Pam Fendt on How Labor Makes a Comeback in Milwaukee

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Photo courtesy Milwaukee Labor Council

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2150

Milwaukee has always been a union town with blue collar workers earning good wages from industrial giants like AO Smith, Allis Chalmers, Briggs & Stratton, Allen Bradley, American Motors, Bucyrus Erie and the breweries. By the 1950s and ‘60s, front line workers had joined labor unions to gain better working conditions. When these formidable companies left town for cheaper labor overseas, the workers suffered, and Milwaukee’s population dropped from 741,324 in 1960 to 577,222 in 2020.

In 1959, the Milwaukee County Labor Council was founded to guide and support working men and women in those manufacturing jobs. Currently known as the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, the organization represents workers in Milwaukee, Washington and Ozaukee Counties. It is one of nearly 500 state and local labor councils of the AFL-CIO.

Recently, I talked with Pam Fendt, president of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council. One of four siblings, Pam grew up in Nebraska and moved to Wisconsin when she was 13. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at UWM. Urban Studies was her field. Her first job was at the Center for Economic Development at UWM, an organization that conducts research on the study of racial disparity in economic indicators.

The center published a research report on deindustrialization in Milwaukee and how it had gutted the central city and lowered living standards for African Americans. In 2010, Fendt took a job at the Laborers International Union of North America, one of the 18 building trade unions. She specialized in construction employment and became a delegate to the Milwaukee Labor Council. She later became its president.

Fendt has a restrained assured demeanor, dedicated to supporting workers and their right to collectively negotiate with employers over such matters as pay and working conditions.

Milwaukee is often thought of as a union town bolstered by leaders of the Democratic Party. Describe your job at the Labor Council.

I serve in a volunteer capacity to manage and administrate the Labor Council. I supervise the staff and preside over meetings.

The stated mission of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council is “Organizing for economic and social justice in the workplace and community.” How do you go about this mission?

Every month, we have a meeting of delegates. The Labor Council is made up of roughly 90 local affiliated unions such as AFSCME, the building trades, machinists and steel workers union, hotel worker unions and more. Each of those unions sends a delegate to our monthly meeting. For instance, the machinists are trying to organize at Expiris Game Solutions, which is part of Manpower. The machinists had been picketing, and they asked other union members to join them in solidarity. We also picketed for the UAW strike on the South Side. When local union people ask us to take action, we try to support them.

The Labor Council more or less assists the individual unions to achieve their goals?

Correct, but we also implement AFL-CIO programming. We have a direct charter with the AFL-CIO national organization. We have a curriculum called Common Sense Economics, which explains the positive roles labor unions play in the economy and why we need more unions to make sure work and wages are fair. We support diversity, for instance, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Labor Council for Latin America Advancement and the Pride at Work chapter. All our work is about solidarity.

You recently wrote this to me: “The loss of unionized manufacturing jobs that were replaced by service sector jobs caused a depression in central city socio-economic indicators.” Name a few of these service sector jobs, and should service sector workers be paid more?

Assisted living employees are generally underpaid. A woman I got to know at my mom’s assisted living facility was making $12.84 per hour after 20 years of employment. Service workers such as waiters, waitresses, and bartenders are also underpaid. Then, there are store clerks and fast-food industry workers. Minimum wage law in Wisconsin is $7.50 per hour. There is no city in the country where you can afford a one-bedroom apartment by yourself on minimum wage. Yes, service workers should be paid more.

Supposing I am a worker at a large manufacturing company, perhaps a welder or a carpenter or a machinist. What can a union do for me that my company isn’t already doing?                    

One thing for sure is safety. Belonging to a union will require your employer to enforce safety measures. For example, take a trench box, metal plates that push apart the dirt when digging, which ensures worker safety. We’ve seen companies that won the lowest bid eliminate trench boxes to save money.

Is it proven that non-union companies have a worse safety record than union companies?

Yes, it is. Another area is gender inequality and wage gaps where women doing the same job as men are paid less. A union will help standardize wages for genders.

So that workers treated unfairly will have a way to appeal through their union?

Workers can request a union rep to accompany them to a dispute meeting at their employer. That union rep can interpret the contract and worker rights.

