Portland observer., May 25, 1983, Page 17, Image 17

Portland Observer, May 25, 1963 Section II Page 5
100 years of labor struggle
j.
(Continuedfrom Section I I Page 4/
The new Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions which they
n created had a constitution inspired by that o f the British Trades Union
Congress — which then was about a dozen years old. Its principal activity
was legislative, its most important committee was concerned with legislation.
The Federation o f Organized Trades and Labor Unions was a good
deal less than a strongly effective organization. Yet its fingers were clearly
on the pulse of America's working class; it passed a resolution decreeing
that “ eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May I,
1886.“ It recommended to its affiliated unions that they “ so direct their
laws as to conform to this resolution by the time named.’* In the words of a
much later clichcv the federation's call for the 8-hour day was clearly "an
idea whose time had come.” It touched o ff, or accelerated, a strong and
vociferous national clamor for the shorter work week.
Despite the popularity o f that call for action, Samuel Gompers and a
number of his associates — among them, particularly, Peter J. McGuire of
the Brotherhood of Carpenters — felt the time had come for reorganizing
the Federation to make it a more effective center for the trade unions of the
country. So, on Dec. 8, 1886, they and a few other delegates met in
Columbus, Ohio, to create a renovated organization.
It was at this meeting that the American Federation o f Labor evolved
from the earlier Federation o f Organized Trades and Labor Unions. The
action was a giant step forward toward the development o f a modern trade
union movement in America.
A statement by the founders of the A FL expressed their belief in the need
for more effective union organization. “ The various trades have been
affected by the introduction of machinery, the subdivision of labor, the use
of women's and children's labor and the lack of an apprentice system — so
that the skilled trades were rapidly sinking to the level of pauper labor," the
AFL declared. “ To protect the skilled labor of America from being reduced\
Naw York's first Labor Day parada waa hold in 1882 an
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to beggary and to sustain the standard of American workmanship and skill,
the trade unions of America have been established.”
The leadership o f the early labor movement showed a keen awareness
that the unions could not succeed with a “ men only” philosophy, even
though men were then the clearly dominant element in the labor force. In
1882 the Federation extended to “ all women's labor organizations represen­
tation. on an equal footing.” Even more explicitly — and rather grandilo­
quently — the AFL convention in 1894 adopted a resolution that “ women
should be organized into trade unions to the end that they may scientifically
and permanently abolish the terrible evils accompanying their weakened,
unorganized state; and we demand that they receive equal compensation
with men for equal services performed.”
The new A F L , with its 300,000 members in 25 unions, came on the
national scene in a time of discord and struggle. Earlier in 1886, railroad
‘ workers in the Southwest had been involved in a losing strike against the
properties o f Jay Gould, one o f the more flamboyant o f the so-called
"robber barons” o f the post-Civil W ar period. On May I , 1886, some
200,000 workers had struck in support of the effort to achieve the 8-hour
day.
While the national 8-hour-day strike movement was generally peaceful,
and frequently successful, it led to an episode of violence in Chicago that
resulted in a setback for the new labor movement. The McCormick H a r­
vester Company in Chicago, learning in advance o f the planned strike,
/ locked out all its employees who held union cards. Fights erupted and the
police opened fire on the union members, killing four of them. A public
' rally at Haymarket Square to protest the killings drew a large and peaceful
throng. As the meeting drew to a close, a bomb exploded near the lines of
police guards, and seven of the uniformed force were killed, with some 50
persons wounded. The police began to fire into the crowd; several more
_people were killed and about 200 were wounded.
Eight anarchists were arrested and charged with a capital crime. Four
were executed; four others were eventually freed by Gov. John P. Altgeld of
Illinois after he concluded that the trial had been unfairly conducted. No
one knows for certain who planted the bomb. But as Gompers ruefully
commented some time later: “ The bomb not only killed the policemen, but
it killed our eight-hour movement for a few years after.”
The decade of the 189O's and the early years of the 20th century witnessed
many intense struggles between essentially weak unions seeking to liberate
their members from back-breaking toil under often unsafe and unhealthy
working conditions for very low wages, and powerful corporations with
heavy financial resources, the active or passive support of the government
and its police forces, and the backing of much of the press and the general
public. It was a perfect climate for union-busting and violence.
In 1891 steel boss Henry C . Frick broke a Pennsylvania strike of coke
oven workers seeking the 8-hour day. But that was just a warm-up event for
Frick, who as head of the Carnegie Steel Company in 1892 ordered a pay
cut ranging from 18 to 26 percent. The Amalgamated Association of Iron A
Steel Workers — one of the stronger unions of the period — called a strike
at the Carnegie plant at Homestead, Pa., to seek a rescinding of the cut in
wages. Pitched battles followed between the strikers and a boatload of 300
armed Pinkerton detectives. The strikers won the battle and the Pinkertons
retreated, with a death toll of seven workers, three strikebreakers and scores
of wounded. The state militia then took over the town. Indictments poured
out, but no one was convicted; and Frick had succeeded in breaking the
strike.
