David M. Colman

 

Printed by the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO

Copyright  Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO

November 2000

David Colman is a graduate student in history at the University of Iowa. Colman lives in Iowa City and between 1993-1998 was employed by the University of Iowa as a research assistant, teaching assistant, and a graduate instructor. He has taught history courses at the University of Iowa about workers, and labor and civil rights activism in the United States and South Africa. Currently he is completing a dissertation on African-American workers in the United Automobile Workers in Detroit between 1941-1973.

Table of Contents

At the time the United States of America gained its independence in 1783, most people did not have a boss. Nine out of ten people lived on farms and cultivated their own crops, slaughtered animals, tended gardens, and made their own clothes, candles, and soap. Most of the people who lived in towns and cities also did not have an employer. Many of the men were master craftsmen who made goods like shoes and furniture, from start to finish, in their own workshops. Sometimes a master craftsman hired a skilled journeymen to work in his shop. But most of these journeymen only earned wages for a short time until they opened their own workshops. The majority of women also did not earn wages from an employer. Most women expected to and did become wives and mothers who worked at home raising children, boiling and ironing laundry, cleaning, marketing, and cooking.

In the eighty years after Independence, however, an industrial revolution turned more people into wage earners who worked for an employer. Many master craftsmen began to expand their small workshops and hire more journeymen to produce more consumer goods like shoes, clothes, books, and furniture. Master craftsmen also began to hire untrained apprentices and half-trained journeymen to increase the output of their workshops. The entrance of unskilled workers drove down skilled journeymen’s wages. In 1820, most journeymen earned at least $330 per year, which raised a family of five just above poverty. Thirty years later, the average urban journeymen earned only $300 per year, which was $200 less than what it would take to keep a family of five above poverty in 1850. The declining wages pushed many craftsmen into or near poverty and prevented journeymen who once looked forward to leaving wage work from opening their own workshops. By 1860, nine out of every ten skilled craftsmen worked for wages in another master craftsman’s workshop.

The revolution affects women and girls. The industrial revolution also brought thousands of women and children into the workforce for the first time. In New England, businessmen built hundreds of textile mills that employed mainly women and some children. At first these factories employed the young, unmarried daughters of farmers; after the 1850s they began to hire immigrant women from countries such as Ireland and Canada. Many women also began to work for wages in their homes or in small shops called "slop-shops," sewing pre-cut cloth into finished clothing. In 1854, the New Haven Shirt Company employed almost 3,700 women who worked long hours for low wages sewing shirts in their homes. In the 1830s and 1840s, shoe manufacturers began to employ thousands of women who worked in their homes stitching the upper leathers of shoes.

This growing class of wage earners had very little control over their work. Textile "mill girls" often worked 12 to 15 hours a day, lived in strictly supervised company boardinghouses, had to be silent during work, and could be fired for using "profane or improper language." Journeymen craftsmen also lost control over their work during this period. Master craftsmen refused to let journeymen take breaks and increased their hours and workload. They divided and simplified journeymen’s jobs. In artisan shoe workshops, for example, a journeyman no longer made a shoe from start to finish. Instead his only job might be to cut the leather for the shoes or attach the bottom of the shoe. Women who stitched clothing and shoes in their homes faced long hours, fines for late and faulty work, and low piece rates.

Striking for the right to talk. Not all members of the country’s new working class accepted their employers’ authority and they organized to resist the growing power of master craftsmen and manufacturers. In 1824, women and men at a textile factory in Pawtucket, Rhode Island led the country’s first factory strike. The striking textile workers demanded that the owner reverse his decision to increase their workday by one hour and to cut their wages. Four years later, mill hands in Dover, New Hampshire led the first all-women factory strike and demanded the elimination of new rules that banned talking at work and fined employees 12½ cents for being one minute late. Women who sewed clothing in their homes and in small workshops also organized. In 1831, 1,600 women tailors in the Union of Tailoresses’ Society of New York struck for higher wages.

Journeymen craftsmen like shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, and printers also organized against the growing power of their employers, the master craftsmen. They organized craft unions as early as the 1790s that pressured master craftsmen to raise wages, shorten their hours, and hire only skilled journeymen. These early journeymen’s unions also called strikes to enforce their demands. If the strike failed, which many did, the journeymen might pool their money and start their own workshop. Many of these early craft unions, however, did not last long, did not expand beyond a single town or city, and did not coordinate their activities with journeymen in other trades. Journeymen unions also remained small because they only represented white men, excluded African-Americans, and often viewed women workers as threats instead of allies.

