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LABOR HISTORY
Reference
List
Notes: Tells the story of how agitation nationally to win the Eight-Hour Day led
to the seven tragic deaths in the Bay View neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin
on May 5, 1886, killed by state militia ordered to fire upon a parade of
striking workers--still to this day the bloodiest day in Wisconsin labor
history.
CREDITS: Produced by David Thomas.
Voices by Melinda Macdonald; Dan Mooney, AFTRA/SAG.
"8 Hours" [sung] by Pete Seeger, used with permission.
Guitar music of John Fahey, courtesy of Vanguard Records, Welk Record
Group. Videotape produced through
the facilities of Milwaukee Access Telecommunications Authority.
Thanks to Milwaukee County Historical Society, State Historical Society
of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Public Library. Special
Thanks to the Wisconsin Labor History Society.
2. Workers
in Wisconsin History: Commemorating
the Contributions and Acknowledging the Struggles of Working People Toward
Making Wisconsin a Great State, A Labor History Sesquicentennial Project of the
Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Labor Education and Training Center, Inc.
Germanson, Kenneth A., editor. Milwaukee, Wis.: Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Labor
Education and Training Center, Inc.; n.d. [1999]. 24 p.
Notes: "This booklet highlights presentations made at six events which were
held throughout the state as part of the 'Workers in Wisconsin History' Project
during 1998--Wisconsin's Sesquicentennial Year.
The contents ... include excerpts from speeches, writings or other
presentations made at the events."--inside front cover.
CONTENTS: "The Bay View Tragedy of May 5, 1886:
A Look at Milwaukee's 8-Hour March, Killings from the Workers' Point of
View" / by Howard Zinn, p. 3-5. -- "The Great Oshkosh Woodworkers
Strike of 1898: Women Played Heroic
Role in Citywide Struggle that had National Significance" / by Virginia
Crane, p. 6-8. -- "The 1940s and the Union Movement in Wisconsin:
Wartime Saw Unions Grow in Numbers, Enter into New Areas, Like
Politics" / by Darryl Holter, p. 9-12. -- "Labor in the Upper
Wisconsin River Valley: From Paternalism to Cooperation, Workers, Companies Built
Prosperity" / by James Lorence, p. 13-15. -- "Labor in Stevens Point,
1880-1998: From $1 a Day for 12
Hours, Unions Made a Difference in Area" / by George Rogers, p. 16-20. --
"Superior's Labor History Hall of Fame:
A Century of Labor's Struggles Told in the Stories of Five Leaders"
/ by Joel Sipress, p. 21-23.
Another edition:
Also available on the web at URL www.execpc.com/~blake/table.htm.
3. Beilke,
Dustin and Micklos, Chris. Wisconsin Education Association Council:
A History. Madison, Wis.: Wisconsin Education Association
Council; 2001. 102 p.
Notes: This history traces the development of the Wisconsin Education
Association Council (WEAC), a union which today represents public school
teachers, educational support personnel, student teachers, Wisconsin Technical
College System employees, state of Wisconsin education and information
professionals and WEAC retired members. The
organization began in Madison, Wisconsin in 1853 when eight educators met to
form the Wisconsin Teachers Association (WTA).
The organization re-named itself in 1935 to the Wisconsin Education
Association (WEA) and, finally, in 1972 to the Wisconsin Education Association
Council (WEAC). In a letter tipped in to this history one of the authors
explains that this book "is intended to commemorate and celebrate the work
done by veteran WEAC members and staffers who are retiring or close to
retirement as we also look toward communicating this history to new young
members who may not know it otherwise."
If only more unions ensured that their history was captured to be
transferred to those who follow!
4. Costello,
Cynthia B. We're Worth It!: Women
and Collective Action in the Insurance Workplace. Urbana, Ill.:
University of Illinois Press; 1991. 154 p.
Notes: A sociological look at the process of collective action among the
women clerical workers at three insurance companies in Madison, Wisconsin; all
three companies had unionized workforces. The
author analyzes the responses of the women workers to the different management
philosophies of the three companies and the strategies employed by the women to
make changes.
The first
workplace was at the Wisconsin Education Association Insurance Trust, which was
formed by the Wisconsin Education Association, the state teachers' union; there
the union involved was the United Staff Union (USU), the state affiliate of the
National Staff Organization, an independent union to represent employees of
teachers unions. The author
analyzes the strategies used by the clericals in this workplace from 1975 to
1985 to gain respect and dignity on the job, including a strike in 1979.
The second
workplace was at the Wisconsin Physicians Services Insurance Corporation; the
union involved there was began as Retail Clerks Union Local 1401 and then became
United Food and Commerical Workers (UFCW) Local 1444 due to a merger in 1979.
The group of womeon at this site were followed from 1974 to 1982 and, in
addition to the unionized clerical office workforce, the author looked at the
strategies of the company's non-unionized clerical homework force as well.
