Lessons for Labor from the Bad-Old-Days

     Labor unions have been in steady decline in the United States for decades now. They currently represent only about seven percent of private sector workers, where once (the late 1950s) that rate was near thirty percent. There are numerous reasons for this decline; changes in technology have meant that the same work can be done by fewer workers and that some jobs have simply ceased to exist. Capital, of course, has never let up in its fight to weaken and eliminate unions, with their potential ability to cut into its profits and lessen its freedom to determine working conditions and terms of employment. Another factor in labor's decline is its own slide into complacency and despair in what has seemed for some time an inevitable result of the world-wide shift to more precarious conditions for the working class. Recent attacks on organized labor from the American political class seem aimed at completely eviscerating the legal basis on which labor had gained power and stability in the twentieth century. Coming on the heels of decades of relentless anti-union and pro-business propaganda and the elimination and off-shoring of traditionally union jobs, these attempts to ban collective bargaining in the public sector with legislation like Wisconsin Governor Walker's “Budget Repair Bill” and the private sector through “right to work” laws currently being proposed in Ohio, Indiana and New Hampshire seem to have the potential if successful to deal an effective death blow to organized labor.

      What these laws seek to reverse in essence is a law passed during the height of the Great Depression called the Wagner Act. The Wagner Act transformed unions in American Society from organizations with no legal right to do what they were created to do, to legally sanctioned institutions meant to be nearly equal partners with capital in determining working conditions, pay and benefits. The Wagner Act guaranteed that when the majority of workers in a particular work place voted in favor of union representation that an election must be held to ratify the union of the employees' choice as the sole agent to bargain collectively on their behalf. It also barred intimidation of union activists and supporters by agents of the company and made it illegal for companies to hire “replacement workers” or scabs during a strike. It established the National Labor Relations board to act as arbiter between union workers and their employers when an impasse such as a strike or lockout was reached. It also established the legality of the “closed shop” where all workers in a given workplace which has chosen union representation are automatically members of the union, which can deduct dues automatically from their pay. It is important to understand how these changes fundamentally altered the role of unions; they greatly strengthened them as actors in the economy and society. Surprisingly, though I would argue that they eventually created a situation where the aforementioned complacency and despair were able to begin to corrode organized labor's more essential source of strength, the solidarity and militancy of their rank-and-file membership.

      In the century before the great depression, the industrial revolution necessitated that large numbers of the population move from agriculture or craft industry (home based manufacturing requiring great skill on the part of the craftsmen) to wage labor in factories and mills creating goods through mechanized assembly-line methods. Many who took these jobs soon became profoundly disenchanted with the dull nature of the work and the long hours and low pay in dangerous and unpleasant conditions. A natural outgrowth of this dissatisfaction was the formations of protean labor organizations, which tried through work-stoppages and other forms of protest and petition to secure shorter hours and better pay. Much of American society was hostile to these organizations from the outset. Business owners, confident that unions had no legal standing appealed to the judiciary to force them to relent in their efforts. In the courts employers tended to bring conspiracy charges against unions and they generally won. An early example of this tactic was a case brought against an association of shoe-makers in Philadelphia in the 1820s. The reasoning went that it was all well and good for an individual shoemaker to demand better pay, but when he joined with his compatriots to make the same demand he (and all of those involved) became party to a conspiracy with the potential to harm society as a whole by forcing employers to act contrary to the interests they had in their property.

      Subsequent court cases such as Commonwealth V. Hunt, lessened the strength of the conspiracy case against unions, establishing that a prosecutor must prove actions violating a particular law in order to establish the existence of a conspiracy. With conspiracy less likely to hold up in court, the new tool for putting a stop to labor activism was the injunction. An injunction allows a judge to bar a person or group of people from taking a particular action. An common injunction in a labor dispute might be barring striking workers from blocking the road that managers and replacement workers might use to gain access to a workplace. Also, though unions were no longer considered conspiracies, to bar non-union workers from a particular workplace was seen as a violation of their civil rights. Thus, collective bargaining was impossible as long as an employer was willing to use strike-breakers and fire those participating in a strike. Unsurprisingly, they nearly always were.

