Wisconsin’s economic growth is continuing to slow down, with job numbers down from a year ago and unemployment up slightly, the state labor department reported Thursday.

“The Wisconsin labor market has cooled a bit along with the national economy,” said Scott Hodek, section chief in the office of economic advisors at the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. “But unemployment remains historically low.”

Jobs and employment data are collected through two separate surveys conducted by the federal government.

The number of jobs reported each month is projected based on a federal survey of employers’ payrolls. The number of people listed as employed or unemployed is projected based on a survey of U.S. households each month.

With the release of data for March on Thursday, Wisconsin now has the jobs and employment picture for the full first quarter of 2026. The release of January and February data was delayed until earlier in April while DWD adjusted its data calculations in comparison with unemployment insurance tax collections. That annual benchmarking process was delayed further due to the October 2025 federal government shutdown.

“Through 2025 and now into ‘26, we are seeing continued growth still, but it does seem to be decelerating some,” Hodek said.

The number of jobs reported each month is projected based on a federal survey of employers’ payrolls. The number of people listed as employed or unemployed is projected based on a survey of U.S. households each month.

The household survey results projected 109,500 people were unemployed in March, an increase of 2,200 from February  and an increase of 8,400 from March 2025. The unemployment rate — the percentage of people who report they are actively seeking work — went up to 3.5% in March. It has increased by a tenth of a percentage point each month for the last three months.

Wisconsin had a projected 3,021,600 jobs in March, about 1,200 more than February of this year but  a loss of more than 17,000 since March 2025. Hodek said that echoed an increase in the number of jobs nationally from February to March.

The construction industry, which has been doing well in Wisconsin, showed a projected 151,800 jobs in March, 1,800 fewer than in February, but a gain of 6,600 jobs from March 2025.

“There are a lot of jobs there still, and if anything, the employment trend over the last year has likely accelerated,” Hodek said.

A challenge has been a continued shortage of workers. “What we’re seeing is demand still outstripping supply,” Hodek said. “There’s not enough crews to go around.”

The number of jobs in manufacturing was projected at 453,600 in March, 1,800 more than in February but a loss of 5,200 jobs from March 2025.

There were a projected 437,500 jobs in healthcare and social assistance in March, a gain of 300 from February and a gain of 4,900 from March 2025.

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Economic growth is slowing down nationally and in Wisconsin this year, on top of a year of underperformance in 2025, a national economist for the homebuilding industry said Wednesday.

At a presentation in Madison to the Wisconsin Bankers Association, Robert Dietz said the risk for a recession has risen in 2026, driven in large part by the Iran war and its effect on the price of oil.

Dietz is the chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, which at the start of 2026 gauged a 30% chance for a recession this year — already a little higher than the average annual risk of 15-20%.

The 2026 Wisconsin Economic Forecast, an annual program, was put on by WisPolitics + State Affairs and  WisBusiness along with the bankers group.

For this year, “we have now raised that to 40% , and you can find plenty of economists that think that recession risk is about 50% or higher,” Dietz said.

Up to now, the economy has been “good, not great,” Dietz said, with annual growth of 2.1% in 2025.

“We expect the economy this year to grow at only a 1.9% growth rate,” he added. “It’s getting awfully close to what we call stall speed at that level, and obviously the run up in oil prices is the big dragging factor that is hurting.”

The national unemployment rate is 4.3% — a point higher than Wisconsin’s rate of 3.3%. With slower economic growth in the picture, his team is forecasting the unemployment rate to rise up to 5% — “not bad, but it is deteriorating,” Dietz said.

Tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump are also impinging on the economy, Dietz added.

“Tariffs change the cost of inputs,” Dietz said, affecting economic sectors ranging from soybeans to manufacturing. “The cost of aluminum in the United States right now is 40% higher than it is in the global marketplace. That is due to tariffs. And I’m a supply-side free market economist — I’m not a big fan of taxes, I’m not a big fan of tariffs. I just don’t think they’re a particularly good way to raise revenue.”

In 2025, U.S. manufacturing lost about 100,000 jobs, “and that was directly attributable to tariffs.”

With the war in Iran and a corresponding spike in the price of oil, inflation has jumped back over 3%, Dietz said.

But for the last three years, more than half of the increase in the consumer price index has been in the cost of housing, including rent and other homeownership costs. Dietz said the homebuilding industry wants to see policies that reduce the cost of construction and increase housing inventory.