The third
workplace was at the CUNA Mutual Insurance Society, which was formed by the
Credit Union National Association; here the union was Office and Professional
Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 39.
Although the CUNA worksite was much more 'benevolent' than the other two
worksites in this study, by the late 1970s a group of the women clerical workers
had formed a Women's Association to take collective action in the workplace
beyond that of their union.
"An earlier
version of chapter 2 appeared as "WEA're Worth it!:
Work Culture and Conflict at the Wisconsin Education Assocation
Trust" in Feminist Studies 11, no.3 (Fall 1985): 497-518. ... An
earlier version of chapter 4 appeared as "Home-based Clerical
Employment" in The New Era of Home-based Work, edited by Kathleen
Christensen, c1988 Westview Press. ..."--title page verso.
Chapter 4 has
also appeared in a somewhat different form as "The Clerical Homework
Program at the Wisconsin Physicians Service Insurance Corporation," in Homework:
Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Paid Labor at Home,
edited by Eileen Boris and Cynthia R. Daniels (Urbana, Ill.:
University of Illinois Press, 1989), p. [198]-214 (Chapter 10).
5. Crane,
Virginia Glenn. The Oshkosh Woodworkers' Strike of 1898:
A Wisconsin Community in Crisis. [Oshkosh, Wis.]: [V. Crane];
1998. 569 p.
Notes: "The Oshkosh woodworkers' strike of 1898 was a dramatic clash of
labor and capital. It threw the
city into the greatest crisis of its history.
This is the story of that strike and of that community a century ago as
it tried to come to grips with forces beyond its control."--back cover.
At the end of
the 1900s, the industry of Oshkosh was dominated by seven woodworking companies,
which specialized in making doors, window sashes and window blinds.
On May 16, 1898, the employees of these factories went out on strike
primarily for recognition of their union, the Amalgamated Woodworkers Union (AWU),
and against the "starvation wages" paid in the Oshkosh mills, wages
much lower than the woodworker pay scale nationally.
The strike lasted for fourteen dramatic weeks and was capped with an
equally dramatic legal battle in which the union's leading organizer, Thomas
Kidd, was defended by famed defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow (himself the son of
a woodworker). Women family members
of the strikers played an important role in strike activities, especially in
thwarting scabs and strikebreakers.
6. ---.
"The Very Pictures of Anarchy": Women
in the Oshkosh Woodworkers' Strike of 1898. Wisconsin Magazine of History.
2001 Spring; 84(3):44-59.
Notes: In this article taken from her book, The Oshkosh Woodworkers'
Strike of 1898: A Wisconsin
Community in Crisis, the author focuses on the instrumental role women
played in strike activities, especially in thwarting scabs and strikebreakers.
7. Doro,
Sue. Blue Collar Goodbyes. 1st ed. Watsonville, Calif.:
Papier-Mache Press; 1992. 73 p.
Notes: Poems, photographs and essays about the thirteen years the author spent
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as the only woman machinist with the Milwaukee Road
Railway and at the Allis-Chalmers tractor plant at a time of increased plant
closings and cutbacks. In 1993 the
Wisconsin Library Association selected this book as one of the ten books of
"Outstanding Achievement" by Wisconsin authors for the year.
Reviewed: Allen, Hayward (reviewer).
"Badger Books: Writers
Link Past to Present." Wisconsin
State Journal, Sunday, November 22, 1992, p. 3F. Reviewed: Monaghan,
Pat (reviewer). Booklist
p. 710 December 15, 1992.
Reviewed: Ratner, Rochelle
(reviewer). Library Journal
p. 81 March 1, 1993.
Another edition:
Doro, Sue. Blue Collar
Goodbyes. Huron, O.:
Bottom Dog Press, 2000. 85
p. (Working Lives Series) ISBN:
0-933087-66-7.
8. Dudley,
Kathryn Marie. The End of the Line: Lost
Jobs, New Lives in Postindustrial America. Chicago, Ill.: University of
Chicago Press; 1994. 224 p. (Morality
and Society.
Notes: An anthropologist looks at the difficult 1988 closing of the Chrysler
automobile assembly plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and how the nearly six thousand
auto workers and their community struggled to cope with the severe changes they
faced.
Another edition:
Dudley, Kathryn Marie. The
End of the Line: Lost Jobs, New
Lives in Postindustrial America. Chicago,
Ill.: University of Chicago Press,
1997. 224 p.
ISBN: 0226169103 (pbk.)
9. Foner,
Philip S. "The Polish-American Martyrs of the First May Day". IN:
Roediger, Dave and Rosemont, Franklin, editors. Haymarket Scrapbook.
Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing; 1986; pp. 88-90.
