Listen! <3 I think I did well in this one. I’d recommend 1.2 or 1.5X speed I talk slow.
Recall
Former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker passed his “Budget Repair Bill,” otherwise known as Act 10, shortly after taking office in 2011, despite mass protests, occupations, and strikes across the state, lead in part by my union, the Teaching Assistants’ Association (AFT Local #3220). A “Recall Walker” campaign began and ended, unsuccessfully, and here now we are, over a decade later. Thus is the preeminent narrative on the hearts and minds of the labor movement here in Wisconsin.
Perhaps it was the hope and solidarity of the groundswell uprising’s failure which has stuck in the minds of public sector workers. It was truly something of magnitude and passion no one had seen before in decades; I am applauded now, 13 years later, for my organization’s role, as if this is our lasting accomplishment, which I take, unfortunately, as an insult. To me it feels we have not done anything of substance since. Or, the draconian reality of the bill itself has a hold on us, as Act 10 decimates unionism as we had known it.
As we hold, cautious in our optimism, a ruling which has overturned Act 10, I’d like to describe my experience organizing under Act 10, what we have done and what we can do despite its restrictions.
Act!
I moved to Wisconsin and began organizing with my union over ten years after Act 10, though I was immediately confronted with it. We would only regain legal certification status if over half of our total bargaining unit voted “yes” every year. Not over half of who voted; but over half of the total unit. Every year. After doing all of that, we only had the right to bargain over a cost-of-living adjustment, and we are not legally allowed to strike. What, then, goes a common attitude I interact with on a daily basis, is the point of doing this “union” thing at all.
But I had never seriously been in a union before. I did not know what ‘collective bargaining’ meant. But I understood how, if you got enough people together, you could make the boss listen to you, and I didn’t see anything in Act 10 restricting that. Perhaps our ignorance, as young graduate workers who just needed to eat, became our saving grace.
Indeed, Act 10 resulted in a precipitous decline in union membership, worker power, and progressiveness in our state. Yet that is not, can not be, the end of the story.
Act 10 and how we responded and continue to respond will teach us how to proceed in the coming years. It is an important lesson on hope, and where our power really comes from. For although we have had to operate in and around Act 10, we do not see it as cause to give up. I do not wish it to be a defining strike against us but simply a hurdle we will overcome, or, furthermore, undeniable evidence as to the immense power of working people, that what which no law can restrict.
I want to provide examples from my local, the Teaching Assistants’ Association, which details how we creatively and successfully operated under Act 10. This is the local I know. There are a multitude of success stories under Act 10: exponential membership growth in the Game Warden’s Local AFSCME, successful recertification campaigns and meet and confer year-over-year in Milwaukee Technical College, a credible strike threat by UW Health Nurses, organizing and advocacy within locals and academic departments across our Higher Education system, but these are not ones I know, in the lived sense.
I want to push back on lukewarm potential members, campaigns like “I will join the union if we get full collective bargaining rights back”, the preeminent narrative on the hearts and minds of our labor movement that we must get past. I have never known a Wisconsin without Act 10, yet still we organize and win.
As it is likely we will see the complete downfall of Act 10 in the near future, though we don’t know how it will play out, it’s worth re-centering to the strategies that work no matter the legal landscape. It is more than worth noting that my union was asked to be a part of this lawsuit, and our executive board said yes. Being able to challenge Act 10 is itself an organizing win, for if our union was snuffed out we would not be able to mount any response.
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After Act 10 passed, the TAA continued to organize for and win significant raises for TAs through petitions, membership drives, and actions like sit-ins and rallies. Graduate workers won a pseudo-“contract” called the Graduate Assistants Policies and Procedures, or the GAPP, which forms a baseline document. Though the GAPP leaves so much, in my opinion, up to “advisor discretion” and bears so little legal obligation by the University that it is lacks any teeth, it serves as a foundational document to improve and negotiate. Simply stating graduate policies in a centralized location both reveals and attempts to guarantee working conditions. Though, like a union contract, the GAPP must be strongly enforced. In the aftermath of Act 10, our union continued to fight for and win improvements to wages and working conditions at UW-Madison.
