All’s Noisy on the Midwestern Front

A. Kersten: Midwestern Front

AS I sit here at my computer, the button I wore today is still on my shirt. It was given to me by the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin organizer on my campus so I could show my solidarity with others who are protesting our newly elected governor’s agenda this afternoon on campus, in Madison, and across the state. It has a picture of Wisconsin’s state capitol building with a question in bold above it: W.T.F? Those who know me know I rarely swear. But really, W.T.F.? There is no other way to put what is going on in this state. W.T.F., like those other great cursing acronyms—S.N.A.F.U. and F.U.B.A.R.—says it all.

In all seriousness, and with tears in my eyes, I am trying to make sense of this, and it’s hard to do.

As a historian of the United States who has written about unions and working people, I know the history. Since last November, I’ve been reading how a Blue state has gone Red. That’s too simplistic and an inaccurate characterization of the past and present. Rather, we need to see Wisconsin as a front in the political and economic war that has swept though our nation. It has a very long history—if only it were new!—in this country and in Wisconsin.

The struggle between the rich and their politicians and the working class was there at the beginning of the state. The first labor union in Wisconsin predated the state’s admission into the union by a year. Wisconsinites were always active partisans in the struggle to shape the political economy. At times, this struggle was peaceful; at other times, it was not. In 1886, while workers in Chicago were fighting for an eight-hour day and in the midst of the Haymarket Massacre, workers outside Milwaukee were staging their own protests for industrial democracy at the Bay View rolling mill. On May 4, 1886, National Guardsmen fired into the crowd of strikers, killing seven.

The Bay View Massacre—which is memorialized every year—was just one episode in the labor battles in Wisconsin. Twelve years later in Oshkosh, there was a general strike by woodworkers laboring in the town’s factories. “Saw Dust City” was a world leader in the production of doors, windows, and sashes. The mill owners were among the nation’s most callous and cruel. They crushed the strike and brought the strike leaders up on charges of conspiracy. Clarence Darrow, the great labor lawyer, came to their defense and quite rightly pronounced to the jury and by extension the entire American public that the case was not merely about the grievances of abused workers. (They had indeed been abused.) By winning in court, the mill owners hoped to smash all unions in Wisconsin and in the United States. As Darrow said, the case was “but an episode in the great battle for human liberty, a battle which was commenced when the tyranny and oppression of man first caused him to impose upon his fellows and which will not end so long as the children of one father shall be compelled to toil to support the children of another in luxury and ease.” If his defendants went to jail for conspiracy, Darrow declared, “then there never can be a strike again in this country where men cannot be sent to jail as well.” Darrow won freedom for his clients, but the bigger fight went on.

With or without Darrow, the war raged in Wisconsin. There were victories such as the nation’s first worker compensation law in 1902 and stunning defeats like the successful open-shop movement in the 1920s, which stunted the Wisconsin Federation of Labor and its member unions. The war continued unabated during the Great Depression. Wisconsin’s Baby Wagner Act of 1937, a milestone law providing state workers the same rights and guarantees as the national New Deal labor law, did not go unchallenged. And in 1939, conservatives won a major victory with the passage of the Employment Peace Act, which curtailed the right to strike and picket and opened new avenues to shut down militancy. Weakened but not destroyed, workers kept fighting through the Cold War years. In 1959, Wisconsin was the first state to allow its public-sector employees to form unions and bargain collectively. In the last thirty years, even while labor has been flat on its back, there were major workers struggles and strikes in the core industries in Wisconsin. In my hometown of Green Bay in the late 1970s and through 1980s, there were four significant strikes: at Nicolet Paper, at KI Industries, at Schneider Trucking, and of course at Lambeau Field.

