Heartland Blues by Marc Dixon

Author:Marc Dixon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The bill was limited. It was only a page long. There was no method to resolve an impasse and no explicit mandate for employers to bargain with workers and their representatives. These issues were hashed out in the coming years. Phillip “Buzz” Kuehn, the Republican candidate for governor in 1960, had advised Steinle in 1958 and embraced his strong anti-labor stance. He made his opposition to the new law and public-sector bargaining in general a campaign issue. Nelson’s defeat of Kuehn that year seemingly validated the WCCME. A bill giving some teeth to 309-A passed the legislature and was signed into law by Nelson in January 1962. It gave the WERB authority to hold union elections and to mediate disputes if requested by both parties, it outlined Unfair Labor Practices, and it called for written contracts. Lawton saw this as the Magna Carta for municipal employees. Nelson was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1962 and went on to make his name on environmental issues, founding Earth Day in 1970. Lawton continued his practice and advocacy for public employees for the next two decades.31

AFSCME had arrived as a potent political organization in Wisconsin and its ties with an ascendant state Democratic Party would grow stronger over the next decade. By 1962, it was the fifth largest union in the state behind the Teamsters, Steelworkers, Machinists, and the UAW. In 1965, state employees were granted limited bargaining rights, while legislation in the early 1970s provided a mechanism for union-negotiated fair-share agreements that required employees covered by the collective bargaining contract to pay dues or a bargaining fee for the duration of the contract. Teachers, while slower to take advantage of the law and pursue collective bargaining, had become much more active and militant by the 1970s.32

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