Interview with David Ahrens

TR OK. Today is the last day of January. January 31, 2014 and the way this January is gone I think everybody's happy to see it go. My name is Troy Reeves and here with Alderman David Ahrens and we are here on the fourth floor of the city county building here in downtown Madison. David for sound quality purposes could you say your last name, and you spell - say your name, spell your last name.

DA David Ahrens. A-H-R-E-N-S.

TR That looks really good, I'm just going to take a quick peek and see [inaudible]. Yeah, I think that's going to work just fine. David as I was saying before we turn the recorder on. Why I'm interested in you is your involvement 2011 protests but since I have you know I want to get context of your life, in particular your life on campus. So from what I found out about you, you've been in town for thirty plus years. So let's ask the first question what brought you to Madison?

DA I came here to go to graduate school. I was a late graduate student. Prior to 00:01:00coming to graduate school, I worked for different unions, for three or four years on the East Coast and in the D.C. area and San Francisco. And decided I would like and could benefit from getting a graduate degree in labor relations. And at the time, Madison had probably was, not the premier school but this was probably the second most credited and established, well-established schools and labor relations and was called the Institute for Research and I.R.R.I. The Institute for ...

TR Was poverty in it?

DA Hmm?

TR Was poverty in it?

DA No, poverty wasn't in it. Anyway it was labor relations school and it had been around since John Commons and so on. That's where I got a - lucky to get a scholarship there and so decided this was the place to be. A part of the scholarship, though, was at the same time as my- that I went to school. I began working for the AFSCME, that's County Municipal Employees Council here. And really after a year or so, my attention school really started to wain as my sort of integration with the goings on at the at the union level increased. So I 00:03:00really didn't - wasn't one of those people who took all my classes either on a Monday and Wednesday or Tuesday or Thursday to limit the amount time that I have spent on campus but I got a degree, after all is said and done. and then immediately began working for AFSCME. So the day after graduation I became labor relations rep.

TR OK, if you don't mind, wouldn't mind my backing up a little bit you said you work in unions prior to coming to graduate school. So when did you begin wanting to be involved in in unions?

DA I started working for a union in 1976 in Baltimore. Actually, at the time I 00:04:00was working in the Baltimore personnel department and doing personal work not labor relations personnel so it was a substantive difference. And it was one of those things that were, kind of, clicks in your mind and you sort of happens and you ask a lot of fundamental questions. What happened there was there was a layoff within the personnel department. And in those days, this is 1976, the five oldest people in the department were fired and including, you know, people that I had professional and personal relationships with. I was a young guy. I was twenty something years old and I was just shocked and outraged that they fired the five oldest people. And there's no age discrimination law in those days. And I say well what should I do about it? Well, I'll call a union. I was 00:05:00pretty naive. So, I remember I called the auto workers union. It was the only union I could think of at the time. And then, they... I said boy we need a union here and the auto workers ought to get over here quickly and, because people all over this city employment are upset. And they handed my number off over to someone from the County and Municipal Employees Union in Maryland at the time and a number of them. It wasn't a union and I met with these people from the National Union and I must seem like a really gung-ho kind of guy and they said, "Well why don't you come over and work with us?" And I mean, it just completely 00:06:00caught me like out of the blue wasn't thinking about that. We'll pay you the same thing. Tell me what these other people pay - Baltimore pays you. We'll do you the same and we'll give you some training and spread the gospel. You know you you you you got the message. And so, I did and though I did a little work in Baltimore.

DA I soon became with this international rep which means I travelled through three or four state area around the D.C. sort of huge metro area: Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, and did work on organizing campaigns and and strikes. And those were the days before most places a collective bargaining and 00:07:00people struck to get collective bargaining rights. Or or even absent of collective bargaining struck for pay anyway even though there was no union and the union would be involved with that so many of those places had no, as we say no law or very minimal rights to situations where there's a full in labor relations statute and process in play like we used to have here. So it was quite a whirlwind experience for a young man. My first day on the job, I remember, I went with the guy who was my boss and we went to a negotiation and the 00:08:00negotiation was eighteen hours long and it was just an amazing process. It was the last day of what had been months of negotiations and the last session was from like ten in the morning to four o'clock in the morning. The guy who I was working with was an old guy. Probably older than I am now. And I remember coming into our caucus room and he at two o'clock in the morning and he was doing pushups to stay awake and alert. So, that was quite a process. So anyway, I stayed with them for about two years or so and for personal reasons, 00:09:00you know, a girlfriend. I moved out to California and got a job working as a banquet waiter but soon became very involved in the hotel and restaurant workers union in San Francisco, which at the time was going through a revolutionary, truly a revolutionary change. It had been under the thumb of the same leadership for over thirty years. Of course, San Francisco had changed in the past thirty years and the union was very mob-oriented, shall we say - both the San Francisco and the Las Vegas locals. Las Vegas was a local one. San Francisco was local two. So, I mean these were longstanding unions of very big unions. Very big 00:10:00locals and they have been there was a grassroots campaign to change over what was a very [schloretic?] leadership that had been in place for, as I said, for thirty years. And the campaign was just, I was very lucky in that I came in when it was, I mean I didn't have to - I was not involved with building it. I came in when it was well-established and... It was a remarkable and we printed a newspaper in four languages every month. I mean, and it was a newspaper in English, Spanish, Togoleg and Chinese. And so 00:11:00the process, so I mean we organize in every hotel. It was mostly hotels, big hotels and long-established restaurants. It was a long process and finally the election had to be supervised by the Department of Labor because of all the problems with the hotel restaurant workers nationally at the time. So lawyers went to court and demanded federal oversight of the election. And the elections took place in three days, twenty four hours a day because everybody works shifts all through the day and night. And so, I was the monitor... I was the chief monitor for our side on the on the election on you know. And unfortunately, they forced us to have only one location for the whole city. So here you had 17,000 00:12:00members of the local, one location in the city and ten thousand people cast ballots. So people, we really got people to understand people understood, really the virtue of their workplace. This is really important - you better vote. It's more important in a presidential election or anything else. You better vote. Also, of course many of these people couldn't vote in a presidential election. But anyway people came in after the shift at eleven to seven as night cooks or cleaners and hotels and came down to I forget which street it was, and voted. I mean we had on the last day we had dragon dances in the street, you know for the Chinese folks and Togala drum bands, Filipino drum bands. And it was fantastic, 00:13:00and we won. But the downside of the story was that we were soon put on what's called trusteeship by the National Union. And then that led to a whole series of federal court cases and regional elections of the people in Las Vegas also won, and they were all killed. And ... and that for our guy, who was our president he just couldn't handle it. And when they were killed he just couldn't handle it and was hospitalized. I mean he just really mentally became unhinged and that gave part of the cause for the national union to say that the leadership was unable to implement 00:14:00contracts and so on. That was really it. So after you know, a month out we were in a trusteeship and then just became- when you get too involved in all this litigation stuff and so on, it just strips all the power from members. You know, well cause we're in court. Why aren't you, why aren't we the leaders anymore? Why are these you know mob guys from Washington now and are meeting again you know blah blah blah, it's just all kind of mystifying to people who are not used to those kinds of processes and they have really no saying. So, I mean there's nothing we can do, but we can protest that and we're sending our lawyers but in terms of what we do in the workplace? What's different, you know? Let's try to 00:15:00be more aggressive, but still the leadership will stop it.

TR So was it around this time that she started looking for something different?

DA Yeah, something different. Yeah, and so then I decided to... I was pretty burnt out and people were, as you could imagine, somewhat discouraged at that. It just sort of was going on and it just went on in court battles and redo elections and so on for years. So, then I came here. So I got a scholarship here through AFSCME and went to school and...

TR So you said... [inaudible] I'm sorry, so you said in your mind this was the second best school for labor relations?

DA Yeah, Cornell is sort of the... it's 00:16:00a big school. It's in fact, has status as a school where we had this was institute of Industrial Relations Research Institute and that's what it's called. So the scope of it was smaller.

TR How did you find out about it?

DA Well it's a well-known school, I mean, I think we're at the time 1980 or 1979 or something. It... the Wisconsin, the great Wisconsin School of Economics and it was closely related to the Econ department. Most of the real faculty for the labor relations, they were housed in the Econ department.

TR So how is your, pretty broad question, but your adjustment to Madison? I assume this was your first time, was your first time in Madison when you came here?

