ERIC Number: EJ941122
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011
Pages: N/A
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0190-2946
EISSN: N/A
Learning from Wisconsin
Daniel, Jamie Owen
Academe, v97 n4 Jul-Aug 2011
Like thousands of other people from around the country and around the world, this author was heartened and inspired by the tenacity, immediacy, and creativity of the pushback by Wisconsin's public-sector unions against Governor Scott Walker's efforts to limit their collective bargaining rights. And like many others who made the trek to Madison to stand, march, and holler in solidarity, the author was exhilarated by the deafening emotional force of the students, union members, and just plain decent citizens chanting in the capitol rotunda. Entire families, parish groups, scout troops, and tribal councils gathered in unprecedented numbers, day after day, in the snow and wind outside the building to reinforce the message to the legislature: "this" is what democracy looks like. Like so many others from the academy and from the labor movement who have written about these weeks of muscular union visibility, the author hopes that "Wisconsin" will represent an irreversible moment when the labor movement began to actually "move" again, as unions, certainly, but also as an essential component in broader struggles for justice. The author offers a more cautious and skeptical approach to what the events in Wisconsin could and should teach people, and argues that it is time to discard the pernicious hierarchical structures that prevent faculty members from seeing themselves as part of a campus community of workers.
Descriptors: Democracy, Collective Bargaining, Labor, Unions, Union Members, College Faculty, Public Sector, Activism, Tenure, Higher Education
American Association of University Professors. 1012 Fourteenth Street NW Suite 500, Washington, DC 20005. Tel: 800-424-2973; Tel: 202-737-5900; Fax: 202-737-5526; e-mail: academe@aaup.org; Web site: http://www.aaup.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Wisconsin
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A