Another “caution flag” on the horizon is consumer debt, he said. Mortgage delinquency rates have risen slightly but remain low. Other debt indicators have prompted concern, however.

Delinquency rates are rising on shorter-term loans for seven to nine years. Credit card delinquency rates have gone up, and the average credit card interest rate, 20-25%, is “kind of a yellow caution flag.”

About one in three car owners with unpaid loans has a balance that is more than the car’s market value, Dietz said — echoing the subprime housing loan crisis that helped trigger the Great Recession in 2008.

Student loan delinquencies, however, have gone up to more than 16% — one-and-a-half times their peak in 2013.

“That’s going to have an impact on rental demand” in the housing market, Dietz said. For the borrowers who fall behind, it could endanger their future credit and crowd them out of the home-buying market.

Economic uncertainty persists, and “the cost of that uncertainty” has been declining international investment in 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds, Dietz said. In response to that drop-off, the interest rate paid to investors on those bonds has risen to 4.4% after starting the year at 4%.

“That’s going to have follow-up effects on mortgage rates, real estate development and apartment construction,” Dietz said.

In a follow-up discussion, economist Scott Hodek of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development and Tim Schneider, president and CEO of Bank Five Nine in Oconomowoc, echoed much of Dietz’s assessment, while observing that Wisconsin overall has been in better shape so far.

Even with some decline in overall jobs and in the labor force over the last year in Wisconsin, “we’ve seen growth in some industries,” Hodek said — notably construction and healthcare. While manufacturing employment has fallen, Hodek said manufacturers still report having jobs to fill, but difficulty filling them.

Wisconsin residents of working age who are younger than 65 and who don’t have jobs are most often people with responsibilities for caring for their children or for the elderly, Hodek said. That means addressing the demand for care as well as other factors that might get in the way of people wanting to join the labor force, he said, because when there’s a mismatch between workers and the jobs available, “you’re going to have folks sitting on the sidelines.”

Schneider said that from his vantage point, Wisconsin’s economy is “in pretty good condition.” Tariff expenses, fuel surcharges as the price of gas goes up and continued concerns about finding workers complicate that picture, he added.

Immigrant workers remain important in industries ranging from dairy farming to construction, he said.

“I think we need to figure that out at the federal level,” Schneider said. “And I’ve talked to our congressional folks and Senate folks about this — both sides just can’t seem to figure it out. I think both want the same thing, but just can’t get it done.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A crowded primary field

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recruited by former Democratic chair, other insiders  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Wisconsin filed three lawsuits Thursday against online prediction market companies that the state Department of Justice accused of “working together to facilitate illegal sports betting throughout the state.”

“Except in limited circumstances, sports betting and other forms of commercial gambling have long been illegal in the state of Wisconsin,” Attorney General Josh Kaul said during a news conference Thursday afternoon. “No company is above this law, no matter how creatively those companies try to disguise the activity that they’re engaged in.”

The lawsuits were filed as Wisconsin prepares to renegotiate 11 tribal gaming compacts to include online sports betting under a law Gov. Tony Evers signed earlier this month. The legislation legalized online sports betting on the condition that the required computer servers are housed on tribal land.

Sports betting has been legal in Wisconsin since 2021, but only in person at tribal casinos.

The state’s lawsuits target online prediction markets that allow users to put money on the outcome of everything from major world events to sports outcomes.

The emergence of prediction markets including Kalshi and Polymarket has prompted states across the country to enact legislation and file lawsuits, Stateline reported in March.

The online platforms have been estimated to generate more than $13 billion every month, with the bulk of those revenues coming from sports betting, Stateline reported.

Kaul said Wisconsin was filing its own lawsuit, but a handful of other states, including recently New York, have filed similar suits citing their own state regulations.

“These companies have chosen to flout Wisconsin law by thinly disguising the sports betting that they facilitate through what are called event contracts,” Kaul explained. “But our position in this case is that event contracts are no different than ordinary sports bets. The companies collect a fee, we allege, for every bet that’s made, leading them to earn significant revenue from Wisconsinites through violations of our state’s gambling regulations.”

The goal of the suits is to shut down the platforms in Wisconsin, Kaul said. The state isn’t currently seeking monetary damages, but he said that possibility hasn’t been ruled out should there be a legal basis to demand them and the facts to support such a demand.

He said the suit was filed in response to “a huge increase in this type of activity” in the last few years.

