Organized Labor in
American History,
1877-Present
The Great Upheaval
The great railroad strike of 1877 started on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in response to the
cutting of wages for the second time in a year by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Striking workers
would not allow any of the stock to roll until this second wage cut was revoked. The governor sent
in state militia units to restore train service, but the soldiers refused to use force against the strikers
and the governor called for federal troops. Meanwhile, the strike spread to Baltimore, causing
violent street battles between the striking workers and the Maryland militia. When the outnumbered
federal troops fired on an attacking crowd, they killed 11 and wounded 40.
An excellent brief source can be found at the Martinsburg Roundhouse Center website,
http://www.martinsburgroundhouse.com/history.html
•English: A chart of real US GNP per capita from 1869 to 1918 (covering the period of the Long Depression
and the Gilded Age). Annotations are major financial panics during the period (e.g., Panic of 1893, Panic of
1907). Shaded areas are recessions as determined by the NBER. Data on real GNP comes from The American
Business Cycle by Robert Gordon (see here). Population data taken from United States census estimates.
Figures were adjusted from 1972 dollars to 2009 dollars using CPI estimates from the Federal Reserve. Chart
was generated using Google Charts.Date24 July 2010)
Knights of Labor
The First Great Labor Union
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Formed in 1869
Emphasized labor and industrial reform, political action, eight hour day, child
labor legislation.
Knights, when successful, were embedded within communities; drew support
from a sympathetic public.
Curious mixture of inclusive and exclusive—often supported racial and gender
integration (see Louisiana’s Thibodaux massacre) but vigorously opposed
immigrant labor.
Ironically, Knights opposed strikes but grew largely as a result of reluctant
participation in successful strikes (against Union Pacific in 1884 and Wabash
Railroad in 1885)
Grew slowly, but as is often the case, saw its membership jump dramatically in
1885-1886, from 100,000 to more than 700,000. Followed a successful railroad
strike. Knights were especially successful in the South among cotton mill
workers and farm workers. See Matthew Hild, Greenbackers, Knights of Labor,
and Populists: Farmer-Labor Insurgency in the Late Nineteenth Century South
(Univ. of Georgia Press, 2007).
Membership began to decline after Haymarket (though not immediately). Albert
Parsons, one of the Haymarket martyrs, was a Knights of Labor member. The
organization had no involvement in the activities in Chicago that had led up to
the Haymarket riot, but an unsympathetic press and the business community
used Haymarket as a club against all labor organizations.
Thibodaux Massacre, 1887
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“Sporadic strikes… plagued Louisiana’s sugar planters” for two decades after the Civil War.
1887: Knights of Labor managed to organize about 9,000 black sugar cane workers and 1,000 white
workers.
Several thousand sugar cane cutters struck on Nov. 1, 1887, protesting wage payments made in scrip, low
wages, prices in plantation stores.
LA Governor John McEnery sent in the militia; evicted striking workers who sought refuge in the
overcrowded African-American section of Thibodaux. Soldiers departed, leaving a local committee in
charge of maintaining order.
“Judge Taylor Beattie, of Orange Grove Plantation, led the Peace and Order Committee in Thibodaux. The
committee decreed that blacks within the city limits would need to show a pass to enter or leave. On the
morning of November 22, armed members of the committee closed the entrances to the city, leading some
of the black strikers to believe that they were endangered. After two of the white guards were fired upon,
an explosion of racial violence ensued. During the chaotic hours of the massacre, black strikers and their
families were rounded up by bands of local vigilantes and shot on sight.” Ellen Baker Bell, "Thibodaux
Massacre," KnowLA Encyclopedia of Louisiana, http://www.www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=740
(accessed January 4, 2012)
“The violence associated with the Knights’ strikes eroded black support for the Noble and Holy Order.”
Paul Moreno, Black Americans and Organized Labor (LSU Press 2006), p. 54. In the wake of Haymarket
and the increasing racial violence that characterized the South, organization seemed a risky proposition.
At least 35 African-American workers and family members were killed. Second only to Ludlow Massacre
in terms of lives lost during a strike; real number of deaths could be higher.
The strike was recently memorialized in the film The Man Who Came Back (2008), available on DVD
though it was never released for theatrical distribution.
See also Eric Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 1863-1923
(University of Illinois Press, 1994) p. 89-91.
