This 2200 word article was published in two parts in the Alamogordo Daily News September 1 and 2, 2005

 

A Very Brief History of Organized Labor in America

 

Labor Day is a special holiday, a tribute to the contribution workers

have made to the strength and prosperity of our country. It is

celebrated in other countries and on other dates, but the first Labor

Day, complete with a parade of more than 20,000 workers and picnics

afterward, took place in New York City on Tuesday September 5, 1882.

The idea spread rapidly, and in 1894 Congress made it a national

holiday.

 

Samuel Gompers, son of a Jewish cigar maker who emigrated from England

in 1863, said "All other holidays are in a more or less degree

connected with conflicts and battles" and Labor Day is dedicated to the

struggles of US labor. Gompers was born in 1850, and like many

children then he started working 12-hour days alongside his father at

the age of 10. At the age of 29 he became an active trade unionist,

and in 1886 he was elected the first president of the American

Federation of Labor (AFL).

 

The struggle of American workers for recognition and fair treatment

started in America long before Gompers was born. The first recorded

strike took place in 1677 in New York City. The Boston Tea Party was

actually organized by carpenters disguised as Mohawk Indians, who

wanted freedom from British oppression. But the "pursuit of happiness"

did not end with the formation of the new nation.

 

Early strikers were organized around one craft and one city. In

Philadelphia, printers staged a walkout in 1786 for a $6 a week minimum

wage, and in 1791 carpenters struck, unsuccessfully, for a 10 hour work

day. New York workers staged several strikes.

 

However, both the factory owners and the young government were hostile

to the cause of the workers. When the Philadelphia Cordwainers

(shoemakers and leather-workers) struck for higher wages in 1806, they

were arrested and convicted of "criminal conspiracy." This decision

was used as a precedent by both the federal and state governments for

the next one hundred-plus years for violently breaking up strikes and

demonstrations.

 

The prevailing opinion was that a worker's labor was a "commodity"

that they had sold to their employers, just like a sack of potatoes.

This applied to children too. In 1830 nearly a third of the workforce

in New England was children under the age of 16. The work week for

children in the silk mills of Paterson, New Jersey was 66 hours--

eleven hours a day, six days a week. Profit was all-important, and

"family values" were not an issue.

 

One of the many brave women who rallied the workers was Mary Harris

Jones, better know as Mother Jones, born in Ireland sometime in the

1830s. Her father was himself a political activist who fled Ireland

with his family in 1838. Mary grew up to be a schoolteacher, and

settled in Memphis Tennessee where she married George Jones, spending

six happy years with him and raising four children, until the tragedy

of a yellow fever epidemic wiped out her entire family in 1867. In her

autobiography she writes, "I sat alone through nights of grief. No one

came to me. No one could. Other homes were as stricken as was mine."

 

 

She then moved to Chicago and worked as a seamstress. "We worked for

the aristocrats of Chicago, and I had ample opportunity to observe the

luxury and extravagance of their lives. Often while sewing for the

lords and barons who lived in magnificence on the Lake Shore Drive, I

would look out of the plate glass windows and see the poor, shivering

wretches, jobless and hungry, walking along the frozen lake front. The

contrast of their condition with that of the tropical comfort of the

people for whom I sewed was painful to me. My employers seemed neither

to notice nor to care."

 

Tragedy struck again when the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed her

home and her business. She then devoted the rest of her life to

organizing unions, focusing on helping miners across the nation in

their fight for improved working conditions and decent wages, and on

putting an end to child labor. 665 words

 

Between 1870 and 1915, while Mother Jones made speeches, recruited

unionists and organized soup kitchens to feed hungry families during

strikes, the violence against strikers and workers increased. In 1874

a detachment of mounted policemen charged into a crowd of unemployed,

unarmed demonstrators in New York's Tompkins Square Park, beating men,

women and children with clubs, injuring hundreds. The Commissioner of

Police said "it was the most glorious sight I ever saw." In 1877

federal troops killed 30 Chicago workers who were part of a nationwide

strike.

