Jim Cavanaugh, the newly elected president of the Dane County Labor Council, tells columnist George Vukelich that unions don't get a fair break from the local media. "Media narrows coverage down to the point where they interpret every strike, every job action, every impasse in negotiations as simply a question of wages." Most strikes in recent years, he points out, "happened because the workers were fighting off the concessions, the ‘takeaways,' the ‘givebacks' that the company was demanding." Cavanaugh, who succeeded David Newby as council president, has a master's degree in history and came to the council through his leadership in the Wisconsin Federation of Teachers. Today, Cavanaugh leads the labor council's successor organization, the South Central Federation of Labor, which is made up of 78 unions - including Madison Teachers Inc., Service Employees, various AFSCME locals, plumbers and steamfitters - and represents more than 35,000 workers in Dane, Sauk, Iowa and Columbia counties.
Money isn't everything
From the Isthmus archives, Feb. 6, 1987