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Faculty at four UW campuses have voted to unionize since Gov. Scott Walker introduced a bill in February limiting public employee unions. In elections overseen by the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, faculty also voted to unionize at UW-La Crosse (on Feb. 24), UW-Stout (March 9), UW-River Falls (March 24) and most recently at UW-Stevens Point.

At UW-Stevens Point, out of 347 faculty eligible to vote, 283 voted to unionize and 15 voted against it, according to Jill Bakken, spokeswoman for the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin.

“It was overwhelming,” she said.

University faculty only just won the right to unionize in a law passed by the state Legislature in 2009. AFT-Wisconsin, the union university faculty are now voting to join, had long pushed to allow UW System faculty to unionize in this state, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Two other campuses, UW-Eau Claire and UW-Superior, voted to unionize in 2010.

“I don’t see the organizing stopping,” Bryan Kennedy, president of AFT-Wisconsin, told the Bloomberg news service recently, adding that state officials are “going to have to pry collective bargaining rights from our cold, dead hands.”

Bargaining by public employee unions would be largely limited to wages under the Walker bill, which passed the state Legislature but is now being fought in court.

The bill would also require school, municipal and state employee unions to be re-certified in yearly elections. Public safety employee unions, such as those representing police officers and firefighters, would be exempt from any of the changes.

The bill would also strip collective bargaining rights from employees of the UW Hospitals and Clinics but makes no effort to cancel the collective bargaining abilities for university faculty passed under Gov. Jim Doyle in 2009.

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