WPR’s Labor Day series features Kersten

Wisconsin Public Radio on Friday (Sept. 2) aired a Labor Day series story on the fallout from Gov. Scott Walker’s contentious move to curb collective bargaining in Wisconsin — a move some see as reenergizing labor unions statewide. Prof. Andrew Kersten (Democracy and Justice Studies) offered a historical perspective on progressivism and the labor movement in Wisconsin, saying the initial intent of labor laws and collective bargaining was to avoid mass protests of the type seen in Madison earlier this year. Click here.

Kersten is also scheduled to speak at a panel presentation at 7 p.m. Wednesday (Sept. 7) at the UW-Marathon college campus in Wausau, at a forum observing the 100th anniversary of workers compensation in Wisconsin, which was a first-in-the-nation milestone. (Wausau Insurance wrote the first policy, in September 1911.) For more on the event, “Lessons Learned from a Century of Workers’ Compensation,” click here.