Notes: Describes the May 5, 1886 Bay View Massacre when the Wisconsin state
militia fired upon workers marching in support of the Eight-Hour Day.
The contemporaneous news of the police riot in Haymarket Square in
Chicago on May 4, 1886 dominated national attention regarding the campaign begun
on May Day 1886 by U.S. workers across the country to win the Eight-Hour Day,
but many workers in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area had also joined the general
strike for the Eight-Hour Day. On
May 5 they were parading to a large factory in Bay View, a neighborhood of
Milwaukee, to ask the workers there to join in the strike.
As the parade got close to the factory, the Wisconsin militia fired upon
the marchers and killed seven people (six men and one boy)--still to this day
the bloodiest day in Wisconsin labor history.
10. Glazer,
Joe. Labor's Troubadour. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois
Press; 2001. 299 p. (Music in
American Life.
Notes: Labor educator Joe Glazer, who wrote such classic American labor
songs as "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night" and "The Mill Was
Made of Marble", kept labor songs front and center throughout his long
career; in his autobiography here he tells the story of his life of using music
for progressive causes and the people he met along the way.
He also devotes two chapters to introducing us to some of the "New
Voices" of the labor song movement, including a labor troubadour of
Wisconsin, Larry Penn of Milwaukee (see pages 255-260).
11. Gordon,
Michael A. "Staging 'The Line': The
Creation of a Play About the Patrick Cudahy Meat Packing Strike of
1987-1989". Labor's Heritage. 1997; 9(2):58-77.
Notes: This article explains how the collaboration of an oral historian
(the author of this article) and a playwright (John Schneider, the artistic
director of Milwaukee's innovative Theatre X) brought about the creation of an
original play which dramatized the bitter 1987-1989 strike by United Food and
Commercial Workers Local P-40 against the Patrick Cudahy meatpacking plant in
Cudahy, Wisconsin, a small town just south of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The strike, which lasted for twenty-eight months, came about after a
bargaining impasse was reached over company demands for a second straight
contract with significant salary reductions--cutbacks which would have taken
many employees back to the wages they had been making in 1967.
In this article
Gordon uses the experience of creating the new play, The Line, to
illustrate how incorporating extensive information from oral histories into the
production of plays can preserve labor history as well as allowing those
interviewed (such as strike participants) can gain insights into their struggle
when given the opportunity to tell their story and find affirmation in the
values which led to their battle. For
about seventy-five percent of the dialogue in the play, Schneider was able to
quote directly from the oral history interviews.
Because of the many examples Gordon supplies in this article to show how
the oral history interviews provided details about what it was like to work in
the plant and how that detail was incorporated into the play, we come to
understand how utterly demanding meatpacking work is; indeed, Gordon says that a
key finding from his discussions with the former P-40 strikers was that
"many workers believed their jobs were simply too arduous and demeaning to
do for just over $6 an hour." (p. 66).
In addition to interviewing company executives and touring the plant,
Gordon supplemented his research with the extensive archival records of the
National Labor Relations Board related to the dispute.
The Line
ran in Milwaukee for twenty performances in January and February 1996 and was
revived for three more performances in September 1996 (one at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee and two at the University of Wisconsin-Madison).
The oral history interviews conducted for the play are in the
"Patrick Cudahy Strike and Plant Closing of1987-1989 Oral History
Project" collection held by the Urban Archives at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
12. Gough,
Robert. Farming the Cutover: A
Social History of Northern Wisconsin, 1900-1940. Lawrence, Kan.:
University Press of Kansas; 1997. 295 p.
Notes: At the time of settlement by Euro-Americans, the northern-most
third of Wisconsin was almost entirely covered by an old-growth forest of pine
and hardwoods, which varied depending on the soil and moisture conditions in
each local area. During the last
quarter of the nineteenth century commercial loggers clear cut almost one
hundred percent of that great forest of northern Wisconsin; this "cutover
region" is made up of eighteen Wisconsin counties:
Ashland, Bayfield, Burnett, Douglas, Florence, Forest, Iron, Langlade,
Lincoln, Marinette, Oconto, Oneida, Price, Rusk, Sawyer, Taylor, Vilas, and
Washburn. (The only portion of the
original forest to be left intact was that held by the Native American tribe of
the Menominee, who refused to permit the commercial loggers to clear cut their
reservation in Oconto and Shawano counties; in fact, today their Menominee
Indian Reservation makes up virtually the only old-growth forest left in the
entire state of Wisconsin.)
With the
assistance of governmental state boosterism, the lumber companies sold off the
land after the last of the forest had been cut down to families for small farms. The chiefly cool-climate forest soils of the area and the
mass of stumps left in place by the lumber companies combined, however, to make
agriculture in the "cutover region" a very daunting endeavor.