But by the 1830s, journeymen from different trades began to coordinate their activities and expand their craft unions. In 1833, nine craft unions in New York City created the country’s first citywide federation of craft unions. By the end of the year, journeymen in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D. C. formed General Trades’ Unions and by 1836, thirteen cities had General Trades’ Unions. In 1834, these citywide federations decided to become active on a national scale and formed the National Trades’ Union. The General Trades’ Unions published their own newspapers like the Philadelphia Trades’ Union, and collected dues to support striking journeymen. These early labor federations excluded free African-American journeymen and rarely supported women workers.

"We are all day laborers." The growing cooperation among union journeymen gave many workers greater power over their working conditions. In the spring of 1835, for example, General Trades’ Unions in a number of cities led successful general strikes to shorten the workday from fourteen hours or more to ten hours. General strikes are strikes that involve workers from many different trades. In Philadelphia, the strike began in June when a group of Irish laborers left work and began marching through the city chanting "six to six." By the end of the day, the march had become huge and included craftsmen, like shoemakers and carpenters who upon seeing the march of Irish strikers, left their shops declaring, "We are all day laborers." Painters, plumbers, and cigar makers soon joined the strike and began attending "festive" parades and rallies. By the end of June almost forty trades in the city had forced their employers to adopt a ten-hour day.

Children on strike! Skilled white male journeymen weren’t the only workers who took part in the labor movement of the 1830s. In 1834, in Lowell, Massachusetts, over 800 women who operated the looms and spindles in the town’s textile mills called a strike to protest a wage cut. The strike began after a mill agent fired a worker who told him "...that there was no cause for any reduction whatever." The other workers followed the fired woman out of the mill and marched from mill to mill urging others to join the strike. After threats and criticism from mill owners, ministers and newspapers, the strikers accepted the wage cut. The same year, 800 women textile workers led an unsuccessful strike in Dover, New Hampshire to protest a wage reduction. The following year in Paterson, New Jersey, 1500 girls and boys struck the city’s mills and won a reduction of hours from 13½ to 12 hours per day.

Depression and immigration weaken solidarity. In 1837, the United States experienced a severe economic depression that destroyed the newly formed General Trades’ Unions and brought workers’ strikes, marches, and rallies to an abrupt halt. This economic crisis lasted seven years and closed factories, stopped production in artisan workshops, and plagued the country with high unemployment. During the next 23 years, except for a brief period in the 1850s, the labor movement never fully recovered and very few workers formed trade unions. The immigration of millions of people from Germany and Ireland during these years also made solidarity among workers difficult to achieve. Many native-born white workers saw the newcomers as competition and formed anti-Irish and anti-Catholic organizations that blamed immigrants, not employers, for their problems.

African-American exploitation and resistance. As the labor movement among white workers declined, a movement emerged to end the exploitation of another group of workers in the United States: African-Americans enslaved in the South. These abolitionists, mostly Northern middle-class social reformers and some artisans, demanded the immediate end to slavery and racial discrimination. White and black abolitionists published newspapers like the Liberator, petitioned Congress to end slavery, and organized a network of hideouts called the Underground Railroad that helped slaves escape the South. The four million slaves working on southern cotton, rice, and tobacco plantations also fought to end their oppression. Many of them resisted by refusing to work fast, sabotaging the master’s crops, running away, and even killing their masters. Slavery finally ended in 1865, but only after a four-year long and bloody civil war between the North and the South.

In the decades after the Civil War the United States grew rapidly. The country’s population jumped from 31 million in 1860 to 76 million in 1900. A growing portion of this population began to live and work in large bustling cities with police and fire departments, streetcars, sewers, tall buildings, factories, mansions, and urban slums. Only New York, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn had populations that exceeded 250,000 people in 1860. But by 1890, eleven cities had grown to this size and the populations of Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago had soared to over 1 million people. In the same year, one out of every three people in the U.S. lived in or near cities. The U.S. and its cities also became more diverse as over 14 million immigrants came, mainly from Europe but also from Asia, between 1860-1900. Many of these immigrants were trying to escape poverty and political oppression in their home countries and were searching for new opportunity in the United States.

Millions of the new urban residents and immigrants found work on the railroads, in the coal mines, and in the massive factories that wealthy manufacturers (dubbed "robber barons" by farmers and workers) began to build after the Civil War. Many of these robber barons had become rich selling war supplies during the Civil War. After the Civil War, they began to take advantage of new technology and to invest their money in new businesses. Robber barons like Jay Gould and Cornelius Vanderbilt invested in railroads that increased the miles of tracks in the United States from 40,000 in 1869 to 240,000 in 1889. Andrew Carnegie built massive iron and steel factories. Carnegie’s steel factories employed thousands of workers who made the rails that the railroad owners needed to lay their tracks. These factories used machines that were driven by electric and steam power instead of water. Coal mines also expanded and employed thousands of coal miners to dig the coal that fueled the railroads and new factories.

