Madison Labor:
Building a City,
Building a
Movement
Madison Labor: Building a City, Building a Movement was originally published in
Union Labor News in May, 1993, marking the 100th anniversary of the South Central
Federation of Labor which was founded in 1893 as the Federated Trades Council.
Written by Dexter Arnold, then-managing editor of Union Labor News and assistant
to the SCFL president, the one hundred year history was based on research Arnold had
done for a video produced in 1985 with funding in part from the Wisconsin Humanities
Committee. The most recent chapter, A Union City, covering the period 1993-2005 was
written by Jim Cavanaugh, president of the South Central Federation of Labor.
Madison Labor: Building a City, Building a Movement is available in digital (DVD)
format and on videotape from the South Central Federation of Labor, (608) 256-5111.
Bakery workers march for equal pay for women in Madison’s 1918 Labor Day parade.
Madison Labor – The Early Years
Since Madison was founded in 1837, working men
and women have not only built a city, they have organized for a better living and more say over their working
conditions.
In 1856, printers organized the city’s first union – a
local of the International Typographical Union. The
typesetters’ major demand was for payment in cash
rather than I.O.U.s that merchants redeemed at less
than face value.
Over the next four decades, Madison workers
formed other unions. But most of these organizations
collapsed as the result of hard times, employer opposition, and membership turnover.
Madison’s modern labor movement dates from the
1880’s when Milwaukee activist Frank Weber helped
Madison workers organize more than a dozen local
unions.
Madison Labor
1893-1929
In March, 1893, printers, painters, cigarmakers, carpenters, and tailors founded the 375-member
Federated Trades Council (the forerunner of today’s
South Central Federation of Labor). John O’Connell, a
printer, served as the Council’s first president.
Madison’s employers had no intention of sharing
their power or profits and fought back against these
organizing efforts. In 1893, the Carpenters called for
higher wages, an all-union closed shop, and an apprenticeship system – modest demands that most Madison
building trades unions would win by the early twentieth century. Instead of bargaining, contractors forced a
strike, which they broke by hiring out-of-state scabs.
The printers also met fierce resistance. The
Madison Democrat ordered its employees to sign yellow-dog contracts promising not to join a union while
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Building a City, Building a Movement
employed at the newspaper. Violating these
terms would mean immediate discharge.
When the typesetters refused, the company
locked them out and brought in scabs. The
defeat forced some skilled union printers to
take jobs outside the printing industry or to
look for work in other cities.
These two defeats, plus a severe depression during the mid-1890’s hit the Federated
Trades Council hard; and several unions dissolved or had to be reorganized.
As the economy improved, craft workers
once again rebuilt their movement. In 1897,
plumbers organized Local 167; since merged
with Milwaukee Local 75, it is the oldest union
still active in the South Central Federation of
Labor. By 1903, the rejuvenated Federated
Trades Council had 17 locals with over 700
members.
IN THE EARLY YEARS, building trades unions formed the foundation of what
would become today’s labor movement.
The Council claimed only a small percentage of the
city’s workers and, like the American Federation of
Labor itself, focused its attention on male, skilled craft
workers. Nevertheless, the city’s union movement had
made a firm beginning.
Building trades locals dominated Madison’s labor
movement during the early twentieth century.
Through their strength and solidarity, the skilled trades
forced management to accept a system based on union
rules, union cards, and apprenticeship.
The big issue for the trades was the eight-hour day.
Since the Civil War, American workers had fought for
“eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, eight hours
for what we will.” But in 1900, the eight-hour day
remained a dream for most Madison workers.
In 1903, the Plumbers struck for seven weeks to
win this demand. The next year, the Bricklayers and
Masons walked out for nine weeks over the same issue.
Although they lost this strike, the Bricklayers’ aggressiveness paid off. In 1906, their bosses agreed to the 8hour day rather than face another long strike. These
two victories set the pattern for the organized construction industry. Over the next few years, other
trades workers won the eight-hour day without major
battles.
Conditions were quite different at the manufacturing plants on the East Side. Although Madison was not
a major industrial center, the city had a growing
machine tool and farm implement industry with firms
like Gisholt, Fuller and Johnson, and Madison Plow.
Madison Labor
Open Shop Movement
Across the country, metal trades employers were
the core of the antiunion Open Shop movement, and
Madison’s machine tool manufacturers and foundry
owners were no exception. While employer rhetoric
described the open shop as a workplace open to
nonunion as well as union workers, the reality was
quite different. For Madison factory owners, the open
shop meant a workplace where nobody carried a
union card. For their employees, the open shop meant
low pay, long hours, and no rights.