And now, in this new Gilded Age of corporate greed, bailouts, upper-bracket tax cuts, corporate subsidies, deregulation, and disinvestment, we are witnessing yet another historic frontal assault on worker rights in Wisconsin. It’s all predicated upon the elections last November, which swept the radical right wing into office. Why did this happen? The Democrats’ plan for prosperity did not work fast enough. Certainly we can say that recalcitrant Republicans and their Blue Dog Democrat friends are partly to blame. They greatly limited President Obama’s “Summer of Recovery.” But I say too that the Democrats missed an opportunity. The stimulus package along with the bailouts helped to create wealth and restart the economy, but these measures did not go far enough in creating prosperity. President Obama should have taken a page out of FDR’s playbook and had Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act, along with the stimulus. Sure, the federal government can help create wealth, but they should also help empower workers to go and get it! It worked for the Greatest Generation; it would have worked for us. Instead, we got half a stimulus and a corporate bailout without worker rights.

The Summer of Recovery wasn’t what its name promised, and voters across the nation were mad and again sought change. In Wisconsin, a majority of voters threw out the incumbents and endorsed those with a new plan for wealth. Last week, the plan was revealed: destroy unions, prevent new ones from forming (like faculty unions in the University of Wisconsin system), and slash wages and benefits.

And that is just for starters. Read the 140-page budget “fix” bill and you’ll see that the fix is in. The Republicans plan to gut both K-12 and higher education and erode business and environmental regulation. Personally, I expect that once the Republicans are done it will cost me a lot more to be an employee of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. I also expect that my wife will lose her part-time job at our local elementary school (hence, my tears). And yet, we will probably be OK. I worry more about those around me. The husband of a close friend of mine who also works in the Green Bay public schools stands a good chance of losing his full-time job. If he keeps it, he can expect a dramatically enlarged classroom. A new friend of mine at UW-Green Bay said the cuts in his pay likely mean he will lose his home.

What’s happening is not isolated, not new, and as vicious as before: smash unions, drive workers into the ground, and reap profits from the lowly. But Wisconsin Blue has not become Badger Red. Far from it. The war rages on. If anything, the events of these last weeks have shown that although the Republicans have captured the state house and the governor’s mansion, they have not captured the hearts and minds of average citizens, who have for almost two weeks been keeping a peaceful and joyful vigil. Workers and citizens across the state have joined them in solidarity. Although we here in Green Bay are quite reticent, today there was a student rally and teach in on my campus. The last time there was any mass, on-campus student demonstration here was in 1970 when, faculty, staff, and students protested President Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia and Laos. Thus, the protesters seem to come out when the time is just right and the stakes are high.

Will we win? It’s going to be tough. Just like in 1898, the conservatives are on the verge of destroying unionism, and this time we don’t have Darrow on our side. But like Darrow, I’m a hopeful pessimist. The other side has got the money; they’ve got the points of power. We have the nerve to say no and the courage to stick together.

The Republicans have gone over the top here in Wisconsin and are running through our lines in hopes of a final victory. All’s not quiet on the Midwestern Front; it’s noisy. What happens over the next few weeks will make or break the lives of workers all over the state. But this class war from above won’t end in Wisconsin or elsewhere in the United States, where Republican are poised to launch similar attacks using these Cheesehead battle plans. A friend of mine who has had a bird’s eye view of the demonstrations in Madison emailed me today with photos. He wished that I were there seeing labor history unfold and asked if I thought if this was the beginning of the end for unions. I replied it was not; it’s the end of the beginning, as it always is. As such, we look to the future. FORWARD!, we say in Wisconsin.

Friends who know my passion for Darrow’s life and legacy ask me: what would he counsel? As he once famously said, “the best proof of the usefulness of the union is that the employers don’t want it.” If Darrow were still among the living, his advice would be: FORM A UNION! He would also give some advice that many might not want to hear: STOP VOTING FOR YOUR ENEMIES! In 1897, the year after the Populists went down in flaming defeat, Darrow lambasted the working-class voters who elected and endorsed politicians “who entirely subverted the liberties of the people.” Darrow would be clear: fight like your very life depended on the outcome.

-February 17, 2011

Andrew E. Kersten is a professor of U.S. history in the Department of Social Change and Development at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. His new biography of Clarence Darrow will be published this May by Hill and Wang. He can be reached at kerstena[at]uwgb[dot]edu.