FROM THE FOLKS
WHO BROUGHT YOU
THE WEEKEND
© 2001 by Priscilla Murolo, A. B. Chitty, and Joe Sacco.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2001
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York
Designed by Kathryn Parise
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Murolo, Priscilla.
From the folks who brought you the weekend: a short, illustrated history
of labor in the United States / Priscilla Murolo and A. B. Chitty;
illustrated by Joe Sacco.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-5955-8856-2
1. Labor—United States—History. 2. Working class—United States—History. 3. Labor movement—United States—History.
I. Chitty, A. B. II. Title.
HD8066 .M86 2001
331'.0973—dc21 2001030978
The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit alternative to the large, commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book publishing industry. The New Press operates in the public interest rather than for private gain, and is committed to publishing, in innovative ways, works of educational, cultural, and community value that are often deemed insufficiently profitable.
The New Press, 450 West 41st Street, 6th floor, New York, NY 10036
www.thenewpress.com
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
For David, Marty,
and Meridith
CONTENTS
FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CHAPTER 1—Labor in Colonial America: The Bound and the Free
Legacies of Conquest
Indentured Labor in British Colonies
Slavery
Free Labor
Unruly Labor
CHAPTER 2—The American Revolution
From Resistance to Independence
The People’s War and the Gentlemen’s Republic
Republican Legacies
CHAPTER 3—Slavery and Freedom in the New Republic
“If You Can’t Fight, Kick”
Wage Workers and Activism
Solidarity and Fragmentation
Westward Expansion and Irrepressible Conflict
CHAPTER 4—Civil War and Reconstruction
The Civil War
Southern Reconstruction and Counterrevolution
Labor Movements and Struggles
Whose Government?
CHAPTER 5—Labor Versus Monopoly in the Gilded Age
Industrial Capitalism: Consolidation and Crisis
The Working Classes
The Knights of Labor
The American Federation of Labor
Populism and Racism
Empire Abroad, Empire at Home
The Labor Movement in the Progressive Era
The Great War
The War’s Aftermath
CHAPTER 7—America, Inc.
The Roaring Twenties
The Labor Movement of the Twenties
Early Years of the Great Depression
Labor Rising
CHAPTER 8—Labor on the March
Grassroots Unionism
The Rise of the CIO
Whose America?
CHAPTER 9—Hot War, Cold War
America at War
The Postwar World
“Big Labor”
CHAPTER 10—The Sixties
In the Spirit of Montgomery
“Power to the People”
The Sixties in the Workplace
A House Divided
CHAPTER 11—Hard Times
Lean and Mean
Race to the Bottom
Fighting Back
CHAPTER 12—Brave New World
Making Change
Steps Forward, Steps Back
Turn of the Century
EPILOGUE
SUGGESTED READING
INDEX
FOREWORD AND
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Why this book now? For two reasons, mainly. When we started this project in 1998, no comprehensive survey of U.S. labor history for the general reader had appeared for more than a decade. Recent scholarship had added new dimensions and many details to the story of working people in America. It was past time to compile these insights into a new general history.
Also, the labor movement itself had changed—most dramatically in the 1995 election of the “New Voice” slate to the leadership of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations. This change reflected a belated recognition that the labor-government-management accord achieved after the Second World War had already been scuttled by both corporations and government, that without reorientation to new economic and political realities unions and the federation itself could become as irrelevant as any boss or banker might wish, and just wither away. Compared to the men they succeeded, the new generation of leaders had different ideas about the role of organized labor in society. These ideas are not new: They are revivals and developments of labor traditions that had long been subordinated to the demands of the scuttled accord of the Cold War era. It was a good time to look again at these traditions.
As we began drafting the story, a third reason appeared and became clearer as we continued. Even a casual look at American history reveals how much of what we learn and teach in school is just not true. Sometimes these misreadings are errors of fact—the extent of the U.S. war in the Philippines at the turn of the last century is one example. More often they are errors of omission—the African American role in the Civil War, for example. Mostly they concern perspective: Looking at historical events from the bottom up alters our understanding of historical agency and causation. Adopting the perspective of people organizing to achieve common goals gives an account of historical events that is truer, and surely more useful.
Compared to conventional labor history, we tried mainly to be more inclusive in terms of “workers” and “working peoples’ movements,” and to incorporate as much recent research, historiography, and events as we could. Almost none of the material comes from our own research. We found an abundance of materials—in fact, too much. To keep the narrative from expanding beyond our publisher’s mandate, or our control, we had to exclude more than we could include at every turn. There are some interesting books we did not write. We did not write a comprehensive account of trade unions, their internal affairs, or their complicated relationships with one another in and out of federations. We did not write a history of work, nor a history of labor and capital. We did not write a history of labor politics. These would be good and useful books. We also tried to keep from straying too far into major reinterpretations of American history, perhaps with mixed results. That would be a great book too, but beyond our ambition, and probably our competence.
Besides, for us the significance of the past is found in the present, and the present moment is full of rapid changes, even surprises. We are hopeful for the future, but certain of very little. We do know that in the past people have always found a way to struggle to make life better for themselves and their posterity. We know their struggles have generally been effective in proportion to the range and depth of the solidarity of their movements. We know the incessant and implacable adversary is privilege, legitimated by law, custom, and popular ideology, which never yields without challenge, to which
democracy is anathema. We side with democracy. We write for the people who work too hard for too little, whose families and communities are hostage to the greed and arrogance of the same privilege that deforms our humanity and threatens our common welfare. We write for the people who can change history.
