A plan to move coal piles out of downtown Green Bay is in jeopardy following a vote by the Brown County Board of Supervisors Wednesday night.
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Wisconsin's forests are facing numerous threats, including climate change, invasive species and a decline in the logging industry, which can help spur new forest growth.
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Green Bay Correctional Institution | Photo by Andrew Kennard
Amidst a staffing crisis that worsened living conditions in Wisconsin prisons, the state gave corrections officers a large raise.
The number of vacant positions for correctional officers and sergeants across adult institutions has declined over 20% from a peak of 35%. But there’s still a struggle with working conditions, former correctional officer Joe Verdegan said.
“By its nature, with the clientele you have there, it’s a very toxic environment,” said Verdegan, who worked at Green Bay Correctional Institution from 1994 to 2020. “The toxic part of it will never change, but the problem is, you need veteran staff that can deal with it.”
Wisconsin’s Act 10, passed in 2011, excluded many government workers from collective bargaining for anything other than inflationary increases to base wages. The law led to an exodus of veteran staff concerned about what might happen to their pensions, Verdegan wrote in a 2020 book about GBCI.
Act 10 grouped some workers together as public safety employees and others as general employees. Public safety employees’ collective bargaining rights were largely unchanged, while those of general employees were severely curtailed.
Dane County Judge Jacob Frost struck down the law’s collective bargaining restriction, ruling that the Wisconsin Legislature didn’t have a defensible reason for excluding some public safety workers from the public safety group.
On Wednesday, Frost put his order on hold, granting a temporary stay on his Dec 2 ruling while he considers written arguments that he should keep the ruling on hold while the Wisconsin Legislature appeals it.
Frost’s December 2 decision essentially confirmed a previous ruling released in July, in which he wrote that Act 10 violated the equal protection clause of the Wisconsin Constitution. Previous legal challenges failed to overturn the law.
Opponents of the law celebrated what the decision might mean for employees’ power in the workplace, while supporters said Act 10 saved billions of dollars. Former Gov. Scott Walker, who signed Act 10 into law, called the decision “brazen political activism” and “an early Christmas present for the big government special interests.”
The law’s effect on retirement contributions led to an increased cost for public employees and government savings. Since employees were responsible for a larger share of pension contributions, state and local governments saved nearly $5.2 billion over the seven-year period from 2011 to 2017, according to a 2020 report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
The judge didn’t strike down Act 10 provisions that changed the rules for employees’ retirement contributions and health insurance premiums, an attorney representing unions in the case told Wisconsin Watch. Those provisions don’t rely on the distinction between the public safety and general employee groups, he said.
Frost’s ruling has been appealed, and it’s expected to go to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Wisconsin Public Radio reported. Its fate might depend on an upcoming Wisconsin Supreme Court election and whether any justices recuse themselves.
Frost didn’t find a legal problem with the Legislature treating the public safety group differently than the general employees group — for example, by providing them with benefits that would attract quality employees to jobs important for public safety. If teachers, administration or sanitation workers face labor unrest, their absence from work probably wouldn’t cause death or great harm, he wrote in the July ruling.
Instead, Frost took issue with the Legislature’s decision to not include certain workers in the public safety group, including the Capitol Police, conservation wardens and correctional officers.
Specifically referring to correctional officers, Frost wrote, “What greater threat is there to public safety than the escape of the persons that those in the public safety group arrested and brought to justice?”
After Act 10, GBCI staff had to contribute more to their pensions and paid higher health insurance premiums, Verdegan wrote in his book.
“People were fleeing the prison to go drive truck, be bartenders, work in cheese factories, or even bag groceries at Woodman’s,” Verdegan wrote.
Corrections officers were asked to put in more overtime around 2011 or 2012, former GBCI officer Jeff Hoffman told the Examiner in July.
“From that time forward, it never got any better,” said Hoffman, who left GBCI in early 2023 after almost 23 years. “If you were there, you were going to work 16-hour shifts.”
Staffing vacancies for correctional officers and sergeants have declined substantially from a peak of 35% in August 2023 to the current 12.9% vacancy rate.
In the DOC’s 2022 Climate and Engagement survey, over half of security staff expressed at least some disagreement with the idea that their pay was fair relative to the duties they performed. Over half said that if they left DOC, it would be because of their salary and/or benefits.
These responses were given before Wisconsin implemented a large pay raise for corrections officers. Under the pay increases, correctional officers’ wages increased from $20.29 an hour to over $30 an hour, with more pay for officers in higher-security and understaffed prisons. Wages had received a $4 boost from federal pandemic relief funds prior to the increase, the Associated Press reported.
Verdegan wrote in his book that some supervisors would try to harass or intimidate staff. Sean Daley of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 32 made a similar remark to the Examiner in 2022.
“It’s a tough enough job as it is,” Daley told the Examiner in 2022. “Add in that a lot of the supervisors think they’re ‘top-cops’ and spend their time tirelessly harassing staff with weak investigations and it just adds to the vacancy rates.”
Nearly half of security staff expressed at least some disagreement with the statements “My supervisor cares about my interests” and “Employees are treated fairly in my work unit.”
About 1 in 10 strongly disagreed with the statement “My supervisor treats me with dignity and respect,” with about a quarter expressing at least some disagreement. About three-quarters at least somewhat agreed that they have positive relationships with their colleagues.
Close to 40% of security staff expressed at least some disagreement with the statements “Work rule violations are not tolerated” and “I can disclose a suspected violation of a rule, law, or regulation without fear or reprisal” in the 2022 survey.
Some individual facilities have vacancy rates for correctional officers and sergeants that are higher than the overall number for adult facilities, including 20.5% at Waupun Correctional Institution. Waupun has seen several prisoner deaths and staff charged with crimes.
Waupun has seen an influx of staff since September, when the vacancy rate was 42%. Sarah Cooper, administrator of the DOC’s division of adult institutions, said at a public meeting in September that other staff were sent to assist Waupun. For example, Waupun also had 40 supplemental staff per pay period, she said.
Correctional officers and sergeants are far from the only staff in Wisconsin prisons. The Department of Corrections has varying levels of vacancies of other staff. Some of the highest vacancy rates are 22% for social services and 21% for psychological services.
