetoed by Gov. Evers, costly work search audit requirements, redundant measures already in effect at DWD to ensure program integrity, and new barriers for individuals receiving benefits,” she wrote

It makes those changes, she added, “all while failing to provide adequate resources for the department to implement these provisions in their entirety.”

This report has been updated at 1/7/2026, 9:38 a.m.

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A 2019 football game between the University of South Carolina and the University of Alabama at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, South Carolina. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House GOP leadership pulled a bill from the House floor Wednesday that would set a national framework for college-athletes’ compensation. 

The Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements, or ‘‘SCORE” Act, would bar student-athletes from being recognized as employees and provide broad antitrust immunity to the NCAA and college sports conferences. 

The measure was on the House schedule for Wednesday, before the office of Majority Whip Tom Emmer announced Wednesday afternoon its consideration would be postponed. The notice did not provide a reason for the cancellation, as is typical. 

The bill’s lead sponsors are GOP Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida and Democratic Reps. Janelle Bynum of Oregon and Shomari Figures of Alabama.

The other original co-sponsors are all Republicans: House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Brett Guthrie of Kentucky, Education and Workforce Committee Chair Tim Walberg of Michigan, and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Lisa McClain of Michigan, Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin and Russell Fry of South Carolina.

Bipartisan opposition

The bill has faced widespread Democratic opposition over concerns it would roll back student-athletes’ rights and give “unchecked authority” to the NCAA while failing to protect student-athletes. 

Though the bill has garnered broad GOP support, some in the party have pushed back against it. House GOP critics include Texas’ Chip Roy, who dubbed the bill a “Band-Aid on a gunshot wound” during a House Rules Committee hearing Monday. 

Roy, along with fellow House Freedom Caucus members, Byron Donalds of Florida and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, joined Democrats in voting against the rule governing floor debate alongside several other measures Tuesday. The rule was still adopted, 210-209. 

The bill advanced in July out of the House Energy and Commerce and Education and Workforce committees, which have jurisdiction over elements of the bill.

The college sports world has grappled with the fallout from the NCAA’s 2021 guidelines, which let student-athletes profit from their name, image and likeness, or NIL. A patchwork of NIL laws exists across states, with no federal NIL law in place. 

In June, a federal judge approved the terms of a nearly $2.8 billion antitrust settlement that paved the way for schools to directly pay athletes. 

Senate Dems’ competing bill

Meanwhile, the bill would face a tough path in the Senate, where Democrats have expressed opposition. 

Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell of Washington state, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut introduced competing NIL-related legislation in September. 

Known as the Student Athlete Fairness and Enforcement Act, or “SAFE Act,” the bill “gives all athletes Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) rights, establishes uniform health and safety standards, protects scholarships and requires agents to register with a state and abide by clear contract requirements, including a 5 percent cap on fees,” according to Democrats on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, where Cantwell serves as ranking member. 

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Legislation is being introduced that would, for the first time in a decade, increase benefits for the most severely injured workers in Wisconsin. 

The bill, if adopted by the Republican-majority Legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, would make a number of changes to the state’s worker’s compensation system. 

In particular, it would give raises to people declared permanently and totally disabled such as 77-year-old Jimmy Novy and paraplegic Scott Meyer.

They were featured in a September Wisconsin Watch article. It reported that more than 300 PTD recipients haven’t gotten a raise in their worker’s compensation benefits since 2016.

Novy, who lives in southwest Wisconsin, receives a worker’s comp check of $1,575 per month. Had his benefit kept pace with inflation, which rose 34%, he would have received nearly $21,000 more over the past nine years.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin employers have seen their premiums for worker’s compensation insurance decrease 10 years in a row, saving them $206 million in the past year and over $1 billion since 2017.

Unlike most workers injured on the job, who get temporary worker’s compensation benefits before returning to the job, Wisconsin PTD recipients get worker’s comp checks for life. Twenty-three states provide automatic cost-of-living raises for PTD recipients. But Wisconsin PTD recipients get raises only if worker’s comp legislation proposed every two years, known as an “agreed bill,” becomes law. 