Each of the three lawsuits is filed in Dane County circuit court as a “complaint to abate public nuisance” and accuse the defendants of “facilitating illegal sports betting throughout the state.” They ask the court to find them in violation of state law and to issue an injunction against the companies for sports-related trading by Wisconsin users.

One suit names Kalshi Inc., along with four affiliates; Robinhood Markets and two affiliates; and two Coinbase companies. The second names three companies doing business as Polymarket or affiliates of Polymarket. The third suit names Foris Dax Markets and North American Derivatives Exchange Inc., doing business as Crypto.com.

In a statement received late Friday, Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal pointed to a Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruling April 6 that states don’t have jurisdiction over prediction markets.

“Congress was clear — consumers deserve uniform, federal oversight over derivatives markets,” Grewal said. “As the Third Circuit held, state enforcement that seeks to prohibit prediction markets — like Wisconsin’s lawsuit [Thursday] against Coinbase and others — ‘is exactly the patchwork that Congress replaced wholecloth by creating the CFTC.’ Wisconsin should accept clear and consistent CFTC oversight of prediction markets — just as Congress intended.”

All of the businesses in the lawsuits list an identical street address in Wilmington, Delaware, except for the three Robinhood companies, which list an address in Dover, Delaware.

All three suits also include as defendants unnamed private individuals or entities that “facilitate” the platforms’ transactions.

The lawsuits focus on sports betting, although the platforms also host transactions involving other kinds of events and predictions. Kaul said the state alleges sports-related gambling is “a very large part” of the activity on Kalshi and other platforms.

The suits describe transactions on the platforms as “indistinguishable from an ordinary sports bet” as defined in Wisconsin law.

Crypto.com, for example, “relabels its sports bets as ‘event contracts,’ meaning contracts traded between buyers and sellers at agreed upon prices that mimic the odds of a sports-related outcome,” the lawsuit naming Crypto.com states. “Parties to these ‘event contracts’ wager money on whether a given sports-related outcome will occur, just as when people bet on that same outcome using traditional casino-style sportsbooks.”

On April 3, 2026, the suit states, “traders could buy contracts taking the position that the University of Michigan would win its Final Four matchup with the University of Arizona for around $0.54, which reflected a roughly 54% projected chance of Michigan winning. When Michigan won, event contract holders who bet on that team winning received $1 per contract and those who instead bet on Arizona winning received nothing.”

Kaul said there was “no direct relationship” between the lawsuits and the enactment of the new law allowing online sports betting. “What we are alleging is violations of Wisconsin law, and the allegations would be the same whether or not there had been the new legislation passed.”

This report was updated 4/27/2026 with a statement from Coinbase. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Union supporters welcomed the outcome of Wednesday’s votes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Staunch resistance to the union

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Professional consultants

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Messages to employees

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

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

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

The Wisconsin Examiner was provided screenshots of the message.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Two right-wing organizations are taking aim at the ban on conversion therapy in Wisconsin’s professional code for social workers, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

But the head of a group that fought for the ban says professional standards are the central issue — and aren’t subject to free speech claims. 

In a joint letter Wisconsin Family Action and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty are demanding that Wisconsin repeal the ban. Conversion therapy is a widely discredited practice purporting to change sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Wisconsin Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board included the ban in its updated professional code published in April 2024.

The code declares that it is “unprofessional conduct” for practitioners to use or promote “any intervention or method that has the purpose of attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including attempting to change behaviors or expressions of self or to reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same gender.”

WILL has been at the center of many conflicts over trans-inclusive policies and gender identity. Wisconsin Family Action has also lobbied against including gender identity in state civil rights protections.

Their letter seeking the conversion therapy ban’s repeal cites a U.S. Supreme Court ruling March 31 in a lawsuit that challenges Colorado’s law banning conversion therapy on First Amendment grounds.

The high court ruling didn’t throw out the Colorado law directly. Instead, it instructed the federal court hearing the Colorado lawsuit to subject that law to “strict scrutiny” on First Amendment grounds because it seeks to “regulate speech based on viewpoint.”

The WILL-Wisconsin Family Action letter, first reported by Wisconsin Health News, was sent April 14 to Gov. Tony Evers, the Department of Safety and Professional Services and the chair of the social work examining board. 

The letter demands that the board stop enforcing the ban and start the process of repealing it. WILL represents a Christian counselor in a pending federal lawsuit to block a La Crosse city ordinance that bans conversion therapy.

Marc Herstand, executive director for the National Association of Social Workers’ Wisconsin chapter, said the U.S. Supreme Court ruling isn’t relevant to the Wisconsin rule.