While Wisconsin’s large pay raises have garnered credit for bringing in new staff, the state hasn’t yet seen whether current efforts will fully staff Wisconsin prisons. A briefing published last week by the Massachusetts-based Prison Policy Initiative challenged the idea that the U.S. can solve prison staffing problems through recruitment.
The research and advocacy group argued that decarceration would be more effective in addressing understaffing than pay raises, lowering employment requirements, offering staff wellness programs or constructing new facilities.
The group promoted reducing the prison populations through parole, other forms of release and taking steps to decrease the number of people admitted to prison.
As of Dec. 6, Wisconsin’s adult prisons held over 23,000 people, more than 5,000 people higher than design capacity. The adult prison population has risen over 2,500 from fiscal year 2022 to fiscal year 2024.
Incarcerated people face the worst harms of understaffing, the PPI argued, but they noted health risks that employees face, including injury, exposure to infectious diseases and high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
“Unfortunately, there’s only so much that a pay raise can do to ameliorate that,” said Wanda Bertram, communications strategist for the Prison Policy Initiative.
A 2018 survey of Washington State Department of Corrections employees found that prison employees experience PTSD at a rate equivalent to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans and higher than police officers. These jobs take a lot out of people, Bertram said.
In Wisconsin’s adult prisons, 452 assaults on staff took place in fiscal year 2024, according to Department of Corrections data. The incident rate was 19.6 assaults per 1,000 incarcerated people, which is the highest it’s been since at least 2013, the earliest year available. These numbers are for adult institutions and many of the assaults involve prisoners spitting or throwing bodily substances (fewer than half involve battery, physical injury or sexual assault).
How long new staff stay in corrections also matters, and Bertram pointed to challenging turnover rates found in a 2020-2021 survey. The job isn’t for everyone, said Hoffman, the former GBCI correctional officer.
“Historically speaking, from the time that I started there to the time that I left… if 10 new people would start at one point, usually half would quit,” Hoffman said. “Because they didn’t want to work in that environment.”
Former correctional officer Denis O’Neill has had complicated feelings about Act 10. He said he would’ve liked to have more money in his pocket, but he said the act was for the greater good of Wisconsin and saved billions for taxpayers.
In Verdegan’s book, O’Neill recounts the story of a fight in 2015 with an incarcerated man who was attacking a staff member. Verdegan wrote that there was “no question O’Neill was fighting for his life.”
O’Neill left GBCI with a medical termination and had physical, cognitive and speech therapy, Verdegan wrote. He had at least four documented concussions while working at GBCI. O’Neill told the Examiner that he had to go back to doctors he was seeing and get new paperwork after the state said they didn’t receive the original documents.
“It’s their job to make it as hard as possible as they can for you so that you get sick and tired of doing everything and you forget about it,” O’Neill said. “That’s the game I felt that was being played.”
O’Neill said he received his benefits after a state senator stepped in. He thinks the union could have taken care of the issue for him if it had not been disempowered under Act 10.
“I could’ve just continued to work on my recovery,” he said.
Kimberly Verdegan, a former GBCI correctional officer who is married to Joe Verdegan, thinks prison jobs are less desirable than teaching jobs and that the passage of Act 10 didn’t take this into account.
“Not to say that a teacher’s job isn’t important,” Kimberly Verdegan said. “But they have their holidays off, they go home at night. They don’t get forced to stay another shift.”
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections declined comment for this story, and AFSCME Council 32 did not respond to requests for comment.
Update: This story has been updated with the most recent data on staff vacancies and prison assaults.
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The reopening of the Social Development Commission, after months of disruption, has sparked mixed reactions from elected officials.
While some welcome its return, others anticipate challenges ahead, with Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson calling for greater transparency from the agency.
The Social Development Commission, or SDC, reopened its main office at 1730 W. North Ave. earlier this month. It’s now focusing on resuming its Volunteer Income Tax Assistance, career services, child care and housing programs.
The agency provided programs and services that helped Milwaukee County residents living in poverty before it stopped services and laid off employees in late April because of its inability to meet payroll and other financial concerns.
At the SDC board’s meeting where leadership announced plans to reopen, Jackie Q. Carter, the board’s commissioner appointed by the mayor, voted against executive board nominations and asked for more community involvement, a formalized process and public transparency in the board’s decisions.
“The vote accurately reflected the mayor’s concerns about the lack of transparency in the latest moves,” said Jeff Fleming, a spokesperson for Johnson.
The mayor would like SDC to follow requirements of Wisconsin open meetings law, which includes publicly posting notice of its board meetings and providing agendas with information regarding the matters of discussion, Fleming said.
Since SDC suspended operations, the board has only been meeting part of the law’s notice requirements. SDC has notified individuals and members of the press of upcoming meetings, but it has not been posting meeting notices in public places or online.
“The mayor is hopeful SDC will, once again, be a leading provider of help to low-income residents of the region,” Fleming said. “It is essential that SDC regain trust before it can resume the important work it previously undertook. The services are needed, and well-run organizations are key to serving those who deserve assistance.”
Before the reopening announcement in November, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said in an interview that the county wants to continue working with the Social Development Commission.
He said many of the services SDC provided have been picked up by other agencies, and his office has not received any constituent calls related to service issues.
“But we also know that as a CAP (community action program) agency, there are dollars that are probably on the table at the state and federal level that we haven’t been able to take advantage of because they aren’t open,” Crowley said.
Following the reopening announcement, Jonathan Fera, the communications director for the county executive’s office, said the state and the federal Office of Community Services are working with SDC to determine how to move forward, and Crowley is ready to collaborate with them when needed.
“It’s encouraging that people are back at the table working on a solution to the challenges that have impacted public services provided by SDC,” Fera said.
The county administration is encouraging residents who can no longer access services through the SDC to reach out to the Milwaukee County Department of Health and Human Services.
Another official interested in SDC restarting services is U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore.
When SDC abruptly shuttered in April, Moore wrote letters to SDC’s board and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, calling for a federal investigation.
“The Social Development Commission’s closure was a loss that was deeply felt in the community,” Moore said. “While I am grateful that the Social Development Commission is resuming some of its services, I know it still faces many challenges ahead.”
County Supervisor Priscilla E. Coggs-Jones, who represents the 13th District on Milwaukee’s Near North Side and is the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors’ second vice chair, called the reopening a “critical step toward restoring vital services for Milwaukee County residents.”