The next big confrontation, in 1984, was at the Pullm an plant near
Chicago. The American Railroad Union — not affiliated with the AFL and
led by Eugene V. Debs, a leading Am erican socialist — struck the
company’s manufacturing plant, and called for a boycott of the handling of
Pullman's sleeping and parlor cars on the nation's railroads. Within a week,
125,000 railroad workers were engaged in a sympathy protest strike. The
government swore in 3,400 special deputies; later, at the request o f the
railroad association, President Cleveland moved in federal troops to break
the strike — despite a plea by Gov. Altgeld of Illinois that their presence
was unnecessary. Finally a sweeping federal court injunction forced an end
to the sympathy strike, and many railroad workers were blacklisted. The
Pullman strikers were essentially starved into submissive defeat.
The strike illustrated the increasing tendency of the government to offer
moral support and military force to break strikes. The injunction, issued
usually and almost automatically by compliant judges on the request of
government officials or corporations, became a prime legal weapons against
union organizing and action.
Braakar boys ready for a long day s work.
decision was a clear signal to the federal judiciary and to the corporations
that injunctions could be used to stop various kinds of labor strikes and
strike-support actions. In addition, the individual strikers were fined a total
of nearly S25O.OOO.
Not all the strikes and struggles o f the period were conducted by the
“ sons of toil” in the nation’s heavy industries. Long before the rise of the
contemporary feminist movement, large numbers of women were at work
— particularly in the big cities and in the men's and women’ s garment
industry. Their grievances were real and tangible in both the textile and
garment industries. Their pay was often at sweatshop levels, their hours too
long, the speed-up rampant, the working conditions dreadful. Conditions
such as these led in 1909 to a strike known widely as "The Uprising of the
Twenty Thousand.” The strikers, mostly women, almost all of them recent
immigrants from eastern Europe, conducted the first big protest in the
needle trades under the banner of the Ladies' Garment Workers against
shirtwaist and dress manufacturers. Their plight brought widespread public
support, and they gained the 52-hour week and wage increases
In 1910, some 50,000 cloak makers called a strike in New York. Thanks to
the efforts of Louis D. Brandeis, a lawyer later named to the U.S. Supreme
Court, the dispute ended on a constructive note. A “ protocol of peace”
designed by Brandeis established procedures for conciliation and
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But a reminder that the gai. ent industry was a good deal this side of
paradise occurred in 1911, when a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist
Co. on New York's lower east side. About 150 employees — almost all of
them young women — perished when the fire swept through the upper
floors o f the loft building in which they worked. Many burned to death;
others jumped and died. Why so large a casually list? The safety exits on (he
burning floors had been securely locked, allegedly to prevent "loss of
goods.” New York and the country were aroused by the tragedy. A state
factory investigation committee headed by Frances Perkins (she was to
become Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of labor in 1933, the first woman
cabinet member in history) paved (he way for many long-needed reforms in
industrial safety and fire prevention measures.
Another of the historic industrial conflicts prior to World War I occurred
in 1912 in the textile mills of Lawrence. Mass. It was led not by an AFL
union but by the radical Industrial Workers of the World — the IW W , or
the Wobblies, as they were generally known — an organization in frequent
verbal and physical conflict with the A FL and its affiliates. The strike in
(Please turn to Section I I Page 6)
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A testing period and growth
A better method of federal intervention occurred during a 1902 strike of
anthracite coal miners, under the banner o f the United Mine Workers.
More than 100,000 miners in northeastern Pennsylvania called a strike on
May 12. and kept the mines closed all that summer. When the mine owners
refused a U M W proposal for arbitration. President Theodore Roosevelt
intervened on Oct. 3, and on Oct. 16 appointed a commission of mediation
and arbitration. Five days later the miners returned to their jobs, and five
months later the Presidential Commission awarded them a 10 percent wage
increase and shorter work days — but not the formal union recognition they
had sought.
The difficulties (hat unions experienced in fashioning their strategies for
bringing workers into membership and fighting low-wage non-union
competition could best be observed in a long court fight which became
nationally known as the Danbury Hatters case. In 1902, the A F L hatters
union instituted a national boycott of a non-union company in Danburv,
Conn. The company, charging a conspiracy in restraint of trade, under tie.
provisions of the antitrust law, filed a damage suit in the state court but
lost.
The case worked its way through the federal courts over the next few
years, and in 1908 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decisions against
the union. I l held that the Hatters Union had participated in an illegal
. .secondary boycott, which was subject to federal injunctive restraint. The
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arbitration of future grievance disputes, as well as such important advances
as the abolition of homework, the free use of electricity, 10 paid holidays a
year, and piece work at rates fixed by joint union-management committees.
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