“I don’t think it applies because we have a rule, and according to state statute, professional boards can create their own ethical standards,” Herstand told the Wisconsin Examiner. That is supported by both the general law that applies to the state’s licensing boards as well as specific provisions authorizing the social worker board, he said.

Herstand said rules against conversion therapy are to prevent harm. He compared the practice to an electrician’s bad advice that leads to a homeowner’s fatal electric shock or a health provider whose bad advice leads a patient with diabetes to lose a limb to nerve damage or the loss of circulation.

“That’s not free speech — that’s unprofessional conduct,” Herstand said. The electrician or health professional “would be held accountable by the [relevant professional] board. Conversion therapy is exactly the same thing.”

Republican lawmakers repeatedly blocked several previous attempts to update Wisconsin’s social work standards. In April 2024, after the Legislature’s session ended, the social work examining board updated its professional standards to restore the conversion therapy ban.

Then, in a landmark state Supreme Court ruling in July 2025, Chief Justice Jill Karofsky wrote that the statutes that state legislators had used to review and suspend administrative rules violated the Wisconsin Constitution. The examining board “exercised its statutory authority” when it revised its rules to ban conversion therapy, Karofsky wrote in the 4-3 decision.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The total number of Wisconsin jobs fell in February compared with January and also fell from the number in February 2025, the state labor department reported Thursday.

Meanwhile, employment was up in February compared with January, while it declined from February a year ago. The percentage of people who reported they were unemployed in February but actively seeking work rose from the previous month, however.

“I would hesitate to say, based on what we’ve seen so far with employment over [the past] year, whether we’re seeing a downward or an uptrend,” said Scott Hodek, section chief in the Department of Workforce Development office of economic advisors, in a briefing Thursday.

Shifting tariff policies and general economic volatility “are introducing a lot of noise in the economy right now,” Hodek said.

According to DWD, 3.02 million Wisconsinites were employed in February, an increase of 1,500 from January but a drop of 11,900 from February 2025. The unemployment rate, which includes people who report they are actively seeking work, rose to 3.4% in February from 3.3% in January.

There were 3.02 million nonfarm jobs in Wisconsin in February — down 10,500 from January and down 20,200 from February 2025.

“Any time we see a job drop it’s something we definitely want to pay attention to,” Hodek said. Current indicators are mixed and make it “difficult to parse where the economy is going,” he added. “You’ve got the [stock] market going one direction and you’ve got real consumer spending kind of flattening.”

There were 153,700 construction jobs in February, a gain of 800 from January and 10,200 from February 2025. There were 451,500 manufacturing jobs in February, down 100 from January and down 8,600 from February 2025.

“That’s related to multiple factors,” Hodek said, but declines “don’t always indicate the health of the industry.”

Automation, productivity increases and outsourcing can all lead to job reductions, he said. But the shrinkage can also reflect difficulty hiring, because the jobs numbers only show people who are working, not vacancies that employers are trying to fill, so “it can look like employment’s going down in manufacturing.”

Wisconsin’s job and employment numbers for January, February and March were delayed due to the annual adjustments made to the formulas that economists use to calculate them. Those delays were exacerbated by the federal shutdown in October and early November.

Wisconsin’s January numbers were released on April 2, and the March numbers will be released in two weeks on April 29.

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Wisconsin’s highest court ruled Wednesday that Pabst Brewing Co. owes millions in damages to the survivors of a worker employed by a second company who died from a cancer related to asbestos in the Pabst brewery in Milwaukee.

The deceased employee — a steamfitter hired to remove asbestos insulation from piping in the facility — worked for an independent contractor, not directly for Pabst.

But Pabst  was sufficiently aware of the dangers of asbestos on its premises to be held responsible under Wisconsin’s workplace safety law, known as the safe place statute, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Dallet wrote in the 5-2 decision. The ruling upheld the circuit court’s award of nearly $7 million to the estate of steamfitter Gerald Lorbiecki.

“As the owner of the brewery, Pabst owed a non-delegable duty under the safe-place statute to frequenters on the premises, a category that includes employees of independent contractors like Lorbiecki,” wrote Dallet. She was joined by Chief Justice Jill Karofsky and Justices Brian Hagedorn, Janet Protasiewicz and Susan Crawford.