“The SDC has been a cornerstone of community support for years, and its relaunch reaffirms our commitment to uplifting people in need,” she said.
State Sen. LaTonya Johnson, who represents the 6th Senate District, said the reopening is great news for Milwaukee County.
“The commission’s ability to provide housing assistance and child care food services has been a lifeline for families who need a little support,” Johnson said. “I’m glad to have them back in our community, and I encourage those who need help to take advantage of their services.”
Devin Blake, PrincessSafiya Byers and Edgar Mendez contributed reporting to this story.
News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.
Milwaukee leaders weigh in on reopening of Social Development Commission 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.
More than half of nonmetallic mine reclamation programs audited in the past five years are out of compliance due in large part to staff turnover, according to state environmental regulators.
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Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman cites third-party financial assessment findings in $855 million budget increase request.
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University of Utah student Rebeca Damico said her professors at first took a hard line against AI when ChatGPT was introduced in 2022, but she and other students say schools have softened their stands as the usefulness – and career potential – of the technology has become clearer. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for States Newsroom)
For 21-year-old Rebeca Damico, ChatGPT’s public release in 2022 during her sophomore year of college at the University of Utah felt like navigating a minefield.
The public relations student, now readying to graduate in the spring, said her professors immediately added policies to their syllabuses banning use of the chatbot, calling the generative artificial intelligence tool a form of plagiarism.
“For me, as someone who follows the rules, I was very scared,” Damico said. “I was like, oh, I can’t, you know, even think about using it, because they’ll know.”
Salt Lake City-based Damico studied journalism before switching her major to public relations, and saw ChatGPT and tools like it as a real threat to the writing industry. She also felt very aware of the “temptation” she and her classmates now had — suddenly a term paper that might take you all night to write could be done in a few minutes with the help of AI.
“I know people that started using it and would use it to … write their entire essays. I know people that got caught. I know people that didn’t,” Damico said. “Especially in these last couple weeks of the semester, it’s so easy to be like, ‘Oh, put it into ChatGPT,’ but then we’re like, if we do it once, it’s kind of like, this slippery slope.”
But students say they’re getting mixed messages – the stern warning from professors against use of AI and the growing pressure from the job market to learn how to master it.
The technological developments of generative AI over the last few years have cracked open a new industry, and a wealth of job opportunities. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced the first statewide partnership with a tech firm to bring AI curriculum, resources and opportunities to the state’s public colleges.
And even for those students not going into an IT role, it’s likely they will be asked to use AI in some way in their industries. Recent research from the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report found that 75% of people in the workforce are using AI at work, and that some hiring managers are equally prioritizing AI skills with real-world job experience.
Over the last few years, the University of Utah, like most academic institutions, has had to take a position on AI. As Damico experienced, the university added AI guidelines to its student handbook that take a fairly hard stance against the tools.
It urges professors to add additional AI detection tools in addition to education platform Canvas’ Turnitin feature, which scans assignments for plagiarism. The guidelines also now define the use of AI tools without citation, documentation or authorization as forms of cheating.
Though Damico said some professors continue to hold a hard line against AI, some have started to embrace it. The case-by-case basis Damico describes from her professors is in line with how many academic institutions are handling the technology.
Some universities spell out college-wide rules, while others leave it up to professors themselves to set AI standards in their classrooms. Others, like Stanford University’s policy, acknowledge that students are likely to interact with it.
Stanford bans AI from being used to “substantially complete an assignment or exam,” and says students must disclose its use, but says “absent a clear statement from a course instructor, use of or consultation with generative AI shall be treated analogously to assistance from another person.”
Virginia Byrne is an associate professor of higher education and student affairs at Morgan State University in Baltimore, and she studies technology in the lives of learners and educators, with a focus on how it impacts college students. She said the university allows professors to figure out what works best for them when it comes to AI. She herself often assigns projects that prompt students to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of popular AI tools.
She’s also a researcher with the TRAILS Institute, an multi-institution organization aiming to understand what trust in AI looks like, and how to create ethical, sustainable AI solutions. Along with Morgan State, researchers from University of Maryland, George Washington University and Cornell University conduct a variety of research, such as how ChatGPT can be used in health decision making, how to create watermark technology for AI or how other countries are shaping AI policy.
“It’s cool to be in a space with people doing research that’s related, but so different,” Byrne said. “Because it expands your thinking, and it allows us to bring graduate students and undergraduate students into this community where everyone is focused on trustworthiness and AI, but from so many different lenses.”
Byrne hopes that her students can see the potential that AI has to make their lives and work more easy, but she worries that it creates an “artificial expectation” for how young people need to perform online.
“It might lead some folks, younger folks, who are just starting their careers, to feel like they need to use (social media tool) Canva to look totally perfect on LinkedIn, and use all these tools to … optimize their time and their calendars,” Byrne said. “And I just worry that it’s creating a false expectation of speed and efficiency that the tools currently can’t accomplish.”
Theresa Fesinstine is the founder of peoplepower.ai, which trains HR professionals on ways AI can be used efficiently within their organization. This semester, she instructed her first college course at the City University of New York on AI and business, and taught students of all years and backgrounds.
Fesinstine said she was surprised how many of her students knew little to nothing about AI, but heard that many other instructors warned they’d fail students who were found to have used it in assignments. She thinks this mixed messaging often comes from not understanding the technology, and its abilities to help with an outline, or to find research resources.
“It’s a little scary, and I think that’s where, right now, most of the trepidation is centered around,” she said. “It’s that most people, in my opinion, haven’t been trained or understand how to use AI most effectively, meaning they use it in the same way that you would use Google.”
Shriya Boppana, a 25-year-old MBA student at Duke University, not only uses AI in her day-to-day life for schoolwork, but she’s also pursuing a career in generative AI development and acquisitions. She wasn’t initially interested in AI, she said, but she worked on a project with Google and realized how the technology was set to influence everyday life, and how malleable it still is.
“Once you kind of realize how much that the tech actually isn’t as fleshed out as you think it is, I was a little more interested in … trying to understand what the path is to get it where it needs to go,” Boppana said.