 

In 1886, again in Chicago, police killed four union members who were

part of a demonstration for an eight-hour day that turned into a fight

between union and non-union workers. Three days later, on May 4, at a

much smaller demonstration, someone threw a bomb that killed seven

policeman. Although there was no evidence against them, eight

anarchists who had advocated armed struggle were arrested, convicted,

and sentenced to death-- for their words, not their deeds. The city

was outraged by this miscarriage of justice. Three of the men were

hanged on November 11, 1887, and 250,000 people lined the streets for

the funeral procession of their leader, Albert Parsons.

 

More killings-- another fifteen people killed in Wisconsin on May 5,

1886 when state militia fired on a crowd chanting for an eight-hour

work day. The Milwaukee Journal wrote that the governor was to be

commended for his "quick action." Thirty-five unarmed black sugar

workers shot to death by the Louisiana militia in 1887, thirty-four

American Railway Union members killed by federal troops in Chicago in

1894, nineteen unarmed striking mineworkers killed by a sheriff's posse

in Pennsylvania in 1897, the machine gunning and burning of a union

tent during the 1914 strike at Colorado's Ludlow Mine Field that killed

19 people, 12 of them children ... the list of killings goes on.

 

Now the strikers did fight back in some cases, such as the striking

miners in Coeur D' Alene, Idaho, who dynamited the Frisco Mill in 1892.

When the Pullman Palace Car Company of Chicago drastically reduced

wages in 1893, rioters caused much property damage. But no striker or

rioter fired on unarmed men, women and children.

 

The tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in 1911 increased

the general public's awareness of the prison-like working conditions

endured by many American workers. One hundred forty-seven women were

burned to death or died when they leaped from the top three floors of

the ten-story building. The stairway exits were locked. This time the

government did take action: the company owners were charged with

manslaughter, but the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. In a

civil suit they paid an average of $75 per life lost.

 

After this tragic fire, Frances Perkins headed the New York factory

inspection committee and collected enough evidence of widespread

hazardous working conditions that New York legislators finally passed

several much-needed reforms in industrial safety and fire prevention.

She later became President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Secretary of

Labor (the first woman cabinet member in US history).

 

There were some signs of enlightenment among employers, such as Ford

Motor company, which raised its basic wage from $2.40 for a nine-hour

day to $5 for an eight-hour day in 1914, but the major breakthrough

came in 1915, when Congress passed the Clayton Act. Section 6 of this

act is headed: "Antitrust laws not applicable to labor organizations"

and states that

 

The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.

Nothing contained in the antitrust laws shall be construed to forbid

the existence and operation of labor, agricultural, or horticultural

organizations, instituted for the purposes of mutual help, and not

having capital stock or conducted for profit, or to forbid or restrain

individual members of such organizations from lawfully carrying out the

legitimate objects thereof; nor shall such organizations, or the

members thereof, be held or construed to be illegal combinations or

conspiracies in restraint of trade, under the antitrust laws.

 

By the time of the Clayton Act legalizing labor organization, Mary

Harris ("Mother") Jones was about 80 years old and less able to work

for her cherished dream of banning child labor. She did publish her

autobiography in 1925 [online at

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/mj/bl_mj01.htm].

 

In Chapter 14 she writes about the conditions in the mills: "A father

of two little girls worked a loom next to the one assigned to me. 'How

old are the little girls?' I asked him. 'One is six years and ten

days,' he said, pointing to a little girl, stoop shouldered and thin

chested who was threading warp, 'and that one,' he pointed to a pair of

thin legs like twigs, sticking out from under a rack of spindles, 'that

one is seven and three months.' 'How long do they work?'

'From six in the evening till six come morning.' 'How much do they

get?'

'Ten cents a night.' 'And you?' 'I get forty.' .... I did not stay

long in one place. As soon as one showed interest in or sympathy for

the children, she was suspected, and laid off. Then, too, the jobs went

to grown-ups that could bring children." [plus 849 words]

 

In 1935 another major improvement was made in worker protection when

the Wagner Act was passed, but it was not until 1938 that the horror

of child labor ended in the United States, at least officially. The

Fair Labor Standards Act, a product of Roosevelt's New Deal and one of

the most humane laws ever passed, halted this injustice against

America's young. This law also established the 40-hour work week.