Lawyers for Pabst had argued that the brewery wasn’t responsible for the hazard because Lorbiecki’s employer had directed the work, not Pabst. In a dissent, Justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley agreed, writing that the Court majority “fails to correctly analyze the law regarding a building owner’s liability to an independent contractor’s employee.”

The asbestos only became a hazard because of the work that Lorbiecki and his coworkers were doing, Ziegler argued.

The repair work took place during the mid-1970s, according to the ruling. “At the Pabst brewery, steamfitters cut out existing insulated pipes and replaced them,” Dallet wrote — a procedure that involved “thousands of pounds of insulation” that would be torn off “many miles” of asbestos-insulated pipe, according to circuit court testimony.  The brewery closed in 1996.

Lorbiecki developed mesothelioma in 2017 and sued Pabst and several other contractors and businesses. After he died his widow and his estate took over as the plaintiffs. His widow later died and their son assumed that role.

By the time the case went to trial, claims against the other companies, including Lorbiecki’s employer, had been dismissed, leaving only Pabst.

Pabst asked the lower court to throw out the case on several grounds, including that Lorbiecki worked for an independent contractor rather than Pabst.

The judge denied the company’s summary judgment petition. The jury awarded $6.5 million for Lorbiecki’s injuries and illness. Jurors also awarded $20 million in punitive damages.

Under state law, a portion of the compensatory damages were capped. State law also caps punitive damages at twice the amount of compensatory damages.

After calculating that Pabst was responsible for 42% of the compensatory damages, the judge calculated the total award at $6,986,906, including $4,657,937 in punitive damages.

The Wisconsin 2nd District Appeals Court in Milwaukee held in a May 2024 decision that the punitive damages should be calculated based on the total amount of compensatory damages — $5.5 million — not just the portion applied to Pabst. That would result in punitive damages of more than $11 million.

The Supreme Court ruling Wednesday reversed that portion of the appeals court ruling, however. Punitive damages in the case should reflect only Pabst’s portion of the compensatory damages — $2.3 million — Dallet wrote, yielding the punitive damages as the lower court originally calculated them.

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Democrats seeking the party’s nomination for governor talk about many of the same goals when it comes to Wisconsin’s health care system: expanding access, reducing costs and ensuring quality.

Some of their proposals to those ends are almost identical. But key details vary. 

“If there’s one thing that’s a certainty, the context will change between now and when one of us takes office and has a Legislature that hopefully is going to work with us,” said Joel Brennan, former secretary of the Department of Administration, at a forum Wednesday conducted by Wisconsin Health News. “That context will change in the next nine to 10 months and we better be ready to change with it too.”

Brennan said his campaign’s health care policy will rest on four principles: broadening access to health care, particularly in rural areas; reducing costs; fostering a pathway to increase the health care workforce; and ensuring that mental health is “a basic part of health care.”

Other candidates have issued more detailed plans.

Former Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO Missy Hughes announced a list of 10 proposals Wednesday.

“I’m really wanting to make sure that we’re addressing a very, very complicated problem in every different way,” Hughes said at the Wednesday forum.

Expanding Medicaid

Almost all of the seven major Democratic hopefuls have endorsed expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act — opening up the health insurance plan for low-income Americans to people with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty guideline.  When the ACA was enacted the federal government paid states that accepted expansion 90% of the additional cost.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers made repeated attempts to enact expansion after he took office in 2019, but couldn’t do it without the support of the Republican majority in the state Legislature because of a law passed the month before Evers was sworn in.

Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has made Medicaid expansion the central focus of his health care policy pitch. He has promised to veto the state budget if it doesn’t include Medicaid expansion.

“The fact that so many folks aren’t covered right now is a problem for everybody,” Barnes said at a forum Monday, because health care providers pass the cost of uncompensated care on to other patients or their insurance companies. The Monday forum was conducted by ABC for Health, a nonprofit law firm that assists low-income Wisconsinites trying to navigate health care coverage and medical debt.

Hughes also lists expanding Medicaid — referred to as BadgerCare in Wisconsin — among her 10 proposals. She would connect BadgerCare expansion to the creation of a public option health insurance plan that Wisconsinites could purchase through the ACA marketplace, HealthCare.gov.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley also favors combining expanded Medicaid with a public option for people to buy into the plan. “We already have the BadgerCare infrastructure that is already in place,” Crowley said at the Wednesday forum. “So I think it’s our responsibility to expand the people’s ability to actually pay into a BadgerCare public option.”