DA First time in the Midwest, yeah. Right. It was quite an adjustment. I mean I didn't come from San Francisco and in... I mean. San Francisco, I go 00:17:00back often cause my family lives there. It was a different city then, of course, and it was much more diverse city. I mean there were actually were lots of Chinese, Toga, Filipino and so on, Latinos living in the city and work places. And that's really the people who I worked with. And then, I came here and this city at the time was probably ninety five percent white. And before San Francisco I lived in Baltimore and worked there, which was a majority black city and doing union work everybody you worked with was black because it was for 00:18:00unskilled trades you know, unskilled workers. We were and we wouldn't... I was you know organizing garbage collectors. That's the sort of main sort of people I worked with. Garbage, sewer workers, water workers, street department people. So, coming to Madison, which was at the time, I just remember driving into town and I could not believe all white people. I mean, I should have figured this was going to be all white people. You know, so I had this map and I drove up to through to the university and it was just all white people. So that was strange. But school was really just I think you'll find that it's a problem for... It 00:19:00can be a problem for people who have been in the field to then go study the academic version of what their experience is. Now the academic version may be in a generalizable sense true but there's definitely going to be dissonance between one's specific experiences and that academic version of it. So the I mean I took a class in collective bargaining, and negotiations and there just seemed to be a...

DA Quite, quite a dissonance and big difference between what the professors were teaching and one of my four or five years of experience was. Also, that I only had one professor who ever, ever had any actual experience and good for him and 00:20:00that had been just for two or three year's decades before. So, that was that was a disadvantage. I really believe it was a disadvantage.

TR So your background made you feel like it was a disadvantage?

DA I felt, well I felt, I felt like at the time I felt like I know all this stuff and I even knew some of the academic aspects of it. I read a little of the literature I was actually working in it. But looking back at it I felt like gee if I had come in like the other graduate students, most of whom were just coming directly from undergraduate school, they just have sort of this open mind about it you know. The teacher tells them this 00:21:00is how things are these are, these are the facts and so on. This is how collective bargaining works you can read on page 200-244 and people take it at his word and I would be you know in the class raising my head and saying, "well, what about ..." and have, you know, just being kind of disagreeable person that I am that always worked, sometimes worked against me and I felt that, it would have, things would have went smoother and easier if I had just gone into collective bargaining and labor relations the same way that I went into my statistics course. I really had no point of view going into my stats course you know?

TR So did you seek out union work before you started school here?

DA Yeah.

TR So did you already have something set up?

DA I knew I'd be working with an AFSCME group of some kind. I... so I started working for the county municipal employees. More or less stayed with them for about seven years.

TR So, you had the, you've already been talking about this and I'll comment and see, what it sounds like you, you had sort of the double disadvantage of being a non-traditional student in terms of age-

DA Yeah, I was older than folks.

TR You know your cohort-wise you know your off age and then you have practical 00:23:00experience where the rest of them at least, sounds like for the most part the rest of students and most of the faculty didn't have for practical labor relations.

DA Right, I was sort of surprised to know that I was the only person who... There was other guy who was my age, maybe a little older who had been a personnel officer for X number of years, and was going back to school, but other than that It was almost, I think, 100% of the people were just coming out of undergraduate school. I thought it would be like people going back to school to get a master's degree in education. Where there would be a lot of people who have been in the classroom or RN's going getting a Master's degree in nursing or something. And because it's U.W. even though most of the people, this was as 00:24:00they say their terminal degree. They still wanted people to, encourage people to go on and become academics and get a P.H.D. So there's always a certain percentage of people sort of after the first year that would be would either, chose to or encouraged to continue into a Doctoral program, which I had no interest in doing.

TR So. Let's sort of back up, what part of town did you, when you got here, what part of town did you live in?

DA I lived on the East Side, primarily. I lived with um someone who was in the doctoral department in the Economics Department 00:25:00who was getting his Ph D. in economics. So, the economics department in those days, and I'm sure it's not all any more, there was a famous economist here, John Commons, whose turn of the century person did little things like unemployment compensation, workers' compensation, those social revolutions. He was really the initiator, you know, sort of the architect of many of those programs. Developed an academic basis for it, but was obviously a doer and worked on implementing those at the state level. And Wisconsin was the first state to implement both of those programs and he was chair of the economics department. Well as a sort of "from the commons" tradition, one part of the 00:26:00commons tradition, I should say is what was called institutional economics and that is... I'd define that... it's almost defined by what it's not, now. These are not quantoids. You know there's quantitat- of course they have to use quantitative analysis in terms of doing, you know studying an issue like the wage levels and employment levels as result of unemployment compensation. But they're not - that's not - they're not statisticians necessarily and or econometricians. And really that's sort of the avenue that where the department became, but my roommate friend for those years was in the Ph D. program of course I had a quantitative background, but he was involved in labor economics 00:27:00which was a good part of the Econ program in those days. As you get a Ph D. in labor econ and now he's the head of the Economic Policy Institute and has been really. Functionally in terms of economic policy, the leading labor economists in the country other than, you know, maybe someone in the department of labor.

DA But they graduated many of the people who at the time worked as labor economists for various unions or you know, the remaining you know, universities that want today labor economists understand really how labor markets operate.

TR So was this to get back to it, then is this disadvantage you had part of the 00:28:00reason why, or one of the reasons why you...school became not necessarily less of a priority but you sort of focused your time in school for certain periods and then spent the rest of the time...

DA Yeah, I mean school was sort of the unreal world and just sort of I thought by the second year I was just getting my ticket punched and wanted to get back to things that really happened to people. I mean my roommate. In the Ph D. program and he also had, in between undergraduate and graduate school, he'd work for U.A.W. and some someplace else. So, he had no institutional experience and understanding how labor relations functions.

TR So then when. You came here in the early 1980s.

DA I think 1979 or... 79 hard to remember these things or I remember when Reagan won and I watched the results with all the office staff from the union and so I think I was in my second year then. I don't think I would have been there right when I started... I probably started in 79.

TR So this is a general statement, but so except for the time you're on campus earning your master's degree did you have much involvement with either campus activism or labor issues on campus?

DA Well the TAA strike occurred in 1981. My... it's funny, because I had a fellowship, I was given an office there. And I really didn't use the office, I 00:30:00mean I had the office at the Union, so I didn't really... I mean for people who are RA's, and working for professors and so on the office made sense but I really didn't need one or so I used to study as my place to study and do work. And the guy who was in the office right next to me was the president of the T.A.A. David Hecker and he had the loudest voice. He must had hard of hearing parents or something, but if he was on the phone it would be, it be so loud and these were like the cement block walls at the Social Science building, it was so loud... any case, so I used to sort of like the day to day events of what was 00:31:00happening leading up to the T.A.A. strike. So the TA strike was a long strike. It was, I mean, the TA had already had recognition. I mean that had happened many years before and but it was it was ultimately unsuccessful in what they had to do, which was to shut down classes. So classes continued. Especially at the undergraduate level and they went back to work after a long period. You know it certainly wasn't. It wasn't definitional in terms of that it either caused the 00:32:00decline or a tremendous growth. I mean one of the things that it did do and this was a problem, sort of one of these weird secondary effects. They picketed the bus. Like the bus barn, where the area where buses came on to campus like at the hospital and the Teamsters refused to cross the line.

DA And so there was no bus service on campus. Well those guys lost their pay. So when the Teamsters a half a year later, these guys were out of work for thirty 00:33:00five days or whatever it was. Well shortly thereafter the city and the Teamsters Union got into this contract dispute and a good friend of mine was an officer - President, Vice President of the bus driver's union and and I remember having this conversation with him where he was saying that it was difficult to strike the city because so many workers, so many members had lost their pay during the TA strike that they were averse to now going out again for an interminable period of time. So it's just sort of one of these secondary effects of things that actually it turned out really to their benefit and- What happened was, and 00:34:00this is really tangential Teamsters used to have, up to that point they had what's called a COLA agreement, which is cost of living adjustment, so whatever the rate of inflation was they got that plus a half a percent. And they had that for years. And they had that through a period through the late seventy's during COLA's last years which is a period of terrific inflation. And of course they loved their COLA and. But... and the city want to buy it back from them. And they didn't want to give it up and they were ready to start for it. Well, but they settled instead for and actually I negotiated the same agreement in some other place at the same time.