The Haymarket Monument
Memorial to the five alleged
conspirators in the 1886
Haymarket bombing. The
Haymarket Square protest on May
4, 1886, was part of a general
strike for an eight hour work day.
The bombing and controversial trial
of the Haymarket anarchists
provided the impetus for the
international tradition of May Day.
The Chicago Historical maintains an
excellent digital archive o the Haymarket
Affair at
http://www.chicagohistory.org/hadc/
The Legacy of Haymarket:
Lucy Parsons, Anarchism,
And the IWW
“It was during the great railroad strike of 1877 that I first
became interested in what is known as the ‘Labor Question.’ I
then thought as many thousands of earnest, sincere people
think, that the aggregate power, operating in human society,
known as government, could be made an instrument in the
hands of the oppressed to alleviate their sufferings. But a closer
study of the origin, history and tendency of governments,
convinced me that this was a mistake; I came to understand
how organized governments used their concentrated power to
retard progress by their ever-ready means of silencing the voice
of discontent if raised in vigorous protest against the
machinations of the scheming few, who always did, always will
and always must rule in the councils of nations where majority
rule is recognized as the only means of adjusting the affairs of
the people. I came to understand that such concentrated power
can be always wielded in the interest of the few and at the
expense of the many. Government in its last analysis is this
power reduced to a science. Governments never lead; they
follow progress. When the prison, stake or scaffold can no
longer silence the voice of the protesting minority, progress
moves on a step, but not until then.”
http://www.lucyparsonsproject.org/index.html
American Federation of Labor
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Formed in 1886 our dispute with Knights of Labor over dues .
Dominated by the figure of Samuel Gompers.
Emphasized craft unionism.
A federation of unions, not “one big union.”
Survived the labor wars of the late nineteenth century and grew in the early
20th century.
Philosophy often summarized as “pure and simple unionism”
Samuel Gompers, Icon of the AFL
"The ground-work principle of America's labor movement has been to recognize that first
things must come first. Our mission has been the protection of the wage-worker, now; to
increase his wages; to cut hours off the long workday, which was killing him; to improve the
safety and the sanitary conditions of the workshop; to free him from the tyrannies, petty or
otherwise, which served to make his existence a slavery." The AFL followed conservative
strategies, but Gompers believed, "it has never given up its birthright for a mess of pottage. It
has pursued its avowed policy with the conviction that if the lesser and immediate demands
of labor could not be obtained now from society as it is, it would be mere dreaming to preach
and pursue . . . a new society constructed from rainbow materials -- a system of society on
which even the dreamers themselves have never agreed." From the website of the Samuel
Gompers Papers, University of Maryland, http://www.history.umd.edu/Gompers/
AFL structure
This description, from an entry on the Structural Building Trades Alliance,
may be found at the Gompers papers website. The description itself offers
clues as the strengths and weaknesses of the AFL approach.
“First organized in 1903 as the Structural Building Trades Alliance, the Building Trades Department was
chartered by the AFL in 1908 in order to strengthen ties between building trades unions, organize local
building trades councils, and, it was hoped, resolve ongoing battles over work jurisdiction. Membership
was limited to national and international unions affiliated with the AFL whose members were primarily
employed in the erection, repair, or alteration of buildings.
Charter members included the Carpenters, Plumbers, Painters, Steam Engineers, Iron Workers,
Lathers, and Tile Layers. They were soon joined by the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters, the
Asbestos Workers, Cement Workers, Electrical Workers, Elevator Constructors, Granite Cutters,
Laborers, Marble Workers, Plasterers, Composition Roofers, Slate and Tile Roofers, Sheet Metal
Workers, Steam and Hot Water Fitters, and Stone Cutters.
By the time the Bricklayers joined in 1916, the Department had already helped to unite some rival
unions: the Carpenters had absorbed the Amalgamated Carpenters, the Plumbers and Steam Fitters
had merged, and the Cement Workers' jurisdiction had been divided between the Plasterers and the
Laborers. And while the Bricklayers had absorbed the Marble Workers and Tile Layers, and the two
roofers unions had merged, a new union of marble polishers joined the ranks in 1917, leaving the
Department with seventeen member unions through 1924.”
The emphasis on definable skills meant that AFL unions had some real
bargaining power, but the craft nature of the federation itself led to a kind of
splintering that may have diluted the organization’s potential strength as a
bargaining agent for a broad working class. By 1905, about 5% of workers
belonged to unions, mostly craft-oriented organizations.
