Demands to recognize their union, which represents approximately 2400 Nurses in Madison, had been rejected up to now. Nurses there submitted a ten-day notice to strike over recognition as provided by law, and had been preparing through the weekend to begin on September 13. Nurses at UW Health, along with hospitals across the country, have suffered from long hours and staff shortages as they've stood on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Provided the nurses’ union is recognized, it would constitute the largest recognition of a union in Wisconsin since Republican governor Scott Walker signed the Budget Repair Bill, commonly known as “Act 10”, over ten years ago.  Since its passage, Act 10 has crippled the ability of public sector workers to legally organize and negotiate with their employers, making proposals over most wages and working conditions illegal, and forcing annual elections even to maintain union status.

#MadisonWI #SEIU #UniversityOfWisconsinMadison

Dozens of nurses laid out the union’s demands at a UWHCA board meeting. Board members appeared largely indifferent to the presence of these workers expressing their need for recognition and better working conditions.

The demands put forward by the nurses at the meeting specifically centered around a few main points: voluntary recognition of the union by the board, direct the hospital and clinics administration to enter into a meet-and-confer process, restore the just-cause standard and Weingarten rights for all.

After the meeting where these demands were put forward, the board released a statement alleging that it was legally impossible to recognize the union due to the implementation of Wisconsin’s anti-union Act 10 in 2011. However, this claim is a lie. According to the union, voluntary recognition of their organization is legal under Act 10 and is not the same as collective bargaining.

The last union contract with UWHCA expired in 2014. Since then, the nurses tried to allow the hospital the opportunity to address their concerns through committees that were created and administered by the hospital. Unsurprisingly, these committees have led to no meaningful progress on the nurses’ patient care concerns.

“We’re demanding the resources, staffing and protections that are necessary to do our jobs effectively and advocate for our patients,” said Mariah Clark, an Emergency Department nurse at UW Hospital of five years. “By joining together in a strong union, we can raise standards, deliver the highest level of care for our patients, and ensure everyone who works at the hospital can provide for their families while caring for others.”

The upstart union has a strong position, as nationally there is a nursing shortage and locally there is a problem of low morale among UW nurses and other hospital staff. Madison can’t afford to lose more veteran nurses, but the workers are prepared to fight for their rights.

The union is hosting a public town hall meeting for residents of Madison and other supporters to learn more about the union drive and to learn how they can lend aid. The town hall is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. on January 29 at the Madison Labor Temple.

#MadisonWI #PeoplesStruggles #nurses #UniversityOfWisconsinMadison

Madison, WI – On April 5, graduate workers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison occupied Bascom Hall for three hours, organized by the Teaching Assistants Association (TAA). The primary demands were that segregated fees be waived for graduate workers, that the international student fee also be waived, and that the university respect the collective bargaining process. Over 400 graduate workers and supporters, including undergraduates, the faculty and staff union, and community members, turned out in the TAA’s largest action in roughly a decade.

For graduate workers, for whom a typical yearly income from the University is about $13,500, segregated fees constitute an enormous tax on earnings, coming to over $1200 per year. These fees are ostensibly used to fund student services, but what graduate workers produce greatly exceeds this sum; graduate workers do the vast majority of teaching labor at the university, and the institution rakes in over half a billion dollars in tuition alone every year. Even factoring in the free tuition that many graduate workers receive, graduate workers are highly-skilled and hyper-exploited, and the remission of fees would only be the first step in moving towards adequate compensation.

The executive compensation of the UW’s top 20 highest-paid employees, many of whom were offered raises of nearly 30% by the Board of Regents the very same day of the sit-in, greatly exceeds the amount needed to waive segregated fees if added together. By contrast, the raise for all UW system workers was a miserable 3%, barely keeping pace with rising inflation.

The international student fee, though smaller in amount, is even more loathsome, constituting an explicitly racist tax on international students for no purpose. The TAA and its allies previously beat back a similar such tax which was passed by the racist Bush II administration, as its proceeds were used to surveil students. This second iteration of the fee has a nominally more humane purpose of ‘aiding’ international students, but it is a tax levied specifically on international students for a service that is provided free to domestic students – and therefore racist and unconscionable.

Rounding out the list of demands was the achievement a fair graduate worker handbook. After the disgraced far-right ex-Governor Scott Walker rammed through Act 10 in 2011, UW-Madison graduate workers’ union contract was nullified, along with the contracts of many other public-sector workers. Since 2017, graduate workers and the administration have haggled over terms in what is known as the Graduate Assistant Policies and Procedures process, which should (theoretically) produce a handbook to replace the previous contract. Despite the fact that this handbook is merely a set of guidelines, which the university can choose to violate at will with no legal repercussions, administrators have nevertheless endlessly pushed back deadlines while failing to carry out what should have been a simple process.

The TAA voted April 10 to endorse an exploratory strike committee at its well-attended April membership meeting. Graduate workers, like education workers across the country, are on the march, whether or not the capitalist state recognizes their right to form trade unions or not. The Teaching Assistants Association, founded in 1966, is the oldest graduate worker union in the United States. Its volunteer leadership – the executive board – is elected each year by the 500-plus membership. The TAA stands in the best tradition of the fighting workers’ movement and in solidarity with workers all over the world.

#MadisonWI #Occupation #PeoplesStruggles #PublicSectorUnions #TeachersUnions #TeachingAssistantsAssociationTAA #UniversityOfWisconsinMadison