The new agreed bill was proposed by employers and labor leaders on the state Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council. The Assembly Workforce Development, Labor and Integrated Employment Committee will hold a hearing on the bill Thursday. 

The bill would make these changes for PTD recipients:

• Make an estimated 210 more PTD recipients eligible for raises, known as supplementary benefits. Currently, only PTD recipients injured before Jan. 1, 2003, are eligible for raises. The bill would change that date to Jan. 1, 2020.
• Raise the maximum weekly benefit for PTD recipients by 57%, from $669 to $1,051, effective Jan. 1, 2026.
• Give PTD recipients annual raises, with the amounts set shortly before taking effect. The raise amounts would vary based on when the recipients were injured and their earnings at the time. 

One example, provided by the state Department of Workforce Development when the agreed bill was proposed: A PTD recipient injured in 1985 and receiving $535 a week would get a 57% increase to $840. The increase would amount to nearly $16,000 per year.

Spokespersons for the Assembly committee chair, Rep. Paul Melotik, R-Grafton, and for Sen. Dan Feyen, R-Fond du Lac, chair of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, Labor and Economic Development, said the lawmakers had not yet reviewed the bill.

Novy, while in his late 20s, learned he had been exposed to manganese, a key component in batteries, from working in a battery manufacturing plant. He suffered neurological problems that affected his left leg, severely limiting his ability to walk or even maintain his balance.

The bill would raise Novy’s monthly worker’s comp check to about $2,450 from $1,575, an annual increase of about $10,000.

“That’s about time,” Novy said Friday about the bill, eager to hear when he might see a raise in his check.

The money for worker’s compensation checks comes from worker’s compensation insurance companies and from employers who are self-insured for worker’s comp. No tax dollars are involved.

Agreement among employer and labor members on the Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council on the bill was reached after a “fee schedule” for worker’s compensation medical services was included in the 2025-27 state budget adopted in July. 

The schedule limits how much health care providers can charge for worker’s comp care.

Meyer, who lost both legs following a workplace accident in 1993 and now lives in Colorado, said he hopes that for PTD recipients on fixed incomes, the proposed raises make “a meaningful impact on their day-to-day lives.”

Appleton lawyer John Edmondson, who represents worker’s comp recipients, said the raises would be “a very nice step in the right direction, albeit coming far too late for those PTD workers who economically suffered and some who simply died waiting.”

Wisconsin worker’s comp bill would raise benefit for permanently disabled 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.

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Click here to read highlights from the story

• In Wisconsin, permanently and totally disabled workers haven’t seen a raise to their worker’s compensation benefits in nine years, despite prices increasing 34% and the Legislature granting companies premium cuts worth more than $1 billion.

• There’s a chance the raise will finally happen now that the state budget includes the creation of a worker’s comp fee schedule for medical services, which was a sticking point in past worker’s comp bill negotiations.

• The proposed bill would make an estimated 210 more people eligible for raises and increase the maximum weekly benefit to $1,051 from $669 effective Jan. 1, 2026. It still must pass the Legislature and be signed by the governor.

Jimmy Novy grew up on a farm with corn, cattle and chickens in Wisconsin’s smallest municipality. Yuba, in the Driftless Area northwest of Madison, covers a third of a square mile. Novy correctly quotes its population in the last census: 53.

In 1967, at age 19, married with a child, Novy got a job at the Rayovac plant in nearby Wonewoc. It made batteries used in walkie-talkies in the Vietnam War. 

In his late 20s, Novy learned he had been exposed to manganese, a key component in batteries. He suffered neurological problems that affected his left leg, severely limiting his ability to walk or even maintain his balance. 

“The nerves from the brain to my leg, they can’t do nothing about that,” he said.

With four children to raise, Novy turned to Wisconsin’s first-in-the-nation worker’s compensation system. After three years of legal back-and-forth, the state agreed that Novy was permanently and totally disabled (PTD), meaning he was among the worst-off of Wisconsin workers injured on the job. As a result, he qualified for worker’s comp checks for life.

But there was no guarantee of how often those checks would increase.