DA I sold a COLA and in Racine. So sold it for three, what we call three tens. 00:35:00Ten percent each year for three years. Well as it turns out, inflation fell. The whole country went into a recession a year after Reagan came into office and the inflation rate was like two or three percent. These guys made out like bandits. If they had stuck with their COLA, struck and stuck their COLA, they'd be making twenty percent less money than they are now so. But I remember so many meetings with these guys to... encouraging them to give up their COLA because three, ten percent pay hikes would bring home the bacon and it really did. Anyway, so alI these weird chain of events, the TAA strike caused these guys to secondary picket, shutdown, not strike and they came out way ahead of 00:36:00the city, on that as well.

TR But overall, at least in your opinion, the TAA strike didn't necessarily benefit the TAA, though.

DA No, I don't think so. No. I mean I remember there were a number... I had differences with a number of strategic and tactical differences with what they were how the conduct of the strike.

TR So then, so besides the TAA strike do you recall other, and also again beside the fact that you were going to school there any other...

DA There really wasn't involved in campus very much. I was not part 00:37:00of sort of the graduate student social thing. Fairly small group of industrial relations students, say forty or fifty and I mean they had a you know a pretty group oriented of, course and it really wasn't my social group. Because my work with AFSCME, I was already involved with sort of other labor activists and so on on campus. Eh, not on campus - in the city. And just also older people you know.

TR More of your age?

DA More of my age. Or yea, people who were settled and families and so on. I mean my best friend who was a student was Italian 00:38:00graduate student and he had come on a Fulbright here to get his Ph D. And he had been in a you know a substantial position in a union in Italy for six years before coming here. So, I mean I spent time with him and his wife.

TR So maybe we should I guess sort of fast forward. Yeah. Is 1996 then the next sort of time you got involved with campus with the cancer center.

DA Yeah, right.

TR So if you wouldn't mind starting to get an overview of how that came to be.

DA Yeah I had well, a transition through, fast forward through some careers. So stay with the union, went to different union, and then worked in the legislature 00:39:00for on and off for about six years or so. And my last... when I, my last two years at the Union, I started the research office for the union. Was a research director for the state union. And the union, a good part of its membership was-were health care workers. The non-professional health care workers who work in county and nonprofit nursing homes and hospitals. So as a result of that I became I'm very knowledgeable and involved with how health care is funded. And health care financing. So, for because of personal reasons, I had married a 00:40:00liberal arbitrator and it really became un- It was not feasible for me to be as a union advocate with my wife as an arbitrator who was hearing cases with my union and because I- the main part of my job was doing these arbitrations. So even if I, of course would never do it with her, but her colleagues and so on was an uncomfortable situation. I did not but, she didn't want to leave her position. I had an opportunity to leave mine. So I went to work in the legislature for the health committee.

DA And who works a lot with how health care's financed. Did that, and I also 00:41:00became involved with public health issues and particularly smoking and drinking because the chair of the committee was a former public health nurse. And... so I was for a staff person for the committee, so I became involved with that so that this was just the first beginnings of smoking as a national health issue. And really, they really had a very novice kind of- they being, the you know Cancer Society, the anti-smoking groups very novice lobbyists. So they had convinced series of things that you could convince the Cancer, the UW Cancer center to get a grant that would hire some people to start a state anti- tobacco coalition and 00:42:00local tobacco group anti- tobacco groups to change local and state policies.

DA So given my background in public health and organizing, the Cancer center hired me to start the organization. And I did. And worked, stayed with it for I stayed in that organization as the director for three or four years and then I 00:43:00and then I and a faculty at medical school wrote a grant to finance a much bigger well- fund- really well-funded group then we were funded. And then the question whether I wanted to stay with that or just do, or stay with the kids. I could I could spin off and do Smoke-free Wisconsin, which is what the organization was. Or I could stay at the Cancer Center and be a researcher there in public policy and I chose the latter.

TR So let's maybe delve into this for a couple questions and then we're probably 00:44:00the wrap up point. So, first off when you when you were hired to be the person in charge.

DA State Tobacco-free yeah.

TR Where did that position you on campus? Where did you...?

DA Well we were first off campus for two to three years we were off campus. We were way out on Monroe Street, so I mean it was a it was part of U.W. but we were not on campus. And then we I got a grant for a lot of money and needed a lot of space and so we moved to the Warf building.

TR So after the bigger grant you moved to the Warf?

DA Yeah, we moved.

TR So for those first couple years when you were on Monroe Street, it sounds like you weren't on campus but you were sort of of campus?

DA Yeah right right. I was you know I shared office with another cancer center group that was not and there was public service group you know it was called Cancer Information Service. So we had a very tangential kind of relationships with with the campus and part of that was intentional. The Cancer Center, it was not... being anti-smoking then was not great PR for the Cancer Center. It was very... this was a you know it's called a Carbone cancer center, well was this is in the day when Carbone was alive and I knew him and it was gutsy on his part to allow this 00:46:00to happen. To take on the ground and to have an organization that said we're part of the cancer center. And get into disputes with powerful interests. And so we got into disputes with retail stores because they were selling cigarettes to kids, to restaurants because people didn't want to be smoking in restaurants and so on. And he was willing to take the heat on that. I mean, they have to be involved with community fund raising, and it's not all NCI ACS money, I mean they're dependent on the goodwill of the community and just being open not not 00:47:00for the cancer center to be perceived as hostile entity in any way.

DA So, he was unbelievable. I mean he's unbelievable in terms of willing to take that on because if you actually look through the places that were funded and where their organizational home was very few were cancer centers. Even though it'd be sort of an obvious place for them to be. There may have been two or three in the country where a Cancer Center who's willing to take this on because it was so unpopular.

TR So what, I guess I'll ask it this way although, I don't know if... So the 00:48:00first grant, the smaller of the two grant, what would you consider to be the successes that came from that?

DA We began the work of establishing a local viable County based anti-tobacco groups of people who were willing to challenge- initiate or challenge public policy. Initially, the first thing was preventing youth access to tobacco and it seems odd but I mean twenty years ago that was controversial. I mean, I was 00:49:00thinking this the other day how remember being at some meeting- It'd happen in legislature. We'd have people come to the legislature and say, "We should be able to sell cigarettes to kids because if I don't I'll take a loss. This will hurt my business." So and legislatures were like, "Yeah, right. I can see your point of view. Yeah, I guess we shouldn't do anything about that." You're a good part of my customers. So he's I mean we started with the real, what would seem to be an easy things like that, but that's how we started and then begin issues concerning the second-hand smoke. And you know the process of educating people about that took about a decade.

TR So, was it because the first grant was running out that you looked for...

DA No, just got a much bigger grant to do a whole variety of research projects.

TR And who was the faculty that you worked with?

DA Pat Remington. He's the Associate Chancellor of the medical school now.

TR So, and it was that grant that moved you on campus from the Warf building.

DA Right. Right right.

TR So, how did additional... I guess were these two these two grants...

DA They were separate- separate organizations. Yeah. My second grant was Robert Johnson and it allowed us to do A lot of interesting stuff 00:51:00and then some more money from the state you know that sort of then brought more money from the state and we're... and then I directed this, what we the surveill- surveillance and evaluation project. And surveillance, this is an epidemiological term, which sounds kind of scary in these NSA days. But surveillance simply meant doing, you know, coding people's behaviors on smoking and smoking policy, exposure to secondhand smoke, and so on. So we would do both surveys and also real air testing, bio medical testing, of people who were smokers or are subject to second hand smoke.

DA And at the time there were a number of different projects being conducted by these counties and state groups and so on and we would do the evaluations of 00:53:00those operations. So say in early 2000s or so the state had dedicated quite a bit of money to running T.V. ads about smoking. I don't know what state you were, which state living in their early twos.

TR Idaho.

DA So you probably didn't have it there. I don't see how they can have it there but we were running a lot of millions of dollars' worth of T.V. commercials about different aspects of smoking and. So, our unit did the evaluation of of those commercials with youth and adult smokers and non-smokers. Well, and then you know there were many different kinds of programs that people watch these were you know pilots and experimental programs Gee if you do these things and have these kinds of activities for sixth graders what happens when they're eighth graders? What happens if you have a smoke-free place? What happens the number of smokers who work there, do they give up smoking? What happens in their homes? Do the give up smoking in their homes? And those all of those things happen where because people cannot smoke in their workplace they also give up smoking in their homes. 00:54:00And then of course after a while you give up smoking and there's just so much you could smoke in your car and then your spouse says stop smoking in the car.

