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• A judge’s order promises compensation to potentially thousands of disabled workers who were denied unemployment benefits under a state law struck down as discriminatory.

• The invalidated law prevented recipients of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) from collecting unemployment insurance.

• Two classes of workers may be eligible for compensation: those denied unemployment benefits after Sept. 7, 2015, and before July 30, 2025, under the invalidated law, and those who had to repay benefits they received during that period for the same reason.

A federal judge has ordered Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development to compensate disabled workers who were denied unemployment benefits under a state law struck down as discriminatory.

U.S. District Judge William Conley’s order promises relief to potentially thousands of workers affected by a 2013 Wisconsin law that banned recipients of federal disability aid from collecting unemployment compensation when they lost work. 

But many details remain to be ironed out, including how quickly the state will reprocess a decade’s worth of denied claims and whether any claims should draw priority.

“Some work needs to be done yet to put the order into practice, and counsels for the class are working diligently to get to that point,” said Paul Kinne, one of the attorneys representing plaintiffs.

Conley issued his order Wednesday following a hearing in which attorneys representing workers and the state discussed remedies for denials under a law that Conley ruled violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. 

The overturned law prevented recipients of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) — a monthly benefit for people with disabilities who have worked and paid into Social Security — from collecting unemployment insurance.

Republican lawmakers who approved the law claimed in 2013 that simultaneously collecting disability and unemployment benefits represented “double dipping.” But SSDI guidelines have long allowed and even encouraged recipients to supplement their income with part-time work, so long as their earnings remain below the threshold of “substantial gainful activity.” 

Conley’s order covers two classes: workers who were denied unemployment benefits after Sept. 7, 2015, and before July 30, 2025, due to receiving SSDI, and those who had to repay benefits they received during that period for the same reason.

Not every class member is automatically entitled to benefits, Kinne said, and it may take time to determine eligibility. That’s due to a variety of factors, including potential difficulties in retrieving and analyzing past claims data — and locating the claimants. Still, Kinne expects an  “overwhelming majority” of class members to be compensated.

In addition to receiving compensation for past denied claims, class members can file certifications for subsequent weeks in which they were told they were ineligible to file. These certifications should be submitted within 90 days of receiving notice from the department, the order said. 

The order also states that claimants who were charged with unemployment fraud for not properly disclosing their SSDI status will be eligible for benefits they had to repay. 

Class members who received federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) — aid for people who lost work during the COVID-19 pandemic but didn’t qualify for regular benefits — will not receive additional benefits for weeks in which they already received pandemic aid. PUA claims were paid at a higher rate than regular benefits, Conley’s order states, and federal law bans the collection of both.

The Department of Workforce Development will begin notifying affected workers by Oct. 1, the order said. The parties must still agree on the language for those notifications, which should inform affected workers about the outcome of the lawsuit and how to claim benefits to which they should be entitled.

“I was generally pleased with the order,” Kinne said. “There is now light at the end of the tunnel for disabled people to receive the unemployment compensation that they should have received in the past.” 

Wisconsin to compensate workers with disabilities for wrongfully denied unemployment claims 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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The Port Washington City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a development agreement with a company that plans to spend more than $8 billion to build a data center campus.

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Protesters show support for immigrant workers in Monroe, Wisconsin, who walked off the job at a cheese-making plant to protest changes in policy made by the operation's new owners. (Photo by Bryan Pfeifer/Wisconsin Bailout the People Movement)

Known as the “Gateway to Cheese Country” and the “Cheese Capital of the USA,” the community of Monroe is a central part of Wisconsin’s dairy history. Besides this fame, the town of 10,000 or so also shares a lot with other small towns in the Midwest. Drive around the city’s courthouse square and you’ll see the offices of local lawyers, some banks and a few bars.

One thing that sets Monroe apart is the area’s relatively recent influx of immigrants.

According to the Applied Population Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Green County, where Monroe is located, has experienced a 229% increase in Latinos from 2000 to 2019. That growth has not been accompanied by a surge in murders, robberies, pet-eatings or any other crimes that the current administration has leveled against migrants. Instead Monroe has seen a rise in the number of Mexican restaurants and bilingual masses at the local Catholic church, as well as hardworking community members hoping to make a better life for themselves. 

Which makes the recent events at Monroe’s W&W milk processing plant especially infuriating. Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) acquired W&W earlier this month , and workers describe an  ownership philosophy vastly different from the positive work environment and commitment to employees they experienced under  the previous owners. Short of formally firing the workers employed there, DFA instituted the E-Verify system as part of their management plan, possibly to avoid the Trump administration’s destructive crackdowns. While this system allows employers to confirm the employment authorization of new hires, employees taking part in the walkout say that in contrast to the previous owners, DFA is requiring verification of all employees, even those who have been there 10-plus years. Not surprisingly, DFA’s decision has triggered a strike and the formation of a legal assistance fund for workers who most likely will lose their jobs after years at the plant.

Across rural America

It’s not an isolated instance; immigrants are being unjustly targeted in similar ways elsewhere in rural America. In Long Prairie, Minnesota, a town much like Monroe, meat processing workers, many of whom received legal status to work with the humanitarian parole program that the Biden administration created for people experiencing potential violence or harm in Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, or Haiti, had their permits revoked by Trump. Hundreds of workers also lost the legal right to work in the United States at a JBS pork production facility in Ottumwa, Iowa, as the current government ended their Temporary Protection Status (TPS). Like humanitarian parole, TPS, which began in 1990, grants people from certain countries work permits who flee disasters like hurricanes or wars.

Throughout the Midwest, milk processing and meat packing firms in rural areas constitute an agro-industrial archipelago where workers, many of whom are immigrants, play a key role in making our food system operate. But instead of being rewarded for years of hard work, immigrants face persecution. Insisting on programs like E-Verify — a voluntary system with documented shortcomings — and removing legal protections terrorize hardworking people. Immigrants and their families deserve better, including legal pathways to remain and work in the country.

In a nutshell, revoking legal protections unfairly turns workers into criminals by making them ineligible to work here. More to the point, these tactics are par for the course when it comes to the current administration’s cruel, underhanded and racist approach to enforcing our country’s outdated immigration system.

This toxic mix of cruelty and racial profiling is on display when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrest immigrants at courthouses after their asylum cases are dismissed, making them vulnerable for deportation. The racial profiling is even more blatant when migrants are stopped outside schools or at Home Depot parking lots because of how they look and where they are. Some get thrown to the ground and handcuffed just because they question the reason they are being detained.

An endless vicious cycle

The problem with such tactics — aside from the ethical and legal problems of encouraging government agents to trample on people’s constitutional rights — is efficiency. Immigration hardliners and Trump loyalists like White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller made it a goal for ICE to fill the for-profit deportation complex with 3,000 arrests per day, having no qualms separating families, arresting children or people who have been model citizens for decades.

ICE has a sordid history of workplace enforcement actions in the past that have proven widely unpopular and non-productive.

