When solidarity doesn’t quite strike: the 1974 Hortonville, Wisconsin teachers’ strike and the rise of neoliberalism

Schirmer, Eleni

doi:10.4324/9781351207874-1

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…First, it weakened the power and direction of the state labor movement, forcing its strategies away from strikes and direct actions and toward legal means, such as interest arbitration and mediation. 103 Second, the MTEA's actions strengthened alliances between civil rights activists and free-market educational reformers, who gained power in Milwaukee in the mid-1980s. 104…”

Section: Contradiction No 2: Workplace Dignity Via Student Disciplinementioning

confidence: 99%

“Sterilizing and Fertilizing the Plant at the Same Time”: The Class Formation of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association

Schirmer

2023

Hist. of Ed. Quarterly

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This article analyzes class formation of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association (MTEA). In 2011, Wisconsin curtailed public-sector union collective bargaining, causing Wisconsin unions’ membership and political power to plummet. This article puts the 2011 collapse into historical perspective, by considering the development of Milwaukee teachers’ labor organizing over the course of the twentieth century. In part I, I chronicle the formation of the MTEA, including its early contest with the Milwaukee Teachers Union (MTU) and the gendered fault lines of the teachers’ collective vision. In part II, I discuss the consequences of teachers’ rhetorical contradictions, especially their lack of collaboration with the civil rights movement in Milwaukee. This article challenges the notion that class movements are preordained with unified interests and aims, and instead shows that unions themselves build and assemble people’s political ideas, either to expand solidarity or to narrow it.

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Section: Contradiction No 2: Workplace Dignity Via Student Disciplinementioning

confidence: 99%

“Sterilizing and Fertilizing the Plant at the Same Time”: The Class Formation of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association

Schirmer

2023

Hist. of Ed. Quarterly

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“…With the rise of precarious work, some unions reinforce insider strategies that protect members (particularly full-time, permanent workers) but that exclude or offer secondary forms of protection for members with lower seniority or those on precarious contracts (Doellgast et al, 2018). Durazzi et al (2018) note the role of unions in constructing exclusionary forms of solidarity, especially through employer-friendly, 'business union' strategies, which are reinforced by North American labour relations frameworks that emphasise legalistic approaches to trade unionism and that undermine orientations towards broader forms of working class solidarity (Schirmer, 2017). Bernaciak (2013) documents exclusionary tendencies among European unions in the years following the 2008 financial crisis through the adoption of nationalist oriented strategies in response to the crisis.…”

Section: Solidarity and Police Unionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blue Solidarity: Police Unions, Race and Authoritarian Populism in North America

Thomas

Tufts

2019

Work, Employment and Society

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With a focus on police unions in the United States and Canada, this article argues that the construction of ‘blue solidarity’, including through recent Blue Lives Matter campaigns, serves to repress racial justice movements that challenge police authority, acts as a counter to broader working class resistance to austerity and contributes to rising right-wing populism. Specifically, the article develops a case study analysis of Blue Lives Matter campaigns in North America to argue that police unions construct forms of ‘blue solidarity’ that produce divisions with other labour and social movements and contribute to a privileged status of their own members vis-a-vis the working class more generally. As part of this process, police unions support tactics that reproduce racialised ‘othering’ and that stigmatise and discriminate against racialised workers and communities. The article concludes by arguing that organised labour should maintain a critical distance from police unions.

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“…Administrators offered 1.2 percent. In response, the teachers walked out and the school district fired them (Schirmer 2016; Schneider 2012). The teacher's union contested the firings in court (eventually both state and federal supreme courts declared them to be legal).…”

Section: Public-sector Conflict In the 1970smentioning

confidence: 99%

State Phobia, Then and Now: Three Waves of Conflict over Wisconsin's Public Sector, 1930–2013

Collins¹,

Carlson²

2017

Soc. sci. hist.

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While state legislative rollbacks of public-sector workers’ collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin and other US states in 2011 appeared to signal an unprecedented wave of hostility toward the public sector, such episodes have a long history. Drawing on recent work on “governance repertoires,” this article compares antistate initiatives in Wisconsin in 2011 to two previous periods of conflict over the size and shape of government: the 1930s and the 1970s. We find that while small government advocates in all three periods used similar language and emphasized comparable themes, the outcomes of their advocacy were different due to the distinct historical moments in which they unfolded and the way local initiatives were linked to political projects at the national level. We explore the relationship of local versions of small government activism to their national-level counterparts in each period to show how national-level movements and the ideological, social, and material resources they provided shaped governance repertoires in Wisconsin. We argue that the three moments of conflict over the size of government are deeply intertwined with the prehistory, emergence, and rise to dominance of neoliberal political rationality and can provide insight into how that new “governance repertoire” was experienced and built at the local level.

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When solidarity doesn’t quite strike: the 1974 Hortonville, Wisconsin teachers’ strike and the rise of neoliberalism

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

“Sterilizing and Fertilizing the Plant at the Same Time”: The Class Formation of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association

“Sterilizing and Fertilizing the Plant at the Same Time”: The Class Formation of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association

Blue Solidarity: Police Unions, Race and Authoritarian Populism in North America

State Phobia, Then and Now: Three Waves of Conflict over Wisconsin's Public Sector, 1930–2013

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