In this outstanding example of a social history, Gough looks at how the
development and settlement of northern Wisconsin was influenced by a host of
factors, including the environmental, commercial, governmental, political,
professional and academic. It is refreshing to find a book which gives the settlers of
this region the respect they deserve for what they accomplished and which is
sensitive to how they struggled to overcome the challenging circumstances they
faced.
13. Gurda,
John. The Making of Milwaukee. Milwaukee, Wis.: Milwaukee County
Historical Society; 1999. 458 p.
Notes: The workers, so integral to the story of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, are
covered in detail throughout this profusely-illustrated general history of the
city from its earliest days up to the 1990s--an indispensible resource!
This book has been recognized for its achievement by the Council for
Wisconsin Writers (Best Non-Fiction Book Award), by the Wisconsin Library
Association (Outstanding Book Achievement), and by the Wisconsin Humanities
Council (Governor's Award for Public Humanities).
Reviewed: Simon, Roger D. (reviewer).
Wisconsin Magazine of History 84:3 (Spring 2001), p. 60.
Reviewed: Gruberg, Martin
(reviewer). Voyageur:
Northeast Wisconsin's Historical Review 18:1 (Summer/Fall 2001), p.
59.
14. Holter,
Darryl. "The Founding of the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor,
1893". IN: Holter, Darryl. Workers and Unions in Wisconsin:
A Labor History Anthology. Madison, Wis.: State Historical
Society of Wisconsin; 1999; pp. 40-41.
Notes: The genesis of the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor, the
enduring statewide political voice of Wisconsin working men and women, is
described; the three-day convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin met for three days
in June 1893. Attending were
thirty-five delegates from unions in Wisconsin representing brewery workers,
carpenters, cigar makers, coal heavers, coopers, electrical workers, furniture
workers, horseshoers, iron molders, plasterers, tanners, trunk makers,
typographers, and machine woodworkers; six Wisconsin central labor councils were
represented with delegates (Ashland, Madison, Marinette, Milwaukee, Oshkosh and
West Superior).
15. ---.
Workers and Unions in Wisconsin: A
Labor History Anthology. Madison, Wis.: State Historical Society of
Wisconsin; 1999. 284 p.
Notes: Here is the book with which to begin to learn about
Wisconsin labor history; this generously-illustrated anthology of writings about
workers' experiences and struggles captures the incredible breadth of
Wisconsin's labor history.
"The Labor
Factor in Wisconsin History: Wisconsin
accounts for about two percent of the nation's total population.
Yet its contribution to the history of working people and social reform
extends far beyond these numbers. In
the early years of the twentieth century, Wisconsin became a veritable
laboratory for social and political reform, producing landmark legislation such
as workers' compensation, unemployment insurance, and other laws that became
models for many states. The study
of the history of labor also began in Wisconsin when University of Wisconsin
economics professor John R. Commons started to document the history of work and
labor in America. For the first
time, historical material on Wisconsin labor, drawn from a wide variety of
sources, has been compiled in a single volume.
With more than a hundred photos, complete footnotes, and a detailed
index, readers can identify the large cast of characters that have left their
mark on Wisconsin's labor history."--back cover, paperbound ed.
Reviewed: Bakopoulos, Dean (reviewer).
Wisconsin Academy Review: The
Magazine of Wisconsin Thought and Culture 46:4 (Fall 2000), p. 53.
16. Jamakaya.
Like Our Sisters Before Us: Women
of Wisconsin Labor; Based on Interviews Conducted for the Women of Wisconsin
Labor Oral History Project. Milwaukee, Wis.: Wisconsin Labor History
Society; 1998. 93 p.
Notes: Ten female union leaders of Wisconsin, including one
African-American, are profiled; the women were most active from the 1940s
through the 1970s. This volume also
includes a list of the over thirty interviewees of the Women of Wisconsin Labor
Oral History Project of the Wisconsin Labor History Society; all of the
project's audio recordings and additional supporting materials from the
interviewees are available to researchers through the Archives Division, State
Historical Society of Wisconsin.
CONTENTS; Evelyn
Donner Day, Milwaukee (Int'l Ladies Garment Workers Union; United Auto Workers).
-- Alice Holz, Milwaukee (Office and Professional Employees Int'l Union). --
Evelyn Gotzion, Madison (Federal Labor Union #19587; United Auto Workers). --
Catherine Conroy, Milwaukee (Communications Workers of America). -- Nellie
Wilson, Milwaukee (A.O. Smith Steelworkers). -- Doris Thom, Janesville (Int'l
Association of Machinists; United Auto Workers). -- Lee Schmeling, Neenah
(Graphic Arts Int'l Union; Graphic Communications Int'l Union). -- Helen Hensler,
Milwaukee (Office and Professional Employees Int'l Union). -- Joanne Bruch,
Whitewater (Int'l Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine and
Furniture Workers). -- Florence Simons, Milwaukee (Int'l Association of
Machinists; United Auto Workers; Allied Industrial Workers).