We can go back to the Bush administration’s mass raids in places like Worthington, Minnesota, and Postville, Iowa, to show how ICE agents’ large-scale enforcement actions in rural communities tear families apart and leave communities with a long process to heal culturally and economically. What we know over a decade later is that arresting and deporting hundreds of people in such ways does not lead to U.S. citizen workers taking the positions formerly  held by immigrants, but the deported people being replaced by, well, another round of immigrants.

But for Trump 2.0, plans for the agro-industrial archipelago are different. Instead of staging mass actions to arrest workers, the government is doing this work digitally. Put otherwise, a faceless bureaucracy revokes programs and permits, giving a contrived legal pretext for ICE to enter communities and arrest people.

Let’s be clear — immigrant workers at these places were trying to “do it the right way.” But this government effectively took the legal carpet from under them as they were trying to scrape a living together for themselves and their families. To threaten these people with deportation is the ultimate in punching down, terrorizing hardworking and community-building people we should be welcoming instead of demonizing.

Real immigration policy reform does not underhandedly manufacture undocumented people, or target people who contribute to the economy, but involves doing the hard work of creating fair, workable policy in Congress. Nor should immigrants be welcomed on a whim of the administration as was the case when white South Africans were given refugee status while suspending protections for thousands of others. Why this special treatment? Most people seeking refugee status are people of color — the South Africans are white.

There are various serious initiatives currently in Congress that could actually improve the lives of immigrants. The bipartisan Dignity Act provides a pathway for citizenship for DREAMers (youth who came to the U.S. without authorization and either attend college or plan to do so) and a work permit system for all other undocumented people. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act puts farm workers and their families on a pathway to legalization. California U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla’s more sweeping Renewing Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929 grants lawful permanent resident status —  green cards — to people who have lived in the U.S. continuously for at least seven years and  do not have a criminal record.

Immigrants come to this country for a variety of reasons, including suffering the effects of flawed trade deals, as well as experiencing war and famine. Many continue to suffer here, working jobs that are ill-paid and dangerous in places like Monroe and Long Prairie. Our current government oppresses them further with draconian and dishonest tactics, scoring cheap political points instead of engaging in actual law enforcement. 

Those among us who really care about public security should think long and hard on how this government is entrapping immigrants instead of reforming and enforcing the law.

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• A 2013 state law prevented recipients of federal Social Security Disability Insurance from collecting state unemployment insurance after losing part-time work.  

• A federal judge struck down the law, ruling that it had “disparate impact on disabled workers seeking unemployment insurance benefits.”

• A hearing will explore whether and how the state should compensate workers for past denied claims.

Wisconsin has stopped blocking laid-off workers who receive disability benefits from collecting unemployment insurance — a response to court rulings that the practice violated federal discrimination law. 

Now U.S. District Judge William Conley will consider whether and how the state should compensate workers for past denied claims. Attorneys representing the state and affected workers plan to propose remedies ahead of a hearing on Wednesday. 

“In my eyes, we deserve all of it,” James Trandel, a longtime seasonal worker who faced denials for years, told Wisconsin Watch. “The law should have never been.”

The state law in question prevented recipients of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) — a monthly benefit for people with disabilities who have worked and paid into Social Security — from collecting unemployment insurance after losing work. 

In proposing the law under Gov. Scott Walker in 2013, Republican lawmakers claimed that simultaneously collecting disability and unemployment benefits represented “double dipping” that “may constitute fraud.”

That overlooked the fact that SSDI guidelines have long allowed and even encouraged people on disability to supplement their income with part-time work, so long as their earnings remain below the threshold of “substantial gainful activity.” 

Eight SSDI recipients, with help from attorneys, challenged the law in 2021 by filing a class action lawsuit.

Conley ruled in July 2024 that the law violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, citing its “disparate impact on disabled workers seeking unemployment insurance benefits.”

But the ruling was not immediately implemented. The state’s Department of Workforce Development continued denying unemployment claims until Conley ordered it to stop in July.

DWD spokesperson Haley McCoy said the department did not oppose Conley’s order to stop enforcing the law he struck down, but she declined further comment due to pending litigation.

The lawsuit covers two classes: workers who were denied unemployment benefits after Sept. 7, 2015, due to receiving SSDI, and those who had to repay benefits they received for the same reason.

Conley will now consider who in those classes qualifies for benefits and how much they should get. 

Both parties will exchange proposals before Wednesday’s oral arguments to address such questions, said Victor Forberger, an attorney for the plaintiffs who has helped many SSDI recipients pursue their claims. The plaintiffs want the state to fairly compensate those who faced discriminatory denials, he added. 

The discussions may also involve how to address past claims for federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) — aid for people who lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic but didn’t qualify for regular benefits. The state initially denied PUA claims from workers on disability, but it reversed course in mid-2020 following Wisconsin Watch and WPR’s reporting on the denials.

“No one’s asking to get paid benefits twice. They’re just asking to get paid to be treated just like everyone else,” Forberger said.

Fighting for future generations 

Trandel, who has used a wheelchair since a 1983 fall left his legs paralyzed, filed for unemployment for years during the off-seasons of his job as a gate chief for the Milwaukee Brewers, where he helps with tickets and security. He has since hit retirement age, now 67, allowing him to switch from SSDI to Social Security retirement benefits. The state allowed him to collect a couple of weeks of state unemployment pay for the first time this spring because he was no longer on SSDI.

Although Trandel managed to get by without the state fulfilling his past claims, he believes that compensating workers for past denials would offer a measure of justice.

But even if that doesn’t happen, he’s proud of what the lawsuit has accomplished so far. 

“If I get nothing, that’s fine,” Trandel said. “At least the law’s changed so the future generations won’t have to go through what we went through the last 12 years.”

Judy Fintz, a seasonal worker and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, hopes that allowing SSDI recipients to collect unemployment like others will eliminate one of the many barriers they face in interacting with a long-outdated system that’s undergoing an overhaul. 

Fintz spends the school year cleaning tables, windows and soda machines part time at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse dining hall. She applied for unemployment during the off months from school, when she relies on SSDI while her bills pile up. That experience was far from smooth, even outside of the denials. She faced the difficulties of having to file claims by phone rather than online due to a severe learning disability, and she said she was treated poorly.

“This should really change everything around,” Fintz said of the court proceedings. “We should be able to get (unemployment insurance) without issue, so we can pay our bills.”

Reentering the workforce

As they await the outcome of litigation, some SSDI recipients are looking for more work that accommodates their disabilities.

Eugene Wilson of Madison is one such person. He deals with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder — conditions that make him easily overwhelmed by tasks and make repetitive work difficult.

Wilson found part-time work years ago before being laid off during the pandemic. He was denied regular unemployment and PUA during a process that took an additional toll on his mental health, he said.

He now receives about $1,500 a month in SSDI benefits and affords his apartment with the help of rental aid. He barely gets by.

He has tried for years to return to the workforce, but he rarely hears back after filing applications and sending thank-you messages. 

“It’s like nobody wants to hire anybody on disability,” Wilson said.

“I just want to get out there and do it and show people that people on disability can do this.”

Jessica Barrera of Eau Claire has a similar goal. Wisconsin Watch followed her in 2020 as she navigated life as a single mother who lost her job during the pandemic and depended in part on SSDI to survive. She spent six months fighting to receive her PUA claim after being denied regular unemployment insurance, initially unaware of the 2013 state law. 

