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