Organized letters in individual departments, particularly in the Biosciences, have been impactful. We have won historic raises, improved transparency & democracy in program decision-making, and emergency “gift funds’ for students. I began organizing this way through an organized petition in my program of Microbiology. The petition effort was popular, with a majority of students signing on, and powerful, leading to raises and fee relief for international students. It was so powerful, in fact, that we faced quite a bit of retaliation from the department, including graduate workers, which persists today. Currently, we have a joint effort petition across multiple Biosciences departments (bit.ly/bio-letter) which provides further strength in numbers, ensures not just one program is singled out, contains some creative demands like eliminating unpaid teaching requirements and publicly publishing laboratory retention data, and takes a stronger stance against retaliation by spelling it out in no uncertain terms.
Creativity
Act 10 organizing necessitates creativity. The History department won segregated fee relief – over $1800 per student per year – after TAA members got involved in its program’s 10-year review process and provided input to administration. Math graduate workers, as some of the most organized department workers on campus, won raises and better grading policies simply by gathering into the union and department organizing meetings. Their department was so afraid they were going to go on strike, even though none of the sort had been proposed, that they gave them better conditions.
Biosciences and Chemistry programs lead attempts to coordinate and distribute information to recruits about cost of living, stipend, and student experiences. This, in particular, was extremely threatening to the University, which relies on a steady stream of graduate students to hold high-ranking programs and to do necessary labor. This caused a fair bit of retaliation, including a town hall in the case of Chemistry, which in the end served to restrict speech, sending a sort of message that, no matter what happens here, you better not tell anyone – especially not in a group. However, if we were stronger and more weathered against retaliation, this type of campaign would be very powerful to win major demands, without an illegal strike.
Last year, we lead a petition and delivery rally for 12 weeks of paid parental leave with workers signing on en masse; we worked with other campus unions who signed on and spread the word to Department Chairs, who wrote their own letter of support. Pro-labor press was instrumental in highlighting the lack of paid parental leave for any employee, including tenured faculty, on campus, and providing updates on the campaign. We utilize this publicity lever to great effect, ex: that UW-Madison as one of the only Big-10 schools which didn’t have any semblance of a paid leave policy for staff, faculty, or students. In the end, we won six weeks of paid leave for all UW employees.
We employ the rights we do have, such as Weingarten rights, which allow for union representation in any meeting which could be disciplinary or investigatory. We represented workers who faced discipline after the pro-Palestinian encampment. We organized around workers who faced undue dismissal from their PhD programs with petitions and solidarity actions.
We continue to host a mutual aid program which distributes over 10,000 free diapers to graduate student parents every month, this arm of our union provides a much-needed service and strengthens community care & our organizing outreach to graduate students who don’t have time to go to union meetings every week.
Though we do not have the right to a seat at the table, we are bringing in our own. Our union is part of a statewide effort in higher education through AFT toward “meet and confer,” or regular meetings with university administration. This campaign garnered the endorsement of many politicians, including Governor Evers. In order to successfully organize under Act 10, we must engage elected officials and community members to our cause. Now, we are writing to the UW Regents to support us by making policy that all Chancellors in the UW System must meet with their unions. I am quite optimistic about this campaign.
Within my local, there has been an ongoing conversation on the question of Recertification, or going through the Scott Walker-mandated process of verifying the union every year. This conversation came to a head last year, in our first contested election in recent memory. The Recertification Caucus and its supporters believed we were not a real union unless we were certified. Some said that they felt lied to when, during recruitment at the beginning of the year, union leaders said our union “represented” them, when in fact we do not have official bargaining rights. Additionally, they believed that a recertification drive, or turning out over 5,000 graduate students to vote, would be the motivation we needed to build density. They believed that our power is limited without legal recognition.
I am excited at the possibility of a recertification vote if Act 10 truly falls after its likely appeal to a hopefully liberal majority State Supreme Court. It will be challenging, but it will be doable. And if the lawsuit, in the end, does not pan out, we still have a very bright future ahead. In the end, myself and the current leadership won the election against the Recertification Caucus. But, I am proud to have been a part of a contested election, and to have grown our union by over 55% since I took office two years ago. I think our disagreements on the future of our union are only signs of its strength.
One thing is certain. Our union will stand in Wisconsin, whether or not Act 10 does.