From time to time, East Side factory workers challenged the open shop. But Madison manufacturers
remained relatively secure until World War I.
During the war, prices and profits rose rapidly, but
wages lagged behind. Women at French Battery (predecessor to Rayovac) still earned 23 cents per hour, and
some men started at 25 at Madison-Kipp.
By 1918, the situation was ripe for organizing. Few
of the workers’ complaints were new, but the wartime
labor shortage gave them confidence. They knew that
they could find other jobs if fired for union activity.
War orders swelled the work force at local machine
shops and battery plants. Still, at the start of the year,
the Machinists had only 38 members in Madison. This
situation changed rapidly when an organizer came to
town in February, 1918. Within ten days, 450 new
members had signed Machinists’ cards; and three mass
meetings brought in 650 more.
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Building a City, Building a Movement
Workers at Gisholt, French Battery,
Madison Kipp, and other factories elected shop committees and drew up contract demands. They wanted the eighthour day, higher wages, regular weekly
pay days, and joint committees to settle
grievances. They insisted that “under no
circumstances shall any work be performed on Labor Day except to protect
life or property.”
Predictably, the owners ignored the
shop committees and insisted that they
would deal only with individuals. Faced
with a strike threat in August, they submitted the dispute to the War Labor
Board – a federal agency designed to
head off work stoppages. Six months
later, the Board granted most of the
workers’ demands – -including he eighthour day and union recognition. But by
then, the war was over; and the owners
ignored the order.
A TURNING POINT FOR LABOR came the same year women won the right to vote.
With wages lagging behind inflation and war-time production driving long work
hours, unions were organized for a wave of strikes.
The key issue was the right to organize. Both sides
knew that without a union to protect workers’ gains,
other concessions would be short-lived. As one manufacturer put it, “We have not recognized any committee of the employees … and I may as well state they we
never will. Before I recognize any committee … I
would sell everything in it and tear down the plant.”
Metal Trades Strike
On April 1, 1919, two thousand metal trades workers struck. Despite active picketing, the threat of a general strike, and pressure from a citizens’ committee, the
employers refused to budge. After more than two
months, the strike collapsed.
The wartime organizing drive witnessed the first
significant attempts to unionize women workers. In
the 1860’s, seamstresses had organized for higher
wages. For the most part, however, women played little role in the city’s early union movement. During the
nineteenth century, unions like the Tailors officially
banned women members.
At the turn of the century, calls for pay equity were
sometimes intertwined with discriminatory policies.
Male bakery workers shifted from seeking women’s
exclusion from their trade to demanding equal pay for
equal work; but after losing a 1918 strike for pay equity, the union reverted to its exclusionary policies.
During the war, union organizers signed up women
Madison Labor
battery workers and machine shop workers, but the
1919 defeat was a crushing setback for working
women’s attempts to organize. In the 1920’s, there was
little overlap between jobs open to women and the city’s
unionized crafts. In 1920, more than half of Madison’s
women wage earners worked in clerical or domestic and
personal service jobs ignored by organized labor.
During the Twenties, a few women teachers
became active in the Madison Federation of Labor; and
Regina Groves, an American Federation of Teachers
member, served as the Fed’s first woman officer. But
the number of women unionists remained insignificant
until the Thirties when organizing drives recruited
public employees, factory laborers, and service workers.
The low number of women unionists was part of a
larger problem facing Madison labor during the
Twenties. Between 1920 and 1930, the work force
grew from 16,000 to 25,000, but the number carrying
union cards remained steady at 1,500.
As in other cities, Madison factory workers’ inability to withstand employers’ postwar attacks and the
lack of organizing among service and public-sector
employees meant that organized labor remained a
movement primarily of male craft workers employed
in small production units – printers, barbers, and especially building trades workers.
During the Twenties, the city’s labor movement
maintained a narrow vitality. Workers bought their
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Building a City, Building a Movement
own Labor Temple on West Johnson Street. Besides the
twice monthly Madison Federation of Labor meetings,
unionists scheduled educational programs, held entertainments, and sponsored well-attended Labor Day celebrations.
Although craft unionists spoke out for unorganized
public-sector workers – objecting to pay cuts for city
employees and protesting longer hours for state highway department clericals – there were no significant
attempts to unionize public employees.