“It really made me feel less than others,” Barrera said. 

That pushed her toward a new goal: “to be equal” by earning a degree and returning to the workforce full time. Barrera is just two semesters away from earning her bachelor’s degree in social work at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She works part time as a peer and parent support specialist, supporting families with mental health challenges  — including those who face similar barriers to hers.

She lives with a rare disorder that makes her blood too thick, causing clots and severe fatigue that can make it hard to even get out of bed. Her current job gives her the flexibility to handle her frequent medical appointments and other challenges with the disease. Working full time will require finding an employer who understands her situation.

Barrera, who is not a plaintiff, encourages those seeking justice in court to stay hopeful and persistent.

“When I got the denial, had I just been like, ‘Well, I’m denied. I’m just out of luck’… Would we be where we are now?” Barrera said. “You have to sometimes be patient, but keep (up) the good fight.”

Wisconsin ends unemployment aid ban for workers with disabilities. Now they want compensation for past denials. 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.

An advocate for industrial ratepayers said American Transmission Company’s rates that cover the cost of building and maintaining transmission lines are rising faster than inflation.

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Exploration for metallic mines is fairly rare. But, in Taylor County, mining company Green Light Wisconsin is drilling for copper and gold. Such metals haven’t been mined in Wisconsin for almost 30 years, but that could change. As drilling is ongoing, Wisconsin tribes and environmentalists are worried about potential harm to water, wetlands and cultural sites.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (right), accompanied by President Donald Trump, speaks during a news conference at the White House on Jan. 21, 2025. Trump announced an investment in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

As a part of President Donald Trump’s AI Action Plan, which rolled out at the end of last month, the U.S. General Services Administration launched a platform Thursday that will allow government employees to experiment with artificial intelligence tools.

USAi.gov allows federal workers to use generative AI tools, like chatbots, code builders and document summarization, for free. The platform is meant to help government employees determine which tools could be helpful to procure for their current work, and how they might customize them to their specific needs, a statement from the administration said.

The tools will come primarily from AI companies Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta, Fedscoop reported. OpenAI initially announced a partnership with the federal government last week, saying any federal agencies would be able to use ChatGPT Enterprise for $1 per agency for the next year.

“USAi means more than access — it’s about delivering a competitive advantage to the American people,” said GSA Deputy Administrator Stephen Ehikian, in the statement.

The GSA called the platform a “centralized environment for experimentation,” and said it will track performance and adoption strategies in a dashboard.

The platform’s creation follows Trump’s recently released plan to “accelerate AI innovation” by removing red tape around “onerous” regulations, and get AI into the hands of more workers, including federal employees.

The plan also calls for AI to be more widely adopted in manufacturing, science and in the Department of Defense, and proposes increased funding and regulatory sandboxes — separate trial spaces, like the USAi platform — for development.

A GSA official told FedScoop that before being added to the platform, AI models will be evaluated for safety, like whether a model outputs hate speech, its performance accuracy, and how it was red-teamed, or tested for durability.

But the GSA didn’t say how the introduction of USAi.gov would affect the federal government’s current tech procurement process, FedRAMP. The program, developed with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), provides a standardized way for government agencies to assess the safety and effectiveness of new tech tools.

“USAi helps the government cut costs, improve efficiency, and deliver better services to the public, while maintaining the trust and security the American people expect,” said GSA Chief Information Officer David Shive in a statement.

Mural depicting workers painted on windows of the Madison-Kipp Corp. by Goodman Community Center students and Madison-Kipp employees with Dane Arts Mural Arts. (Photo by Erik Gunn /Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin’s jobs and employment numbers showed a slightly softening economy in July, following national trends, the state labor department reported Thursday.

“The Wisconsin labor market has cooled a bit along with the national economy. Unemployment remains historically low,” said Scott Hodek, section chief in the office of economic advisors for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD), in a briefing on the July numbers.

Private-sector jobs dropped slightly in July from June, DWD reported. Employment and labor force participation edged down slightly, too, as did the state’s unemployment rate.

“What we’re seeing is that Wisconsin seems to be following the national trend,” Hodek told the Wisconsin Examiner. While the economy is cooling down, “we’re actually still seeing historically low unemployment rates,” Hodek said. “So you’ve got kind of a mix of up and down indicators.”

He pointed to national economic uncertainty as well as the longstanding challenge of Wisconsinites aging out of the workforce faster than younger residents are entering it as likely contributors to the economic cooling. 

DWD pegged the number of Wisconsinites working in July at 3.05 million, a drop of 4,500 from June and down 32,500 from July 2024.

The number of people who were unemployed in July was projected at 98,600 — down 2,200 from June, but up 5,400 from July 2024. The unemployment rate for July was 3.1%.

The labor force shrank in July to just under 3.15 million, a decline of 6,700 from June and a decline of 27,000 from July 2024. The labor force is defined as people 16 or older who are working or seeking work, excluding people in the military or who are in institutions such as nursing homes or prisons.

Wisconsin’s labor force participation rate was 65% of the state’s population 16 or older in July — down 0.1% from June and down just under 1% from July a year ago. Labor force participation remains ahead of the U.S. as a whole, while unemployment is lower, DWD reported.

Employment and labor force participation numbers are projected from a monthly survey of households. A separate survey, polling employers, produces data on the number of jobs in the state.

Wisconsin counted just under 3.06 million nonfarm jobs — an increase of 1,800 over June and 20,200 over July a year ago. Private sector jobs in July totaled more than 2.6 million, a decrease of 3,800 from June but still 15,100 ahead of July 2024.

Construction jobs fell by 500 from June, Hodek said, but remained 3,100 ahead of July 2024. Manufacturing jobs fell by 500, and are down 1,800 from a year ago.

Rosier picture in Wisconsin than broader U.S.

Wisconsin’s jobs report Thursday lacked the drama of the national jobs numbers reported two weeks ago that prompted President Donald Trump to fire the nation’s chief statistician.

On Friday, Aug. 1, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported the U.S. gained 73,000 jobs in July, below analysts’ estimates. The BLS also updated national job numbers for May and June, dramatically reducing both: in June, a gain of 14,000 jobs instead of previously reported 147,000, and in May, an increase of 19,000 instead of the previously reported 125,000.

The national unemployment rate of 4.2% was in line with economic forecasts, CNBC reported. Other indicators nationally added up to “a slow but persistent cooling trend,” the North America regional president at Manpower Group, Ger Doyle, told CNBC.

Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to declare without evidence that the numbers were “RIGGED.” He summarily fired the director of the BLS, replacing her this week with an economist from the far-right Heritage Foundation who has called for a broad overhaul of the agency.

Hodek told the Wisconsin Examiner Thursday that DWD has not received any communications about changes in procedure from the BLS.

“We’ve certainly seen the news and we’re monitoring the situation, of course,” Hodek said. “But we do have confidence in our data and we can’t really speculate on what could possibly happen. We’ll just need to wait and see what the Bureau of Labor Statistics actually does down the road.”

Hodek said that revisions of previous months’ reports are “a normal part of the data process.” The first round of data isn’t inaccurate, but “as you take more time, the data become more accurate,” he said.

