Thanks to Scott Walker, the dull monotony of Wisconsin politics has become a raging battleground between union busters and union supporters. As Robert W. Ozanne's The Labor Movement in Wisconsin (Wisconsin Historical Society Press) reminds us, Badger politics wasn't always dull and the battle over unions has occurred in the past. Trade unions existed in Wisconsin before statehood and their strength often declined with the economy, especially during the ominously titled Long Depression of 1873-1878.
During the 19th century, when employees of all sorts were expected to work 12-hour days, the unions' big issue was cutting work time to eight-hours a day. A public employees union succeeded in collectively bargaining with the City of Milwaukee for the eight-hour day in 1886—the year of the Bay View Massacre, in which the governor ordered the National Guard to fire on strikers at a rolling mill. The author, an economics professor at UW-Madison, found shenanigans in the Legislature reminiscent of Wisconsin politics in 2011. The politicians of the 1880s never came out against the eight-hour day, but whittled away the possibility through sneaky clauses that made workers rights impossible.
The republication of Ozanne's 1984 book is timely. Oddly, present-day Fox mouthpiece Greta Van Susteren is among the research assistants credited in the acknowledgments.
