Labor Day 2009

Here’s yet another Labor Day and I continue to wonder about whatever happened to the militant Labor Movement I was part of for the first third of my working life? I just received an article from Bruce McIver out in Missoula, Montana about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (who I had met on several occasions) and the Wobblies free speech fight. Missoula had refused them the right to speak on a street corner. What did the Wobblies do? They called all their followers in the Northwest to come to Missoula to pack the jails. Did it work? You betcha. With the jails overflowing the local government rescinded the ordinance and free speech was returned to Missoula. That’s the tradition of the American Labor Movement that made me proud to be part of it. So what happened to that tradition?

Labor won huge victories during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. The the entire landscape of America’s Industrial Heartland was changed by the passage of the Wagner Act that made it possible to organize and win collective bargaining rights via an election. During this period we saw the emergence of the Steel, Auto, Rubber, Electrical, Textile, and Chemical Workers’ unions. With an overall membership of millions of unionized workers, they became a formidable force in the life of the country and particularly its politics; for example, the election of FDR to four successive terms. At the end of WWII big business decided it was time to put the unions back in a box. Giant corporations thought the unions had gained far to much power during the thirties and forties and they were determined to dramatically change that.

The end of WWII saw one of the greatest strike waves in history. Many of the strikes were Wild Cats that were never approved by the union leadership. Workers resented the huge profiteering that took place during the war, while their wages were frozen. The post WWII strike wave was an attempt to correct that injustice. As President of the Machinists Union in NY State, I was extremely busy running from one major strike situation to another. In a number of instances companies simply refused to recognize existing contracts. The Yale & Towne Lock Company in Stanford CT. was the leader in that struggle.

In 1948 Senator Taft and Congressmen Hartley introduced a bill in Congress called the Taft Hartley Act. At the urging of my members I wrote a pamphlet called “THIS IS AIMED AT YOU -- AN EXPOSE OF THE TAFT HARTLEY PLOT TO BUST THE UNIONS AND HI-JACK THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.” A most critical part of the law was to put the Labor Movement under the supervision of the Government. This was best exemplified by the need of the union leadership to sign an affidavit that they were not communists, nor belonged to any organization on the Attorney Generals Subversive List. John L. Lewis, a dramatic leader of the Mine Workers Union, declared he thought it an insult for him to have to swear his loyalty to the government in order to lead his union. He refused to sign the affidavit; and that is exactly what the rest of the union leadership should have done. It would have made the Taft Hartly Law ineffective.

With the rising tension between the US and the Soviet Union, the union leaders seemed to fall all over each other in their haste to sign up to prove their patriotism. What they proved was the beginning of the end of a militant labor movement. Since that time we have literally seen the withering away of any militancy that once defined the American Labor Movement. It reached its peak when Ronald Reagan fired the striking aircraft controllers and the Labor Movement just snored through the whole event.

It was not by accident that during this period of decline the number of racketeering cases increased dramatically. Why you might ask? Once the “true believers” started to leave the unions, the business trade unionists took over. And who are they? These are people who see the union as a dues collection organization that resulted in major unions falling under the control of the Mafia. They add the additional feature of forcing employers to make payoffs if they want any kind of industrial piece. Are you still wondering why workers have become disillusioned and disgusted with the union leadership?

Is this just a hopeless scenario or is there hope for change? I believe that there are the beginnings of a new emerging voice of labor in the SEIU and a number of other emerging unions. Yes, they seem to be primarily in the white collar world, but one can argue that’s where the future of the job market is. Still it does make me sad to live through another Labor Day and the need to reflect on what happened to a once powerful voice of the downtrodden and oppressed.

P.S. I was one of those “true believers.” It took the Machinist Union leaders three years to get rid of me. They expelled me three times; probably a Guiness record.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.