Work and Unions in Sheboygan in the Twentieth Century

Sheboygan and its surrounding areas have had a rich history of work and workplace organizing.  Over the course of the twentieth century, workers in the area were at the center of some of the nation’s most prominent economic and political conflicts.  Using the case study of United Auto Workers Local 833 and the Kohler plant in this talk, labor historian Jon Shelton will chronicle the trajectory of labor politics in the United States over the course of the 1900s. 

Jon Shelton is associate professor and chair of democracy and justice studies at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.  He is the author of Teacher Strike! Public Education and the Making of a New American Political Order and The Rise and Fall of the Human Capital Myth. Shelton has also published work in the Washington Post, Dissent, Jacobin, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and other publications.  He sits on the Board of Directors for the Labor and Working-Class History Association and the Wisconsin Labor History Society and is Vice-President for Higher Education of the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin.

Masks are required at all library-sponsored programs as well as inside the Sheboygan County History Museum, regardless of vaccination status.

This program is is co-sponsored by Mead Public Library and the Sheboygan County History Society as part of The Way We Worked a Smithsonian Traveling Exhibit, on display at the Sheboygan County History Museum July 17-October 9, 2021.

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