Industrial Workers of the World
The IWW, formed in 1905,
advocated a strategy of
industrial unionism. The
Wobblies are still around.
These images and more
can be found at the IWW’s
website.
http://www.iww.org/en
IWW History
• IWW formed in 1905
• “One big union”
• Advocated constant class struggle; disdained written
contracts
• Generated tremendous elan; sometimes won seemingly
important victories only to see gains evaporate over time
(see Lawrence strike, 1912. Bread and Roses Centennial
Exhibit, http://exhibit.breadandrosescentennial.org/node/27
• IWW split, 1925: political action through the Socialist Party
(Daniel DeLeon) vs. direct action and ceaseless struggle
(Big Bill Haywood)
Preamble to the IWW Constitution
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as
hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the
employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until
the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage
system, and live in harmony with the Earth. We find that the centering of the management of industries
into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the
employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted
against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars.
Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working
class have interests in common with their employers. These conditions can be changed and the interest of
the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one
industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department
thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all. Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage
for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the
wage system." It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of
production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on
production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the
structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/preamble.shtml
“Bread and Roses”
By James Oppenheim
As we come marching, marching in the beauty
of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill
lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden
sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: "Bread and
roses! Bread and roses!"
As we come marching, marching, we battle too
for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother
them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until
life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread,
but give us roses!
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered
women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry
for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging
spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for
roses, too!
As we come marching, marching, we bring the
greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the
race.
No more the drudge and idler -- ten that toil
where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses!
Bread and roses!
THE PREACHER AND THE SLAVE
(Joe HilI)
Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:
Workingmen of all countries unite,
Side by side we for freedom will fight;
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain:
Last Chorus:
Main Chorus:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and Pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.
And the starvation army they play,
And they sing and they clap and they pray.
Till they get all your coin on the drum,
Then they tell you when you are on the bum:
If you fight hard for children and wife
Try to get something good in this life
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.
Main Chorus
You will eat, bye and bye,
When you've learned how to cook and to fry
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good
And you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye.
(Tune : In the Sweet Bye and Bye)
IWW Songbook 1911 Edition
Unions and the State
in the Progressive Era
• Homestead (1892): Carnegie Steel uses a private Pinkerton army to retake the Homestead work
from strikers; after the Pinkertons fail, the state militia is called in by the governor to break the strike.
• Pullman (1894): Workers at George Pullman’s company town strike to protest wage cuts and the
arbitrary dismissal of members of a protest committee. Eugene Debs and his American Railway
Union launch a sympathy boycott that is eventually broken by federal troops.
• Walter Quentin Gresham, US assistant secretary of state, famously spoke of “symptoms of
revolution” abroad in the land; a sense of crisis permeated upper and upper-middle class drawing
rooms in the decade.
• National Civic Federation (1900) formed in the wake of the Pullman strike to promote mediation
and “respoinsible unionism.” Members included Samuel Gompers of the AFL.
On Homestead, see Andrew Carnegie: The Richest Man in the World, PBS American Experience,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/peopleevents/pande04.html
On Pullman, see the Pullman strike pages at Ohio State University’s eHistorywebsite.
http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/1912/content/pullman.cfm
Solidarity Forever
Ralph Chaplin, 1915
When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood
shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the
sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength
of one,
But the union makes us strong.
CHORUS:
Solidarity forever,
All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours
Solidarity forever,
alone.
Solidarity forever,
We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone
For the union makes us strong.
by stone.
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.
Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy
While the union makes us strong.
parasite,
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with Chorus
his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong.
Chorus
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to
earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can
turn.
It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom
when we learn
trade;
Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of That the union makes us strong.
Chorus
railroad laid;
Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded
have made;
gold,
But the union makes us strong.
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousandChorus
fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the
old
For the union makes us strong.
Unions and the State
in the Progressive Era II
• Sherman Act (1890)—Used against unions; use of injunctions against unions (Pullman case)
• Clayton Antitrust Act—a symbolic turning point. “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.” Section 17, Clayton
Antitrust Act, 1914, text found at
http://www.capitalismcenter.org/Advocacy/Antitrust/Other_Resources/Clayton_Act.htm
• Conservative unions such as AFL reach a sort of accommodation with the federal government
during the era of World War I; growth of unions during the war is impressive.
