It is difficult to plan for the future if you don’t understand the past.
For example, the right to form or join a union without harassment or intimidation is not a new concept. The National Labor Relations Act, also know as the Wagner Act, was signed in to law by FDR in 1935 as part of the New Deal which lifted our nation out of the Great Depression.
This piece of information is especially empowering as we face our own economic crisis and work to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Like the National Labor Relations Act, this bill will rebuild the middle class by allowing working people to bargain for fair wages and benefits.
But you would never know that without a basic education in labor history. As things stand today, that history is not taught in many Wisconsin schools.
On Thursday, July 9th, the Senate Education Committee held an important hearing on Senate Bill 135 /Assembly Bill 172 to determine whether Wisconsin will include labor history as part of the public school curriculum. Wisconsin State AFL-CIO President David Newby gave the following testimony:
Of all the states in America, you would think that the history of organized labor would be prominently taught in Wisconsin classrooms. After all, in 1898, when woodworkers in Oshkosh went on strike for decent wages and safe working conditions, it was Clarence Darrow who defended their leaders against charges of conspiracy. Luckily he won that case, because if the case had been lost, strikes would have been illegal and their leaders subject to draconian jail sentences.
Then in 1911, it was the Wisconsin Legislature that passed the first Workers Compensation bill in the United States, establishing a “no fault” system which guaranteed that any worker injured on the job would have their medical care paid for and would receive some compensation for lost wages. That system was so successful that it was eventually copied in some form by every state in the union.
In 1932, Wisconsin once again led the way when it passed the first Unemployment Insurance bill in the United States. Our system of providing at least some income to the unemployed proved to be so effective in the early years of the Depression that this program too was copied in other states and then by Congress in 1935.
More recently, Wisconsin was one of the first states to pass a Family and Medical Leave law. Once again, other states followed our lead and eventually a federal Family and Medical Leave Act was passed by Congress in 1993.
“But don’t they teach these things any longer?” you might ask. Actually, no they don’t. If you look at the dominate American history text books, they might have half a dozen paragraphs out of 300 pages on the history of labor and unions (and most often it centers on the United Farm Workers and the grape boycott of the early 1970’s, interestingly enough!).
Why? Well, partly, no doubt, due to the right-ward shift of the politics of our country in the past 25 years. But also due to the structure of the national textbook market. The two biggest markets for textbooks (chosen by a state level government panel) are Texas and California – both dominated by conservative (and generally anti-union) boards. If a textbook is rejected by these state boards, then the publisher will find it difficult to sell enough copies of that textbook in other states to make a profit. So the politics of these two state school boards essentially determine the content and politics of the textbooks that are used in the rest of the United States.
So all Sen. Hansen and Representative Jorgensen’s bill asks is that the history of labor and unions be given its due and the history of our country be taught accurately. The Department of Public Instruction has extensive resources online for teachers to use -- so no extra training of teachers is necessary. Moreover, the bill does not specify how much attention has to be given to labor history in our classrooms. Finally, the American Labor Studies Center (on whose board I serve) has a wealth of information and lesson plans online that teachers can use. I would urge anyone interested in this issue to check out their website: www.labor-studies.org. There you will find not only Wisconsin’s “Lessons in Labor History,” developed in cooperation with the Department of Public Instruction, but also, for example, three 55-minute programs on the rise of organized labor from the Library of Congress, a section on “Using Songs to Teach Labor History,” an instructional unit “Hardball and Handshakes” on the history of labor relations in Major League Baseball and how collective bargaining developed in this “industry.”
We ask for your support of SB 135/AB 172 not so that unions can be glorified (our shortcomings should be taught as well), but so that an important dimension of our history, the story of how ordinary working people have banded together to improve their lives and the lives of their families, their children and grandchildren, will be taught appropriately in our schools. There are important lessons to be leaned from history, and our children should know them.
Labor History legislation has already passed the State Assembly and will likely be voted on in the Senate this fall.
For more information about the history of the Employee Free Choice Act, visit the national AFL-CIO blog:
http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/07/10/the-employee-free-choice-act-from-2003-to-today/
(Photos: Wisconsin State AFL-CIO President David Newby, testifying at Thursday’s Senate hearing in Madison. Photo Credit: Union Labor News.)