DA Yeah something to really push the area so that you know I think the last statistic that I read was like twenty-five percent of smokers do not smoke in their homes. So so are we so we had what was called the surveillance of the project which is running a lot of mass surveys, and testing, and the other part was program evaluation. The city, I mean, not the city. The state and the federal government was spending between fifteen and twenty million dollars a year on different kinds of smoke- anti-smoking education and cessation projects. And we did the evaluations on what worked.

TR So it just sounds like to me that your your activism becomes focused at least as part of your life in sort of health care/public health is that a Yeah.

DA Oh yeah.

TR Is that a safe assumption? So is there any other... I guess this takes us 1990s, probably into the early two thousands.

DA Sure, Yeah.

TR Any other activism or their labor activities you're doing at that time?

DA No, I wasn't involved with labor work anymore. I was involved politically on campaigns. But I wasn't, I wasn't central to any campaign activity, shall we 00:56:00say? I mean I've been , certainly as an alderman, but I mean in 1986, I was on leave from work for periods of time working on a U.S. Senate campaign and then in 1988 on a state campaign. So, I wasn't at that level of activity by far. I was called a reliable campaign helper. New politicians, because new politicians want to know people who are reliable campaign helpers. But beyond that wasn't 00:57:00that critically engaged. I was very absorbed by the period of probably four or five years where I was very absorbed by this tobacco thing. At the time, probably from 1998-2002 or 2003 there was really a fervent, almost religious kind of sense of mission that people had that this, you know, evil tobacco industry that's killed blah blah blah blah blah and done all these you know it's now known horrible things lies and deceit and so on then we were going to, you 00:58:00know, slay the dragon and and perhaps if not slay it, then really shrink it in a measurable way. And we had money and resources to be able to do it, growing public support could do it, growing public understanding about what was happening. So, it was really quite really absorbing. I mean

DA and the people that I work with being at the University worked with we had lots of graduate students and research assistants and graduate assistants and everything and people came and we're just like, "I'm so happy to have something 00:59:00that was like wow we're really changing society." I mean you could watch it. I mean, we'd look at the map and, oh OK let's put that dot on Oshkosh now. It has smoke-free restaurants. You know let's put the dot here, you know? And so for people to be engaged at that level and and there was a lot of T.V., a lot of media attention to things to that at the time. But beyond that I mean, people really had a great sense of mission on this. I mean work with a lot of kids. Working with kids wasn't really my cup of tea, but for the people who were, I mean I can't I mean I could see it from afar why you'd want to do it because I'd go to youth events and high school events of kids against or whatever they were. 01:00:00People you know especially some of the you know younger people graduate assistants and so who were very turned on and lit up. And that really becomes contagious. I mean it really becomes sort of a group thing really.

TR I want to got a little over an hour I want to give you the last word we sort of get a whirlwind from 1976 Baltimore through 2003 Madison. Is there anything on your mind specifically about those, you know those decades that you feel you want to get on the record in case we don't get to it on the follow up interview.

DA Not really. I'm trying to think about sort of the aspect of the uni- you know 01:01:00so my relationship to the university I mean I had a- I mean at the time and this sort of became instructive at a later time when I became an employee advocate, I could look back and say, "Well many people are of the mind that I was five or six years before, which was, they're a tremendous sense of mission. Funding is lush, and solid for the foreseeable future. And you know sort of all is well. You know I'm paid adequately, I mean it was and then you know. But then things 01:02:00of course changed over the next decade or so. So you know in terms of a lot of times people when I was more involved in the union activity that people would be frustrated. The other piece of that was the third part of it is, and this was probably the most important part was, how cloistered I was. And this will come up more later, which is my sense of where I work was limited to the third and fourth and sixth floor of the wharf building. That was the university. That's where our people were and that's was it. And the fact that there was this big 01:03:00cancer center over at the clinical science center and those people at Bascom Hill, that really to me was just stuff on a page. You know there really was no kind of sense of that I was somehow really part of that other than my pay status or whatever. And that's how...

DA I think most who are not academics staff who are not administrative, but academic staff who are research people, which is most of the academics staff they're focused on and you know this protein. Not that other protein. If it was on this protein and and that's how I was you 01:04:00know... I mean, there's another group, Center for Tobacco research and intervention. Which took up the quarters that I left on Monroe Street and so they moved in where I left and- of course I work with them, but those are the critical times. You know those people tested medicines to help people stop smoking and I worked with them, did some joint research projects with them, but I mean they were sort of in my circle but not really of it and I'm sure they felt the same way. They tested drugs and I did this public policy stuff and millions of survey and all that saying crazy stuff. So people have this very kind of very, very parochial view in academic because really, it's who you work 01:05:00with where your money comes from and on the research end very, very little comes from the university.

DA So it's very difficult to get to get people sort of some kind of broader collective view of this that really your situation. Your employment situation as a researcher and protein enlargement may be so and so on. It's very hard, I mean you really need a longer broader view to be able to... and really some kind of crisis you know to be able to do it and that's sort of what the question was in 2011 as to whether that crisis would precipitate both the view and then action that flow from it. That will resume.

TR Yes. And we'll probably pick up a few years before 2011 but thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

End of Transcript

TR OK today is February 4, 2014. This is the second interview with, do you go by Dave or David?

DA David. David Ahrens and we are here inside the city county building inside the Madison common council suite of offices. My name is Troy Reeves. So David we last left off chronologically at 2003 and we just talked about that, so 2003 was just where we ended. It wasn't necessarily an end point or a changing point for you on campus.

DA Ah, no. In terms of I guess in 2005, I began working as a functioning as a 01:07:00delegate to the academic staff assembly for our unit, which is the cancer center. And the academic staff assembly is the body that's charged with, statutorily charged with developing and reviewing policies and procedures- employment policies and procedures in regard to academic staff.

DA It reviews them and that's the aim. It doesn't necessarily set those policies and procedures. It's a review process and review and comment on it.

TR How did you - How'd you first find out academic staff assembly or ways to 01:08:00become involved?

DA It's part of the orientation you get you know. Different parts of it it's a very... it's quite a low profile. A group probably and within my unit I think very few people that really heard of it. But you know because of my background in employment relations, I was interested in that there is such a body it exists so I contacted them and they said, "Oh please be a delegate. We haven't had a delegate from the Cancer Center for years. So, I began to attend those meetings and it was as I thought, which was that it it's... Well first of 01:09:00all it's chaired by the Provost. So. So, it doesn't even have the autonomy sort of being in the chair by a member of the- of its own body, it's chaired by the- an official of the administration. And in terms of, doing employment relations because it's academic staff, there's such a huge range of academic staff that you have... I mean, I when I joined it, I was called a research program manager. 01:10:00I had been hired and fired and I was a program manager and there were many people who are very senior. There are a lot of people who were assistant deans in the leadership of the group so really in terms of being a- It can't really function as an advocate for employment rights for most of the academic staff because people want to exercise their managerial authority. So, it's a very mixed bag of everybody who's the- and what sort of a research assistant. I forget the classifications now but sort of the lowest lab-rat to my position, which was the highest research administration, Research Program Manager 3. So 01:11:00it's basically it's for research programs that are more than a million dollars and... So that's quite a bit of latitude there. So the academic staff or assembly who reviewed rarely minor policies, I'd never in the probably four or five years that I was a member it, and I stayed as a member of a throughout UFAS and everything else. It never took a substantive critical view of an administrative of policy and this went all the way to the whole revision of the academic staff under the new human- new human resource policies that took effect 01:12:00and- well almost took effect and then repealed in 2012. So, I attempt to participate in that and then in around 2007 or 2008 I became interested in working with the union because as united faculty and academic staff because in 2008, the faculty and academic staff won collective bargaining rights. I think I had been a member earlier and then left because it seemed to be just have one 01:13:00issue, which was to get collective bargaining rights and until that was going to happen there was really not much that that organization can do other than work for collective bargaining rights. And as it was it was a - DA is a pretty expensive mission to be a member of. They wanted one percent of your salary, one percent of your gross salary was the dues. So, In terms of my ideological commitment it wavered at that point. But once the, you know collective bargaining rights were won then it became a whole different story, which was now there's something to really do. And the whole question of collective bargaining 01:14:00on the campus which had been going on for 80 years. Now was passed the point of discussion and I was a point of reality. Or not reality. You're either going to do it or not. And that was true for all faculty and academic staff. The... the collective bargaining bill was passed as a actual bill. Along with it, however, was a series of amendments to budget bills that - let me just say in case you haven't gotten this from other people- the, the model that was going to be developed was there would be separate academic staff and faculty votes on each campus. There was not going to be a, either across campus, inter campus, or 01:15:00inter-academic staff. So they were going to be all separate bargaining units. Each of those units, so academic staff and and faculty say in the Madison campus could collectively, that is, not collectively, they would both have to affirmatively vote yes to make one bargaining unit.