As before the war, the heart of the labor movement
remained the building trades. Through skill and solidarity, trades workers insured a trained work force that
maintained union conditions and enjoyed a decent
standard of living.
By enforcing union regulations and demanding that
everyone on a job carry a union card, workers protected hard-won standards. The apprenticeship system
insured a competent, trained work force and helped
protect the conditions of those with jobs by regulating
the labor supply.
Craft Pride
One young apprentice during the 1920s was Bill
Conners, a Madison bricklayer who later became international secretary of his union. Conners’ recollections
underscore the trades’ workers’ sense of craft pride.
“The man who taught me the trade used to tell me
‘I want you to lay every brick perfect, the speed will
come by itself and when you get to be a journeyman
bricklayer you’ll be a good mechanic.’
“I pride myself on good work and he used to set an
example in telling me that if you do some bad work
maybe 25 years later you’ll come back and look at that
building and feel ashamed – and how true that was.”
On the whole, construction workers like Conners
enjoyed good relations with their employers. This
reflected the unions’ strength, the employers’ need for
skilled labor, and a favorable economy.
After an unsuccessful attack on the trades locals in
1920, Madison contractors decided to live with the unions.
Between 1920 and 1930, work was relatively steady as
Madison’s population grew from 38,000 to 57,000. By
1930, organized construction workers took home $1.10 to
$1.40 per hour - two to three times the wages earned by
workers in the city’s unorganized factories.
The decade’s one major confrontation occurred at
the University of Wisconsin when an out-of-state contractor imported non-union carpenters to build the
Madison Labor
Memorial Union. Other unionists walked off the job;
strikers met scabs at the train station; and angry workers marched from the Labor Temple to UW where they
scattered the scabs and tore down their living quarters
on the site of today’s Union Terrace.
Layoffs
During the 1920s, Madison escaped major unemployment problems, but workers had to endure seasonal layoffs.
Conners recalls that “I was told I could expect to
work at the most eight months a year because along in
the fall, probably in November, we would cover the
walls with planks and put big stones on them and put
hay over them to keep them covered from the winter...
then we’d start probably the following April... The
bricklayers when they we out of employment, there
were two areas of employment open to them in the
Madison area. Either go and cut ice on one of the lakes
or work in a tobacco warehouse. Those were the two
avenues open for employment. And fortunately, I didn’t work in either one of them. I worked in a foundry
on the East Side for a couple of winters.”
Production workers at Rayovac and Oscar Mayer
also faced seasonal unemployment. With no union protection, however, these workers were uncertain about
recall and had to deal with favoritism.
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Building a City, Building a Movement
Organizing a Broader,
Stronger Movement
1930 - 1940
The Madison Labor movement changed
dramatically during the 1930s. Although the
explosive strikes that rocked Minneapolis,
Toledo, and the Southern mill towns were not
repeated in Madison, there was a dramatic
shift in the size and composition of the city’s
union movement.
– photo: Oscar Mayer & Co.
The Depression hit Madison hard.
Between 1929 and 1933, the number of building permits shrank from nearly 5,000 to 312.
Thousands were thrown out of work, and
many of those with jobs saw their wages
slashed by 30 to 50 percent. Lower wages did
not mean more work, however, and the trades
membership dropped by 50 percent. The
THE DEPRESSION, wage cuts and long hours got workers at Oscar
unions helped their members as best they DURING
Mayer talking about organizing a union.
could. Building trades locals voted assessments on those with jobs, the Typographical Union breakthroughs in the service sector. Although legislators
blocked pay cuts at the profitable Capital Times and would not pass collective bargaining laws for public
employees until the 1950s and 1960s, city, county, and
used assessments and job-sharing to aid its members.
For many workers, however, there was no alterna- state workers began organizing for better conditions.
tive to public relief. In 1933, the Dane County
Unemployed Workers League confronted the County
Board over relief policies. Led by Boilermakers’ activist
and former Madison Federation of Labor officer
William Forrest, more than 1,000 relief workers struck
against the Board’s policy of paying 80 percent of relief
earnings in store orders. Strikers sought cash wages for
relief work and an end to make-work jobs. They
demanded that the county stop using them to replace
regular county employees.
Insisting that “we don’t want charity, we want cash
for our work,” protesters stopped trucks, picketed
supervisors’ homes, and packed the courthouse to
force a meeting with relief officials. But after three
months, the supervisors broke the strike.