She said she uses some form of AI tool every day, from planning her own schedule, to having a chatbot help decide how students in a group project should divide and complete work, based on their availability. Because she works with it regularly, she understands the strengths and limitations of AI, saying it helps her get mundane tasks done, process data or outline an assignment.
But she said the personalized tone she aims to have in her writing just isn’t there yet with the publicly available AI tools, so she doesn’t completely rely on it for papers or correspondence.
Parris Haynes, a 22-year-old junior studying philosophy at Morgan State, said the structure and high demand of some students’ coursework almost “encourages or incentivizes” them to use AI to help get it all done.
He sees himself either going into law, or academia and said he’s a little nervous about how AI is changing those industries. Though he leans on AI to help organize thoughts or assignments for classes like chemistry, Haynes said he wouldn’t go near it when it comes to his work or career-related objectives for his philosophy classes.
“I don’t really see much of a space for AI to relieve me of the burden of any academic assignments or potential career tasks in regards to philosophy,” Haynes said. “Even if it could write a convincing human-seeming paper, a philosophical paper, it’s robbing me of the joy of doing it.”
Like Haynes, Fesinstine knows that some of her students are interested, but a little scared about the power AI may have over their futures. Although there’s a lot of research about how older generations’ jobs are impacted by AI, those just about to break into the workforce may be the most affected, because they’ve grown up with these technologies.
“I would say the attitude is — I use this term a lot, ‘cautiously curious,’” Fesinstine said. “You know, there’s definitely a vibe around ethics and protection that I don’t know that I would see in other generations, perhaps … But there’s also an acknowledgement that this is something that a lot of companies are going to need and are going to want to use.”
Now, two years since ChatGPT’s release, Damico has started to realize the ways generative AI is useful in the workplace. She began working with PR firm Kronus Communications earlier this year, and was encouraged to explore some time-saving or brainstorming functions of generative AI.
She’s become a fan of having ChatGPT explain new business concepts to her, or to get it to suggest Instagram captions. She also likes to use it for more refined answers than Google might provide, such as if she’s searching for publications to pitch a client to.
Though she’s still cautious, and won’t use generative AI to write actual assignments for her, Damico said she realizes she needs the knowledge and experience after graduation — “it gives you kind of this edge.”
Boppana, who sees her career growing in the AI space, feels incredibly optimistic about the role AI will play in her future. She knows she’s more knowledgeable and prepared to go into an AI-centered workforce than most, but she feels like the opportunities for growth in healthcare, telecommunications, computing and more are worth wading into uncertain waters.
“I think it’s like a beautiful opportunity for people to learn how machines just interact with the human world, and how we can, I don’t know, make, like, prosthetic limbs, like test artificial hearts … find hearing aids,” Boppana said. “There’s so much beauty in the way that AI helps human beings. I think you just have to find your space within it.”
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A customer walks by a display of fresh eggs at a grocery store on Sept. 25 in San Anselmo, California. Grocery prices rose 0.4% in November, according to the Consumer Price Index, leading to tougher times for many during the holiday season. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
A rise in food prices makes for a less than merry holiday season.
Grocery prices rose 0.4% in November, according to the Consumer Price Index, released this week by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Eggs made one of the biggest jumps at 8.2% over the month, and 37.5% over the past year, providing challenges for people trying to eat a somewhat cheaper protein and families cooking holiday foods such as sugar cookies and jelly doughnuts.
Although the increase in food prices has moderated a bit from past years, they are still more than 20% higher than they were before the pandemic, according to David Ortega, at Michigan State University.
“It was a key issue in the election in terms of people really feeling that sticker shock at the grocery store,” said Ortega, a food economist.
President-elect Donald Trump vowed to bring down prices during his campaign and blamed the Biden administration for how they reached this point. But in an interview with TIME published this week, Trump said he does not believe his presidency would be a failure if grocery prices do not come down.
“It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up,” he said.
The increase in grocery, or food at home prices, was partly driven by the rise in egg and beef prices, Ortega said. He said the price of holiday roast has been affected by drought and high feed prices. This year, the inventory of beef cattle was the smallest beef herd since 1951.
“On eggs, the story continues to be bird flu together with increased consumer demand given the holiday season,” he said following Wednesday’s release of the latest Consumer Price Index. “And for beef the issue is supply — high input costs and decisions that beef producers made a couple of years back when they were facing drought and high feed prices which has reduced beef supply, and this in turn is affecting beef prices.”
The latest food price numbers presented a mixed bag for holiday shoppers looking to bake treats this month. Flour and prepared four mixes fell 1% and bread decreased 1.3%, while sugar and sweets rose 0.2%, and butter ticked up 1.5%.
Oranges, including the popular stocking stuffers tangerines, fell 1.8% in the latest Consumer Price Index report.
The rise in cost of eating your meals at home compared to the rise in cost of eating out is also getting narrower, with the gap in inflation between restaurant menu prices and grocery year-over-year prices being the narrowest it has been since May 2023, according to Supermarket News. Food at home in previous reports rose 0.2% and 0.4% compared to 0.2% and 0.3% for the past two food away from home reports.
Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the Groundwork Collective, a left-of-center economic think tank, said that just a few seed producers, meatpackers, and grocers dominate the food industry, which is a key part of the story of what drives grocery prices. This hurts lower-income shoppers the hardest. Oklahoma, Iowa, and Arkansas are some of the states most dominated by a single grocer, such as Walmart or Hy-Vee.
“Across the food and grocery industry, we have a sector that is deeply consolidated,” Mabud said. … And so when you have big companies controlling such large chunks of the market, we know that they have used things like inflation, things like supply chain shocks to jack up prices far beyond what their input costs to justify.”
Mabud said that when there is this level of market concentration, companies can signal to each other in earnings calls that they are going to start raising prices.
“If you know that your only other competitors are also raising prices, there’s kind of no reason for you to try to undercut them if you both hold giant shares of a market,” she said.
An economic paper published this year found that companies are able to coordinate price increases around cost shocks and increase profits from these events. Mabud said the holidays provide plenty of opportunity for the food industry to raise prices on things people ordinarily don’t buy and don’t have a price comparison for during a less in-demand season.
“Grocers and the food industry kind of know that they know that they have more information about the underlying cost of a good than a consumer who only comes to buy the Christmas ham once a year. And so they can take advantage of that,” she said.