DA So looked to be a multiple bargaining units all across these many units, many different campuses. So there we were, the second thing that happened was, and this turned out to be really momentous, was one of the budget bills included a provision that was called the cumbersome language unit clarification of the 01:16:00academic staff. Over the years as new positions are created and universities always never destroying but always creating new classifications and new positions. It's incumbent on the H.R. department to say, "OK here we have a seismic technologist. Seismic technologist 1; Seismic technologist 2." And so on. What bargaining unit should that person be in? Should that person being an academic staff unit? Should that person be a technical staff as represented by 01:17:00currently by a union, and if so which union? So on.

DA: So hundreds of these things come forth on a literally hundreds per year come forth and the H.R. department puts them in these different boxes. Well the unions, have always contended that, they're putting an awful lot of the academic staff box, which is not represented and rarely are they put into one of their technical and clerical or scientist. AFT had a science professional's position, science professionals unit and AFSCME had this clerical unit. It was called 01:18:00clerical technical and then there was another union called blue collar unit, which were people who call work the sweepers and cleaners and non-skilled trades mechanics.

DA Well, so that was going on over a year, over years and the AFSCME units were often crying that you know, through attrition the area locals are getting smaller, while this Academic Staff Union has grown to over eight thousand. And there were you know a lot of charts that showed his real up and sweeping curve. So, late in the budget process of the last budget of the Doyle era, someone entered an amendment that said basically that the unions can just petition for 01:19:00all of the people any of the people they sort of fit within the academic staff and have them, and there's the word- accreted to their existing unit. Well, there's a process of unit clarification and this study that I conducted when this came about, -

DA it's a process that happens in both private and public sector labor relations and so in the public sector, you know, you know you have a county garage and they hire the storekeeper, what's called a storekeeper. Is that person a manager employee? Is that person a blue collar, white collar? What local union do they 01:20:00go to? And there's a different - if there's a difference of opinion you people would go the W E or C. and and you's have a short hearing on this person would describe their duties and someone from the commission would say, "put it in this box" or "put it in that box." And so I went through all of the unit clarification petitions ever conducted for the [inaudible] in ten years. And the average size of the units that were being clarified were two. Okay, it's usually one, two, three, four alright? Well this was something where they were going to take about four thousand people and assign them to a union without an election. And it's unheard of. In the private and public sector, it's simply unheard of. 01:21:00When we have a unit of that size, people vote. It should not just be an administrative process.

DA And it's, I mean, in many different ways. It's anti-democratic and everything else. So a lot of people raise the quite a stink about it and Doyle said well he didn't mean for it to be that, I mean, I think it's just democratic impulse even though he want to do a favor for the unions after all those years. I think his democratic impulse was, well of course, if you can have thousands of people who are in a union they should vote to whether or not they want to join. 01:22:00Well the unions didn't see it that way. The unions in the immortal words of Marty Beal said, "I want what's mine." And that was his quote in the paper. He thought that he had some legal, moral, some kind of right to just tell fifteen hundred people you're in now in our union. Pay up. For our purpose in UFAS, we soared as well of course it's undemocratic and people would be furious. And, and after they were furious, they would vote the union out. When I pointed out to 01:23:00some of the unions that you're about to accrue so many people. And they're going to be so pissed off, you'll be decertified throughout the union. So there's two hundred people in the union. You're going to accrue three hundred people. They could call a certification election. And you're going to wind up with zero.

DA That started to change their minds and started to, I think cross people off of their list that they wanted to have in. Well, we got into really, that is UFAS, into really pretty heated argument with the AFT state folks because of the of the strategy. I mean they just saw, you know, the opportunity to just pick 01:24:00off thousands of people without going through the effort, cost, or whatever. It's very costly to run a certification election or run a Union campaign anyway. You have to hire these people, be organizers, and do all of these mailings and convince people and this whole thing. Well, through this you just have to hire a lawyer, basically. They do the petition. They go to the hearing and argue the case. I said, that that's well, many of the reasons that that's-we're going to wind up either without anything because people will be so pissed or if for some reason people don't decertify the union or vote no we'll wind up with a very weak union because part of the process of organizing people and getting people engaged in building their union makes for a stronger union. And instead it was a 01:25:00formula for either a catastrophe or just a bad union.

DA So they really compounded their problem. What they did then, and this was just unbelievable- most people still didn't know what was going on with this. It hadn't gotten much publicity at all. No press publicity. And had been operating at pretty low level of discussion mostly between us UFAS folks and AFT and AFSCME and so on. Well, what happened is someone had contacted a Journal Sentinel or some reporter to talk about this. AFT found out that there was going to be a newspaper report about it. Not that that many people in Madison read the 01:26:00Journal Sentinel, right? Well, their response was so over the top. They then that day sent out a letter to everybody on their list - of all the potential recruited individuals. I wish I had a copy of it. It was, "This is to notify you that you have been- you will be accrued to our union and you will be dadada number based on..." this very kind of legalistic letter to hundreds of people. And I don't know whether they said you'll start paying dues or anything but certainly that was there between the lines and people just went nuts. And people came into my office, you know sort of waving that letter because they knew that I was active in the union and they were, "What does this mean?" You know. "Why 01:27:00don't... aren't we supposed to vote on this?" I mean they sort of knew the 101s. They saw the movie Norma Rae or whatever it is, you know? so -

DA and that, so what happened then the administration said, "Well, this is a tremendous opportunity for us to protect our people against the union." I mean lot of people called H.R. and said, "What's going on?" H.R. said, "I don't know what's going on. We're not responsible for this." They knew about the whole unit clarification thing. That they were going to sort of stand aside and let the unions bash each other's over their head looking for this group and that group. Well, Biddy Martin then sends out a letter... Biddy Martin's the new 01:28:00chancellor. Newly appointed at that point and she sends out a letter saying, "We shall protect you. We will not allow these unions to just take away your rights to decide, to choose," You know sort of those magic words, "and just by legal fiat, make you union members and force you to pay dues."

DA And I remember, I still remember reading the letter on my computer saying I say, "This is of like three worst cases. I hadn't even thought of this one, but this is the worst case is we now have. Pushed everybody into the protective arms 01:29:00of the administration. And there they'll be and we're the bad guys." It was just incredible. So the um, I think the academic staff assembly then called a meeting about you know, sort of informational meeting about what's going on. I remember it was the armory building, the Morgridge building and their big hole there- You couldn't fit into it, it was so crowded. It was definitely the biggest gathering of academic staff. Ever. And out of the whole group only one person said that 01:30:00they were interested in being a member of the union. I mean weren't all, you know, just vocally anti-union. Most were, but only one person said, "Well let me just say, I would like to join you. I don't like what he did here but I would like to join a union."

DA So that was... We never you know, got them to stop it, so what we did is we said, "Well this is just untenable. They're destroying any possibility of having an Academic Staff Union and also potentially poison it for faculty as well." Because faculty knew about this. So he said the thing to do 01:31:00is to split off and sort of decertify ourselves as a, you know have a union election. And we attempted to do that and that was unsuccessful. You needed a two-thirds of the membership.

TR Two thirds to vote one way or the other?

DA Yeah, two-thirds to certify. To join a different union or start something else. So that didn't happen. And I and some other people left and by that point, Biddy Martin started her discussion of this public-private partnership programs, 01:32:00this new, this was before the 2010 so we were in 2010 then but it was before the election. She was meeting with, she met with Barrett and Walker to try to get them on board with, I think was a, not such a veiled attempt to split off Madison Campus. We would have a separate funding stream. We would have a different governance system of some kind. And and she, I mean, you were on campus when Biddy was there? She is, she was just a terrific sales person on 01:33:00this. A really a good politician.