The Thirties were a watershed for the Madison labor
movement as the hard times of the Depression spurred
some workers to act on long-standing grievances. By
1940, workers had shattered the open shop on the East
Side by organizing the city’s three largest factories-Gisholt, Oscar Mayer and Rayovac. Other workers made
Madison Labor
During 1931-34, public employees fought back
against budget-cutters. In 1931, firefighters formed
Local 311. Two years later, a 15 percent to 30 percent
pay cut spurred activity among other municipal workers. After three years, they won a public referendum
restoring their wage rates.
Organizing began among state workers in 1932.
At first, they formed an independent AFL local; and by
1934, the Wisconsin State Employees’Association was
the largest local in the Madison Fed. In 1936, the
WSEA joined with public employees elsewhere in the
country to form the American Federation of State,
County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and
became Local 1 of the new union. The WSEA’s head,
Arnold Zander, became AFSCME’s first president; and
the union’s national headquarters remained in
Madison until 1957.
Oscar Mayer workers made the breakthrough at
the city’s industrial plants. In summer, 1933, a handful of workers held their first union meeting. During
the Depression, management had slashed wages to 28
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Building a City, Building a Movement
cents per hour for men and 25 cents for women.
More importantly, workers objected to favoritism and
arbitrary treatment by management.
you had a good job and did your work good and someone didn’t particularly like you, you could be laid off
first.
Bob Schultz, one of Local 538’s founders, recalled
that “there were no set hours at all before the union.
There was just whatever the boss wanted you to do,
and you had nobody to complain to.”
“At the time when I first started, we had no unemployment compensation and you just waited to get
called back and we had no union and you never knew
for sure if you were going to get called back. So I think
one of the greatest things that happened so far as I was
concerned when our union started was we had seniority rights …. Everybody was treated fairly.”
“After you had the union, why you got some protection. There was no protection before. The ‘yes’ men
were protected pretty good but the other ones
weren’t.”
Aided by local unionists and a campus supporter,
the meat packers formed Amalgamated Meatcutters
Local 538. For nine months, the company refused to
deal with the union.
Membership dropped
off as the union was
unable to do anything for
its members.
Despite company resistance, by 1940, the battery
workers had not only won seniority rights but also
increased their wages, narrowed the gap between rates
paid to men and women and established a grievance
procedure.
Madison Labor
–7–
– photo: Wisconsin State Historical Society, #WHi(x3)22109.)
The Rayovac union
– Federal Labor Union
Local 19587 – demonstrated the change in
the Madison labor
In May, 1934, the
movement. As one of
union took a strike vote.
the city’s largest locals,
Because only 51 percent
this industrial union
voted to walk out,
brought large numbers
national union officials
of women as well semitold the Madison local to
skilled men into the
stay on the job. Fearing
AFL. The local held
that inaction would kill
dances to fund sick benthe union, activists decidefits for its members. It
WOMEN BATTERY WORKERS joined the ranks of organized labor
ed to risk a wildcat
during the 1930s to win seniority rights and more equal pay.
cooperated with unemstrike. “Some of us
ployed organizations,
thought it was now or
provided
grocery
never,” said Schultz. “We were afraid if we lost the
orders to laid off members and demanded the right to
chance, well nobody else would sign up again.”
represent them a relief hearings. Like many industrial
The gamble paid off. Once the union acted, the unions formed during the Thirties, Local 19587 was
strike was nearly 100 percent effective. Within 24 concerned about social and political issues. When
hours, the company had come to terms, recognizing other workers struck, they could count on donations
the union and agreeing to seniority rights.
and picket line support from the battery workers.
Management reneged on a no-reprisals pledge, firing
A second wave of union activity swept Madison
Schultz and other activists; but the union’s position
during the late Thirties. CIO sympathizers at the
was secure.
Madison Federation of Labor helped Gisholt workers
Several weeks before the Oscar’s strike, workers organize a Steel Workers local and helped establish the
began organizing at Rayovac. One women activist UAW at Burgess Battery.
recalled that “a few of us decided we should organize
At first, local unionists opposed the bitter rivalry
a union …. we met at the Labor Temple … and signed
between national AFL leaders and the CIO. This policy
a charter.”
changed in 1937 when the MFL expelled its treasurer,
For the battery workers, favoritism and lack of sen- Cedric Parker, for helping Gisholt and Burgess workers
iority rights made seasonal layoffs a serious problem. organize into CIO unions.
