Mar 9, 2022
We're back, baby! We're kicking off Season 5 of Working
People with a multi-part series on teachers and public sector
unions in the state of Wisconsin. As part of a special
collaboration between The Real News Network and In These
Times magazine for “The
Wisconsin Idea,” Max, Cameron Granadino (TRNN), and Hannah
Faris (In These Times) traveled to Wisconsin in the summer
of 2021 to investigate two intertwining stories that have played a
crucial role in the rightwing shift and the decades-long attack on
workers and unions in a state that used to be a bellwether of the
labor movement and progressive politics in America.
One of those stories has to do with the passing of Act 10 in 2011
under Republican governor Scott Walker, which was a hammer blow to
public sector unions around the state that stripped them of their
collective bargaining rights and put a chokehold on unions’ ability
to function—a chokehold that was tightened in 2015 when Wisconsin
became the 25th "right to work" state. The other story is the story
of a historic teachers’ strike that took place in 1974 in the
small, rural town of Hortonville. With a population of just around
1,500 people at the time, Hortonville became the site of one of the
most contentious and consequential teachers' strikes in Wisconsin's
history. And, in many ways, the sort of cultural hostilities,
clashing economic pressures, and vicious union-busting that played
out in Hortonville set the stage for a statewide showdown over Act
10 nearly 40 years later. The Hortonville strike itself ripped the
community in two—over 80 striking educational staff members in the
district were fired by an intransigent school board, and the legacy
of the broken strike left a deep scar on the town and the school
district for many years.
Over the course of this series, we'll be talking to teachers and
organizers in Wisconsin to see how, nearly 50 years after the
Hortonville strike and a decade after Act 10 and the historic
protests against it at the state capitol, they are still fighting
to recover and build worker power. In this interview, Max talks
with Amanda and Jeff Frenkel, two K-12 teachers in Hortonville and
union organizers with the American Federation of Teachers, about
the challenges they and their coworkers are facing today, and about
the ways they are working to rebuild the union and serve their
community.
Additional links/info below...
- American Federation of Teachers—Wisconsin website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
- Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "The Fight to Organize Teachers in Small-Town Wisconsin"
- Eleni Schirmer, Gender and Education, "When Solidarity Doesn't Quite Strike: The 1974 Hortonville, Wisconsin Teachers' Strike and the Rise of Neoliberalism"
- In These Times investigative series: The Wisconsin Idea
Permanent links below...
- Working People Patreon page
- Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
- Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
- In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
- The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page
Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)
- Jules Taylor, "Working People Theme Song"