History of the American Labor Movement
Kids don't learn this in school anymore but the American labor movement
is responsible for every law that protects workers, every law that
supports workers, every law that gives workers a shot at the American
dream.
They did it through grass roots organizing and national organizing, they
did it with marches and strikes, they did it by lobbying congress
insistently, they did it by putting their money where their mouths were
and sacrificing yesterday for a better today. Union locals are the best
source of grass roots organizing for liberal causes in the country, even
now.
But there's fewer people in the labor movement now and fewer people to
sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. That's where you young folks
come in.
In the United States, the Chambers of Commerce and the School Board members
are often the same people. No surprise that labor has to reinvent the
wheel when it comes to organizing every new generation. Those folks
decide what's taught and what books are used.
Is the labor movement perfect? No, no more than any other aspect of
human endeavor. They've had their share of crooks and losers, just as
every institution from the White House to the Catholic Church have had.
But in the case of the labor movement, that's all you hear about...
The sitcoms abound with jokes about "union rules". The movies are full
of references to the mafia's corruption of unions as if they hadn't
tried to any other institution. Movies like Norma Rae and Matewan are
so few and far between that I could practically name them and I'm not a
real movie buff. What labor movie is really famous? "On the
Waterfront", McCarthy committee squealer Elia Kazan's opus. It goes on
and on. And the only union man on TV that I can recall is Archie Bunker.
The baby boomer generation remembers that George Meany endorsed Nixon
and that the union hardhats opposed the student demonstrators during
Viet Nam. But most of us have never been told, unless we sought out the
information, that everything from Social Security to minimum wage
increases, from Medicare to unemployment insurance, from Occupational
Health and Safety to worker's compensation, from food stamps to the coal
miners' black lung benefits were actively and insistently supported by
labor unions with enough membership and money to make a difference. Or
that labor leaders have gone to jail opposing wars throughout our history.
It's no surprise the Republicans hate the labor PAC's. Everybody knows
PACS should be for corporations, not workers. But it's only through
unions and their PACs that workers get some influence to change laws in
workers' favor.
American law does not recognize workers in any other context. If you
work in a non-unionized environment and your boss wanted to lower your
pay, you and every other worker in the shop could try to make him
negotiate. But unless you're organized in a union recognized by the
National Labor Relations Board, you and your co-workers might as well be
whistling Dixie. The restrictions placed on workers are greater than
the freedoms allowed them, but at least there is still the freedom to
join a labor union. In every right wing dictatorship, that freedom is
one of the first to be abridged if not outlawed entirely.
In America workers can be fired at will. In Europe, the unions have put
laws in place that make the employer prove that the firing was
justified. In America, workers get benefits and vacations and health
insurance and severance pay at the employer's discretion. In Europe,
where unions are still strong, where the workers still know their own
history, those are not just the benefits from a union contract, they're
a matter of law for all the workers. That sort of thing scares the
pants off the corporations. They'll use their last stock share to
prevent that kind of fairness in our country.
So fasten your seatbelts, boys, and take a ride through a little labor
history...
We subscribe to the George Meany archives magazine, Labor's
Heritage. It's a scholarly journal which tells labor's history warts
and all, with everything footnoted within an inch of overdone.
Here are some links you may want to check out for more information:
http://www.georgemeany.org/archives/home.html
http://www.boondocksnet.com/labor/history/labor_links.html |