Economists are watching out for how the next administration will impact food prices.
Trump’s promise to impose heavy tariffs on the U.S.’s biggest trading partners – Mexico, Canada and China – are expected to drive up the cost of everything, including groceries.
Products the U.S. can’t produce year round, like fruit and coffee, will be affected, Ortega said.
“There’s still a lot of uncertainty in terms of whether these tariffs are really going to be implemented or are they a negotiating tool? But that creates a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “Even that amount of uncertainty can lead to a rise in costs as companies prepare for the potential of these tariffs taking place.”
Trump’s expected policy of mass deportation of immigrants will also affect the agriculture industry, in addition to the major human rights implications.
“If there’s a mass deportation that is a shock to the labor supply and the agricultural sector. And that will lead to an increase in costs as producers and companies have to offer higher wages to attract enough labor. Ultimately that gets passed down to the consumer in the form of higher prices,” Ortega said.
Mabud is also concerned that expected tariffs could mean companies take advantage of the policy change well beyond the actual financial impact to their business.
“It’s a policy change where consumers don’t necessarily know how much the price of an avocado is going up because of a tariff versus a supply chain issue versus the grocery store just wanting to increase the price,” she said.
Patricia “Pogo” Overmeyer, 65, who works as a lawyer in Arizona and lives with her retired husband, said she has always been focused on how to save money on groceries. But she said she has become even more thrifty since inflation worsened.
She said she’s been using more meatless meals and stocks up on holiday food all year round when prices are low, some of which she freezes and cans.
“Once I retire, our income will not be as high,” she said, “Most likely I will forgo some foods or make substitutions. It’s anyone’s guess as to what we will be paying for groceries.”
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The Supreme Court on Friday said it would take up a new religious rights case over whether a Catholic charitable organization must pay Wisconsin’s unemployment tax.
The justices will review a divided state Supreme Court ruling that refused to grant an exemption to the Catholic Charities Bureau, based in Superior, Wisconsin. The state court ruled that the work of Catholic Charities and four related organizations is primarily not religious, although it found that the motivation to help older, disabled and low-income people stems from Catholic teachings.
The case probably will be argued in the spring.
The Supreme Court in recent years has issued an unbroken string of decisions siding with churches and religious plaintiffs in disputes with states.
Lawyers for the Wisconsin groups argued to the court that the decision violates religious freedoms protected by the First Amendment. They also said the court should step in to resolve conflicting rulings by several top state courts on the same issue.
“Wisconsin is trying to make sure no good deed goes unpunished. Penalizing Catholic Charities for serving Catholics and non-Catholics alike is ridiculous and wrong,” Eric Rassbach, the lead lawyer for Catholic Charities at the Supreme Court, said in a statement.
Wisconsin Attorney General Joshua Kaul had urged the high court to stay out of the case, arguing that much of the groups’ funding comes from state and local governments, and the joint federal and state Medicaid program.
Employees don’t have to be Catholic and “people receiving services from these organizations receive no religious training or orientation,” Kaul wrote.
Catholic Charities has paid the unemployment tax since 1972, he wrote.
Wisconsin exempts church-controlled organizations from the tax if they are “operated primarily for religious purposes.” The state high court ruled that both the motivations and the activities have to be religious for organizations to avoid paying the tax.
A group of religious scholars, backing Catholic Charities, told the court that “the case involves governmental interference with religious liberty” that warrants the justices’ intervention.
Catholic, Islamic, Lutheran, Jewish and Mormon organizations also filed briefs in support of Catholic Charities.
At the state Supreme Court, the Freedom from Religion Foundation argued that a ruling for Catholic Charities would extend to religiously affiliated hospitals and some colleges across Wisconsin, potentially taking their employees out of the state unemployment insurance system.
Catholic Charities in Superior manages nonprofit organizations that run more than 60 programs designed to help older or disabled people, children with special needs, low-income families, and people suffering from disasters, regardless of their religion, according to court documents.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
U.S. Supreme Court to hear Catholic Charities plea to avoid Wisconsin unemployment tax 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.
While some are celebrating the reopening of the Social Development Commission in Milwaukee, not everyone is joining in.
“SDC stands for ‘Still Didn’t Compensate,’” said Sarah Woods, a former youth and family services supervisor for SDC.
Last week, the Social Development Commission resumed providing tax assistance, career services, housing-related services and child care food services after being closed for seven months.
But Woods thinks SDC should not be paying staff for new work if former employees, including her, have not been paid for work done before SDC suspended operations and laid off its entire staff.
However, William Sulton, SDC’s attorney, said that staff doing new work is precisely how former employees are going to get paid.
“I would say … the way that those folks are going to get paid is by the organization reopening and submitting the required reporting documentation to get paid on grants,” Sulton said.
As of last week, 45 people have unresolved claims concerning pay from SDC, according to a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, the state agency that handles employment and labor-related disputes.
Sulton also said that among these 45 employees are highly paid employees like George Hinton, SDC’s former CEO who resigned at the request of SDC’s Board of Commissioners.
The Department of Workforce Development did not provide a clear timeline for when it will make a decision about people’s claims, but the investigator assigned to these claims is actively working on them, the department’s spokesperson said.
Sulton said he believes there is a path for how former employees will be paid: new, or rehired, employees providing services.
If SDC hadn’t brought in employees to do new work, grant money couldn’t be accessed to resolve Department of Workforce Development claims, Sulton said.
The quasi-governmental community action agency provides a variety of programs and services to meet the needs of low-income residents in Milwaukee County.
But making a claim with the Department of Workforce Development does not guarantee that person will get the full amount they say they’re owed.
Each claim is being evaluated individually, and there are some disputes, Sulton said.
“For example, there’s one employee whose time we’re unable to confirm. There’s one employee who claims that she had a conversation with their supervisor and the former supervisor promised her an increase in pay,” Sulton said.
A common theme among claims is about getting paid out for unused paid time off, Sulton said.
Department of Workforce Development staff are assisting former employees with supplying the right documentation, which can include pay stubs, records they kept or other communications, according to the spokesperson.
Woods thought ahead in this regard.
“On the last day, I just was taking screenshots and printing whatever I needed and emailing to myself,” she said.