17.
Konopacki, Mike and Huck, Gary. Working Class Hero:
Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons IV. Pittsburg, Pa.: United
Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE); 1998. 112 p.
Notes: Here's their fourth collection--now published by the well-known UE
union, because "UE and other unions fought [their] way through the Reagan,
Bush and Clinton years with the cartoons of Gary Huck and Mike Konopacki helping
to make those struggles a bit more possible and certainly more
understandable."--p. 7.
18. Krejcarek,
Jody. "The Knights of Labor and the Lumber Industry in Northeast Wisconsin,
1885-1887". Voyageur: Northeast
Wisconsin's Historical Review. 1996(Summer/Fall); 13(1):16-21, 24-29.
Notes: The Knights of Labor had over 30,000 members in Wisconsin by the
middle of the 1880s and this article looks at the activities and influences in
the lumber industry of the Knights' assemblies in Marinette, Oconto and Peshtigo
from 1885 to 1887. In Marinette,
many of the members of the Knights' Assembly were also members of the Menominee
River Laboring Men's Protective and Benevolent Union; this union led a strike in
late 1885 which resulted in the introduction of the ten-hour day at the mills of
the entire area for the 1886 sawing season (a reduction from eleven-and-a-half
hours). Various other improvements
brought about as a result of the Knights' assemblies in each of the three cities
are also detailed, especially the political campaign efforts undertaken through
a new party, the People's Party, which was closely linked to the key organizer
in Wisconsin for the Knights of Labor, Robert Schilling from Milwaukee.
19. Lorence,
James J. Gerald J. Boileau and the Progressive-Farmer-Labor Alliance:
Politics of the New Deal. Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri
Press; 1994. 324 p.
20. Meyer,
Stephen. "Stalin Over Wisconsin":
The Making and the Unmaking of Militant Unionism, 1900-1950. New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press; 1992. 263 p.
(Cantor, Milton and Laurie, Bruce. Class and culture).
Notes: The story of the workers and their union at the Allis-Chalmers
Manufacturing Corporation from 1900 to 1950 is eloquently explained here.
The company, located in West Allis, Wisconsin (a suburb of Milwaukee),
was one of the largest employers in Wisconsin and specialized in a wide variety
of metal and electrical manufacturing (from small electric motors to large steam
engines, from tractors to artillery shell casings); the union, United Auto
Workers Local 248, played a significant role in the Milwaukee and Wisconsin
labor movement as well as nationally within the UAW.
The author analyzes the process by which the employees built up the
strength of the union at the job through the principles of industrial unionism
and how the forces of power were able to tear it apart with the red-baiting
tactics of the McCarthy period.
21. Nesbit,
Robert C. "Making a Living in Wisconsin, 1873-1893". Wisconsin
Magazine of History. 1986 Summer; 69(4):250-283.
Notes: "Editors'
Note: By courtesy of Robert C.
Nesbit, and of William F. Thompson, general editor of the six-volume series, we
are pleased to present this excerpt from Nesbit's recently published book, The
History of Wisconsin. Volume III: Urbanization and Industrialization, 1873-1893.
This article represents most of Chapter 5 of the 712-page volume,
..."
22. Penn,
Larry. Gone to the Doggerel: Songs
That Didn't Work. Milwaukee, Wis.: Cookie Man Music Co.; 1999. 48 p.
Notes: Almost thirty pieces--some poems and some unfinished songs--are
included in this collection by one of Wisconsin's labor troubadors; included is
"A Pile of Big Blue," a poem about the three workers killed July 14,
1999 in the collapse of a construction crane during the building of the new
Milwaukee Brewers baseball stadium.
23. Penn,
Larry and Holter, Darryl. Stickin' With the Union: Songs From Wisconsin Labor History [audio recording].
Silver Spring, Md.: Produced for Collector Records by Cookie Man Music
Co.; 1989 1 sound cassette (37 min.) : analog, 1-7/8 ips ; 3-7/8
x 2 1/2 in. + 1 booklet
([32] p.)(. Collector Records; 1948-C).
Notes: A fine collection of labor songs performed by Larry Penn, one of
Wisconsin's labor troubadors, and Darryl Holter, former president of the
Wisconsin Labor History Society. The
substantial and well-illustrated accompanying booklet explains the historical
connection of each song, many of which are about a specific Wisconsin event or a
labor issue which affected workers and labor unions in Wisconsin.
Copies are still available from: Cookie
Man Music Co., 3955 South First Place, Milwaukee, WI 53207; telephone:
414/483-7306; URL: http:www.execpc.com/~cookeman/.