Evelyn Gotzion remembers that before the union, “if
Building a City, Building a Movement
The CIO controversy involved jurisdictional jealousies as well as pressure from the AFL officials in
Milwaukee, but the dispute also reflected a split
between some longtime Madison Federation of Labor
members and the newer unions that favored more
aggressive policies and a broader view of the labor
movement that meant closer ties to unemployed
groups and concern for issues like public housing.
This conflict had a high price. Competition made
Organizing
At Oscar’s
After the 1929 stock market crash, there were
many reports of wage cuts. In the early 1930s, there
was a wage cut notice on our bulletin board. All the
employees walked to the locker room.
Plant Manager Bolz promised no more wage
cuts for a year if we went back to work. In three
months, there was another wage cut notice.
We again walked off the job. Mike Lynch
reminded Mr. Bolz of his promise. He informed us
his orders came from Chicago.
When we argued against the cut, he told the
department timekeeper to take the names of those
who wanted to work. With high unemployment
and with 25 to 30 people at the front entrance
every morning looking for jobs, we all went back to
work.
The company would hire several men when the
fall and winter hog rush started, about November.
We worked six long days a week, no overtime, no
rest periods except the half hour for lunch at noon.
When there was not room in the yards for all the
hogs, the U.S. inspectors would order the hogs
unloaded, fed, and reloaded on the railroad cars.
Those days, the company would give us a 35 cent
meal at 5:30 to 6:00 p.m., then we would kill hogs
until 8:30 or 9:00 p.m., all straight time.
First headquarters (1937-40) of Local 538 of the Amalgamated
Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen at Oscar Mayer.
the AFL more active in organizing; and the AFL dominated the city’s labor movement; but the split caused
some AFL industrial unions to cut back their involvement in the Fed.
Still, the union movement made major advances
during the Thirties. In 1930, approximately 1,500
workers belonged to unions – nearly all of them
skilled craft workers employed on construction sites or
in small workshops. Ten years later, six to seven thousand carried union cards, and workers had organized
the city’s three largest plants. Besides the building
trades, Madison unions now represented thousands of
factory and government employees as well as semiskilled service workers.
It made us think and talk about starting a union.
Excerpted from Michael DeMinter’s oral history interview with his grandfather, Bob Schultz.
The interview won first prize in the Wisconsin
Labor History Society’s 1984 essay contest.
Madison Labor
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Building a City, Building a Movement
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.
idarity 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
These conditions creduring the 1950s proated a sense of security
vided a tool for publicand stability among many
sector workers, but
unionists. At the same
teachers, firefighters
time, unions
placed
and other municipal
increased emphasis on
STATE EMPLOYEES PICKET in front of
University Hospital during a 1977 strike.
employees still had to
electoral politics. The fedforce improvements
eral Taft-Hartley Act
from reluctant public
encouraged this outlook
by outlawing many forms of solidarity such as sympa- officials through strikes and sickouts.
thy strikes and secondary boycotts of firms using
Unionization also reached new groups of state
goods produced by strikebreakers.
workers. In 1966,Teaching Assistants at the UW began
Despite the success of many established locals, organizing for job rights and educational quality. Four
there was an underside to the 1950s that raised ques- years later, after a month long strike, they won a union
tions about this sense of security. Many smaller firms contract. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the TAA
remained vehemently anti-union. Like manufacturing would play a leading role in local labor solidarity
at the turn of the century, these owners refused to con- efforts.
cede their workers’ right to organize.
During the Seventies, state clerical workers, attorWorkers lost their jobs trying to form unions at neys, and education and science professionals organfirms like Graber’s and Wisco Hardware. Although the ized. Student workers and limited term employees at
NLRB sometimes ordered the companies to rehire the UW’s Memorial Union also forced University manunion supporters, by then the organizing drives had agers to recognize their union – the Memorial Union
been damaged. Managers and judges battled labor sol- Labor Organization.
Madison Labor
–9–
Building a City, Building a Movement
– photo: Perry Greene & Tom Kelly, Daily Cardinal
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 workTHE STRIKE AGAINST MADISON NEWSPAPERS INC. which began in 1977 was one of the
ers demonstrated that solidarity longest and bitterest strikes in recent memory.
and forceful community support
could win union rights despite
gled to hold on to what they had.
employer resistance and attacks by the local press.
