WEAC's UniServ system brought union services close to home for locals throughout Wisconsin.

Just a phone call away,” was not a slogan so much as a goal for improving member services. And the purpose of the UniServ system is to make that phone call local rather than a long-distance call to Madison or Washington, D.C.

The leadership of the National Education Association initiated the UniServ—Unified Service—program to give all members access to a professional union organization closer to home. WEAC and Wisconsin became one of the first states to establish a UniServ system.

UniServ units generally consist of a collection of locals that lie in close geographical proximity to each other. Each UniServ has a minimum of 1,200 members, with the exception of UniServs in very sparsely populated areas where a minimum of 600 members is required. In the case of large locals whose membership exceeds 1,200, the local affiliate is designated a UniServ unit.

UniServ directors are professional staff members who do all of the work that a professional union needs done. They assist locals in the formation and negotiation of collective bargaining contracts. They help define and interpret member rights and how best to protect and preserve them in contracts and in daily practice. They organize around events, campaigns, legislation and other issues important to members’ livelihoods and lives. And they help develop leadership skills in members.

WEAC leaders and field staff drew the original 33-unit UniServ map in 1972. The 33 UniServs corresponded roughly to the state’s 33 State Senate districts. While this was done to correspond with population numbers, it also provided a structure for political organizing around local and regional elections.

The locations of UniServ units and offices highlight WEAC’s inherent ballot box and campaign potential. Teachers can make dramatic differences in elections just by voting. In the 2000 elections, Wisconsin’s voting age population stood at 3.85 million and WEAC membership was about 90,000. That means that 1 in 42 eligible voters was a WEAC member. In the 1996 elections, 2.19 million Wisconsin citizens voted. If WEAC’s full membership had voted, 1 in 24 votes cast, or more than 4 percent, would have been by a WEAC member. In the 1998 election, only 1.75 million people voted, so if all of WEAC had voted, 1 out of 19 votes, more than 5 percent, would have been WEAC votes.

The National Education Association initiated the UniServ program to give all members access to a professional union organization closer to home.

If WEAC members came out to vote in force, they could control the outcome of elections with a solid 4–5 percent of the total vote. And, when factoring in immediate family, that total could rise easily to 10 percent, enough to reshape the state’s political landscape. Because WEAC members are spread evenly throughout the state, they can have influence on local and regional elections as well as statewide races.

"WEAC Staff Reorganized into Teams of Specialists" News and Views, November 1972 UniServ is here to stay and the role of the state staff must change if WEAC is to continue building a powerful state teacher organization. Throughout the summer the WEAC elected leadership and staff have been engaged in implementing a staff reorganization plan which would fulfill the will of the 1973 WEAC Representative Assembly. At the Representative Assembly held last May, delegates voted to use UniServ as the sole method of providing field service by September 1974, and to convert WEAC field staff to specialists who can work directly with UniServ staff in solving specific problems at the local level. The switch of WEAC field staff from generalist roles to specialist roles has created a considerable decentralization of the Madison-based staff into regional offices.

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