Now 77, widowed, remarried and using hearing aids and a cane, Novy hasn’t seen an increase in his $1,575 monthly worker’s compensation check — nor have the other more than 300 other PTD recipients — since 2016.

“I can’t make it,” Novy told Wisconsin Watch in mid-July. “I got $8 left in my checkbook right now to last me through the last week of the month.”

“The wife buys food and stuff, otherwise I’d be starving to death,” he added.

Had Novy’s worker’s comp payment kept pace with inflation, which rose 34%, he would have received nearly $21,000 more over the past nine years, according to calculations by University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Menzie Chinn.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin employers have seen their premiums for worker’s compensation insurance decrease 10 years in a row, saving them $206 million in the past year and over $1 billion since 2017, according to the Wisconsin Hospital Association, which is part of the state Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council.

Twenty-three states, including Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota, provide automatic cost-of-living raises for PTD recipients. In Wisconsin, raises have been provided only when they are included in a wide-ranging worker’s compensation “agreed bill,” proposed every two years, and only if the bill becomes law.

That moment might be at hand.

The advisory council has recommended raises for PTD recipients in the next agreed bill, which is being drafted. 

The bill still has to be approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

Making history, creating PTD raises

In 1911, Wisconsin became the first state to adopt a comprehensive worker’s compensation law that was upheld as constitutional. Before that, the burden was on the worker to prove that a job injury was the employer’s fault. Now it’s a no-fault system. Workers injured on the job can receive regular payments based on their salary, plus coverage of medical bills to treat their injuries. 

Wisconsin’s system has received high marks for getting injured workers back on the job quickly and for worker satisfaction in health care for their injuries.

The money for worker’s compensation checks comes from worker’s compensation insurance companies and from employers who are self-insured for worker’s comp. No tax dollars are involved. 

About 21,000 people annually receive Wisconsin worker’s comp checks, the vast majority of them for a temporary period. Only about 500 people receive PTD benefits, and only 300 of them, like Novy, are eligible for raises. 

That’s because the 2016 agreed bill limits raises, known as supplementary benefits, only to PTD recipients injured before Jan. 1, 2003. 

How PTD raises are decided

The process that determines whether PTD raises are granted is not unlike the bargaining that an employer and a union do to reach a contract. Both sides have priorities, and there is horse trading and eventually compromise, at least on some issues.

The Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council is composed mainly of five representatives from management and five from organized labor, though it also includes nonvoting members representing insurance, health care and the Legislature. 

Every odd year, the council develops a bill proposing multiple changes to worker’s comp. The process typically takes months of negotiations, said John Dipko, the council’s non-voting chair and administrator of worker’s compensation for the state Department of Workforce Development.

If approved by the Legislature and the governor, the bill becomes law the next year. 

That process has produced 11 PTD raises since 1972. The 2016 raise put the maximum PTD payment at $669 per week. 

‘The most severely changed’

Circumstances have left PTD recipient Scott Meyer better off financially than Novy, but delays in raises have forced Meyer to dip into savings and, as his health conditions worsen, worry about the future.

Meyer grew up outside of Milwaukee, playing in the woods and farm fields of rural Washington County. He was a member of the hockey team at West Bend West High School. 

In 1993, at age 19, Meyer was working on a loading dock when a co-worker backing a semi-trailer pinned Meyer between the trailer and the dock. Meyer closed his eyes and tried to remain calm, thinking his right leg was broken.

“One of the paramedics in the ambulance thought that I was unconscious and said to the other paramedic that this was going to be his first fatality call,” Meyer recalled. “And I immediately then knew that something more major had happened.”

Meyer underwent multiple surgeries, spent more than a year in the hospital and dropped to under 100 pounds. He was left a paraplegic. 

Though unable to work, Meyer became an Alpine skier in Colorado, where he now lives, competing in the 2014 Paralympics in Sochi, Russia.

Meyer, 51, said he receives about $2,300 per month from worker’s compensation – nearly $370 per month less than what he was paid on the job in 1993. 

Meyer, who owns a condominium with his wife, a mental health therapist, said he has been able to live comfortably only by preserving savings, including from a one-time payout he received from his former employer for his injury. But with no raises in nine years, he has had to dip into savings to get by. 