DA I went to, she gave talks around campus about it. Selling the idea and I went to two of them and they were almost all academic staff at these things and I always sat in the front row because I wanted to watch what people's reactions were as she talked. And she always said the same thing about because of the state, personnel system, and the classification system, the UW system is really encumbered from giving people the kinds of raises, you know, recognizing what those classifications were and giving people the kind of raises that they deserve. And that's the point when I was turned around and watched people and 01:34:00you'd see a whole crowd of people individually but collectively nod their heads. "Yes. She's talking about me." And we think that we should, you know, people deserve more money especially those people who are working in an unusual capacity, or it's an exceptional outstanding capacity and everybody would be shaking their heads that certainly they were, "you know, I'm the one that she really has in mind here." You know we have ninety five percent of people thinking they're above average. And so she worked that quite a bit. All the other aspects of what might happen should we stand alone -

DA kind of faded, you know I mean people who are, not of course interested at 01:35:00all and as the equity that they'll gain once, you know we get our right to be free of this kind of substandard other campus partners. I mean it really play a lot on the flagship talk, you know and and our sense of being exceptionally, international campus of renown. We're not like Platteville, you know and we shouldn't be treated like Platteville and Oshkosh, you know sort of the exceptionalism. Let me end it there.

TR Yeah.

DA I've got to run along.

TR Yeah. So David I want to thank you for your time again.

End of Transcript

TR OK, today is, February 11, 2014. This is the third interview with David 01:36:00Ahrens again we are here in that Madison city county building and my name is Troy Reeves, with the UW Oral History program. David for sound quality purposes could you say your name and spell your last name?

DA David Ahrens, A-H-R-E-N-S.

TR Looks like it's going to pick you up just fine. I may have to project a bit make sure the questions get on the record too. As I said before I turn this on I have a couple of follow up questions. The first is, it appears you start to become active again in labor issues you know 2005 with academic staff and so I'm wondering if your interest in public health issues was ebbing enough that you felt like you wanted to become involved in other things. So basically, were you still involved-

DA Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

TR OK, so maybe you can just take me 01:37:00through however brief or not so brief you want. Your sort of occupational history on campus and between that second big grant.

DA Oh, well I was still managing a- the called the tobacco surveillance and evaluation program, the program though from 2007 to 2011 shrunk every year, both the program that we're evaluating and our work continued to shrink and shrink and shrink until it disappeared.

TR Is that because you were doing so well or?

DA No, just political. It's purely political.

TR OK, so then just to confirm you were on campus, you were still doing public health work.

DA Yeah.

TR As your paid job on campus?

DA Yeah, right, right. And actually in 2009 I 01:38:00also started to work in another epi... epidemiology work particularly on county rankings, it's called, you know, ranking counties by public health inputs and what their outcomes are. So I started of working with different counties on those projects particularly the poorer rural counties in the state. So that you know sort of broaden my work in terms of traveling and again and meeting with people who are very much outside of Madison you know, really outside of Madison.

TR Were you still, when you weren't traveling were you still stationed inside wharf?

DA Yeah.

TR So, when you would travel, what sort of things, what sort of things would you be doing these counties?

DA Oh, just meeting, you know traveling to counties and meeting with and meeting with local health department officials and coaching them in terms of different interventions- sort of low risk, low cost interventions they could do in public health. Whether that would be... things like... one thing was the food fairs. Another thing was working with health officials to get a better public health or primary health care services for migrant workers. Youth, some pregnancy 01:40:00prevention which is where it becomes very political and but it was the first time, I mean it, I started working with some counties on, which is kind of it's very popular topic now but at the time it was kind of unheard of which was the issue of bullying and how you know encourage some schools to do surveys and you had significant parts of populations who are afraid and disturbed to come to school because of bullies. And it interfered with their social academic and personally life, anyway those kinds of issues were what are some things that I 01:41:00worked on.

TR OK maybe another follow up to that.

TR Coming into these rural counties as a UW-Madison person how are you how were you treated.

DA Very wearily. Very wearily. Yeah. We were not popular. One time I called and said, "We would like to see what we could do to help you-" and the public health officer cut me off and said "If you want to help me you can drive up here right now with the pickup truck and a shovel and pick up... go on county X. Y. and pick up that dead skunk that's rotting on the road." And OK, well, 01:42:00we'll be touch.

TR You can cross that county off of your list. Wow.

DA Public health is the last thing in the world that the county is interested. The state has the lowest per capita public health expenditure of any state in United States. And counties reflect that. Some counties spent almost nothing on it. Except that they absolutely have to do to prevent disease outbreaks. And so, the idea for many of these folks, and they're all women for these women, is to put another thing on her plate? I mean you've got to be kidding, you know.

DA So I mean the disease outbreaks, they have to check the water in one hundred 01:43:00fifty tourist resort swimming pools, they have to rashes, poison water wells, water is a real issue. Migrant workers on and on and on and on, I mean the list is long. In addition to attempting to do anything at all and prevention, whether that's smoking, drinking, obesity rates, which are skyrocketing you know and so on. These are the ten poorest rural counties. So they were just really challenged. I mean anything that they- they're hard working. I mean they're all just really of their hearts in it or they hire people who are extremely dedicated 01:44:00but under-resourced. I have a cold. So, just to get back to the main thing, so I think we left off- do you have any other questions?

TR Yeah, I do. Then we can...

TR You know I have talked to some people who have been academic staff assembly members but I never really asked what an academic staff assembly meeting is like. Wonder if you could just sort or give me either specifics about a specific or just sort of some idea of how...

DA Well the first question about academic staff assembly meeting or do we have a quorum?

TR So if they were a quorum... then then what would happen after that?

DA Then there might be a 01:45:00discussion of a what always struck me as being fairly minutia of a policy. Or a study committee or participation in some work group. And that's it. I mean the provost would give a sort of management report of what's happening in school and administration. The chair of the academic staff assembly would give a presentation about the meetings that she went to and so. And then there would be presentations by an awards committee, a Policies and Procedures Committee, you 01:46:00know, sort of standing committees and that would be about it.

TR And just confirm you were on academic staff assembly before the collective bargaining.

DA Oh, sure. Right.

TR So at that point you were on UFAS, right?

DA Right.

TR Or you decided to become a part of UFAS once the collective bargaining bill passed.

DA The bargaining bill passed. OK All right. All right.

TR I think we got that. I just want to make sure we have that. So I think when we last left off we were talking a little bit about the new Badger partnership, sort of the pre-2010 election version of the new Badger partnership. So, I don't know if you want to... might give you space to comment on that. As we go along.

DA Yeah, I think it was very, very well received on campus. I think any... There was 01:47:00nothing really I mean it was so much it was so vague that it was difficult to be really be critical of it in any substantive way. You know, greater autonomy and we'll be raising a lot of money, and I mean one thing is that it correctly, it was, it was premised on the notion and I don't know whether Martin actually explicitly said this but it was premised on the notion- One premise was, the 01:48:00days of twenty-five percent in funding from the state government- that's over. And and we're on decline. It's it's it's a trend and there's only one way that this is going and that's down.

DA And it may take thirty years to get there to zero but that's the only direction that we're going and we've got to find our own way. Where we're going and part of that is let's capitalize on our brand and work it. And and we'll 01:49:00benefit and the real stars here will benefit from it and that will carry the whole campus forward. And it's you know it's very much premised on this kind of international research university notion. I mean just sort of lip service on the graduate education, but it's really that's not the partnership plan was about. It was the brand. And of course as we move further and further away from state funding as as being really critical, how we... what we do with undergraduate education becomes less important. And I mean you know I mean there's such a 01:50:00mutual dislike between the legislature and the university for many years and where the university feels, gee, you pay eighteen percent of our baggage and you want one hundred percent, fifty one percent of the say and you know where do you get off and state says, "Well, we're still a majority holder at eighteen percent. And second, we built the place." You know and this is something for people who say, "well we should you know, we had Catherine Lyle, who was president of the university in the ninety's and she was always floating this privatization thing" and I said well that's a great idea if you could come up with someone to pay the state back. Five ten billion dollars for the buildings, 01:51:00for the plant that would be great but I don't think the state's going to gift it to a private university. So, that was sort of Martin's thing and she made... she floated it with Barrett and Walker, said that they both seemed to be enthusiastic about it and really on its face, why should they be do it because it's essentially saying. Less money to UW Madison. So it'd be a big cost savings, it's a lot of headaches, you know, and so on.

DA Well the one part of the plan is a new H.R. system and so the vice chancellor, Darrell Bazzell started a work group called the HR design group. And 01:52:00it was on all the unions, and different Academic Staff, classified staff, and some personnel officers started meeting and developing a new personnel policy for the, for us. And it's going to be the big thing and we met a lot. And lots of paper, lots of discussions, met every Friday for three or four hours. You know work groups and so on, and those faculty there, too. It was a good working group. We had a lot of faculty support. The- the person who's than the chair of the faculty senate, I can't remember her last name. She was a chemistry 01:53:00professor, was very good and really developed a leadership role in the group. Not by virtue of her faculty status which tends to be a negative in a group like that. But she sort of overcame that fact and and really by being intelligent and group intelligent and understanding and being articulate she sort of became a real leader there. Well, then we had the election and that was, a shock. But then came the budget emergency bill. And before that I I, the people on the 01:54:00committee were the heads of what they call blue collar unit and the clerical unit of AFCME and I remember and I know the guy who was the head of the clerical unit when I was a graduate student, up to for thirty five years ago, and said, "You know, Gary, you you could lose dues deduction. We could all lose the dues deduction in this."