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez favors BadgerCare expansion as well as a public option health plan. Rather than combining them, however, she lists them as two of three health care initiatives she would pursue as governor. The third initiative is to institute a stabilization fund program to support struggling rural providers.  

The public option plan, to be sold on the ACA marketplace, “would be able to put downward pressure on costs across Wisconsin and have some price transparency within that,” Rodriguez said at the Monday forum. She pointed to examples in other states, including Colorado, where a public option health plan is also required to reduce its premium costs by 5% each year.

“Secondly, I do think that we should expand Medicaid in the state of Wisconsin,” Rodriguez said, noting Wisconsin is one of just 10 states that have not done so.

Rodriguez also observed that the 2025 “big, beautiful” tax and spending bill enacted by the Republican majority in Congress and signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025, “makes it a little harder” for the state to expand Medicaid.

State Rep. Francesca Hong also included BadgerCare expansion and “a robust public option” health plan in a longer list of priorities during the Monday forum. Along with those, she called for lowering prescription drug costs, acting to “crack down on private insurers,” among other goals.

A Medicaid expansion dissent

An exception on Medicaid expansion is Sen. Kelda Roys. Although she has advocated Medicaid expansion going back to her years in the Assembly a decade ago, she argues now that it’s no longer practical.

An August 28 memo from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services declares that the 2025 tax and spending law includes “several traps making it cost and policy prohibitive for Wisconsin to expand Medicaid.”

The law requires Medicaid participants to prove they’re eligible every six months instead of annually as now — which advocates argue will lead more qualified recipients to be kicked out of the program. In addition, a $1.3 billion boost that Wisconsin would get for expanding Medicaid will end Dec. 31.

Expansion “is not feasible given the changes that the Trump administration has made right now,” Roys said Wednesday.

Instead, she has proposed allowing the general public to buy into the state health insurance plan that covers state employees. Wisconsin employers could buy into the plan to cover their workers, or individual Wisconsin residents could buy into it as an alternative to other private health insurance plans.

“We can lower costs, reduce uncompensated care, expand access to coverage, especially for small businesses,” Roys said.

Brennan has also proposed opening the state plan to the public, because it has broad participation as well as higher reimbursement rates for health providers, he said Wednesday. 

But he added that he thinks details on the public option should wait until the next governor takes office, so that experts in the state as well as from other states that have instituted a public option “can be part of that conversation.”

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Ten Democratic state legislators  wrote Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil Tuesday urging him and the GOP majority in Congress to take control of the war in Iran in reaction to President Donald Trump’s social media threats against the country.

The lawmakers sent the letter after Trump posted on his social media platform Tuesday morning that “a whole civilization will die” if Iran doesn’t meet his deadline to open the Strait of Hormuz. The post followed Trump’s threat on social media Sunday to bomb bridges and power plants if Iranian leaders don’t open the waterway to ship traffic.

“We are writing to you with an urgent request and to express our grave concerns for the safety of our country and civilians around the world,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Steil (R-Janesville), led by Assembly Minority Leader Rep. Greta Neubauer (D-Racine).

“Earlier today, President Donald Trump warned the world through a social media post that ‘a whole civilization will die tonight’ if Iran fails to meet his deadline,” the letter states. “This appears to be an explicit threat to commit unimaginable atrocities against civilians. Congress must act and stop the president’s actions.”

The letter continues: “We are calling on you and the Congress of the United States to assert your authority and enforce congressional war powers as laid out in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. The president and his administration are letting this conflict spin out of control. It’s time for Congress to step in.”

The president’s threats target non-combatants, the letter notes.

“Threatening millions of civilian lives is fundamentally un-American and violates the core values that both Democrats and Republicans share. Whether President Trump intends to follow through on his threat or not, his statement demonstrates he is not fit to be commander-in-chief,” the letter states.

“It’s time for you to summon your courage, recognize the gravity of this moment, and do the right thing for our shared future. We must rise above partisanship and call out the president’s recklessness immediately.

“Reassert congressional control over the conflict in Iran and put an end to the president’s erratic and dangerous actions before it is too late.”

In addition to Neubauer, the letter was signed by Democratic state Reps. Christine Sinicki, Brienne Brown, Ann Roe, Clint Anderson, Angelina Cruz, Tip McGuire and Ben Desmidt, and Democratic Sens. Mark Spreitzer and Robert Wirch.

Trump agreed Tuesday evening to a two-week ceasefire with Iran and said the countries were near a long-term peace agreement.

Letter to U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil re_ Congressional War Powers

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