The key confrontation came at Madison
Like the campaigns of the 1930s, this victory gave conNewspapers Incorporated. During the 1970s, newspafidence to other workers and spurred more union
pers across the country shifted from hot metal to comdrives.
puterized typesetting. In most cities, managers barDespite these victories, events during the Seventies gained in good faith with the International
made it clear that the sense of security enjoyed by Typographical Union over this changeover and avoided
many workers had been the result of postwar econom- confrontations. But at MNI, managers used the shift in
ic expansion and union strength.
technology as a weapon against their employees.
Plant Closings
Management tried to keep its plans secret even
Gisholt and Red Dot workers faced traumatic plant after it had ordered the new equipment. “They didn’t
closings. In 1966, Giddings and Lewis bought Gisholt. know this, they didn’t know that, and the damn stuff
Five years later, 800 workers lost their jobs when the was ordered,” recalled one union leader. “You’re put in
company closed the East Washington Avenue machine a spot where you have to wait and see. And while
shop. In 1984, the remaining workers were thrown out you’re waiting to see, they’re doing everything. They’ve
got all the ducks in a row. They’ve got their attorneys
of work when Giddings and Lewis closed its foundry.
lined up and you don’t know for sure what’s happenMore than 1,000 workers lost their jobs as Oscar
ing … It was like we’ll see when we get there. We
Mayer cut back local operations. Despite extremely
don’t know yet. You can’t bargain impact on that ….”
profitable operations, the firm‘s new owner, General
In spring, 1977, MNI moved against the union, forcFoods, joined other meatpacking companies in pressing 17 printers to give up their jobs in violation of their
ing for concessions.
seniority rights and unilaterally cutting the wages of
Since the late 1970s, uncertain economic condithe remaining printers by one third.
tions, management decisions about how to use new
These actions – combined with MNI’s pressure on
technology, the growth of conglomerates, and the
the
other newspaper unions – led to unprecedented
increasing use of unionbusting consultants have posed
cooperation among the five locals at the plant. In
threats to even the most well-established unions.
October, the five unions struck. One spinoff of the
The 1976 strike by Madison Teachers Inc. and the
struggle was the creation of the Madison Press
state employees’ strike the following year were among
Connection. Begun as a strike paper, it survived for a
the last major walkouts in which unionists tried to
year and a half as an independent publication.
break new ground. Since then, most strikes have
The strikers received widespread community backbecome defensive battles in which workers have strugMadison Labor
– 10 –
Building a City, Building a Movement
ing. 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 KleinDickert painters also won back their
union.
ORGANIZED LABOR IN MADISON demonstrated its strong tradition of solidarity by
supporting Greyhound drivers during a strike in the mid-1980s.
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.
IN 1963, RAYOVAC WORKERS WENT ON STRIKE
for 5 months to win pension improvements.
Madison Labor
– 11 –
Building a City, Building a Movement
A Union City
1993-2005
With the contraction and dispersal of the manufacturing base and a generally anti-union political climate
reminiscent of the early twentieth century, organized
labor in the United States has experienced declining
numbers and concessionary bargaining in recent years.
While unions in the Madison area have not totally
escaped these negatives, they have generally prospered
relative to most other areas of the country, and over the
last decade or so have ramped up both their political
and legislative efforts and their outreach to the rest of
the community and to workers who do not have the
benefit of a union.
Although not at a satisfactory level, new union
organizing did meet with some success, particularly in
the government, construction, and service sectors of
the economy. Early in 1993 AFT-Wisconsin organized
the last large group of unorganized state employees –
the “Fiscal and Staff” bargaining unit – and also doctors
and attorneys (public defenders who work for the
state). Many of the building trades unions took advantage of a construction boom and encouragement from
their international unions to grow their numbers during the 1990s and early 2000s; even Klein-Dickert
returned to the union fold. And in the service sector,
Red Cross nurses, Head Start workers, nursing home
workers at Orchard Hill and Oakwood Village, teachers
at Madison Media Institute, warehouse workers at Holt
Products, and employees of Whole Foods, Charlton
Telemarketing, and Monona Terrace Catering all won
collective bargaining rights.
Employer resistance, of course, had not disappeared. In addition to several aborted organizing
drives, the bakery workers at Village Hearth in Sun
Prairie lost two close union elections, and the employees at Whole Foods, Madison Media Institute, and Holt
Products all failed to achieve a first union contract due
to fierce employer opposition.
