Hortonville 25 Years Later Strike Left a Powerful Legacy

The memory of spring 1974 still ignites our sense of injustice

Twenty-five years ago the Hortonville School Board fired almost all of the district’s teachers after they went on strike to win a new contract. The strike and its aftermath threw the lives of the “Hortonville 84” into stress and turmoil. Some left teaching for good, others changed careers after school districts across the state ignored their employment applications. Many had to uproot their families as they searched for new employment. One of the most painful memories of many fired teachers was the personal hostility exhibited toward them by local citizens who had once praised their dedication to students.

The mass firings provided a dramatic example of how a flawed collective bargaining law led to an abuse of power by an unreasonable school board. The firings contributed to a political climate for change by showing the people of Wisconsin how much disruption a bad law can cause. The Hortonville experience so energized WEAC members that, over the next two years, they mobilized to win a new, fair law through intensive political action and lobbying efforts.

When the strike began on March 19, 1974, Hortonville teachers had not won a base salary raise in three years. The school board refused to bargain or mediate. Its final offer included a 4.2 percent raise and an open ten-hour day. The Hortonville Education Association (HEA) had two options: accept the board’s offer or go on strike.

For those who were there the images are still fresh: picket lines of 500 Wisconsin teachers; helmeted deputy sheriffs bused from five neighboring counties; carloads of strikebreakers driving through picket lines; a tough anti-union school board; more than 70 Hortonville Education Association (HEA) supporters arrested for acts of civil disobedience, including the WEAC executive secretary. And who can forget the Hortonville Vigilante Association, a small band of idle men who delighted in harassing picketers and escorting strikebreakers through picket lines?

At its peak, in April 1974, daily news about the strike filled the airwaves and the pages of newspapers across the nation. The firing of an entire teaching staff in a small Wisconsin town proved to be major news. That news included stories about how State Superintendent Barbara Thompson aided the school board by not enforcing teacher licensure laws thereby allowing uncertified and uncertifiable strikebreakers to continue working in Hortonville classrooms.

During much of April hundreds of police, teachers and supporters from other unions converged in front of the high school in the morning and in the afternoon when the strikebreakers were arriving and leaving. The bravest sat in front of schools and were carried to paddy wagons headed to the county jail in Appleton.

After a judge issued an order restricting the number of pickets to 84, the battle shifted to the courts, where the U.S. Supreme Court said the school board had the right to fire teachers engaged in an illegal strike. But not before hundreds of UniServ and WEAC local leaders met in Appleton to consider actions aimed at reaching a settlement in Hortonville. One of the recommendations was that a statewide teacher strike be called on Friday, April 26. Within ten days a vote on whether to support the April 26 walkout was taken by teachers in every WEAC affiliate. Public and media interest was at a near fever pitch. When the voting was completed, WEAC locals, by a four-to-one margin, had voted not to participate in the protest walkout.

In announcing the vote, WEAC President Lauri Wynn said, “….we will remain in the courts. We will be at the legislature so that they can understand that the law under which we find ourselves working is a deformed law and needs to be changed.”

Hortonville part of a larger scene

The Hortonville strike occurred against a backdrop of militant political and social change. A long list of groups were asserting their right to fully participate in American society. On the national and state level, governments were attempting to deal with the issues raised by the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the environmental movement, and many others.

Teachers, too, saw the ground as fertile for claiming a measure of control over their professional lives. After being dominated by school administrators since their inception, both the NEA and WEAC were evolving into strong teacher advocate organizations in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Hortonville was just one of at least 30 Wisconsin teacher strikes that occurred in 1972-73 and 1973-74. Teacher strikes were illegal under the 1971 bargaining law (111.70), which mandated good faith bargaining on both sides of the table. However, there was nothing in the law that forced compliance.

During that period the typical teacher strike lasted no more than two weeks with the local association able to claim victory on many of its goals, especially the addition of just cause for nonrenewal and improvements on salary and insurance. Most school boards sought injunctions against a strike and resumed bargaining that led to a settlement.

Hortonville’s anti-union school board

At first, Hortonville seemed like it too would follow the familiar pattern of strike and settlement. However, the sight of organized teachers stoked the school board’s anti-unionism. The school board was not only hostile to the HEA, it was prepared to demolish its own educational system and break the union if its members wouldn’t approve the board’s final offer. In 1973, the HEA and the school board began bargaining the 1973-74 contract. By January 1974, after ten months, negotiations were at a stalemate. The school board, with coaching by the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, refused to budge even though it would have cost only $26,000 to settle, a tiny fraction of their eventual legal bills and strike-related costs. Not to mention the $15,000 per day cost for police during much of April 1974.

Once it fired the teachers and withdrew its last contract offer, it was obvious that this board was out to claim the mantle as the toughest school board in the USA. This is precisely how it was portrayed in a cover article that appeared in the magazine of the National Association of School Boards in June 1974.

Strike served as catalyst for change

Every Wisconsin school employee is indebted to the Hortonville 84. Their firing heightened support among teachers for amending a bargaining law that forced teachers to strike illegally to achieve equity at the negotiating table. WEAC lobbying, along with nearly 50 other teacher strikes in the 1970s, and general unrest in teacher negotiations throughout the state, graphically revealed the flaws in the old bargaining law. The result was passage of a bill that legalized strikes and put in place a system of binding arbitration to resolve disputes.

Two decades of labor peace is the real legacy of the 84 fired Hortonville teachers. We can honor their sacrifices by organizing in today’s changed environment for a return to a fair system of collective bargaining and school finance that respects teachers, education support employees, and their union as equals.

• Hortonville 25th anniversary page

Posted March 17, 1999