Month: April 2024

It’s having a deep impact on the labor force. According to a 2023 report from High Roads Strategy Center, part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin’s women labor force participation dropped below 60% for the first time since the late 1980s.

“Our relative (workforce) advantage shrank quite substantially over the last two years,” said Laura Dresser, associate director of High Roads Strategy Center. “We know that child care has been in crisis, even before the pandemic. Our structures for taking care of kids tend to weigh heavily on women and on women’s work.”

We welcome Laura Dresser, Associate Director, of the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Peter Rickman, president, Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Union to discuss the finding and key policy and organizing implications of a new High Road Center report, “From Community Benefits, to Collective Bargaining, and Back.”

Dresser is the associate director of the High Road Strategy Center, a think-tank that in-part looks at employment conditions in Wisconsin. But in the case of the Deer District, developers created a community benefits agreement ensuring certain rights for its future employees. That led to the creation of MASH — the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization, a labor union that represents these workers. A recent report from High Road Strategy Center details the benefits this union and agreement it has brought to its workers.