In Wisconsin, Shades of the Thirties
By now, there's can be no doubting it: What's happening in Wisconsin is one of the most important labor developments in decades. It's of major importance to unions and their members, of major importance to working people generally of major importance to us all.
In many ways, it's the 1930s again. Just as then, workers and their political allies and other supporters are demonstrating, picketing, marching, striking and otherwise forcefully demanding the basic civil right of collective bargaining the unfettered right for workers' representatives to negotiate with employers on setting their wages, hours and working conditions.
Eventually, workers and their millions of supporters won the 1930s struggle.
Congress, acting closely with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, granted the legal right of collective bargaining to most workers. Farm workers, domestics and a few other groups were excluded from the law, but all others finally had that vital right.
The 1930s struggle arose primarily because of the economic pressures of the Great Depression that led to massive protests, just as today's struggle can be traced to the pressures of the Great Recession that also have led to massive
