Progress
and Empty Promises
1941-1993
During the Fifties and Sixties, the larger, more established unions won improved pay, increased benefits, and better conditions. Firefighters and county employees lobbied successfully for shorter hours, and many private-sector unions won health benefits for the first time.
These gains did not always come easily. At times, workers had to strike. Still, they made headway, laying the basis for future gains and forcing management to respect their strength and determination.
If employers did not make unnecessary concessions, they recognized that the larger unions were there to stay and came to terms with them. In the building and printing trades and at plants like Rayovac, Oscar Mayer, and Gisholt, the battles were over what gains the workers would win – not whether they would have a union.
These conditions created a sense of security and stability among many unionists. At the same time, unions placed increased emphasis on electoral politics. The federal Taft-Hartley Act encouraged this outlook by outlawing many forms of solidarity such as sympathy strikes and secondary boycotts of firms using goods produced by strikebreakers.
Despite the success of many established locals, there was an underside to the 1950s that raised questions about this sense of security. Many smaller firms remained vehemently anti-union. Like manufacturing at the turn of the century, these owners refused to concede their workers’ right to organize.
Workers lost their jobs trying to form unions at firms like Graber’s and Wisco Hardware. Although the NLRB sometimes ordered the companies to rehire union supporters, by then the organizing drives had been damaged. Managers and judges battled labor solidarity by threatening the Teamsters and the building trades with injunctions. At a few organized firms, managers were able to eliminate the union.
The Sixties and Seventies brought new directions and new challenges to Madison’s labor movement. New groups of workers became the focal point for renewed organizing. Increased unionization among service sector and public employees reflected the importance of these workers to the local economy.
In 1916, a small group of public school teachers had formed American Federation of Teachers Local 35. Although its members were active in the MFL and the union won some benefits for teachers, Local 35 never held bargaining rights. In 1964, the Madison Teachers Association (now Madison Teachers Inc.) won a union representation election and began to build a solid, majority union.
Collective bargaining legislation passed during the 1950s provided a tool for public-sector workers, but teachers, firefighters and other municipal employees still had to force improvements from reluctant public officials through strikes and sickouts.
Unionization
also reached new groups of state workers. In 1966, Teaching Assistants at the
UW began organizing for job rights and educational quality. Four years later,
after a month long strike, they won a union contract. During the 1970s and early
1980s, the TAA would play a leading role in local labor solidarity efforts.
During the Seventies, state clerical workers, attorneys, and education and science professionals organized. Student workers and limited term employees at the UW’s Memorial Union also forced University managers to recognize their union – the Memorial Union Labor Organization.
Most private-sector organizing during the early Seventies occurred in small workplaces where workers faced bitter opposition. The Madison Independent Workers Union waged hard fought campaigns at local restaurants – at times, facing owners who preferred to close rather than concede their employees had rights.
Aggressive Teamster campaigns helped cannery and warehouse workers and cab drivers organize. A grueling 17-week strike by General Beverage workers demonstrated that solidarity and forceful community support could win union rights despite employer resistance and attacks by the local press. Like the campaigns of the 1930s, this victory gave confidence to other workers and spurred more union drives.
Despite these victories, events during the Seventies made it clear that the sense of security enjoyed by many workers had been the result of postwar economic expansion and union strength.
Plant Closings
Gisholt and Red Dot workers faced traumatic plant closings. In 1966, Giddings and Lewis bought Gisholt. Five years later, 800 workers lost their jobs when the company closed the East Washington Avenue machine shop. In 1984, the remaining workers were thrown out of work when Giddings and Lewis closed its foundry.
More than 1,000 workers lost their jobs as Oscar Mayer cut back local operations. Despite extremely profitable operations, the firm‘s new owner, General Foods, joined other meatpacking companies in pressing for concessions.
Since the late 1970s, uncertain economic conditions, management decisions about how to use new technology, the growth of conglomerates, and the increasing use of unionbusting consultants have posed threats to even the most well-established unions.
The 1976 strike by Madison Teachers Inc. and the state employees’ strike the following year were among the last major walkouts in which unionists tried to break new ground. Since then, most strikes have become defensive battles in which workers have struggled to hold on to what they had.
The key confrontation came at Madison Newspapers Incorporated. During the 1970s, newspapers across the country shifted from hot metal to computerized typesetting. In most cities, managers bargained in good faith with the International Typographical Union over this changeover and avoided confrontations. But at MNI, managers used the shift in technology as a weapon against their employees.
Management tried to keep its plans secret even after it had ordered the new equipment. “They didn’t know this, they didn’t know that, and the damn stuff was ordered,” recalled one union leader. “You’re put in a spot where you have to wait and see. And while you’re waiting to see, they’re doing everything. They’ve got all the ducks in a row. They’ve got their attorneys lined up and you don’t know for sure what’s happening … It was like we’ll see when we get there. We don’t know yet. You can’t bargain impact on that ….”
In
spring, 1977, MNI moved against the union, forcing 17 printers to give up their
jobs in violation of their seniority rights and unilaterally cutting the wages
of the remaining printers by one third.
These actions – combined with MNI’s pressure on the other newspaper unions – led to unprecedented cooperation among the five locals at the plant. In October, the five unions struck. One spinoff of the struggle was the creation of the Madison Press Connection. Begun as a strike paper, it survived for a year and a half as an independent publication.
The strikers received widespread community backing. But neither unions nor community groups were able to mobilize the strength required to help the strikers beat back management’s efforts to drive unions from MNI, the Capital Times and the Wisconsin State Journal. The newspaper unions’ defeat may well have encouraged unionbusting offensives by UW administrators and several contractors.
Since
1980, building trades workers at Joe Daniels and Klein-Dickert Paint Division,
Teamsters at Lycon, printers at Straus, production workers at Stoughton Trailers,
and teaching assistants at the UW have all faced employers eager to provoke
walkouts to break the union. The TA’s were able to regain bargaining rights
but only after seven years of lobbying, picketing, and court cases. Years later
Klein-Dickert painters also won back their union.
Tough times have forced unions to increase their outreach efforts and to experiment with new techniques. When UAW members struck Stoughton Trailers, the South Central Federation of Labor organized regular picket line support, helped Local 2247 mobilize public backing and provided major financial assistance.
Painters Local 802’s boycott campaign against the Klein-Dickert Paint Division showed how innovative approaches can improve on familiar tactics. Rather than simply announcing a boycott, Local 802 hired a full-time boycott coordinator to keep the heat on K-D. Close scrutiny of K-D’s projects, labor solidarity, determined community outreach, and aggressive publicity efforts took a heavy toll on K-D’s business. The Painters’ campaign benefited all labor. Since K-D forced the strike in 1985, Lycon concrete is the only contractor to risk a unionbusting adventure.