Since the April layoffs, SDC has paid $51,000 toward what it owes people, Sulton said.
Most of this money came from a contribution from Unite WI.
The SDC was quite deliberate in the way it used that money, said Sulton.
“We started with employees that earned the least amount and we paid from the bottom up. So that’s what happened,” he said.
Sulton said new employees have been hired and some former employees have been rehired as part of SDC’s reopening.
Woods said someone from SDC asked her to come back to work, but she didn’t take the person up on the offer.
She is not confident in SDC’s financial stability.
“I loved SDC when I worked there, don’t get me wrong. But I would be scared to go back,” Woods said.
News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.
Former Social Development Commission employees still waiting to be paid 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.
Congress has until Dec. 20 to strike a funding deal to keep the federal government functioning.
The post Baldwin hopes to beat the clock on ‘unfinished business’ before congressional term ends appeared first on WPR.
The U.S. Department of Education released the official application on Nov. 21, after seven weeks of beta testing.
The post This year’s FAFSA is open, and early reviews are positive appeared first on WPR.
Federal wildland firefighters earn as little as $15 per hour, with entry level positions earning just less than $27,000 per year, according to Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group. (Photo by U.S. Forest Service)
The $20,000 salary increase for wildland firefighters in the 2021 infrastructure law could be coming to an end next week if Congress doesn’t act.
The infrastructure law included $600 million to boost salaries for the nearly 11,200 wildland firefighters for two years, giving the Interior Department or Forest Service employees a raise of either $20,000 each or 50% of their base salary.
Federal wildland firefighters earn as little as $15 per hour, with entry level positions earning just less than $27,000 per year, according to Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group. Those rates are well below those of some state employees in similar roles.
The problem is Congress provided the higher pay rate would expire with the rest of government spending, which is set for Dec. 20.
Lawmakers are likely to once again pass a continuing resolution prior to that deadline to keep the government open at current spending levels into the new year.
But because the firefighter pay boost was part of the infrastructure law instead of a yearly spending bill, it would require additional legislation to keep being paid out beyond Dec. 20.
Firefighters, their advocates and some members of Congress are now pushing to have the pay raise made permanent, as lawmakers enter the final days of this session of Congress.
President Joe Biden asked for a disaster relief spending bill after hurricanes Helene and Milton to include $24 billion for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Biden called for the bill — which is expected to be attached to the continuing resolution — to include “statutory language to support permanent, comprehensive pay reform for Federal wildland firefighters.”
The disaster aid bill appears the best chance of addressing the issue this year.
And appropriators are looking at fixing the issue in their annual funding bills, even as work on those bills is likely to be paused as Congress instead looks to pass a stopgap measure past Dec. 20 to keep the government funded for the next few months.
A House proposal included in Republicans’ spending bill covering the Interior Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies would direct $330 million for a pay increase to replace the expiring infrastructure law salary increase. It would be a permanent pay fix.
Setting a baseline in an annual spending bill would help keep the salaries consistent and avoid the uncertainty that comes with the expiration of the one-time infrastructure law funding, supporters say.
“Rather than continuing temporary and uncertain Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) supplemental payments, the funding in this bill will permanently address Federal wildland firefighter pay and capacity,” the funding bill’s chief sponsor, Idaho Republican Mike Simpson, and Oregon Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer wrote in an August op-ed in the Idaho Statesman.
Simpson is the chair of the subcommittee responsible for writing the bill. Chavez-DeRemer, who represents a purple district in Central Oregon, lost her reelection bid this fall but won a nomination to join President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet as secretary of Labor.
The effort comes amid an atmosphere favorable to funding cuts in Washington. Republicans, who will soon have unified control of Washington as Trump returns to the Oval Office, have blamed the inflation of the past four years on high government spending.
Trump has tasked entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy with looking at ways to reduce federal spending. The pair of wealthy Trump backers has estimated $2 trillion could be trimmed from the $6.75 trillion annual budget, though they have been vague about what exactly would be chopped.
The Musk-Ramaswamy organization, which has not been formally created but is dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is not expected to be an official government entity. A Trump spokeswoman did not return a message seeking comment about whether wildland firefighter pay would be a target for funding cuts.
Finding the political will to increase spending for any purpose in such an environment could be challenging, though increasing the pay of wildland firefighters — who work to manage the increasingly severe and costly fires that particularly ravage the rural areas known as the wildland-urban interface — has support from across the political spectrum in Congress, including leading GOP members.
The House funding bill authored by Simpson that included the pay raise passed the House nearly along party lines.
In a video message to constituents this month, Simpson sounded broadly supportive of Musk and Ramaswamy’s mission, but indicated there were areas he would fight to avoid cuts. He did not explicitly mention firefighter pay.
“It will be an interesting debate,” Simpson said of the effort to identify funding cuts. “I don’t mind having outside eyes look at how Congress does their job and how the money is spent. It could be spent more efficiently and more effectively, thus saving the taxpayer money.”
He added he was “excited” to see recommendations from the pair.
“There will be some I suspect I disagree with and a lot of them I probably agree with,” he said. “So that will be a debate for Congress.”
The Senate, which generally requires a much more bipartisan approach than the House, has not passed the Simpson-authored bill that Democrats opposed because of its drastic cuts to the Interior Department and EPA.
But the Senate companion spending bill, sponsored by Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley, who chairs the corresponding spending panel in the Senate, also includes a permanent raise for wildland firefighters, as well as funding for a firefighter health and wellness program and a fund for housing.
“This bill honors the courageous work our federal wildland firefighters do by establishing a permanent fix to prevent a devastating pay cut,” Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, said in a statement after the committee passed the bill 28-1 in July.
People flocking to Wisconsin’s waters, trails and woods prompted a $11.2 billion boost to the state’s economy last year, up 9.4 percent from the previous record set in 2022.
The post Federal data shows outdoor recreation contributes $11.2B to Wisconsin economy appeared first on WPR.
Maritime innovation only gets 4.5% of overall cleantech private investment. There are plenty of technologies available, especially in CleanAI, alternative fuels, and electrification...
The post Greenship 2024: Accelerating Maritime Decarbonization appeared first on Cleantech Group.