Our debts to historians and activists are too numerous to list. Our publisher, André Schiffrin and The New Press, and our editors, first Matt Weiland, then Marc Favreau, encouraged our work. Copyediting by David Allen helped to reconcile inconsistencies and force clarification. A Flik grant from Sarah Lawrence College gave Priscilla some money for travel. Feedback from students in labor history courses at Sarah Lawrence, the Midwest Summer School for Women Workers, and summer workshops sponsored by Hospital and Health Care Workers District 1199 in Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky sharpened the analysis and the narrative. Friends and comrades like Kim Scipes, David Cline, and Gideon Rosenbluth helped us at particular points. Without the intellectual, emotional, and logistical support of Mary Reynolds, Associate Director of the Graduate Program in Women’s History at Sarah Lawrence College, this book most likely would never have appeared.
We dedicate this book to three people. David Montgomery has been our personal intellectual guide to American labor history. His life and work combine the long view with mastery of historical detail and with activism to a degree all too rare in the profession of history. Martel Montgomery, David’s wife, has been our good friend, steadfast and practical in seeing the possibility of change for the better, constant in her conviction that the principles by which we work for social justice apply with equal force to our everyday lives. Finally, our student and friend Meridith Helton learned labor history and then lived it, long enough at least to realize a personal dream working for the union victory at the Fieldcrest Cannon mills in North Carolina. She died too suddenly and too soon, leaving us with an indelible and fiery memory of beauty, youth, and energy, love of music, adventure, and life, and passion for justice. She and her generation carry our hopes and quiet our fears. They have already started making our history.
Yonkers, New York
January 2001
LIST OF
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Boston Massacre
Pre-Industrial Era Workers
Slave and Worker
Mother Jones and the Miners
Industrial Era Workers
The Flint Sit-Down Strike
Migrant Labor’s Heroine
Post-Industrial Era Workers
The Last Gasp?
LIST OF
1199 Hospital and Health Care Workers Union 1199
AAFLI Asian American Free Labor Institute
AAPL Alliance of Asian Pacific Labor
ACORN Association of Communities for Reform Now
ACTWU Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union
ACW Amalgamated Clothing Workers
AFL American Federation of Labor
AFL-CIO American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
AFSCME American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees
AFT American Federation of Teachers
AIFLD American Institute for Free Labor Development
AIM American Indian Movement
APALA Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance
APRO Asian Pacific Regional Organization of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
ARU American Railway Union
AUD Association for Union Democracy
AWO Agricultural Workers Organization
AWOC Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee
B&O Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
BAGL Bay Area Gay Liberation
BIA Bureau of Indian Affairs
BRU/SdP Bus Riders Union/Sindicato de Passajeros
CAP Congress of African Peoples
CAT Contract Action Teams
CBTU Coalition of Black Trade Unionists
CFI Colorado Fuel & Iron
CFUN Committee for a Unified Newark
CGT Confederación General de Trabajadores
CEO chief executive officer
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CIO Committee for Industrial Organization; later, Congress of Industrial Organizations
CIO-PAC CIO Political Action Committee
CLUW Coalition of Labor Union Women
CNLU Colored National Labor Union
COF Congreso Obrero de Filipinas
COINTELPRO Counter Intelligence Program of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
COLA cost of living adjustment
COPE Committee on Political Education
CORE Congress on Racial Equality
COSH Committee on (or Coalition for) Occupational Safety and Health
CP Communist Party
CROC Confederación Revolucionario de Obreros y Campesinos
CTM Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos
CUA Chinese Unemployed Alliance
CUTW Connecticut Union of Telephone Workers
CWA Communications Workers of America
EEOC Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
ENA Experimental Negotiations Agreement
ERP employee representation plan
FAT Frente Autentico de Trabajo
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
FEPC Fair Employment Practice Committee
FLOC Farm Worker Organizing Committee
FLT Federación Libre de Trabajadores
FLU federal labor union
FOTLU Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions
FSLA Fair Labor Standards Act
FTA Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers
FTUI Free Trade Union Institute
FWIU Food Workers Industrial Union
G&W Gulf & Western Corporation
G.E. General Electric Corporation
G.M. General Motors Corporation
HERE Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees
IBEW International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
ICC Interstate Commerce Commission
ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
ILA International Longshoremen’s Association
ILGWU International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union
ILO International Labor Organization
ILWU International Longshore and Warehouse Union
INS Immigration and Naturalization Service
IUE International Union of Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers
IWW Industrial Workers of the World
JMLA Japanese-Mexican Labor Association
JwJ Jobs with Justice
K of L Knights of Labor
LAANE Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy
LCFO Lowndes County Freedom Organization
LCLAA Labor Council for Latin American Advancement
LFLRA Lowell Female Labor Reform Association
MFDP Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
MFLU Mississippi Freedom Labor Union
Mine Mill Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers’ Union
MOU Movimiento Obreros Unidos
NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
NAM National Association of Manufacturers
NCA National Contractors Association
NCF National Civic Federation
NEA National Education Association
NFU Newfoundland Fishermen’s Union
NFWA National Farm Workers Association
NIRA National Industrial Recovery Act
NLC National Labor Committee
NLRA National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act)
NLRB National Labor Relations Board
NLU National Labor Union
NRA National Recovery Administration
NTU National Trades Union
NTU National Typographical Union
NWLB National War Labor Bo
ard
NWRO National Welfare Rights Organization
OAAU Organization of African American Unity
OCAW Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers
OPA Office of Price Administration
OPM Office of Production Management
ORIT Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers
OSHA Occupational Safety and Health Administration
PACE Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy International Union
PAFL Pan-American Federation of Labor