CONTENTS: Side A. "Fifty
Years Ago" (Joe Glazer)--"Babies in the Mill" (Dorsey
Dixon)--"Ghosts of Bay View" (Larry Penn)--"Saturday Night"
(Darryl Holter)--"Frozen in Time" (Larry Penn)--"So Long
Partner" (Larry Penn)--"Willie the Scab" (Larry
Penn)--"Which Side Are You On?" (Florence Reece; additional lyrics by
Darryl Holter). Side B.
"Cowboy Days" (Larry Penn & Traditional)--"The Wreck
of the Carl D. Bradley" (Larry Penn)--"Love and the Shorter Work
Week" (Darryl Holter)--"Putting the Blame" (Tom Juravich)--"So
Long It's Been Good to Know Ya" (Woody Guthrie; additional lyrics by Darryl
Holter)--"Union Maid" (Woody Guthrie).
"Fifty
Years Ago" is about the founding of the American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in Madison, Wisconsin.
"Babies in
the Mill" was written in 1950 and is about child labor in textile mills and
was included here because of the significant growth of child labor in the modern
economy.
"The Ghosts
of Bay View" is about the 1886 Bay View Massacre when the Wisconsin
National Guard fired into a group of workers marching in a parade in support of
the Eight-Hour Day in Bay View, a neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin; at least
seven were killed (six men and one boy)--still to this day Wisconsin's bloodiest
labor dispute.
"Saturday
Night" is about a 1902 strike of workers at papermills up and down the Fox
River Valley in Wisconsin to win Saturday nights off.
"Frozen in
Time" is about the 1913 Italian Hall Tragedy in Calumet, Michigan when 72
people--mostly children--died in a stampede when someone created a panic by
yelling "fire" in a second-floor room where a Christmas party for the
children of striking copper miners was being held. The Calumet strike was lost, but, when those who were
involved moved on, the memory of the tragedy of Italian Hall inspired them to
carry on the union struggle in their new communities.
"So Long
Partner" was written in honor of Fred Wright, the great labor cartoonist
who worked for the United Electrical Workers International Union (UE); Wright's
1975 book of the same title is a classic collection of labor cartoons. This wonderful song effectively captures the bosses' ploy to
wring all possible concessions from their employees and then dump the employees
when it suits the bosses' greed.
"Willie the
Scab" is about the scabs during 1987-89 strike by members of the United
Food & Commercial Workers Union, Local P-40 at the Patrick Cudahy
meatpacking plant in Cudahy, Wisconsin.
"Which Side
Are You On?" was originally written for a strike of mine workers and became
a classic song of the U.S. labor movement; additional lyrics here adapt it to
the long and bitter union struggles at the Kohler Company in Kohler, Wisconsin
in the 1930s and 1950s.
"Cowboy
Days" is about the life of a truck driver working as an over-the-road
mover.
"The Wreck
of the Carl D. Bradley" is about the November 1952 shipwreck on Lake
Michigan of one of the largest boats operating at that time on the Great Lakes.
"Love and
the Shorter Work Week" is a wonderfully fun song effectively capturing how
the workers of today's "new economy" struggle with work schedules and
jobs designed without taking human elements into consideration.
"Putting
the Blame" explains how manufacturing workers were unfairly blamed during
the Reagan recession of the 1980s for the ugly shutdowns of their factories; the
song ends by identifying the real culprit of the plant closures.
"So Long,
It's Been Good to Know Ya (Rustbowl Version)" was adapted from Woody
Guthrie's classic song about people during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s; the
re-written verses by Darryl Holter eloquently tell the story of the abandoned
manufacturing communities of the "rustbowl" states like Wisconsin.
"Union
Maid" is another rousing classic labor song by Woody Guthrie.
24. Rajer,
Anton and Style, Christine. Public Sculpture in Wisconsin:
An Atlas of Outdoor Monuments, Memorials and Masterpieces in the Badger
State. Madison, Wis.: SOS! Save Outdoor Sculpture, Wisconsin ; Fine Arts
Conservation Services; 1999. 156 p.
Notes: "A collection of essays and an atlas of outdoor monuments,
memorials, and masterpieces in Wisconsin, including traditional statuary,
veterans monuments, church grotto art, self-taught visionary environments,
chainsaw carving, fiberglass creations, Native American effigy mounds,
government and corporate public sculpture, and the commissioning, maintenance
and conservation of outdoor public sculpture."--title page verso.
Wisconsin
contains over seven hundred outdoor sculptures and many commemorate workers
involved in different types of industry and livelihoods and this
profusely-illustrated, over-sized inventory volume will enable you to identify
and visit most of them. In order to
make it easy to identify what there is to see in each area, the authors have
divided the state into six regions (Milwaukee and five broader areas); within
each of the areas the sculptures are then listed first by county within the
region and then by city within each county, except for Milwaukee which is
arranged by sections within the city. A
photograph and the exact address of its location is provided for each sculpture.