 

Mary Harris Jones did not live to see this realization of her cherished

dream-- she died in 1930. After a funeral attended by over 20,000

people, she was buried in the United Mine Workers Union Cemetery in

Mount Olive, Illinois.

 

The violence against strikers and union organizers did not completely

stop after the passage of the Clayton Act. Lynchings of union

organizers were common, and strikers were still being killed by

vigilantes, police, and occasionally the National Guard or army troops.

On the other hand, one contractor was killed by labor racketeers in

1930.

 

In 1942, after the United States entered World War II, the AFL pledged

that there would be no strikes in defense-related factories for the

duration of the war. This act of patriotism was given a slap in the

face in 1947 when the Taft-Hartley Act was passed. It is fair enough

that "coercion of an employer in his choice of persons to represent him

in discussions with unions" should be banned. There were several less

benign clauses, however. Supervisory employees and independent

contractors were excluded from the protection of the Wagner Act.

Secondary boycotts of unions in sympathy with other strikers were

banned.

 

The worst part of the Taft-Hartley Act is Section 14b: "Nothing in

this Act shall be construed as authorizing the execution or application

of agreements requiring membership in a labor organization as a

condition of employment in any State or Territory in which such

execution or application is prohibited by State or Territorial law."

This legalese means that individual states can pass "Right to Work (for

less)" laws. Labor union officials charge that their union security

and solidarity is jeopardized when individual workers can enjoy the

higher wages and improved benefits negotiated by their fellow union

workers but opt out of any union membership or financial

responsibilities. The tend has been an increase in businesses where

there is no union representation for workers.

 

New Mexico is not a "right-to-work-for-less" state. Many southern and

midwestern states are. North Carolina is the least unionized state,

with only 3.8% of the workforce represented by unions. Small wonder

that in 1991 a fire in the Imperial Foods chicken processing plant in

the village of Hamlet, NC killed 25 workers, most of them single

mothers, and injured another 54. The reason for the deaths, as in the

Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, was blocked exits-- doors chained

shut "to prevent theft." In this case, the owner negotiated a guilty

plea of manslaughter for the 25 deaths and served four years in prison

(less than two months per death) and the company paid an $800,000 fine.

 

 

The Federal Emergency Management team that investigated the fire

learned that there had not been one inspection of the factory by OSHA

in its eleven years of operation. Perhaps this was because of

President Ronald Reagan's appointment of an OSHA director who

discouraged aggressive enforcement of industry standards and instead

encouraged a "volunteerism" approach. Perhaps it was because of the

budget cut in FY 1982 that led to a 22% reduction in the number of OSHA

inspectors.

 

State investigators called the Imperial Foods Chicken Plant a "death

trap." Eighty safety law violations were found, including no

sprinklers, no fire alarm or fire safety plan. This would not have

happened in a union shop.

 

The Taft-Hartley law made it possible for American companies to move to

non-union states where they can cut workers' wages and benefits.

NAFTA and CAFTA allow them to move their plants to other countries

where they can profit from even lower standards for workers' wages and

safety in the workplace.

 

Union membership has declined in the last twenty years, and in 2004

unions represented only 12.5% of the American workforce (15.5 million

members). For 2004 the average union member's weekly salary was $781.

For non-union workers it was $612.

 

In comparison, the average CEO weekly salary in 2004 was $189,000,

representing a pay increase of 12% between 2003 and 2004. The average

worker's salary increased by only 2.2% (2.7% for union workers) in that

year.

 

In these uncertain times, when it seems like the American working

family is under attack, let us listen again to the words of Mother

Jones: "In spite of oppressors, in spite of false leaders, the cause

of the workers continues onward. Slowly his hours are shortened, slowly

his standards of living rise to include some of the good and beautiful

things in life. Slowly, those who create the wealth of the world are

permitted to share it. The future is in labor's strong, rough hands."