Earlier this year, both Novy in an email and Meyer in a video asked the Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council to recommend raises for PTD recipients. 

“These are people whose lives are the most severely changed and are legitimately dependent upon these funds,” Meyer told Wisconsin Watch. “We’re talking about pennies on the dollar to the kind of money that is in the system.”

The process that results in PTD raises involves negotiations on a variety of worker’s compensation issues. That has made the road to another raise rocky in recent years.

Delayed raises and a possible breakthrough

The Worker’s Compensation Advisory Council’s agreed bill for 2018 would have raised the maximum weekly PTD payment to $711 from $669 and made more PTD people eligible for raises. But the bill also proposed a “fee schedule,” generally opposed by health care organizations, to limit how much health care providers can charge for worker’s comp care. The bill did not pass the Legislature.

Since then, the labor side of the advisory council continued to propose PTD raises, while the management side continued to seek a fee schedule. Wisconsin is one of only a handful of states without one. The two sides did not agree to include PTD raises in their 2020, 2022 and 2024 agreed bills. 

A key barrier was cleared when a fee schedule for worker’s comp was included in the 2025-27 state budget adopted in July. 

Days later, the advisory council proposed raises for current PTD recipients and made more PTD recipients eligible for raises. 

Under the 2026 agreed bill, the injury date for PTD recipients to be eligible for raises would change from Jan. 1, 2003, to Jan. 1, 2020 — making an estimated 210 more people eligible for raises. 

The bill would also raise the maximum weekly benefit for PTD recipients to $1,051 from $669 effective Jan. 1, 2026. 

And it would add raises each Jan. 1, though those amounts would not be set until shortly before they become effective. 

For individuals, the raise amounts would vary based on when they were injured. 

For example, a PTD recipient injured in 1985 and receiving $535 a week would get a 57% increase to $840. The increase would amount to nearly $16,000 per year.

Once it’s drafted, the new agreed bill would need a final vote from the advisory council, which is expected in September. Then the bill would be submitted to the labor committees of the state Senate and Assembly. 

Council management representatives didn’t reply to calls and emails requesting comment. Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Stephanie Bloomingdale, the lead labor representative, said she understands the frustration over delayed raises. But she said the advisory council system, with management and labor hashing out worker’s compensation issues, provides stability.

Without it, “it would be up to the Legislature, and the whims of the political winds would determine the policy,” she said.

Dipko, the DWD administrator, said the department is sympathetic. 

“We agreed that an increase is overdue,” he said.

After waiting this long, Novy isn’t sure what to think. He’s happy he and wife share a $125,000 brick house they own “with the bank,” as he puts it, and for his monthly $1,635 Social Security check, which increases each year. But he has filed for bankruptcy three times, most recently in 2020. He feels that at this stage of his life, he should be more secure, and a raise in worker’s comp would help.

“The Legislature should be — forget Republican, Democrat — just vote for what’s good,” he said.

“I can’t see how come they can’t give us a little raise every year,” he added.

As Wisconsin companies saved $1 billion in rate cuts, severely injured workers haven’t had a raise in 9 years 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.

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In 2023, the average S&P 500 CEO earned $17.1 million in total compensation compared with $63,800 earned by the average worker in an S&P 500 company. For the CEO that works out to $46,849 a day.

Because average compensation rates include extreme outliers, it’s notable that median pay differences between CEOs and workers in 2023 also yielded similar results. 

The median S&P 500 CEO earned $16.3 million in 2023 while the median worker for those companies earned around $81,400. Outliers notwithstanding, CEOs still earned their workers’ annual pay in a little less than two days.

This phenomenon continued in 2024 as the median S&P 500 CEO pay jumped nearly 10% and worker compensation increased by less than 1.05%.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• AFL-CIO: Company Pay Ratios
• Equilar | Associated Press: CEO Pay Study
• PBS News: CEO pay jumped nearly 10% in 2024 as profits and stock prices soared

Did the average S&P 500 CEOs earn in less than two days what their typical worker earned in all of 2023? 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.