
William Roberts
Union steward Joe Evica, front, was suspended and then fired for alleged ‘violations of workplace rules’ regarding information handling.
After a year of contentious negotiations, workers at one of Madison’s largest private-sector employers, CUNA Mutual Group, say the company has stopped bargaining in good faith, adding new conditions to make meeting more difficult and, as this issue was going to press, firing Joe Evica, the union’s chief steward, who had been suspended by the company in March.
Representatives for management and 450 union workers at CUNA Mutual— an insurance and investment firm that provides services to credit unions and their members — had been meeting by videoconference regularly through the end of 2022 to negotiate differences on wages, benefits, the use of contractors, and the company’s diversity practices. But the two sides haven’t met since Jan. 12, and the union filed a number of unfair labor practice charges in February and March with the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency that enforces labor law.
Workers, who are represented by OPEIU Local 39, say the breakdown in talks happened when CUNA Mutual— which has embraced remote work and adopted a hybrid-first approach in its day-to-day operations — started asking union representatives to meet in person. The company also said union workers would no longer be paid for their time during daytime negotiations.
Workers say this left them with two bad options: forgo significant pay to participate in negotiations during their normal work hours, or meet outside of work hours, when members of the bargaining team who live outside the Madison area would have to commute to the city after a full day of remote work.
“The only reason to do it was to stall the bargaining process and to make it impossible for the two parties to meet,” Evica told Isthmus in March before his termination.
Under federal labor law, companies have a legal duty to bargain in good faith with union workers, and a refusal to bargain or to meet with workers at reasonable intervals would be considered a violation.
Evica, a retirement services specialist, was suspended on March 14 with pay for allegedly sharing company information. CUNA Mutual hired Ogletree Deakins, the second-largest pro-management law firm in the country, to conduct an investigation.
Workers say the suspension was in retaliation for Evica’s union activity.
Even before Evica’s firing, the union was considering a temporary work stoppage tied to its unfair labor practice charges. Under federal labor law, workers engaged in an “unfair labor practice” strike are protected from being fired and permanently replaced by the company.
The firm declined to answer specific questions about the labor dispute, but emailed a statement to Isthmus.
“CUNA Mutual Group remains committed to reaching a collective bargaining agreement with OPEIU Local 39,” media relations consultant Phil Tschudy wrote. “We’ve had an 80-year relationship with this union built on respect for our employees and their rights. The company has and continues to be dedicated to bargaining in good faith.”
Since the Jan. 12 meeting, CUNA Mutual has sent one counter proposal to the union via email. The union says that without a meeting to discuss the document, the company's proposal is not a sincere attempt to negotiate.
The escalating conflict at one of Madison’s largest private-sector employers — with roughly 2,000 workers — is playing out in a new post-COVID era of labor relations full of uncertainty. Can workers still form a picket line in a mostly remote work environment?
For CUNA Mutual, will the company’s embrace of remote work give it leverage at the negotiating table? And in the short-term, how will an active labor dispute impact the company's anticipated May rollout of its rebrand as TruStage?
Sarah Larsen, an administrative specialist at CUNA Mutual since 2019 and member of the bargaining team, says the fight at the company is part of a broader trend of rising pro-worker sentiment and labor activism in the wake of the pandemic. “Our struggle is symbolic of a larger uptick in labor empathy around the country,” says Larsen. “People are tired of the unremitting struggle.”
Since the pandemic, the Madison area has seen successful private-sector union campaigns at Colectivo Coffee, Noble Knight Games, Raven Software, Starbucks, and ongoing campaigns at UW Health and Madison Sourdough. Nationally, support for labor unions has increased steadily since the late 2000s and is now the highest it has been since 1965, according to Gallup’s latest Work and Education survey, with 71% of Americans approving of labor unions.

Mark Clear
CUNA Mutual’s headquarters on Mineral Point Road.
‘A targeted retaliation’
When Evica was notified in March that he was being suspended, he was told he would have to turn his computer over to the company while an outside law firm conducted an investigation.
On March 20, Evica says, a lawyer from Ogletree Deakins questioned him for about four hours.
The suspension fired up his coworkers, who say it diverged from CUNA Mutual’s normal disciplinary process and looked like retaliation for Evica’s organizing efforts. “When there is something like that [sharing company information], it generally starts with an oral warning, and then builds stepwise from there,” says Larsen. Federal labor law prohibits retaliation against union activity.
After Evica’s firing, the union said in an April 4 statement to its members that “Joe’s termination is a targeted retaliation for his role as a union leader.” CUNA Mutual, it added, “has terminated Joe in order to disorient and demoralize our members, in an effort to slow the union’s campaign.”
In an email to Isthmus the same day, Barclay Pollak, media and reputation consultant for CUNA Mutual, said that Evica was fired for “violations of workplace rules regarding data privacy and information handling.” The termination, he added, followed “an internal investigation and interview with the employee, as well as a computer forensic audit that was conducted by a third-party firm.”
Evica could not be reached immediately for comment.
Sheila Condron, an analyst at CUNA Mutual who has worked there for 37 years, says the company’s treatment of Evica has “galvanized people because frankly if they can do it to him, they can do it to anybody. That kind of fear is what they are trying to instill.”
She and other workers say CUNA Mutual prides itself on its progressive reputation, and often lives up to it. When Larsen interviewed at the company, she was worried that her multiple sclerosis would hurt her chances. “I was really concerned that I would not get the job. But there was nary a mention,” says Larsen. “And so I was very excited about working for a company that seemed to be that progressive.”
She says participating in contract negotiations has given her a different lens on the company’s values, as it rejected several of the union’s proposals on diversity, including implementing a “Rooney Rule” for hiring that would require candidates of color to be interviewed, and conducting pay equity reviews for union workers, which the company currently does for non-union workers.
“Our company does wonderful things for the community,” says Condron. But, she adds, “I find it very hypocritical. We also need to take care of our own employees. [CUNA Mutual has] given me a lot, but I’ve given them a lot.”
Getting to an agreement
As contract negotiations ground to a halt, CUNA Mutual workers started seeking — and receiving — support from local officials. In late March both the Dane County Board of Supervisors and the Madison Common Council passed resolutions encouraging CUNA Mutual to return to the negotiating table. About a dozen state legislators also signed a letter to the company’s CEO with similar demands.
“We have to make them as uncomfortable as possible because trying to reason with them at the table is not working,” says Condron.
Workers say the company’s wage proposal doesn’t reflect recent high inflation. They are also concerned about the high numbers of contractors who often perform work formerly done by union workers. The resolution passed by the city council notes that CUNA Mutual “has outsourced over 1,200 positions” in the last 20 years.”
At the same time, CUNA Mutual has asked for concessions on healthcare benefits and the pension plan.
“They started negotiations by saying this will not be a concessionary process,” says Larsen. “That is seared into my memory because the first thing that they did was to try to take the HMO away and to try to freeze the pension for all new hires.”
The union said in its April 4 statement to members that it would file an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board in response to Evica’s firing.
“Our union will be pursuing all legal avenues to overturn this decision."