• The Russian Revolution and the first “red scare”(1917-1920) short-circuited some promising
beginnings in industrial unionism.
• Most unskilled workers left behind. Friederich Engels had commented on the “aristocratic”
character of American labor unions in the 1880s, and observed in 1892 that a socialist political
party or union would make progress in the US “only when there is a generation of native-born
workers that cannot expect anything from speculation any more.”
Labor in the 1920s
Weaknesses of the labor movement
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Ethnic and racial divisions
Internecine conflict over basic approaches (IWW split)
Difficulties expanding beyond skilled trades
Welfare capitalism
100% Americanism--the slogan of the new Klan, but, more
broadly, the sense of American triumphalism and uniqueness that
found its greatest expression in stock market speculation
• Return to state hostility after the end of World War I.
The Great Depression, The New Deal and Labor
• Initial impact of the depression on unions was negative; decliune in
membership as unemployment rose.
• New Deal policies generally encouraged union growth
• National Industrial Recovery Act and its section 7A hailed by United
Mine Workers President John L. Lewis as the greatest advance in
human rights since the Emancipation Proclamation. The NIRA
labor board proved ineffective, however, and the initial surge in
union membership proved illusory.
Southern Labor and The General Strike of 1934
The plight of southern textile mill workers has deep resonance for teachers and student
in Georgia, where so many mills dotted the landscape. Researchers at the University of
North Carolina published a epic and influential study of the South’s cotton mill world in
1987, with a second edition in 2000. Like a Family builds to a climax with the great
General Strike of 1934, the largest work stoppage in American history, largely a
southern affair. Across the southeast, thousands of textile workers walked off their jobs
protesting the stretchout (downsizing, or speedup, in modern terms). Workers lost the
strike, but may have helped stimulate interest in labor reform in Washington. The Like a
Family website contains excellent brief overviews of mill life, protest, and the strike of
1934, as well as excerpts from extensive oral histories the authors conducted with mill
workers. It is a unit on southern textile mills in a box, so to speak. Like a Family
website http://www.ibiblio.org/sohp/laf/index.html .
"The General Strike, whatever else it may have been, was a moment in history that laid bare
longings and antagonisms ordinarily silenced, distorted, or repressed. Cotton mill people in the
1930s may not have subscribed to an abstract, universalistic notion of class solidarity. If nothing
else, deep racial divisions militated against such perceptions. But mill folk did see themselves as
a people apart, exploited by men with interests opposed to their own and denied opportunities for
progress that had seemed within their grasp. Their militancy sprang in part from a defense of
traditional values and in part from a desire to exert control over their changing place in a new,
more expansive world -- and it must be understood on its own terms and in its own historical
moment." Jacquelyn Dowd-Hall, et. al., Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill
World, Uni. Vo North Carolina Press, 353).
The Wagner Act, 1935
The National Labor Relations Act fundamentally changed the
landscape of the labor movement. It
• Defined and outlawed a number of unfair labor practices by
management.
• Established a National Labor Relations Board with legal authority
to enforce decisions.
• NLRB empowered to conduct secret ballot elections in the
workplace to determine if workers want union representation.
• If workers vote in favor of union representation, management is
legally bound to engage in collective bargaining with the chosen
union.
• Management must bargain in “good faith.”
Impact of the Wagner Act
Wagner Act signaled a shift in the political climate, and it accompanied a shift in the fortunes of labor in
the states. Pro-New Deal governors like Frank Murphy in Michigan made a sharp break from past
practice by state authorities. Murphy famously refused to send in the National Guard to help break the
Flint, Michigan sit-down strike at GM in 1936-37.
The new election procedures and legal safeguards provided a boost for the union movement. John L.
Lewis led in the creation of a Committee for Industrial Organization within the AFL in 1935. After a
contentious battle with the conservative AFL leadership, Lewis and a number of rebellious unions were
expelled from the AFL. Lewis and the dissident unions established the Congress of Industrial
Organizations in 1938.
The AFL was wary and unenthusiastic about the new government guarantees offered by the Wagner
Act; the CIO embraced them. Union membership exploded in the 30s and continued tog row during
and after World War II.