DA And his view was, it was really thinkable you know. Really. There was a, I can't remember the name of it but there's a a policy magazine that comes out of Milwaukee and it's a conservative policy magazine, I think MacGyver maybe from MacGyver Institute and so in the months leading up to the election and afterwards each month would be sort of what's the conservative agenda? I remember reading the one on UW and and it was on collective bargaining and and saying, well absolutely we have to repeal the collective bargaining for faculty 01:56:00and academic staff. I mean that goes without saying and they run into this Republican lobbyist. This is shortly after, shortly after the election and a guy I knew from years back- I am friendly with some Republicans and and he said, "Oh you're still at the UW?" Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, "You're fucked." He said, "That's the one thing, that's top of their head parade. Is they're going to repeal your ass." Oops.

TR So, then you had a pretty good idea it was coming before...?

DA Yeah, yeah. I knew that the repeal was coming. But I didn't know about the rest of that. I didn't know they were going to repeal everybody's collective bargaining. I thought they were going to repeal the academic staff, and faculty and I thought they would roll back all the arbitr- mediation of attrition provisions for local employees. And you know curve this, do that. And, I thought well that they might go the full boat. I mean I raised this with AFSCME, of that the dues deduction might go. Well the, so it happened. The problem that then happened with The Badger partnership was it just became submerged in this whole morass 01:58:00of... If it's Walker, then it's of course, completely beyond suspect I mean it's... then it has to be rejected on its face. And the real aspect of it was that UW had become this public authority. And who would appoint members of the public authority? Of course it's going to be Walker and the script that I was telling people was, he can't wait till he gets a majority of the regents. He wants to do it all now. He's just going to strip out the flagship and appoint 01:59:00his people as directors of it. And so, so that coupled with... the other thing is that the HR design was based on continuing a union management relationship. Well really the whole foundation of it than just, the bottom of the bucket fell out. We now are not dealing with that. We were dealing with potentially these very lopsided kinds of power relationships. These weren't relationships based on equity any more. These were relationships based on all real power being vested in the employer. So, that discussion the nature of that discussion really 02:00:00changed. I mean people who are of the union- who were union before... And they weren't, I mean they had some power at the table as those discussions began before, but by the end all of the demonstrations were over. Everything was sort of over. The law had been passed. They knew that in July 1 they were not going to have dues deduction and really no collective bargaining authority. The employer was not going to recognize them.

TR So, if you don't mind getting to maybe some of your specific memories about what went on. We already talked about the budget repair bill, but I am wondering 02:01:00if you recall not specifically where you were, but just sort of in general where you were when you found out...

DA Well, one of the things that happened was on the first day of the demonstrations really, well, you know this from talking to TAA's. So the TAA's were part of the committee, the H.R. committee and I remember they had the TAA's had, you know, about these postcards, "I *heart* UW" so we wanted everybody to sign these I *heart* UW postcards. They were going to give it to the governor. Oh yeah that's good. That'll work. So we'll sign them. They went up there and, what did they have? A hundred people or something go up 02:02:00on the first day and dropped off a lot of the postcards heard about it. You know Rob, what's his last name? He was like the staff person for the TAA. Broadhead [?]. And so he was on our committee- the H.R. Committee. And so I saw him the next day and he said it was great they were going back the next day and talk about demonstrating against the overall collective bargaining bill and then it all rolled from there. I mean the next day there are a few hundred people. On the third day there were, when I came, it was a few thousand people. So it was 02:03:00just... Were you were there?

TR I went one day.

DA So it's staggering you know. And so it was very heartening. But, I think I had a such a such a sense of anxiety often about what happens next? And and that it was such an extraordinary event. As weeks went on you know two hundred thousand people, whatever the numbers were. Just the biggest groups of people ever. That people were so 02:04:00caught up in this moment that it was impossible to think strategically down the line the little, other than the one thing, which people kept saying, well we'll vote you out and the recall vote. And and my view was is that we need more than one strategy here. And, it's a long time to get from x to y and other aspects of this. So you know I tried to, you know I worked on trying to keep having a 02:05:00campus based protests in terms of marching up the street and stuff like that. I really felt the campus was just rather oblivious to it. And it's very odd way I remember I wouldn't say I was downtown every day. We were coming back on a Friday and I came back to my office for a few hours and I'd been away for two days. You know downtown and everybody was like nothing was going on. And what 02:06:00was going on was, I thought so important to campus but people didn't share that. You know maybe maybe it's not true. You know, maybe I was wrong.

TR So, I think you just said it yourself, so after about day three, you started going down everyday?

DA Yeah on day three.

TR There are pictures and video about what the inside of the Capitol looked like, but as a person actually in there, is there a way you can describe what the Capitol was like during those days?

DA Oh it was, I really didn't like it. I don't like very big claustrophobic crowds and the whole drumming thing and I'm an old guy. The idea of someone drum 02:07:00choruses or whatever they're called they're just really distasteful. Yeah, I mean it was this commune our kind of feeling to it and people sleeping there and banners and boards all over on this and that. Yeah I was really surprised the administration tolerated it. And... but it sort of played out, you know. And that's what happened to the demonstrations, they just sort of played out. Waited 02:08:00it out. Do as little as possible and just wait it out.

TR Is that your... and it might be tough to, sort of what your idea was at the time, and what your idea was now but the - I guess I would call the tactic of the Democratic senators, the Wisconsin fourteen leaving state. In your mind did you feel that that was all that was doing was postponing the inevitable?

DA No, that was good. That was good. It kept the debate going. I mean, otherwise they just would have of slammed this through overnight and that, you know and then all the air would have been out of the tire and we've had nothing going on. You know, I mean, things like civil disobedience and I thought, why don't we stop our cars on the 02:09:00beltline? On the interstate? Or go forty-five miles an hour, whatever it is - you can't stop because that will cause an accident with the drive forty-two miles an hour and just, I'm old school, so I sort of, like you've got to show people that this hurts. And that this is really important and going downtown and having this exultant party for two weeks. So, it doesn't translate into like 02:10:00we're going to pay a price for this because we are going to pay a price for this. So, we've got to put ourselves on the line. I mean if we're sincere about and really believe that these are really important rights that are being taken away and people are going to be losing ten, fifteen percent of their incomes as a result of this for nothing but political purposes and smashing of the nothing but an attempt to destroy the political opposition, which is what it's really about. Then, we've got to oppose it. In something other than, you know balloons 02:11:00and drums and marching around.

TR So so you alluded to the recalls, earlier too. So how did you feel about those? I know you said that there needed to be more than just sort of more long term thought than just recall, but what about the idea of recalling not only the governor that some of the senators?

DA Oh, I was for that. Yeah, I worked hard on that. I made the calls and walked around some districts and did that.

TR Did you, I mean obviously in the end it it I guess it worked, it worked for some of the senators but it, really now we're back to a point where the Senate is controlled by Republicans.

DA Yeah I think we knew. I think a lot of people could sort of count the... where things were going before that. How things were going to turn out. They 02:12:00weren't going to... if we won the Senate it wasn't going to be for long.

TR And what about the recall the governor, did you feel...?

DA I think people were blown away by that. Emotionally really blown away by it.

TR By the fact that he wasn't he wasn't recalled.

DA That he wasn't recalled, yeah. I... shortly after the recall I managed Obama's campaign on this east side area here so I chaired the committee here.

TR So you're pointing to a map that's basically east of Lake Monona and then to the north of Lake Monona.