And generally, union workers are paid more than non-union workers?

Yes. I think the average is 10% or more, depending on the job, according to the AFL-CIO and other sources.

Let’s look at a few examples of union organizing. Starting locally with Colectivo Coffee. There are currently 20 coffee shop locations owned and operated by Colectivo in the Milwaukee, Madison and Chicago metropolitan areas with 600 workers. Last summer, unionized Colectivo workers ratified the first collective bargaining agreement. What are their benefits as a result of joining the union?

I believe part of their demands were wages, wanting more money for doing their jobs, but primarily working conditions. And safety. Covid was hard on service workers. The ability to get proper breaks, for instance. During the ACT 10 period, there were prison guards who testified that safe staffing issues were their biggest issue, and also schedules that prevented burnout in a difficult job.

How about Starbucks? As of June 2024, over 10,000 workers at over 400 Starbucks stores in at least 40 states in the United States have voted to unionize, primarily with the Workers United Union. Why is this drive to join the union organized on a store-by-store basis and not organized against the entire company in one big effort?

When you organize, you have to give each worker a say to decide if they want a union. It is a democratic process. You need to form an organizing committee at each store and include all the employees. With Starbucks, I believe the main issue was better pay.

Moving onto Planned Parenthood. Last winter, health care workers at Wisconsin’s Planned Parenthood clinics voted to unionize. This includes 134 healthcare professionals. What will a health care worker get out of this, a higher salary?

I think the issue with Planned Parenthood was working conditions. Wages were the second issue. Working at Planned Parenthood is a high stress job. The employees thought certain issues could be addressed collectively. The votes to unionize were overwhelming.

On a national basis, there is Volkswagen. Last spring, workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers Union. How do the 5,500 workers benefit from joining the union?

That was a wage and workplace conditions issue. Volkswagen is a German company, and trade unions in Germany are a tradition. Workers wanted to bring work standards and benefits up to the level of the Big 3 American automakers. I have tremendous respect for Shawn Fain, the United Auto Workers President, who has done an excellent job in getting American auto workers good wages and benefits.

I believe that each union worker for the Volkswagen Tennessee factory, will on average, be making about $10,000 more per year than before the union contract.

Yes, the financial gains from the UAW strike and the Volkswagen strike were very significant.

What are the union dues for a factory worker at a large company like the Big 3 automakers?

Not sure, but in the construction trades, there are local monthly dues, called window dues, which you pay regardless of whether or not you are working or you are laid off. Currently, the dues are $38 per month.

Five industries have a high proportion of union membership—government, utilities, transportation, telecommunications and education. Why are unions involved in these primarily government-related industries? Government union membership including Federal employees is like 30%.

I think government unions make sure you avoid corruption, for instance, preventing cronyism and patronage, or if a boss asks you to bury a report and so on. Then, there is gender disparity where women get paid less than men.

And there are certainly a lot of women who work in governments.

True. A lot less women are in the construction industry, for example. But we are working on that.

Looking at the private sector: In 1983, 19.8% of private sector employees belonged to a union. Forty years later in 2023, union membership declined to 5.6%. Why did this happen?

In the era of the 1950s and ‘60s, more workers were unionized and making good money, even African Americans in Milwaukee. Economic expansion was going strong. To make more profit, manufacturers went offshore for cheaper labor, and many American workers got paid less or lost their jobs. When the boss says he can’t give you a $100 raise but spends thousands on anti-union lawyers, that makes no sense. But I will say that in the past year, Wisconsin’s union membership has ticked up by point-four percent. Unions are making a comeback.

Also, during that 40-year period, cheap foreign goods flooded the American market, the foreign companies paying their workers much less than American workers.

Yes, in America, we relied way too much on foreign products.

Should there be tariffs on goods produced in China in order to help American workers achieve more and better-paying jobs?

I do think so. Foreign companies may be having child labor or low wages for their workers, and that makes for an uneven playing field.

The state of Wisconsin saw a small uptick in union density in the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report, after years of decline.

The labor council believes that by continuing to work together we will organize additional workers into labor unions, and that this in turn will raise the standard of living of hundreds of Milwaukee area residents, and that is the very definition of solidarity. We are very proud as we celebrate this 65th anniversary.