Some examples of
work-related outdoor sculpture to be found around the state: "Memorial to Commercial Fishermen" in Bayfield,
Wisconsin; "Seamen of the Great Lakes Monument" on Barker's Island in
Superior, Wisconsin; "The River Rafter" in Merrill, Wisconsin; "Morzenti
Memorial" [in honor of area miners] in Montreal, Wisconsin;
"Lumberjack" in Ladysmith, Wisconsin; "First Northern
Loggers" in Green Bay, Wisconsin; "Log Sawing" in Shawano,
Wisconsin; "Letter Carriers' Sculpture" in downtown Milwaukee,
Wisconsin; and "On Watch" [in honor of police and firefighters] in
northwest Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
An unfortunate
omission, however, is the Wisconsin Workers Memorial in the Carl Zeidler Park in
downtown Milwaukee (at Michigan Street and North Fourth Street); this public art
project, a collaboration between the Milwaukee Labor Council and the Wisconsin
Labor History Society, is a memorial to worker occupational health and safety
and consists of a series of decorative chains and bollards displaying
informational signs along the park walkways leading up to a gazebo containing
design elements drawn from the work tools of all kinds of occupations.
25. Salas,
Jesus and Giffey, David. Lucha por la justicia: Movimiento de los trabajadores migrantes en Wisconsin =
Struggle for Justice: The Migrant
Farm Worker Labor Movement in Wisconsin. David Giffey, Photos by.
Madison, Wis.: Wisconsin Labor History Society; 1998. 15 p.
Notes: Accompanying booklet for a travelling photo exhibit about Obreros
Unidos, a migrant farm worker union active during the 1960s in Wisconsin's
Waushara, Marquette and Portage counties; booklet text in Spanish and English.
Contact David Giffey (Arena, WI) or the Wisconsin Labor History Society
(Milwaukee, WI) to arrange to show the exhibit.
26. State
Historical Society of Wisconsin. Office
of School Services. The Changing Workforce:
Teaching Labor History with City and County Directories. Madison,
Wis.: Office of School Services, State Historical Society of Wisconsin; 1996. 1
kit (1 folder with 11 photographs on card stock + teachers' guide)
(Teaching History with Community Resources.
Notes: A curriculum guide demonstrating the interesting technique of
using city and county directories to teach high school students about data
gathering techniques used by historians. The
activities are designed for students to learn how to analyze the information
provided in their area's city or county directory to chart changes in the area's
occupations, neighborhoods, etc. brought about during the period of rapid
industrialization in the United States from the mid-1890s up to the mid-1920s.
Although the teacher's guide and sample handouts use the city of
Oconomowoc, Wisconsin for a representative lesson, the eleven individual 8-1/2 x
11" photographs included with the kit represent a variety of men's and
women's occupations at locations throughout Wisconsin during the
industrialization time period. The
teacher's guide offers lots of ideas on customizing the curriculum to meet
varying teaching needs. To obtain a
copy of the kit, contact the Office of School Services at the State Historical
Society of Wisconsin in Madison.
27. Trotter,
Joe William Jr. Black Milwaukee: The
Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-45 . Urbana, Ill.: University
of Illinois Press; 1985. 302 p. (Blacks
in the New World.
Notes: A revision of the author's thesis (Ph.D.)--University of
Minnesota. An impressive work of
original scholarship; Professor Trotter reports that an updated edition is due
in the near future.
Reviewed: Gelber, Steven M. (reviewer).
American Historical Review, v. 90, no. 5 (December 1985), p. 1288.
Reviewed: Crew, Spencer
(reviewer). Journal of American
History, v. 74, no. 2 (September 1987), p. 543-544.
Reviewed: Grossman, James R.
(reviewer). Reviews in American
History, v. 14, no. 2 (June 1986), 226-232.
Another edition:
Trotter, Joe William, Jr. Black
Milwaukee: The Making of an
Industrial Proletariat, 1915-45. Illini
Books ed. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1988, c1985.
302 p. (Blacks in the New
World) ISBN:
0252060350 (pbk.)
28. Uphoff,
Walter Henry. Kohler on Strike: Thirty
Years of Conflict. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press; 1965. 449 p.
Notes: The Kohler Company, the well-known maker of plumbing fixtures, and
its company town of Kohler, Wisconsin (located in Sheboygan County) were the
focus of two long and bitter strikes from 1934 to 1941 and from 1954 to 1960.
This history takes a carefully-documented look at the issues involved in
prompting the strikes and why the dispute dragged on for such lengthy periods.
Eventually, the conflict, perhaps the longest in U.S. history, was only
resolved in 1965 when the Kohler company, after losing its appeal before the
U.S. Supreme Court, agreed to a $3,000,000 back-pay settlement to the Kohler
workers involved in the second strike, in return for their union dropping the
unfair labor practice charges before the National Labor Relations Board which
had been brought against the company.