Boeing workers gather on a picket line near the entrance to a Boeing facility on Oct. 24 in Seattle. The strike ended with a deal in November. Those workers returning to the job factored into growth reported in the latest labor report. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)
The economy added 227,000 jobs in November, making for a strong jobs report despite a slight increase in the unemployment rate. Although the labor market has cooled this year, the Trump administration stands to inherit a fairly healthy labor market, with decent job growth across many sectors.
The number of jobs was bolstered by the return of striking workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Employment in transportation equipment manufacturing rose by 32,000 jobs. Boeing machinists who went on strike in September seeking higher pay and better retirement benefits reached a deal in November.
The agency also revised up the number of jobs added in the October and September reports by 56,000 jobs combined.
Although the unemployment rate ticked up from 4.1% to 4.2%, the economy is looking strong, particularly when you look at gross domestic product, said Louise Sheiner, with the nonpartisan Brookings Institution.
“It’s been remarkably strong. If you look at what the Congressional Budget Office projected the level of real GDP before the pandemic, it’s higher now. We’ve just had a really strong economy,” said Sheiner, who focuses on fiscal policy.
Although she said the labor market has been slowing a little, it’s still healthy.
Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the three-month average of job growth at 173,000 jobs shows a fairly strong labor market.
Employment in health care and government, including state government employment, continued to add jobs. Leisure and hospitality added 53,000 jobs and food services and drinking places added 29,000 jobs.
Gould said she is keeping an eye on the employment-to-population ratio, a measure of workers employed versus the working-age population. The measure is down 0.6 percentage point over the year.
“Let’s pay attention to that and see where that goes,” she said. “We were at a pretty nice high this summer that has come down a bit.”
Economists will also keep an eye on demographic data changes in the next jobs report. The unemployment rate for Black men jumped from 5.7% to 6% and the unemployment rate for Black women increased from 4.9% to 6%. Economists and policy experts said that although they will be watching these numbers, they don’t think the higher unemployment rate for Black people will necessarily continue. The month-to-month data can be volatile and may not point to a broader trend, they said.
“The Black unemployment rate jumped to 6.4% which is the highest since March and then looking at Black women, we saw their unemployment rate jumped to 6% which is the highest that we’ve seen in 2.5 years,” said Clara Wilson, senior policy analyst at the Groundwork Collaborative, a left-of-center economic think tank. “However, the spike in Black unemployment is something to always keep a track of because if we continue to see a rise in Black unemployment that typically is a warning signal canary in the coal mine that there could be further weakening in the labor market down the line.”
Retail jobs fell by 28,000, with a loss of 15,000 in general merchandise and 4,000 in electronics and appliance retailers.
“I’m not particularly concerned about it because it can be due to the fact that it was just a late Thanksgiving this year, so that holiday hiring may not have happened during the reference period in the same way,” Gould said.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.4%, the same as October, and 4% over the past year. Although some economists say the Federal Reserve would like to see wages come down to help it meet its 2% target for inflation, Wilson said higher wages are an indication that workers are benefiting from the current economy. She said she’s worried that the Trump administration will undo some of the economic progress she said has been made from the Biden administration’s major legislation.
“It’s really important to remember that real people are behind the data and the strong labor market propels more opportunities for workers and ensures families have higher wages and that leads to a stronger economy. Policymakers should take those lessons that we’ve learned from those strong public investments and sustain that progress,” Wilson said.
Two Wisconsin's most prominent retail companies had sales slumps heading into the holiday shopping season, while a third posted a slight decline in overall revenues, according to recent earnings reports.
The post Kohl’s Corp., Duluth Trading Co. see sales slump ahead of holiday shopping season appeared first on WPR.
The Columbia Energy Center was originally slated to shut down by the end of 2024, but two years ago that retirement was pushed back to 2026. Now, it will remain open through 2029.
The post Columbia County coal plant retirement delayed for a second time, now pushed to 2029 appeared first on WPR.
A scene on tariffs from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in 1986 is getting some extra attention. (Paramount Pictures.)
Fans of the movie, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” will remember the scene. Ben Stein plays a famously boring high school teacher giving a lecture about economics to a room full of teenagers fighting to stay awake. In about a minute, he covers the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and the Laffer Curve, fundamental economic topics, desperately trying to get the students to engage with him.
“Anyone? Anyone…” is the memorable device Stein uses, to no avail, to engage an audience who couldn’t care less.
Some analysts say the economy is the reason voters chose Donald Trump for a second term in last month’s election. His economic plan is rooted in the broad and cavalier use of tariffs on imports from friends and foes alike. Last week, he announced his plan to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The announcement prompted a surprise visit from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and a phone call from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Meanwhile, the American public, particularly Trump voters, remain in an economic daze much like Ben Stein’s class.
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was passed in 1930 in an attempt to thwart the impacts of the Great Depression. It was legislation initially designed to provide relief to the American agriculture sector but became “a means to raise tariffs in all sectors of the economy.” It also marked the end of an entrenched Republican platform of protectionist policymaking during that era. The policies ended because they were…anyone…anyone? Failures.
Ignorance has become a vital asset in the political space these days. Yes, it is an asset in politics, but it is the devil in economics.
As a political asset, there are voters who believe that simply throwing a tariff at any nation they are mad at has nothing but benefits. Mad at Mexico because of migration? Slap them with a tariff and border crossings will go down, right? A good number of voters believe the answer is yes. Though this is almost entirely wrong, politically speaking, that ignorance served the pro-tariff candidate in November.
Economically however, the only real certainty that a 25% tariff on Mexico will have, is a 25% price increase in America. There actually is no disagreement on how tariffs functionally work, but I will refer to PBS for a simple explanation. Importers here pay the tariff, otherwise known as a tax, and remit that payment to the U.S. Treasury. How they pass that increase in costs along may vary a little from merchant to merchant, but ultimately it ends up in the price the American consumer pays.
Yes, a tariff program, in the most basic sense, is government imposed price increases. So, if high prices are the reason why an American voted against the current party in power, voting for higher prices seems, well, ignorant.
Now, does a tariff hurt who the angry American is mad at? Sure. In our example, Mexican goods become less affordable if a tariff is applied to them. In that sense, a tariff can hurt who it is designed to hurt. But that doesn’t change the fact that Americans pay the tariff, not the other country.