DA Yeah. The East side. It's not the near East Side, it's the East Side. So, it's four council districts and so the campaign in the campaign began before the recall, of course, this was twelve and and the and these are people from the Obama campaign I told them that. "There's no... you cannot get any activity from them. I mean these people sort of parachute in. And say, "Well, can you organize for the Obama campaign?" and say, "Don't you know we're recalling the governor?" "Yeah but how about Obama?" I thought, "Well... Have you read the paper?" So so they sort of caught on to 02:14:00that. The only way to get the Obama campaign organized was to get volunteers together and work on these other campaigns or at least just wait, wait it out. So, but the point is that after the recall campaign failed, after we lost we couldn't get anybody to work on the Obama campaign. It really took months. People were so disheartened. I mean, the thing is I mean we had more, we had many more signatures than we had votes. So, we didn't get all all of the people 02:15:00who signed to the polls. I mean, there was so many, you know one point one million petitions and people thought, "Well, that's in the bag." You know? Well these people signed and there's got to be some people who didn't sign but who will vote, well turned out to be the opposite people who sign, just signed because someone asked them to sign. And I saw it myself. I mean, stand in the Woodman's parking lot and people would pull in. I'd say would you like to sign the recall petition? One person would say, "Yeah" and then the people would say... and then they would say to the other people in the car, "Well you sign too." And they'd pass it around everybody would sign. That's all it was. So, it 02:16:00was quite a staggering yet...

DA Yeah, there was really... other than the T. A's and some graduate students, I didn't sense a high level of participation from the UW. I mean just looked at the crowds I mean just looked at them and... It just wasn't college students there. On two- two times I worked with groups to get people together at library mall and march up State Street and maybe a thousand people or something. Really 02:17:00not the kind of support that you were expecting. I mean we had more people coming from the West High. I mean West High had a walk out. East High had a walk out. Look up and down East Wash and you'd see fifteen hundred students from East High come down the street. So that was really kind of disappointing

TR Can I ask you because we have just ten minutes left and I think this is probably going to be our last session so there's a couple of things I want to get on the record and... So, first off is why, why retire from the UW you when you did?

DA I lost funding. We lost all our funding at the end. So about... In... not 02:18:002012, in 2011- We just, the Walker administration just zeroed us out. So, I was able to retire.

TR So... you had enough time

DA Yeah, time and age.

TR So, I mean it's easy in hindsight, it's now 2014 but if the funds would've continued 02:19:00do you think you would still be on campus?

DA I don't think I'd still be there now. I might have stayed not much longer really. I might have stayed another year.

TR It's the other thing I want to make sure we get on the record is then you know you know I'm an alderman, an alder person for the city of Madison. Why did that become something you wanted to do?

DA I really had no political aspirations oddly enough. We went through the recall campaign and the Obama campaign, and I heard that the alder for our district was not going to run again and I had asked literally three people - I mean, not just asked, but seriously 02:20:00sat down with them and said I'll run your campaign. Run. And I'll run it. And all of them said no. One guy said, "Well, if you could get me appointed and I don't have to run at all, I'll do it. But I don't want to run at all." So, I said well it really doesn't work like that. You really have to do something. That's the price of admission pal. So, I couldn't... other people who I... were- I politically respected, capable, had the time, and so on. None of them wanted to do it and then I was really kind of... I didn't think any more of it and then 02:21:00two of them said, came to my house and said, "You know we were thinking about it and said- why don't you run? And... I'd been involved in politics for a very long time and always had this notion of- I absolutely do not want to run as a candidate. I'll be happy to run other the people but don't want to run as a candidate I didn't particularly... wasn't interested in being in a governing body or anything. And thought about it and said, "Yeah. This could be worthwhile." I have not been involved very much with City politics. So, I came to that kind of a fresh view. And then I, I was very fortunate, not because I 02:22:00had run these other campaigns, I had a good group of volunteers to, who knew me, who worked with me, and who were ready, really the week after the Obama campaign ended to start meeting with me and start the whole thing over again. And then I'd get an opponent, you know, substantive opponent and won. But it took a lot of... it's a lot of work, I campaigned throughout- from December one to April whatever it was fifth, I campaigned every day except for two days. You know, 02:23:00talk to thousands of people and so on. It's quite a role. And so I've really enjoyed it. I mean after a while a started accepting my role as a candidate. It was very hard for me to say, "Vote for me." I'd spent years saying vote for somebody else but saying "Vote for me because I'm special" was a real threshold issue for me to cross. And even worse was the issue of asking people for money. That was very hard. So, but that all aside it's been very gratifying, very 02:24:00interesting work.

TR I want to give you space, again, you know we got a couple of minutes here for some final thoughts. And you know, I came to to talk to you about the 2011 protests but

DA We covered a lot of other ground.

TR We covered a lot of other ground other issues, politics and I just want to make sure if there's anything on your mind you know, either looking back or maybe looking ahead that you want to get on the record I want to give you space to do that.

DA Well, I mean just to get back to it again, the leadership of the protests, which were of course AFSCME unions and WEAC, just we're so dependent on the bag 02:25:00of the trick. The one thing that they had in their bag of tricks. They have one thing, let's go to elections. And and if it was and everything gets played from there. I mean, I think, I mean you could see that by the fact of how slow they were even to, catch on to the demonstrations themselves. You can imagine that there would be a real outpouring of this, of you know, popular rage and disgust and at this they didn't show up for a week. And then it became, you know, very 02:26:00kind of stage managed and so on. But to roll the whole thing on we're either going to do it electorally and you know that there were some people, "Well let's have a general strike. Blah, blah, blah." I felt that was nonsense, I mean that just.... You know, here's an anecdote that was really shook me up. About, this was well after it was over, I was having lunch with the history professor, a labor history professor, that's currently at the UW and... I forget his name. 02:27:00He's the Dean of the Business School came over, and he's French, he's a French import and so he came over and he had just... he was in France during the height of the demonstrations and and he said, "You know, you guys... I talk to my labor friends and we watched your demonstrations, I watched the demonstration with some of my labor friends," and guy, believe me is no labor guy. I mean he is the Dean of the Business School, and he said, "I don't get it. They say why do they just go round and round and round and that's all they do?" And so the 02:28:00notion was why didn't they I mean, what were the unions so depleted of of solidarity and force that they couldn't shut down Madison- They shut down Madison schools for two days. But why weren't their strikes all In every school district? Or most of them? Or two days in Green Bay, or the the highway department in Racine County and then a Courthouse in Sheboygan? We couldn't, you know unable to do, not to go out on strike permanently, that's the I mean they do this in many countries, which is It's the rolling strike and it hurts the 02:29:00employees the least because you're only out for a day. And the real margin of it is that it doesn't really hurt people as much as it incredibly inconvenient, causes a lot of inconvenience for people. So it's not really a punch in the jaw or something where, gee, your kids are out of school for two weeks and absolutely disrupt your life you know? This is- gee, they're out of school for two days and somebody is going to stay home or do something for two days. So, but it really gets people noticing what, what's the problem here.

DA Why are these people doing it and it causes discussion and kind of forces the hand, you know, well, government what are you going to do about it? Maybe this thing is so 02:30:00bad that you shouldn't have done it. And that's the thing that Walker was running against, really I mean, that was the jibe against him was he really wasn't very nice. I mean, for sort of the middling ground people. It was, people shouldn't behave like that. We should have discussions with people. Both sides to play fair and reach some middle ground. Some of the union stuff should have been rolled back. We should have paid something on the retirement, we should have paid something on the health insurance, but, no unions? That seems extreme. And, so, but the unions really never forced the issue. They only want to play within a very, very narrow comfort zone where they you know gotten good at. Hire 02:31:00consultants. You raise a few million dollars, you can have your- you know sort of core group of activists and you know it's a core group of five percent or ten percent of members who really respond to calls for political activity. But the thing of, can we really get people to to get into the base here? And can we get the Kenosha highway workers to walk out for two days. That would have been, would have been a challenge but I think it would have made a whole different outcome. A whole different outcome. And then even to that same time raise the 02:32:00stakes a little more. You know? Have civil disobedience, just inconvenience people. Just get to, you know, and you inconvenience people you get some people pissed off for sure. But, but, a lot of people who are in the margins who are in the center I should say will scratch their heads and say, "Why are they that angry about this?" This must be a really bad thing. So that was my anxiety during it. I felt very jubilant and it was all very dreamlike during it but I also felt like only playing one card is, is a dangerous game to play. And I'm 02:33:00sure there are a lot of the unions felt we really got no other cards. Really can't do it, but I think they underestimated the members. I think that with some coaching and some organizing, they could have done it. It just would have been risky and legal fees and blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, It would have been risky. But I mean the risk of not doing was obviously huge because they lost.

TR Well, David, we've passed our allotted time. So I want to thank you for all the time you've given me. This concludes the oral history with David Ahrens. 02:34:00Thank you very much.

DA Thank you Troy.

End of Transcript