“Ideally you want a combination of both —  something that kind of gives you the current edge of where you’re headed, and then as more and better data come in, you get a better sense of what has been happening,” Hodek said.

For example, a quarterly collection of information from the unemployment insurance system “actually covers most employers and it’s very solid data,” he said. “But it lags by half a year.”

Information from that report can be used to further refine the calculations and assumptions that go into the state’s monthly reports.

The monthly numbers for the nation as a whole and for each state go through different calculations and formulas, Hodek said, so it’s not possible to draw direct connections between the state jobs numbers and the national jobs numbers.

It’s also too soon to explain the seemingly dramatic differences between the national jobs picture and Wisconsin’s, he added: “We’ve only got a couple of data points where we saw those large revisions, so that doesn’t really make a trend necessarily yet.”

Hodek doesn’t think Wisconsin is somehow “diverging from the national economy,” however, he said. “In fact, it’s fairly unlikely in general, just because what happens to the national economy and the global economy is going to impact us as well. We tend to follow the national and global trends.”

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Gov. Tony Evers signs AB 257 into law Friday. The bill creates a credential and pathway for advanced practice registered nurses to practice independently. (Photo courtesy of Office of Gov. Evers)

As expected, Gov. Tony Evers signed legislation Friday that clears the way for nurses with advanced training to practice independently.

“Nurses play a critical role in our healthcare workforce, and I’m proud of our work to expand opportunities for nurses to not only grow their career but create a system that allows for more advanced practitioners here in Wisconsin,” Evers said in a statement released Friday announcing his plans to sign AB 257, the advanced practice registered nurses (APRN) legislation, now Wisconsin Act 17.

The bill creates a new license category and a professional pathway for nurses who qualify to practice independently.

Evers vetoed two other closely watched bills — one that would have carved out app-based drivers from protections under state employment laws and one that would require the state Department of Corrections to recommend sending back to prison people charged with a crime while they are on probation, parole or extended supervision.

Altogether the governor signed 16 of the 21 bills that the Legislature formally presented to him on Thursday and vetoed five.

Advanced practice nursing bill wins approval

The Wisconsin state nursing board will oversee the credentialing of advanced practice nurses, a group that includes certified nurse-midwives, certified registered nurse anesthetists, clinical nurse specialists and nurse practitioners.

Advocates said the measure will increase the availability of health care providers, particularly in parts of Wisconsin where doctors are scarce.

Evers vetoed previous versions of the bill in 2022 and 2024. Both times he expressed support for the concept but insisted nurses should meet tighter qualifications before they can practice on their own.

The bill he signed Friday adds those requirements — increasing the amount of supervision that an APRN must have under a physician to 3,840 hours before practicing independently; adding additional supervision requirements for certified registered nurse anesthetists who specialize in pain management; and including language to restrict the titles APRN practitioners use so patients aren’t confused about their credentials.

The Wisconsin Medical Society cited those issues in opposing APRN bills in previous legislative sessions, and with the 2025 revision shifted its stance to neutral.  

In floor votes in June, lawmakers from both parties stressed the bipartisan compromise reflected in the measure that was presented to Evers this week.

In his announcement, Evers thanked lawmakers for their work on the measure, including Republican state Sens. Patrick Testin and Rachael Cabral-Guevara, Republican state Rep. Tony Kurtz and Democratic state Rep. Lisa Subeck.

He also thanked “the many nursing and physician groups that we worked with to get this bipartisan bill across the finish line to help bring more folks into the healthcare profession and ensure that Wisconsinites get the high-quality care they need when they need it while setting our nurses up for success.”

Bill classifying gig drivers vetoed

Evers vetoed AB 269, legislation that would have blocked drivers from app-based rideshare and delivery businesses from being declared employees.  

The legislation would have automatically classified drivers for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and similar businesses as independent contractors, bypassing current Wisconsin laws that differentiate independent contractors from direct employees. 

It would have categorically excluded app-based drivers from coverage under the state’s unemployment insurance, workers compensation and minimum wage laws. 

“I object to the bill’s definition of independent contractor status in the absence of any guaranteed benefit for workers,” Evers wrote in his veto message.

In a campaign pushed most prominently by DoorDash and other app-based businesses that enlist drivers, advocates focused  on the bill’s provisions that would permit — but not require — those businesses to establish portable benefits for drivers.

Evers acknowledged in his veto message that app-based drivers “are a growing segment of Wisconsin’s workforce.” But he said changing the state’s independent contractor definitions “demands substantive conversations among several parties,” with management and  workers both at the table. 

Evers wrote that while the bill was moving through the Legislature, his staff asked lawmakers and groups with an interest in the measure to allow time for “robust dialogue and engagement to reach consensus and compromise” over the legislation. 

“Unfortunately the Legislature declined to meaningfully provide that opportunity, choosing instead to send this bill to my desk anyway,” he wrote. “My veto today will allow time for these important conversations to occur so Wisconsin can find a path forward.”

The Wisconsin AFL-CIO praised the veto. “Legislation that makes the loss of important worker rights a certainty while holding out the possibility of flexible benefits if and when the employer chooses to provide them is a bad deal for workers,” President Stephanie Bloomingdale said. 

Bill pushing revocation for offenders rejected

Evers vetoed AB 85, legislation that would require the Department of Corrections to recommend automatically returning a person to prison who is charged with a crime while on extended supervision, parole or probation. Evers vetoed a similar bill in 2019.

Evers wrote in his veto message that the legislation was “an unfunded mandate” likely to cost the state more than $330 million in the first two years, according to the fiscal estimate, “and hundreds of millions in unknown, ongoing costs.” 

In addition, he wrote, it would likely require building more prison facilities and would be expected to impose new costs on local governments, while he blamed lawmakers for “significantly underfunding existing operations at the Department of Corrections in the most recent state budget.”

The bill “would move Wisconsin in the wrong direction on criminal justice reform without improving public safety,” Evers wrote. 

Instead, he urged lawmakers, “Wisconsin should be investing in data-driven, evidence-based programming that addresses barriers to reentry, enhances educational and vocational opportunities for individuals who will be released after completing their sentence, and provides treatment for mental health and substance use issues, which will help to reduce recidivism and save taxpayer money while improving public safety.”

In a message posted on Facebook the bill’s author, state Rep. Brent Jacobson (R Mosinee), criticized the veto. “It is unacceptable to give repeat criminals the opportunity to continue to put our families and neighbors at risk again and again without facing consequences,” he wrote.

The bill was opposed by criminal justice reform organizations, including the national prison reform group Dream.Org and Wisconsin-based Ex-incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO).

“This harmful bill would have led to more people being revoked from community supervision and incarcerated, making it harder to build safe and thriving communities in Wisconsin,” Dream.Org posted on Facebook. The organization credited campaigning by advocates and community groups with persuading Evers to veto the measure. 

Primary care medicine measure falls 

Evers vetoed SB 4, legislation that would specify that subscription-based direct primary medical care arrangements are not subject to the state’s insurance laws.

While the legislation had some bipartisan support in concept, it foundered at the governor’s desk on the issue of anti-discrimination language.