The CIO embraced the new political atmosphere. The CIO went on to form a Political Action
Committee and cemented an alliance with FDR and the Democratic Party in the 1944 presidential
election. The AFL had traditionally followed a more moderate political program. Gompers had
famously insisted that unions should “reward friends and punish enemies,” but Gompers and the
federation he founded never developed a broad political program. The CIO, on the other hand, both
benefited from the new political environment and tried to shape an even more pro-union environment
for the future.
Race and Labor
Racial tensions made labor organizing in the US
difficult, according to many observers. AfricanAmerican workers often suffered from discrimination
by employers and union officials alike in the era of
segregation. A. Philip Randolph, President of the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, played a
significant role in overcoming these obstacles.
Randolph helped pressure the Roosevelt
administration into creating a Fair Employment
Practices Committee during World War II. The
committee was charged with guaranteeing nondiscrimination in defense plants during the War.
Randolph’s bold action created a precedent that
resulted in an ongoing President’s Committee in
various forms that survived throughout the 1950s and
1960s. The Committee’s actual achievements were
debatable, but in terms of introducing the idea of fair
employment practices, it clearly played a great
symbolic role. Randolph played a pivotal role in allying
elements of the labor movement with the civil rights
movement in the 1950s and early 1960s.
See the S. Philip Randolph Institute website at http://www.apri.org/ht/d/sp/i/225/pid/225
Taft-Hartley and Labor
The political climate shifted back in the opposite direction in spite of the
CIO’s political efforts. In response to a wave of postwar strikes, Congress
enacted a series of amendments to the Wagner Act in 1947.
Taft-Hartley
• Defined a number of unfair labor practices that could be committed by
workers or unions, such as featherbedding.
• Outlawed closed shop contracts.
• Permitted states to outlaw union security or union shop arrangements
(right to work laws).
• Allowed the President to intervene and issue back to work orders in
strikes that could create a national emergency.
• Required union officials to sign non-Communist affadavits.
Paul Robeson, Labor and Civil Rights
National Park Service Historic Site Robeson House
http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/ny1.htm
Robeson in Spain, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives
http://www.alba-valb.org/resources/robeson/about
Original Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Revised Lyrics by Paul Robeson
Dere's an ol' man called de Mississippi;
Dat's de ol' man dat I'd like to be!
What does he care if de world's got troubles?
What does he care if de land ain't free?
Ol' Man River,
Dat Ol' Man River
He mus' know sumpin' But don't say nuthin',
He jes' keeps rollin',
He keeps on rollin' along.
There's an ol' man called de Mississippi;
That's the ol' man I don't like to be!
What does he care if the world's got troubles?
What does he care if the land ain't free..
Ol' Man River,
That Ol' Man River
He mus' know sumpin' But don't say nuthin',
He jes' keeps rollin',
He keeps on rollin' along.
He don't plant taters,
He don't plant cotton,
An' dem dat plants 'em
Is soon forgotten,
But Ol' Man River,
He jes' keeps rollin' along
He don't plant taters,
He don't plant cotton,
An' dem dat plants 'em
Is soon forgotten,
But Ol' Man River,
He jes' keeps rollin' along
You an' me, we sweat an' strain,
Body all achin' an' racked wid pain Tote dat barge!
Lif' dat bale!
Git a little drunk,
An' you land in jail...
You an' me, we sweat an' strain,
Body all achin' an' racked wid pain Tote that barge and
Lift that bale,
You show a little grit and
You lands in jail...
Ah gits weary
An' sick of tryin';
Ah'm tired of livin'
An skeered of dyin',
But Ol' Man River,
He jes' keeps rollin' along
But I keeps laffin' instead of cyrin'
I must keep fightin';
Until I'm dyin'
And Ol' Man River,
He just keeps rollin' along
Impact of Taft-Hartley
Taft-Hartley allowed southern states (and some Rocky Mountain and plains states) to enact right to work
laws that made it difficult for unions to maintain their membership. This helped southern states combat
the CIO’s Operation Dixie, a massive organizing drive aimed at “organizing the unorganized” in the
South.
Taft-Hartley intensified an ongoing civil war within the CIO. Communists had always played a small but
active role as enthusiastic union organizers, and most had gravitated toward the CIO in the late 1930s
and 1940s. During the Popular Fronts of 1935-39 and 1941-45, this participation of communist
organizers was manageable. In the emerging Cold War climate, Communist organizers and union leaders
were a luxury the CIO could no longer afford. The CIO had hitched its wagon to the federal government
and the Roosevelt administration. When the political climate shifted against the CIO, the new federation
was perhaps more vulnerable than if it had eschewed such intimate relations with power.