Many voters have the perspective that Trump imposed tariffs during his first term, and everything worked out fine. The Associated Press reports, “When Trump first became president in 2017, the federal government collected $34.6 billion in customs, duties and fees. That sum more than doubled under Trump to $70.8 billion in 2019, according to Office of Management and Budget records.” That sounds like a lot of money, until it is put in the context of the current $29.3 trillion gross domestic product.
The tariffs Trump is discussing in 2024 are wildly bigger and are being threatened toward virtually every country. But that’s not the only thing different between 2024 and 2017.
What else is different?
Anyone? Anyone?
The economy that Trump inherited in 2017 is sharply different than the one he will inherit in January. Inflation eight years ago was low and had been for a long time. Interest rates were also low and had been for a long time. The 2016 election wasn’t about inflation, and those rather small tariffs weren’t either. But times have changed.
For the life of me, I cannot find any credible theory as to how raising prices on imported goods will have the effect of lowering prices. I’ve written that sentence six times, and I know it reads like gibberish, but I just can’t help it.
Simply put, tariffs raise prices. After a bout with historic global inflation, consumers are exhausted with high prices. We can all agree with that part.
But there is a word for thinking that raising prices will actually lower them.
Anyone? Anyone?
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The news that a Dane County judge struck down key parts of Act 10 — former Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s signature anti-union law — prompted Walker to comment on X: “Collective bargaining is not a right. It is an expensive entitlement.”
That’s the kind of message that helped make Walker a national Republican star back in 2011. The billionaire Koch brothers supported him and his pioneering approach to politics — turning neighbor against neighbor by weaponizing the resentment of working class people and training it on teachers and other public employees whose union membership afforded them health care and retirement benefits. Walker memorably called his approach “divide and conquer.” That philosophy is at the heart of Judge Jacob Frost’s decision, which found that Act 10’s divisive carve-out for “public safety” employees (i.e. Republican-voting cops) is unconstitutional.
Walker started by pitting private sector workers against public employees. The next step, he promised his billionaire backer Diane Hendricks, would be to make Wisconsin a right-to-work state, smashing unions across the board.
Walker made good on that promise and signed the right-to-work law that undercut private sector unions. And he certainly succeeded in dividing Wisconsin, ushering in a toxic style of politics that set the stage for Donald Trump and nationwide polarization.
But Walker’s war on organized labor is out of tune with the populism of today’s Trump-dominated Republican party, which courted union support in the recent election. It’s also out of step with public opinion. A September Gallup poll found near record-high approval of labor unions with 70% of Americans saying they approved of unions, compared with 48% approval in 2009.
In embracing Act 10 and Walker’s dubious legacy, Wisconsin Republicans are marching to a different beat than the rest of the country.
“Act 10 has saved Wisconsin taxpayers more than $16 billion,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos declared in a statement. “We look forward to presenting our arguments on appeal.”
Other Republicans have made even bigger claims about the “savings” that came out of teachers’ paychecks and benefits. But over time, it has become clear who the real beneficiaries of those savings were. The Kochs and Hendricks didn’t support Walker because they thought he would do wonderful things for working class voters. They backed him because they wanted to squeeze workers and enrich themselves.
Act 10, and the other measures passed by the Wisconsin Legislature in its wake, including right-to-work and prohibitions on local governments from increasing wages and improving working conditions in city and county contracts, hurt Wisconsin workers and the state economy.
“The changes, labor leaders and experts say, have caused flattened real wages for construction workers, higher pay for their bosses and local governments stuck offering wages that make it difficult to hire contractors — and hard for those workers to make a living,” Wisconsin Watch reported.
A study by the Economic Policy Institute compared the economies of states with strong collective bargaining laws with so-called “right-to-work” states from 2011 to 2018. “Those ‘right-to-work’ states see slower economic growth, lower wages, higher consumer debt levels, worse health outcomes and lower levels of civic participation,” one of the study’s authors, Frank Manzo, told Wisconsin Watch.
On top of all that, Walker’s oft-repeated promise to create 250,000 new jobs in his first term was a bust. He made it just over halfway to that goal, according to a “gold standard” report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the end of his second term, Walker still hadn’t reached the 250,000 jobs number. Instead, when he left office, Wisconsin ranked 34th in the nation for private sector job growth, according to the BLS. Walker’s 10.3% growth rate fell far behind the national growth rate of 17.1%. And Wisconsin public schools have never recovered from Walker’s savage budget cuts.
There has been a lot of talk since the 2024 election about how Democrats have lost touch with working class voters, allowing the Trump-led Republican Party to capture disaffected working people who are suspicious that politicians don’t really care about them or represent their interests.
The Act 10 fight, which will be front and center in Wisconsin’s spring state Supreme Court race, reverses that dynamic. Democrats in Wisconsin have been fighting all along for better wages and working conditions for working class people, and Republicans have been outspoken in their opposition to workers’ rights.
Walker’s war on workers prompted historic protests in Wisconsin back in 2011, bringing together teachers, firefighters, police, prison guards, snowplow drivers and tens of thousands of citizens from across Wisconsin to protest at the Capitol. Democrats in the state Legislature fled to Illinois to temporarily deprive Republicans of the quorum needed to pass the law. Walker dismissed the protesters as “union bosses” and agitators brought in from “out of state.” But anyone who was there could tell you the crowd was made up of lots and lots of regular Wisconsinites outraged that the governor had made hardworking people his target.
The uprising in Wisconsin inspired other pro-democracy protests around the globe. Egyptian activists ordered pizza from Ian’s Pizza downtown for the protesters at the Capitol.
Still, in the short term, the protests failed. A grassroots recall effort against Walker fell short, and he went on to be reelected to a second term. But the tide has been turning steadily ever since. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers defeated Walker in 2018. Evers’ reelection by a larger margin in 2022 was one of 7 out of 10 statewide races Democrats have won since 2019. In one of those races, the Democratic-backed Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz beat her conservative rival by more than 10 points, flipping the ideological balance on the court and setting up the demise of Republican gerrymandering and, potentially, a final judgment against Act 10.
Today, as Democrats reel from their losses in the recent national elections, Wisconsin offers an example of a state where the fight over workers’ rights is at the center of politics. The Act 10 battle makes it clear which side each party is on. That’s good news for Democrats. For Walker’s brand of Republicanism, not so much.
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