Evers listed in his veto message a number of provisions in the legislation that forbid primary care providers from refusing to treat patients. 

Nevertheless, he wrote that he objected to “the Legislature failing to provide sufficient protections for patients receiving care under direct primary care agreements from being discriminated against and potentially losing access to their healthcare.”

Evers did not specify what additional protections he believed the measure should include. “I previously raised similar concerns when I vetoed earlier iterations of this legislation five years ago — concerns the Legislature has declined to satisfactorily address in the bill that is now before me and despite having ample opportunity,” he wrote.

In 2020, when Evers vetoed the version of the legislation on his desk at the time, he wrote that he objected to an amendment in which lawmakers had removed language protecting patients from being refused treatment on the grounds of “genetics, national origin, gender identity, citizenship status, or whether the patient is LGBTQ.”

In his veto message Friday, Evers wrote, “Every Wisconsinite should be able to get the healthcare they need when and where they need it — and without fear of discrimination. I welcome the Legislature revisiting this legislation and the opportunity to enact a version of this bill that sufficiently addresses my concerns.”

The announcement issued by the governor’s office Friday includes a complete list of bills that the governor signed and vetoed, with links to the enacted measures and to Evers’ veto statements.

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the Von Ruden farm sits on a hill overlooking Vernon County. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

State Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Rep. Jenna Jacobson joined Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden on his Vernon County farm Thursday to criticize the economic and agricultural policies of President Donald Trump as bad for Wisconsin’s small and medium farms. 

The event at the farm in Westby came as Wisconsin Republicans have ignored or disputed the cumulative effect on farmers of tariffs on foreign imports, cuts to programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and an immigration policy that has scared away some farm laborers who are afraid to show up to work. 

“The tariffs coming out of Washington D.C. are hurting our farmers across Wisconsin and across the country, and you don’t have to just take this from me,” Pfaff said. “All you have to do is look at the economic indicators, those troubling signs that are coming across from Washington, D.C. Job growth is stagnating, prices are rising, and the agriculture sector is taking a hit. Sadly, my Republican colleagues in Madison seem to be turning a blind eye to all of these concerns.”

Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), whom Jacobson is challenging in next year’s midterm elections, recently said that “farmers aren’t concerned” about the potential damage of Trump’s policies. At a telephone town hall earlier this week, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany said that through actions such as raising the estate tax exemption for farms and the establishment of trade agreements with countries around the world, Wisconsin farmers will be able to benefit from “free markets.” 

But Von Ruden told the Wisconsin Examiner he doesn’t see how Wisconsin’s farmers can benefit when the federal government is cutting programs that directly help them find markets for their products while tariffs only make it harder to export. Trump and Republicans have made massive cuts to USDA programs that help schools and food banks buy food from local farmers. The recently enacted Republican reconciliation law makes large cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, which low-income residents have been able to use to buy food from producers at local farmer’s markets. 

“That’s hundreds of millions of dollars that farmers are going to lose because the government’s not going to be purchasing [food] to take care of the most needy people in this country,” Von Ruden said. “The other thing is, because we’ve allowed so many loopholes in the USDA, fewer people are getting bigger dollars from the government or insurance subsidies and things like that. So that’s taking money away from the small producers, because we don’t have the capabilities to hire an attorney to make sure that we get that $5 or $6 million check from Uncle Sam. Our members and myself, I would much rather get my income from the marketplace versus depending on a government check.”

Von Ruden’s kids are the fourth generation to work on his family farm. He said that with Trump’s tariffs, his costs are going up. Canadian fertilizer is more expensive. The John Deere tractor he uses will soon be unaffordable. 

“We need to make sure that we’re growing agriculture, not decreasing it. Looking at how tariffs are going to affect this farm, we’re going to see the trickle down effect from that in the commodity markets,” Von Ruden said. That trickle down effect is the biggest concern for farmers, he added. 

“The president has said that he’s going to make sure that farmers are taken care of,” Von Ruden said. “Tariffs aren’t going to do that. So let’s stop all the rhetoric.”

Jacobson pointed to a number of proposals in the Wisconsin Legislature meant to help farmers respond to Trump’s trade wars that Republicans have blocked. 

“Wisconsin Republicans had three chances to support our farmers, and three times they voted no,” she said. “Howard Marklein and Republicans in both chambers have failed to support our family farmers, failed to invest in our agricultural industry and made it harder for those in need to buy food. This is completely unacceptable.” 

The driftless region of western Wisconsin is set to become a major target for Democrats in next year’s midterm elections as the effects of Trump administration and Republican policies hit the purple swing region. In addition to Jacobson’s challenge of Marklein, Democrats are targeting U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden’s 3rd Congressional District seat.

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Some Walworth County residents are worried their lifestyle could be affected by a proposed natural gas power plant.

The post Developer looking to build new natural gas peaker plant in Walworth County appeared first on WPR.

Some American companies have agreed to comply with new, voluntary AI standards from European Union regulators, in advance of new regulations set for 2027, but others have decried them as overreach. (Photo by Santiago Urquijo/Getty Images)

American companies are split between support and criticism of a new voluntary European AI code of practice, meant to help tech companies align themselves with upcoming regulations from the European Union’s landmark AI Act.

The voluntary code, called the General Purpose AI Code of Practice, which rolled out in July, is meant to help companies jump-start their compliance. Even non-European companies will be required to meet certain standards of transparency, safety, security and copyright compliance to operate in Europe come August 2027.  

Many tech giants have already signed the code of practice, including Amazon, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral AI, Cohere and Fastweb. But others have refused.

In July, Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said in a statement on Linkedin that the company would not commit.

“Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI. We have carefully reviewed the European Commission’s Code of Practice for general-purpose AI (GPAI) models and Meta won’t be signing it,” he wrote. “This Code introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act.”

Though Google’s President of Global Affairs Kent Walker was critical of the code of practice in a company statement, Google has signed it, he said.

“We remain concerned that the AI Act and Code risk slowing Europe’s development and deployment of AI,” Walker wrote. “In particular, departures from EU copyright law, steps that slow approvals, or requirements that expose trade secrets could chill European model development and deployment, harming Europe’s competitiveness.”

The divergent approach of U.S. and European regulators has showcased a clear difference in attitude about AI protections and development between the two markets, said Vivien Peaden, a tech and privacy attorney with Baker Donelson.

She compared the approaches to cars — Americans are known for fast, powerful vehicles, while European cars are stylish and eco-friendly.

“Some people will say, I’m really worried that this engine is too powerful. You could drive the car off a cliff, and there’s not much you can do but to press the brake and stop it, so I like the European way,” Peaden said. “My response is, ‘Europeans make their car their way, right? You can actually tell the difference. Why? Because it was designed with a different mindset.”

While the United States federal government has recently enacted some AI legislation through the Take It Down Act, which prohibits AI-generated nonconsensual depictions of individuals, it has not passed any comprehensive laws on how AI may operate. The Trump administration’s recent AI Action Plan paves a clear way for AI companies to continue to grow rapidly and unregulated.