The CIO would eventually expel 11 member unions, charging that they were “communist dominated.”
Democratic socialists were still welcome in the union movement, but their position became more tenuous
in the increasingly anti-communist 1950s.
An excellent source on Operation Dixie in Georgia is Michelle Brattain, “A Town as Small as That:
Tallapoosa, Georgia, and Operation Dixie, 1945-1950,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 81 (Summer 1997),
395-425 (available via JSTOR through Galileo). In fact, the Summer 1997 issue of the Georgia Historical
Quarterly was devoted to labor and is an excellent starting point.
Labor After Taft-Hartley
The romance seemed to go out of the union movement…
Shortly, we’ll talk about the music of the labor movement, songs like “Solidarity Forever” and the music
of Woody Guthrie. But it seemed as if the music stopped. The enduring images of labor in the 1950s
and much of the 1960s were Jimmy Hoffa, corruption, the increasing conservatism of mainstream
organized labor, symbolized by the 1955 merger of AFL and CIO. Analysts and social critics argued
that American society had overcome class conflict or had never really had any meaningful classoriented conflict. Labor had been so successful that at least the “aristocracy of lab or” that Engels had
warned of had it pretty good. Organized workers, though a minority, enjoyed a middle-class lifestyle.
Management pursued increasingly rational personnel policies and raised wages preemptively to head
off union organizing efforts. American business pioneered new strategies in maintaining the “freedom
to manage.” American enterprise could afford to buy workers loyalty in the economic golden age that
followed World War II and prevailed through the early 1970s. Also, a rising tide of economic growth
seemed to lift many if not all boats. Unions had also played a key role in pressing for reforms such as
the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which introduced the permanent minimum wage, mandated the
40-hour work week with extra pay for overtime, outlawed child labor. As unions succeeded in achieving
long-sought reforms and employers improved conditions to avoid union organization, many non-union
workers benefited from the contributions unions have made to American life.
(For more see Timothy Minchin, What Do We Need a Union For? The TWUA in the South, Univ. of
North Carolina Press, 1997; for a short introduction see Mary Frederickson’s review in Southern
Changes http://beck.library.emory.edu/southernchanges/article.php?id=sc19-3-4_009 .)
Unions and Social Justice
By the end of the 1960s, new social movements and a New Left had
emerged (symbolized by the student movement, the civil rights
movement, and the anti-war movement).
The fate of the mainstream union movement was parodied on the
controversial new situation comedy All in the Family. Union member
Archie Bunker seemed to many associated with the New Left to
represent all that was wrong with the union “establishment”—socially
conservative, opposed to equality for women and minorities, devoted
to the anti-communist Cold War foreign policy that dominated both
political parties and totally committed to a stultifying vision of middleAmerican family, but still narrowly focused on using the union to
maintain status and hang on to the (now) rapidly eroding economic
gains of the previous generation. Mainstream unions had become
institutionalized, a part of what C. Wright Mills called the “power elite”
and the students referred to as the “establishment.”
Manufacturing employment as % of all
jobs in the United States, 1937-2011.
Manufacturing jobs have always been
the bread and butter of the labor
movement. The low-wage service
sector has proven very difficult terrain
for unions, while manufacturing jobs
have declined as a proportion of the
workforce. Manufacturing jobs, like
those in Detroit’s auto industry or
Pittsburgh’s steel mills, accounted for
more than 30% of all jobs in the
1930s. By 2012, manufacturing jobs
only made up about 9% of all jobs in
the US economy. The decline in
manufacturing jobs eerily mirrors the
decline in the rate of unionization.
From Matthew Yglesias, Slate Moneybox blog, Jan. 24, 2012,
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/01/24/reviving_american_manufacturing.html
(retrieved Jan. 25, 2012). Based on data collected by the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank.
Jimmy Hoffa, symbol of union
“gangsters” for many after Senate
hearings in the 1950s.
The Hard Hat
Riot, May 8,
1970. 200
construction
workers
mobilized by the
AFL-CIO Building
Trades Council of
New York attack
antiwar
demonstrators.
Archie Bunker, comic symbol of
the fading “aristocracy of labor”
Yet the AFL-CIO and many of its constituent unions supported the civil rights
movement. The sign to Dr. King’s right (the left side of the picture)
represents the International Union of Electrical Workers, a union born in 1949
to replace an expelled “communist dominated” organization, the United
Electrical Workers.