Also, in manufacturing the Madison area suffered
the same plant closings that the rest of the country was
experiencing at this time. Long time union employers
Rayovac, Stainless Tank, and Rock-Tenn all closed their
Madison facilities within a few years of each other
around the turn of the century, as did Perry Printing in
Waterloo.
Madison Labor
WHAT NO FAMILY DESERVES: More than a thousand labor supporters joined striking Tyson Foods workers as they entered their
third week on strike, March 16, 2003. The 470 Jefferson meat packers hit the streets rather than accept a 32 percent cut in their wage
and benefit package.
Tyson Strike
An intransigent employer also led to the area’s
largest labor dispute since the Stoughton Trailers strike
in the late 1980s. In early 2003, after nearly a year of
negotiations, the workers at Tyson Foods in Jefferson,
represented by UFCW Local 538, the same local that
represents the workers at Madison’s Oscar Mayer
plant, struck in response to the employer’s demands
for drastic concessions in wages, health insurance,
vacations, and pensions. The Jefferson plant, owned by
a local family and successfully run for over 100 years
without a strike, was sold to one national corporation
after another beginning in the 1970s until it finally
wound up in the hands of Tyson which controlled a
quarter of the country’s meat supply.
Local 538 workers held strong with less than a half
dozen of the 470 strikers crossing the picket line. The
area labor movement responded with demonstrations,
large rallies, picket line support, and sizable financial
contributions. The Jefferson community and the surrounding area also rallied to the cause of their striking
neighbors. Nevertheless, without a national strategy to
combat this multibillion dollar company and facing a
union decertification vote in which, by law, the strikers
would not be allowed to vote but the scabs would, the
strike was lost. The workers voted to accept most of
the concessions and return to work rather than lose
their union.
– 12 –
Despite the growing power of huge corporations
Building a City, Building a Movement
and a labor law stacked against workers, not all
strikes were lost during this time. Of particular
note was a strike in late summer of 1999 by
Laundry Workers Local 229 (now UNITE HERE
Local 229) against the Aramark laundry on
Madison’s east side. The workers, many of them
Hmong and Latino immigrants, struck only for a
few days of sick leave each year to take care of
sick kids without losing pay or being slapped
with attendance demerits. The Madison labor
community rallied to the cause of these workers
with a big demonstration the second day of the
strike and continual picket line support. After six
days, the workers won their main demand, get- IN AN UNPRECEDENTED MOBILIZATION, union members walked house to
ting four additional personal holidays per year house in Madison neighborhoods, talking with other union members
which could be used as sick leave. The strike’s about the stakes in the November ‘04 election.
success, contrasted to the Tyson strike, was due in
part to simply catching the company off guard and take a special interest in this struggle. For the two and
partly to the nature of the business. Unable to recruit a half years of the lock out, individual union activists
competent scabs to do this hot and dirty work and and local unions contributed through SCFL over $1000
unable to supply their customers’ needs, Aramark, per month in order to “adopt” two locked out families.
despite being a multi-billion dollar diversified compa- UFCW Local 538 on its own adopted a third family.
ny, made a necessary business decision and agreed to SCFL coordinated boycotts of products using Staley
sweetener, and at least a half dozen times Madison
the workers’ demands.
activists caravanned to mass rallies in Decatur, taking
Solidarity – the Staley Lockout
food, toys, and money with them for Christmastime ralThe Madison labor community also rallied to the lies. Because of the repressive tactics of the Decatur
cause of key labor struggles taking place in other police force, these activists at least once returned
states. In the 1980s, Madison unionists collected home with watering eyes and the smell of pepper gas
money, boycotted products, and caravanned to rallies in their hair.
for striking packinghouse workers at Hormel in Austin,
Students at the University, in response to the Staley
Minnesota, and held big fundraising efforts for striking
struggle, formed the Student Labor Action Coalition
miners at Pittston in western Virginia. This solidarity
(SLAC), which was soon emulated at campuses throughwith workers involved in key struggles elsewhere in
out the country. Long after the Staley struggle had
the country soon made Madison a must stop on any
ended, SLAC-type chapters continued to take up the
“Road Warrior” circuit.
cause of worker struggles, be they living wage camWhen “Road Warriors” from the union representing paigns for workers right on campus or sweatshop work760 workers who had been locked out by the A.E. ers making University apparel in foreign countries.