But under the EU’s AI Act, tech giants like Amazon, Google and Meta will need to be more transparent about how their models are trained and operated, and follow rules for managing systemic risks if they’d like to operate in Europe.

“Currently, it’s still voluntary,” Peaden said. “But I do believe it’s going to be one of the most influential standards in AI’s industry.”

General Purpose AI Code of Practice

The EU AI Act was passed last year to mitigate risk created by AI models, and the law creates “strict obligations” for models that are considered “high risk.” High risk AI models are those that can pose serious risks to health, safety or fundamental rights when used for employment, education, biometric identification and law enforcement, the act said.

Some AI practices, including AI-based manipulation and deception, predictions of criminal offenses, social scoring, emotion recognition in workplaces and educational institutions and real-time biometric identification for law enforcement, are considered “unacceptable risk” and are banned from use in the EU altogether.

Some of these practices, like social scoring — using an algorithm to determine access to certain privileges or opportunities like mortgages or jail time — are widely used, and often unregulated in the United States.

While AI models that will be released after Aug. 2 already have to comply with the EU AI Act’s standards, large language models (LLMs) — the technical foundation of AI models — released before that date have through August 2027 to fully comply. The code of practice released last month offers a voluntary way for companies to get into compliance early, and with more leniency than when the 2027 deadline hits, it says.

The three chapters in the code of practice are transparency, copyright and safety, and security. The copyright requirements are likely where American and European companies are highly split, said Yelena Ambartsumian, founder of tech consultancy firm Ambart Law.

In order to train LLMs, you need a broad, high-quality dataset with good grammar, Ambartsumian said. Many American LLMs turn to pirated collections of books.

“So [American companies] made a bet that, instead of paying for this content, licensing it, which would cost billions of dollars, the bet was okay, ‘we’re going to develop these LLMs, and then we’ll deal with the fallout, the lawsuits later,” Ambartsumain said. “But at that point, we’ll be in a position where, because of our war chest, or because of our revenue, we’ll be able to deal with the fallout of this fair use litigation.”

And those bets largely worked out. In two recent lawsuits, Bartz v. Anthropic and Kadrey v. Meta, judges ruled in favor of the AI developers based on the “fair use” doctrine, which allows people to use copyrighted material without permission in certain journalistic or creative contexts. In AI developer Anthropic’s case, Judge William Alsup likened the training process to how a human might read, process, and later draw on a book’s themes to create new content.

But the EU’s copyright policy bans developers from training AI on pirated content and says companies must also comply with content owners’ requests to not use their works in their datasets. It also outlines rules about transparency with web crawlers, or how AI models rake through the internet for information. AI companies will also have to routinely update documentation about their AI tools and services for privacy and security.

Those subject to the requirements of the EU’s AI Act are general purpose AI models, nearly all of which are large American corporations, Ambartsumain said. Even if a smaller AI model comes along, it’s often quickly purchased by one of the tech giants, or they develop their own versions of the tool.

“I would also say that in the last year and a half, we’ve seen a big shift where no one right now is trying to develop a large language model that isn’t one of these large companies,” Ambartsumain said.

Regulations could bring markets together

There’s a “chasm” between the huge American tech companies and European startups, said Jeff Le, founder and managing partner of tech policy consultancy 100 Mile Strategies LLC. There’s a sense that Europe is trying to catch up with the Americans who have had unencumbered freedom to grow their models for years.

But Le said he thinks it’s interesting that Meta has categorized the code of practice as overreach.

“I think it’s an interesting comment at a time where Europeans understandably have privacy and data stewardship questions,” Le said. “And that’s not just in Europe. It’s in the United States too, where I think Gallup polls and other polls have revealed bipartisan support for consumer protection.”

As the code of practice says, signing now will reduce companies’ administrative burden when the AI Act goes into full enforcement in August 2027. Le said that relationships between companies that sign could garner them more understanding and familiarity when the regulatory burdens are in place.

But some may feel the transparency or copyright requirements could cost them a competitive edge, he said.

“I can see why Meta, which would be an open model, they’re really worried about (the copyright) because this is a big part of their strategy and catching up with OpenAI and (Anthropic),” Le said. “So there’s that natural tension that will come from that, and I think that’s something worth noting.”

Le said that the large AI companies are likely trying to anchor themselves toward a framework that they think they can work with, and maybe even influence. Right now, the U.S. is a patchwork of AI legislation. Some of the protections outlined in the EU AI Act are mirrored in state laws, but there’s no universal code for global companies.

The EU’s code of practice could end up being that standard-setter, Peaden said.

“Even though it’s not mandatory, guess what? People will start following,” she said. “Frankly, I would say the future of building the best model lies in a few other players. And I do think that … if four out of five of the primary AI providers are following the general purpose AI code of practice, the others will follow.”

Editor’s note: This item has been modified to revise comments from Jeff Le.

Workers install solar panels on the roof of a low-income household in California. On Thursday, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers wrote a letter to the EPA urging the Trump administration not to cancel the Solar for All program. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Gov. Tony Evers wrote to the federal Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, urging the Trump administration not to cancel Wisconsin’s $62.4 million grant to install solar energy systems for low- and moderate-income households.

Evers’ letter to EPA administrator Lee Zeldin followed a New York Times report earlier this week that the agency was preparing to cancel the $7 billion federal “Solar for All” grant program. “Solar for All” was part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act passed by congressional Democrats and signed by then-president Joe Biden.

“To be clear, attempting to terminate Solar for All grants has no legitimate purpose or justification,” Evers wrote. “Beyond that, doing so will also negatively impact Wisconsinites and our state, causing increased energy bills for Wisconsinites and hurting efforts to improve air quality, boost resilience, and create good-paying jobs.”

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. has put out a request for proposal seeking an implementer for the state’s program, called “PowerUp Wisconsin.” Bidders were to submit a notice of their intent to bid by this past Monday, Aug. 4, and final proposals are due on Friday, Aug. 29.

According to the WEDC’s work plan for the project, Wisconsin’s grant would add rooftop solar power systems to 1,038 households in single-family homes and 2,200 more households in 24 multifamily homes. The plan also calls for 10 community solar projects that could serve an additional 4,239 households.

Evers told Zeldin in the letter that since Wisconsin’s $62.4 million grant was awarded in April 2024, the WEDC has worked with local governments, solar installers, utilities and housing developers to draw up the state’s program guidelines. The program would reduce Wisconsin’s reliance on out-of-state energy and save households up to $500 a year on their energy bills, Evers wrote.

The governor wrote that lowering costs has been “a top priority” for his administration.

“While the Trump Administration claims to share this priority, terminating Wisconsin’s Solar for All grant would have the exact opposite effect, preventing Wisconsin families and households from seeing the direct savings offered through PowerUp Wisconsin,” Evers wrote.

The Evers administration and the Wisconsin Department of Justice have joined a number of lawsuits to block Trump administration executive orders and unilateral actions to cut funding approved by Congress.

Evers’ letter appeared to leave open the prospect for more litigation. “At a time when energy demand continues to increase, it is unfathomable for the Trump Administration to unnecessarily — and potentially illegally — terminate funding for a program designed to deploy affordable, renewable energy systems,” Evers wrote.