New unions emerged that seemed to rekindle
some of the old romance, most notably Cesar
Chavez and his United Farm Workers in the
late 1960s.
Even so, union membership among private sector workers fell steadily to just over 9%
by the early 2000s. Factors: renewed employer resistance, a shifting of the political
climate even further to the right, and Engels’s old fascination with speculation?
Music and the Labor Movement
“We Shall Overcome”
Generally thought of as the anthem of the civil rights movement, it originated in its “social protest” form as a labor song. It
evolved from Charles Albert Tinsley’s “I’ll Overcome Someday” (1901). Zilphia Horton, Pete Seeger, and Guy Carawan
adapted the song over the years at a labor/civil rights training school called Highlander Folk School. Today, royalties from
commercial uses of the song go to the Highlander We Shall Overcome Fund, which makes grants to worthy projects focusing
on civil rights.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/getupstandup/index.html
After its first success, the popularity of "I'll Overcome" waned for
a time in the gospel world. However, a letter printed on the front
page of the February 1909, United Mine Workers Journal states
that, " Last year at a strike, we opened every meeting with a
prayer, and singing that good old song, 'We Will Overcome.'"
This is the first mention of the song's being sung in a secular
context and mixed race setting. It is also the first instance of the
use of the first person plural pronoun "we" of a movement song
instead of the singular "I" usual in the gospel and spiritual
tradition.
Zilphia Horton of Highlander Folk School
on a picket line in the 1940s.
http://labornotes.org/2012/08/we-shall-overcome
The Songs of Woody Guthrie
See Mark Allan Jackson, Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie, University
Press of Mississippi, 2006.
The Farmer-Labor Train
Woody Guthrie, 1944
From the high Canadian Rockies to the land of Mexico,
City and the country, wherever you may go,
Through the wild and windy weather, the sun and sleet and
rain,
Comes a-whistlin' through the country this Farmer-Labor train.
Listen to the jingle and the rumble and the roar,
She's rollin' through New England to the West Pacific shore.
It's a long time we've been waitin', now she's been whistlin'
'round the bend,
Ride on on into Congress on that Farmer-Labor train.
Listen to the jingle and the rumble and the roar,
She's rollin' through New England to the West Pacific shore.
It's a long time we've been waitin', now she's been whistlin'
'round the bend,
Roll on into Congress on that Farmer-Labor train.
There's folks of every color and they're ridin' side by side
Through the swamps of Louisiana and across the Great Divide,
From the wheat fields and the orchards and the lowing cattle
range,
And they're rolling onto victory on this Farmer-Labor train.
There's lumberjacks and teamsters and sailors from the sea,
There's farmin' boys from Texas and the hills of Tennessee,
There's miners from Kentucky, there's fishermen from Maine;
Every worker in the country rides that Farmer-Labor train.
This train pulled into Washington a bright and happy day,
When she steamed into the station you could hear the people
say:
"There's that Farmer-Labor Special, she's full of union men
Headin' onto White House on the Farmer-Labor train."
There's warehouse boys and truckers and guys that skin the
cats,
Men that run the steel mills, the furnace and the blast,
Through the smoky factory cities, o'er the hot and dusty plains,
And the cushions they are crowded, on this Farmer-Labor train.
Union Maid
Union Maid
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie
This union maid was wise to the tricks of
company spies,
She couldn't be fooled by a company stool,
There once was a union maid, she never was
she'd always organize the guys.
afraid
She always got her way when she struck for
Of goons and ginks and company finks and the better pay.
deputy sheriffs who made the raid.
She'd show her card to the National Guard
She went to the union hall when a meeting it
And this is what she'd say
was called,
And when the Legion boys come 'round
You gals who want to be free, just take a tip from
She always stood her ground.
me;
Get you a man who's a union man and join the
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union, ladies' auxiliary.
I'm sticking to the union, I'm sticking to the
Married life ain't hard when you got a union card,
union.
A union man has a happy life when he's got a
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union, union wife.
I'm sticking to the union 'til the day I die.
This Land is Your Land: The Lost Verses
This Land Is Your Land
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie
This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream
waters
This land was made for you and Me.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.
I've roamed and rambled and I followed my
footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds
rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.