      Under these conditions, which persisted with little change until the passage of the Wagner Act, labor faced an uphill battle in winning any concessions from capital. The attempts currently being made by conservative politicians to enact “right-to-work” laws and limit or eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees have the potential to effectively turn the clock back to these pre-Wagner Act Days. I would argue that it is of the utmost importance to resist these attempts. However, with the unresponsive nature of America's government at the present moment, low levels of union membership in the private sector, and seemingly unprecedented hostility to organized labor in much of the population, it may be nearly impossible to prevent the success of much of this anti-union legislation.

      At this grim moment for labor it has become necessary to revive the tactics that allowed labor to maintain an upward momentum for decades, in spite of the significant obstacles it faced. Some of the tactics that brought labor success in its early days began to fade after the passage of the Wagner Act. With government backing for collective bargaining and procedures in place to arbitrate intractable disputes that were accepted by both labor and capital as generally fair and acceptable, a certain routine took hold in labor relations. With closed shops in effect union officials tended to become distant and unresponsive to their membership. Strikes became rarer and rarer for various reasons, and labor saw less of an incentive for organizing the unorganized and gaining the support of the general public. Though the Wagner Act was a crucial victory for labor it also brought about these unintended negative consequences. This general malaise in labors ranks coupled with conservative control of the government and a less stable workforce combined to bring labor to the sad state it finds itself in today.

      Before the Wagner Act dues weren't automatically collected from every employee at a workplace, they were voluntarily paid by workers who understood that the union was attempting to protect them from abuse at the hands of the boss and to bind them together in solidarity. This made the financial position of unions more precarious, but it made for union officials who were responsive to the needs of the rank-and-file. After the United Mine Workers of America negotiated a 10% pay increase for coal miners in Pennsylvania in 1901, but failed to get the coal companies to recognize the union, the companies began to increase the size of carts which the miners were paid a per-ton amount for filling. (A “miner's ton” at this time was generally close to 3,000 lbs, and a miner was paid sixty cents for each “ton” brought to the surface). The union officials has agreed not to make any more demands for a year, but the membership, incensed at the dishonesty of the companies, took it upon themselves to call strikes at individual mines without official union backing. Many simultaneously stopped paying their dues to the union. A year later the union called an industry-wide strike. In the period between the union's threat of a strike and its outset, dues began pouring back in. When the strike went into effect at least 140,000 people stopped work. The immensity of this is more impressive when you consider that it was perfectly legal for the companies to escort anyone who wanted to continue working to the mine surrounded by national guardsmen armed with machine guns. If the strike wasn't successful, many who were active could expect to find themselves on a black-list that would prevent them from finding work anywhere in the region. This type of solidarity seems to have faded in organized labor today, but without the protections enjoyed by unions in the past it may soon become absolutely necessary in opposing further attacks by capital.

      Another important way that unions found success in a hostile environment was by winning public support for their cause. It may have been legal for employers to use strong arm tactics to prevent unionization and break strikes, but when it became too obvious that they were doing so it could hurt their business when potential customers felt that labor's demands were reasonable and that companies were being abusive in resisting them. The Industrial Workers of the World, an early industrial union, was constantly attacked in the press, but were successful in winning the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1911 because the public was horrified at the striker's treatment by police (who shot and killed a young, unarmed female striker), and the suffering of the strikers' children (most of whom would have worked in the mills with their parents). Underlying this public support was a rising class consciousness in the population as a whole that has largely faded today. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries most who weren't actually union members began to feel that they had more in common with the workers than the bosses. They generally felt that the demands of workers were entirely reasonable given the immense wealth and power of the industrial capitalists of the day. Conversely, where many unions today seem content to remain static, representing workers in whatever industry they've gained a foothold, the earlier industrial unions saw it as their goal to organize as many workers as possible. They were well aware that this could only increase their power in bargaining for better conditions and pay.

      At this crucial moment for the labor movement, all who are sympathetic to labor's cause and whose personal quality of life will be affected by its success or failure should re-dedicate themselves to the core principles that have enabled it to profoundly improve the lives of the vast majority of Americans; solidarity with your co-workers and with all working people, the willingness to fight back with direct action when pushed to make concessions (whether by the employer or a demoralized union hierarchy), and a sense of pride in your work and in organizing to stand up for the dignity of that work, and in the end the dignity of all who work for a living.