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The building that houses video game company Raven Software is shown in Middleton, Wis. A group of quality assurance testers at the company have ratified their first union contract — more than three years after launching the first union at a major U.S. gaming studio. (Photo by M.P. King/Wisconsin State Journal)

Video game testers at Middleton-based Raven Software have ratified their first union contract, more than three years after making local and national headlines by launching the first union at a major U.S. studio.

Ratified on Aug. 4, the contract gives employees a 10% raise while limiting mandatory overtime and preserving remote work options.

The deal is the latest development in a saga involving some of the video game industry’s lowest-paid workers. It comes after Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard, Raven Software’s parent company, leaving the roughly two dozen testers to negotiate with one of the world’s largest tech companies.

“I think we pretty much got everything we aimed for,” said Erin Hall, a seven-year veteran at Raven and one of two workers who negotiated the contract. As a quality assurance tester, she checks for bugs in the blockbuster Call of Duty franchise and works with developers to fix them.

An Activision Blizzard spokesperson declined to comment but directed Wisconsin Watch to a web page discussing Microsoft’s labor principles.

Studios nationwide employ testers to play new video games and identify problems before release.

Raven’s testers make around $21 an hour, and they’re frequently required to work overtime in weeks-long “crunch time” stretches ahead of a game’s release. The volatile nature of their industry prompted the workers to organize.

The testers walked off the job to protest layoffs of a dozen colleagues in December 2021. They announced the formation of a union the next month — the first at a AAA studio that makes high-budget games. The Game Workers Alliance represents the workers, organized with support from Communications Workers of America.

Lessons from three years of negotiating

For Hall and fellow bargaining committee member Autumn Prazuch, contract negotiations required intensive lessons on bargaining and labor laws. Neither had joined a union before launching their own.

“We had no idea it would be this difficult, or that it would take three-and-a-half years, or that it’d be this stressful, that we would be giving up so many nights and weekends,” Hall said. “We felt like it was the right thing to do, and we did it, and we learned as we went.”

The process took about twice as long as a norm that has grown longer in recent years. Newly unionized workers between 2020 to 2023 spent an average of 17 months negotiating their first contract, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis.

The contract negotiations overlapped with a change of ownership: Microsoft’s $69 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard. In 2022, while waiting for regulators to approve the deal, Microsoft committed to remaining neutral on the workers’ unionization efforts.

That was after Activision took steps organizers called union busting, including withholding raises granted to nonunion workers and reorganizing Raven’s staff in what the union argued was an attempt to dilute its support ahead of the election.

Prazuch said negotiating with leaders at Activision and Microsoft made her feel like “a little fish in a big pond.”

“You’re sitting across from tech billionaires, and this is a huge company … and we’re 19 people at Raven QA in Middleton, Wisconsin,” she said.

But in that process, Prazuch discovered strengths she didn’t know she had.

“I’ve learned that I have more determination than I initially thought, that my voice is louder than I thought it was,” Prazuch said.

She also learned that the same focus that helps her identify glitches in games allowed her to flag subtle wording changes that would shift the terms of the deal.

The deal they reached limits mandatory overtime to half the weeks in a quarter, and it gives testers the flexibility to choose their schedules when working overtime. Workers who currently work remotely can continue to do so under a contract that also promises 10% raises over the two-year contract period, with potential for additional raises.

Hall said she’d encourage other workers to start unions — if they’re in it for the long haul.

“I would not want to take it back for anything, but it was really hard work,” Hall said. “If people want to unionize at their workplace, just know it’s going to be really difficult, and you have to be committed to seeing it through to the end.”

More video game workers are unionizing

While Microsoft’s promise to not oppose employees’ union efforts contrasts with many other major companies, the process has still had moments of controversy. Communications Workers of America, for instance, criticized Microsoft this summer when it announced plans to lay off around 9,000 workers across the company. That included its gaming division, where it halted production of several games.

Raven’s quality assurance team escaped those layoffs, along with a previous round, Hall said. Having a contract doesn’t guarantee the testers won’t be laid off, but it requires the company to offer notice and bargain over severance and benefits.

Keith Fuller, a former Raven Software employee who is now a Madison-based workplace culture consultant, called collective bargaining “one of the few levers that game developers have” as video game companies tighten their belts and as the Trump administration redefines workers’ rights.

“The power imbalance that’s inherent in capitalism shows up very easily in game development,” Fuller said. “I think that this is something that will benefit workers across the industry.”

The organizing trend comes as state lawmakers are exploring ways to encourage video game companies to move to Wisconsin or expand their in-state operations.

In the years since Raven workers unionized, workers at some other major studios have followed their lead. Communications Workers of America says it now represents 2,000 video game workers at Microsoft.

“When we started [our union campaign], we were kind of ambitiously hoping that there’d be anyone that would do this too, and now there’s so many,” Hall said.

This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To republish, go to the original story and follow the Wisconsin Watch republication guidelines. 

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The state of Wisconsin is offering up to $100 million in performance-based tax incentives to support pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly’s $4 billion investment in Kenosha County, Gov. Tony Evers announced Tuesday.

The post Wisconsin offering up to $100M in development incentives to Eli Lilly’s Kenosha County project appeared first on WPR.

Photo by Architect of the Capitol | U.S. government work via Flickr

The July jobs report released last Friday wasn’t pretty. It showed weaker than anticipated U.S. job growth in July, and there were substantial downward revisions of jobs numbers for May and June as well. Economists predicted a slowdown. The chaos of tariff threats has created substantial uncertainty, which is bad for the economy, and the tariffs that have gone into effect have raised prices. It’s no surprise, then, that we’re seeing a slowdown in jobs. 

Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi noted on social media, “It’s no mystery why the economy is struggling; blame increasing U.S. tariffs and highly restrictive immigration policy. The tariffs are cutting increasingly deeply into the profits of American companies and the purchasing power of American households. Fewer immigrant workers means a smaller economy.”

But instead of reflecting on mistakes in economic policy or offering some austerity suggestion, like limiting U.S.  children to  two dolls each , President Donald Trump blamed the messenger, firing the government official in charge of the data release, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Erika McEntarfer. He baselessly asserted that the bad news was “concocted” and suggested that he knows better than the data. The economy is great, according to him, and he will find a commissioner to tell him so.

Trump’s approach is a disaster for economic decision making and for public trust. The BLS is an independent agency with a strong legacy of providing the data that businesses, analysts and policymakers need. Good economic decisions require reliable data. As the American Economics Association wrote: “The BLS has long had a well-deserved reputation for professional excellence and nonpartisan integrity. Safeguarding this tradition is vital for the continued health of the U.S. economy and public trust in our institutions.” 

The BLS monthly jobs report provides a timely snapshot of labor market dynamics which inform investing and hiring decisions as well as policy choices. BLS data also measures the rate of inflation through the consumer price index. The rising price of goods is not only a key economic indicator but also the scale by which Social Security payments are adjusted and a point of reference in private and union wage negotiations.

BLS data are essential to understanding what is going on in the economy, when a slowdown is emerging, and the cost of daily life. The independence and integrity of the agency, long assumed and supported by both parties, is now under attack.

