The South Wall: Madison’s Founding to WWI

The wall on the right tells the story of:

• Madison’s first union – a local of the International Typographical Union – was founded in 1856 by typesetters.

• Skilled building trades workers – like the stonecutters carving the Historical Society’s lions’ heads – constitute the majority of early union activity in Madison. A recurring theme for all these unions was the struggle for the eight-hour day. A condition won by most of the trades by the time of WWI.

• Seamstresses in the 1860s organized the first predominantly female union in Madison.

• Bakery workers struck, unsuccessfully, for equal pay for women in 1918.

The East Wall: WWI to 1970

The wall in the center tells the story of:

• In 1919, over 2000 heavy manufacturing workers in Madison went on strike to get factory owners to accept the union recognition and eight-hour day ruling handed down by the then defunct War Labor Board. After more than two months, the strike was lost.

• Madison’s factory workers – at places like Ray-O-Vac, Gisholt, and Oscar Mayer – were not able to organize permanent unions until the 1930s and the more hospitable climate of the New Deal.

• Also in the 1930s and early 1940s, Madison’s office workers - government workers, CUNA, etc. – began to form unions. AFSCME, one of the nation’s largest unions today, was founded in Madison in 1936 and maintained its national headquarters in Madison until 1957. The UW’s School for Workers, established in 1925, became the standard for labor education in the United States.

• Like much of the rest of the country, it was during this time that electricity and telephone service became commonplace in Madison homes and utilities became heavily unionized.

• Unemployment Councils during the depression of the 1930s often held rallies and even struck relief work in order to demand meaningful work and payment in cash, rather than store orders.

• As elsewhere, during WWII many women entered manufacturing employment to replace the men who’d left to fight the war. Employment at Gisholt peaked around 10,000 during WWII.

• After the Depression and WWII, established unions tended to steadily improve workers’ wages, benefits, and conditions, but not always without a struggle, as exemplified by the 1963 strike at Ray-O-Vac for pension improvements.

The North Wall: 1970-2006

The wall on the left tells the story of:

• Public sector organizing continued apace during the 1970s, but raising standards for public workers often required strikes – AFSCME state workers in 1977 and MTI in 1976.

• The nation’s first union of university teaching assistants – the UW-Madison Teaching Assistants’ Association, AFT 3220 (TAA) had to strike in 1970 in order to achieve a first contract.

• The 1970s and 1980s saw significant union organizing amongst nurses and other professional employees.

• The generally peaceful labor relations of the 1950s and 1960s represented merely a lull in employer attacks on unions and workers. Management at Madison Newspapers Inc. forced a five-year long union busting strike in the late 1970s. Smaller employers like Yellow Cab often forced strikes and broke their unions. In 1985, Klein-Dickert Paint Division determined to shed itself of union benefits, resulting in a strike and creative boycott by the Painters that lasted a decade before returning K-D to the union rolls. At Stoughton Trailers, the UAW struck for seven and a half months in order to achieve a weak first contract, but the union was never able to secure a permanent collective bargaining relationship. In 1999, workers at Aramark Laundry had to strike for several days just to get a few days of sick leave in their contract. And the huge Tyson corporation forced a strike in 2003 at its Jefferson plan in order to attack the wages and benefits that the union had accumulated over decades of negotiations.

• Madison labor became know nationally for its support of workers struggling to fend off these attacks. Whether the struggles were local – like Stoughton Trailers and Tyson – or much further removed – like the 1980s strikes by miners at Pittston Coal in western Virginia and meatpackers at Hormel in Minnesota or the mid-1990s struggles in Decatur, Illinois – Madison union activists rallied picket line support, food drives, and cash donations.

• Once predominately white and largely male, Madison’s labor movement become much more diverse as more jobs opened up for African Americans, Hmong refugees settled in the city, and Latinos, once relegated to largely to migrant farm labor in Wisconsin, were attracted to the more stable work and lives afforded by urban employment.

• As one reaction to the growing hostility of employers, Madison labor increased its involvement and energy in politics.

• Madison Labor also stretched its involvement in the community, working with the School for Workers to establish the weekly Labor Radio News on WORT-FM and becoming more involved with the labor initiatives of University students and the Student Labor Action Coalition (SLAC).

• Because of the high level of political activity, creative reach into the community, and intense support for workers involved in difficult struggles, Madison was one of only 14 cities at the 2001 AFL-CIO national convention to receive the honor of being designated a “Union City.”