Staley Company in Decatur, Illinois, came to Madison in
In the end, after two and a half years of intense
July 1993, they met a hearty reception from SCFL and
struggle, the company’s intransigence was too much
Madison labor activists. Owned by the British multifor the Staley workers and they returned to work
national Tate & Lyle, the Staley Company, which prounder a contract that allowed most of the concessions
duces mainly sweetener made from corn, was demandthe company had originally demanded. But, they
ing twelve hour, rotating shifts and unlimited subconreturned to work knowing that at least in Madison,
tracting amongst other concessions. The union refused
Wisconsin, solidarity was alive and well.
to take this strike bait and instead launched a vigorous
Political Action
in-plant strategy. The success of the in-plant strategy
led the company to lock out the workers in late June.
Meanwhile, in the early 1990s a growing number of
The company’s heavy handed tactics and the politicians not supportive of worker concerns were
union’s valiant fight back inspired Madison unionists to being elected to public office in the greater Madison
Madison Labor
– 13 –
Building a City, Building a Movement
area. In response, SCFL in 1994 led the formation of the
Labor Political Coalition, a grouping of many of SCFL’s
larger affiliates and of some unaffiliated unions. The
Coalition pooled the human and financial resources of
the participating organizations and targeted strategic
races. As a result, by the end of the decade, the Dane
County Board, the Madison Common Council, and the
Madison School Board all had elected solid pro-worker
majorities, and the area’s representative in Congress and
all but one of Dane County’s representatives in the state
legislature had been elected with labor’s support.
Changing the political orientation of the local legislative bodies resulted in Madison and Dane County passing strong living wage ordinances (applied mainly to
organizations holding service contracts with the city
and the county) in 1999,Madison passing one of the few
municipal minimum wage ordinances in the country in
2004, and an end to the contentiousness that had characterized the relationship of Madison Teachers Inc. and
the Madison Metropolitan School District throughout
most of the 1990s.
A Union City’s Community Outreach
In addition to legislative efforts that reached out to
non-union, low wage workers and to the community in
general, labor unions also engaged in a wide variety of
other efforts designed to extend labor’s reach into the
community.
Madison Labor Radio was initiated in the mid-1990s
with the UW School for Workers as a 15 minute, biweekly news program about workers and their unions. By
early 1998 the program was a half hour and weekly, and
continues as such to this day.
A UNION CITY: The South Central Federation of Labor is named
one of fourteen Union Cities at the national AFL-CIO’s 2001 convention. Pictured above: SCFL President Jim Cavanaugh, SCFL
staffer Sue Vilbrandt, SCFL activist and AFSCME Co. 40 President
Mike Murphy and Wis. State AFL-CIO President David Newby.
to place the University of Wisconsin at the forefront of a
nationwide anti-sweatshop movement.
These efforts by the South Central Federation of
Labor partly predated and partly coincided with the
AFL-CIO’s “Union Cities” initiative to reinvigorate central labor councils. The Union Cities initiative called for
greater engagement with the community, more support for organizing, greater involvement in the political
and legislative arenas, and more concerted efforts to
mobilize union members to assist each others’ collective bargaining efforts as well as labor’s political and
legislative agendas. The latter mobilization emphasis
has led over a thousand Madison area union activists to
sign up for SCFL’s Street Heat and E-Activist
mobilization lists.
Further, largely through the assistance of the
South Central Federation of Labor, a chapter
Madison’s long history of union
of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists
activism led SCFL to be one of
was started, the South Central
the first labor councils in the
Wisconsin
Committee
on
country to commit to the AFLOccupational Safety and Health was
CIO’s Union Cities program.
launched, and the Interfaith Coalition
Implementation of that profor Worker Justice of South Central
gram resulted in SCFL being
Wisconsin (ICWJ) was formed. The
one of the first 14 labor counICWJ created a bilingual Workers
cils in the country designated a
Rights Center on Madison’s south
“Union City” by the AFL-CIO at
side which has provided invaluable
its 2001 Convention.
wage claim and other assistance and
Proud of their traditions,
empowerment for mainly non-union
Madison labor activists head
workers, many of them immigrants
into the 21st century poised to
from Latin America. Madison labor
THE ICWJ’S WORKERS’ RIGHT CENTER
activists also partnered with students located on Madison’s south side opened in 2002. make more history.
Madison Labor
– 14 –
Building a City, Building a Movement