Wisconsinites lived through something like this more than a decade ago. Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker promised to create 250,000 jobs in his first term. He focused on the goal relentlessly, at least until it became clear that he would not meet it. (In fact, the Wisconsin economy didn’t even meet Walker’s first term goal across his two terms – adding just 233,000 jobs by the time he left office after serving for eight years.)

In the first years of Walker’s  “relentless focus on jobs” under his administration’s tagline  “Wisconsin is Open for Business,” the monthly numbers showed that Wisconsin’s economy was growing more slowly than the national labor market and neighboring states. 

Walker blamed the data. He insisted that we wait instead for a federal source which was more reliable, but had a substantial time lag. As someone who watches this data, I can assure that this was the only time in my three-decade career when differences between monthly and quarterly sources of federal jobs data were a policy talking point. 

But in the end, the data issue was just a distraction from the truth. Wisconsin was growing more slowly, and no amount of complaining about the data or waiting for another source on jobs could change that fact. Eventually, the Walker administration went silent on both the data and the promised 250,000 jobs. 

Trump’s approach is worse than waiting for another source of data. His firing of the commissioner suggests that he’ll only accept data that confirms his narrative. And that makes it harder for any of us to trust any data the federal government is willing to release. 

That’s bad for the economy and bad for democracy. As narrow and nerdy as this topic may seem, we all have an interest in facts and reliable data. We have had a government infrastructure capable of producing it. We lose it at our own peril.

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Reading Time: 4 minutes

Click here to read highlights from the story

• Video game quality assurance testers at Middleton-based Raven Software have ratified their first union contract, more than three years after launching the first union at a major U.S. gaming studio. 
  
• Testers are some of the lowest-paid employees in the video gaming industry.
  
• The deal comes after Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard, Raven Software’s parent company. Activision had been accused of trying to bust the union. Microsoft agreed to stay neutral on the union. 
  
• Organizers said they learned plenty during the challenging years of contract negotiations.

Video game testers at Middleton-based Raven Software have ratified their first union contract, more than three years after making local and national headlines by launching the first union at a major U.S. studio. 

Ratified on Aug. 4, the contract gives employees a 10% raise while limiting mandatory overtime and preserving remote work options. 

The deal is the latest development in a saga involving some of the video game industry’s lowest-paid workers. It comes after Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard, Raven Software’s parent company, leaving the roughly two dozen testers to negotiate with one of the world’s largest tech companies.

“I think we pretty much got everything we aimed for,” said Erin Hall, a seven-year veteran at Raven and one of two workers who negotiated the contract. As a quality assurance tester, she checks for bugs in the blockbuster Call of Duty franchise and works with developers to fix them.

An Activision Blizzard spokesperson declined to comment but directed Wisconsin Watch to a web page discussing Microsoft’s labor principles. 

Studios nationwide employ testers to play new video games and identify problems before release.

Raven’s testers make around $21 an hour, and they’re frequently required to work overtime in weeks-long “crunch time” stretches ahead of a game’s release. The volatile nature of their industry prompted the workers to organize. 

The testers walked off the job to protest layoffs of a dozen colleagues in December 2021. They announced the formation of a union the next month — the first at a AAA studio that makes high-budget games. The Game Workers Alliance represents the workers, organized with support from Communications Workers of America. 

Lessons from three years of negotiating

For Hall and fellow bargaining committee member Autumn Prazuch, contract negotiations required intensive lessons on bargaining and labor laws. Neither had joined a union before launching their own.

“We had no idea it would be this difficult, or that it would take three-and-a-half years, or that it’d be this stressful, that we would be giving up so many nights and weekends,” Hall said. “We felt like it was the right thing to do, and we did it, and we learned as we went.”

The process took about twice as long as a norm that has grown longer in recent years. Newly unionized workers between 2020 to 2023 spent an average of 17 months negotiating their first contract, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis.

The contract negotiations overlapped with a change of ownership: Microsoft’s $69 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard. In 2022, while waiting for regulators to approve the deal, Microsoft committed to remaining neutral on the workers’ unionization efforts. 

That was after Activision took steps organizers called union busting, including withholding raises granted to nonunion workers and reorganizing Raven’s staff in what the union argued was an attempt to dilute its support ahead of the election.

Prazuch said negotiating with leaders at Activision and Microsoft made her feel like “a little fish in a big pond.”

“You’re sitting across from tech billionaires, and this is a huge company … and we’re 19 people at Raven QA in Middleton, Wisconsin,” she said. 

But in that process, Prazuch discovered strengths she didn’t know she had. 

“I’ve learned that I have more determination than I initially thought, that my voice is louder than I thought it was,” Prazuch said. 

She also learned that the same focus that helps her identify glitches in games allowed her to flag subtle wording changes that would shift the terms of the deal. 

The deal they reached limits mandatory overtime to half the weeks in a quarter, and it gives testers the flexibility to choose their schedules when working overtime. Workers who currently work remotely can continue to do so under a contract that also promises 10% raises over the two-year contract period, with potential for additional raises. 

Hall said she’d encourage other workers to start unions — if they’re in it for the long haul. 

“I would not want to take it back for anything, but it was really hard work,” Hall said. “If people want to unionize at their workplace, just know it’s going to be really difficult, and you have to be committed to seeing it through to the end.”

More video game workers are unionizing

While Microsoft’s promise to not oppose employees’ union efforts contrasts with many other major companies, the process has still had moments of controversy. Communications Workers of America, for instance, criticized Microsoft this summer when it announced plans to lay off around 9,000 workers across the company. That included its gaming division, where it halted production of several games.

Raven’s quality assurance team escaped those layoffs, along with a previous round, Hall said. Having a contract doesn’t guarantee the testers won’t be laid off, but it requires the company to offer notice and bargain over severance and benefits.

Keith Fuller, a former Raven Software employee who is now a Madison-based workplace culture consultant, called collective bargaining “one of the few levers that game developers have” as video game companies tighten their belts and as the Trump administration redefines workers’ rights.

“The power imbalance that’s inherent in capitalism shows up very easily in game development,” Fuller said. “I think that this is something that will benefit workers across the industry.”

The organizing trend comes as state lawmakers are exploring ways to encourage video game companies to move to Wisconsin or expand their in-state operations.

In the years since Raven workers unionized, workers at some other major studios have followed their lead. Communications Workers of America says it now represents 2,000 video game workers at Microsoft. 

“When we started (our union campaign), we were kind of ambitiously hoping that there’d be anyone that would do this too, and now there’s so many,” Hall said. 

These Wisconsin video game workers were first to unionize at a major U.S. studio. Three years later, they have a contract. 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 proposal from a Republican Wisconsin congressman would make it harder for universities to use a work visa program to hire faculty and staff from other countries, while limiting private businesses' ability to recruit high-demand workers from abroad. 

The post US Rep. Tom Tiffany’s bill would make it harder for universities to hire faculty from abroad appeared first on WPR.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy recently unveiled a package of new initiatives, pilot programs and regulatory changes to the long-haul trucking industry.

The post Wisconsin trucking companies react to Trump administration’s ‘pro-trucker package’ appeared first on WPR.