The Kohler labor
conflict began soon after the passage in 1933 of the federal National Industrial
Relations Act (N.I.R.A.), which was designed to make it easier for employees to
win union representation; the N.I.R.A. was part of the "New Deal"
legislation passed during the first one hundred days of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's first administration. Although
the paternalistic Kohler Company was determined to continue to maintain their
workplace as an open shop, the Kohler employees soon organized and affiliated
with the American Federation of Labor, receiving a charter in August 1933 as
Federal Labor Union No. 18545 (F.L.U. No. 18545). The Kohler company responded by assisting in the start-up on
September 7, 1933 of a company union, the Kohler Workers Association (K.W.A.),
and used delaying tactics over several months of talks with F.L.U. No. 18545 to
prevent the union from achieving a contract with the company.
On July 16, 1934, after much fruitless bargaining, F.L.U. No. 18545 went
on strike. After eleven days on
strike, there was a violent confrontation on the night of July 27, 1934 between
the strikers and the many 'Kohler Special Police' deputies, who were armed with
clubs and guns to defend the company. Forty-seven
strikers were injured in the incident from either buckshot or bullets and two
strikers were fatally shot; five women were among the injured. The strike carried on until 1941 when the Kohler company
suddenly "settled" because the company wanted to participate in the
government war contracts during the Second World War; the company knew that, if
they wanted to put up the new facilitlies required to handle the expanded war
work, they had to have labor peace at their workplace, since construction
workers would not cross a union picket line to work on a construction project.
Although the strike settlement included a provision to re-hire all of the
striking employees, through the strategem of a secret proviso. three of the
strike leaders were kept from any further company employment; the settlement
agreement also explicitly withheld recognition of any union to represent the
Kohler workers and F.L.U. No. 18545 became inoperative.
Between the two
strikes the company union, the Kohler Workers Association,
continued as an organization and did win some improvements in the
workplace for the employees, but Kohler company officials were deciding most
matters for the K.W.A. By the early
1950s the leadership of the K.W.A. began looking to affiliate with an
independent union organization. The
K.W.A. membership voted in late April 1952 to affiliate with the United Auto
Workers-Congress of Industrial Organization (U.A.W.-C.I.O.) and received their
charter as U.A.W.-C.I.O. Kohler Workers Association Local 833 on May 5, 1952;
the legitimacy of the local was confirmed with an election conducted by the
National Labor Relations Board on June 10 and 11, 1952.
Shortly thereafter, some members of the K.W.A. company union, who had
opposed the U.A.W.-C.I.O. affiliation, formed a new company union, the
Independent Union of Kohler Workers' Association (I.U.K.W.A.), and filed a legal
challenge to Local 833 having been given the treasury funds of the now defunct
K.W.A., the original company union. After
the I.U.K.W.A. lost its case about the membership funds before the Wisconsin
Supreme Court, the members of Local 833 voted on October 10, 1953 to modify its
name to simply Kohler Local 833, U.A.W.-C.I.O., to reduce confusion with the
I.U.K.W.A.
By the end of
February 1953, Local 833 had been able to get a first contract in place for the
period covering March 1, 1953 to March 1, 1954.
Negotiations for the second contract began in early February 1954, but
fell apart a few weeks later over the issue of extending the old contract during
the contract talks. On April 5, 1954, after working for five weeks without a
contract, Local 833 went out on strike. No
further summary here can possibly capture the riveting drama of the lengthy
strike which ensued--find and read this book for the entire compelling story!
Another edition:
Uphoff, Walter Henry. Kohler
on Strike: Thirty Years of Conflict.
Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1967. 450
p. (Beacon Paperback ; BP 274)
29.
Wisconsin. Department of
Public Instruction. Lessons in Labor History. Benson, John T.
State Superintendent; Fortier, John D. Assistant State Superintendent Division
for Learning Support--Instructional Services; Grady, Susan M. Director Content
and Learning Team; Salveson, Connie J. Consultant Content and Learning Team;
Prepared in collaboration with the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO; the Wisconsin
Federation of Teachers, AFT AFL-CIO; the Wisconsin Education Assocation Council,
NEA, and and the Wisconsin Labor History SocietyMadison, Wis.: Wisconsin
Department of Public Instruction; 2001. 95 p.
Notes: "Pursuing the following study suggestions will be extremely
helpful in gaining a better understanding of what unions are, how they developed
in this country, what they have done in the past, and what they do today.
The study suggestions provide a series of topics around which student and
teacher investigation, research, and discussion can be instituted.
The study suggestions relate to a number of Wisconsin Model Academic
Standards in various academic areas, ranging from social studies to English to
the arts."--Section 1, "Introduction" (p. 1).