Meat, oats and cloth. Manufacturers built numerous other factories that rapidly expanded the size of the working class. By 1899, meat packing manufacturers had built 38 plants in Chicago that employed over 25,000 workers. By 1900, the workers at the Union Stockyards in Chicago were killing and preparing for consumption 75,000 cattle, 80,000 sheep, and 300,000 hogs each day. Henry P. Cowell formed the Quaker Oats company and in 1882 built a mill to process oats and package oatmeal in boxes. Textile factories in New England expanded rapidly after the invention of the sewing machine and shoe production also moved into factories after the invention of the McKay stitcher. Other factories sprang up to manufacture new inventions like the telephone, electric lamps, light bulbs, and a new floating soap called "Ivory." Businessmen also built department and retail stores like Macy’s, Marshall Field’s, and Woolworth’s to sell these new products to the consumer.

The growth of cities, railroads, factories, and mines brought tremendous changes to working class Americans. First, this growth greatly increased the size of the working class. In 1870, over 8 million people out of a workforce of over 12 million earned wages from an employer. By 1900, the workforce had grown to over 29 million and the number of wage earners in the U.S. had grown to over nineteen million people. The rise of factories also made workplaces bigger and more mechanized. In 1860, most workplaces employed an average of six workers. By 1890, the average shop size increased to 20 workers and in 1900, there were almost 1,500 factories that employed more than 500 workers. A number of plants employed over 10,000 workers under one roof. The typical workplace also became more diverse as millions of new immigrants and women entered wage work.

The growth of urban industrial America also made employers more powerful and more committed to controlling workers. Manufacturers combined firms into corporations, called "trusts," that dominated entire segments of the economy. Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and John P. Morgan, for example, formed trusts that attained virtual monopolies in oil, mining, steel, and banking. These corporations also figured out ways to exert more control over workers. They hired more foremen, fined or fired workers who worked too slowly, paid workers by the piece instead of a daily wage, increased the speed of conveyor belts, and introduced machines to replace skilled workers. In many ways workers were becoming "servants to the machine" in factories with rigid rules, poor ventilation, "noxious odors," and extreme temperatures.

Skilled craftsmen, mainly native-born white men but also many English, German, and Irish immigrants, began to rebuild unions in the late 1860s and 1870s to confront the growing power of big business. They formed numerous local trade unions in cities across the country. In Chicago, for example, skilled craftsmen formed thirty-three trade unions by 1869. Many of these local trade unions also began to join together on a national level. Between 1865 and 1873, local unions of miners, carpenters, bricklayers, machinists, shoemakers, tailors, locomotive engineers, and unions in twenty-seven other trades organized 34 national trade unions.

In 1873, the country experienced an economic crisis that caused widespread unemployment and briefly reduced the number of national unions to 7. By 1880, the economy had recovered and the number of national unions climbed to 18. Craftsmen also formed local Trades Councils or Labor Assemblies to support strikes and boycotts against anti-union employers and to lobby for legislation to protect workers. In 1881, craftsmen from these local and national unions came together and formed the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions.

No "boss’s pets!" Members of these unions resisted corporate power and exerted their right to control their work. Skilled ironworkers, for example, in the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steelworkers, retained broad powers in iron and steel mills. The members of the Amalgamated--mainly English, Welsh, and Irish-American men--negotiated their wages, hired and paid their own helpers, supervised their own work, and convinced their employers to raise their wages whenever the price of iron increased. These iron workers also established union rules that regulated the pace of work, known as a "stint." Anyone who worked too fast and exceeded this "stint" was called a "hog" or a "boss’s pet." Association members required strict loyalty and refused to work with people who tried to take another members’ job or paid their helpers under the wage scale. Sometimes the union would call a strike until the company fired the "Scoundrel."

The noble and holy order. Unskilled workers also began to organize in the late 19th century to challenge the growing inequality between workers and employers. In 1869, nine garment cutters from Philadelphia formed the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor that became an inclusive labor organization that welcomed unskilled workers, immigrants, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and women. The Order, as it was known, had a broad agenda that extended beyond the workplace. The Order established cooperative businesses owned by workers, fought against prison labor, advocated government ownership of railroads and telegraphs, and supported government health and safety regulations to protect workers from injury. Its numerous local and district assemblies sponsored picnics, parades, and balls, and built halls where workers gathered to read, debate, and listen to lively speeches and sermons.

During its first decade, the Order had a policy of secrecy that prevented the organization from expanding rapidly. Partly to protect against being fired by their anti-union employers, members of the Order never mentioned the name of their organization in public. Meeting announcements were made by word of mouth or given in coded messages written on sidewalks or in labor newspapers. The Order’s secret induction ceremonies that included "mystical" rituals probably also prevented a massive upsurge in membership. Finally, an economic Depression that lasted between 1873-1877 led to widespread unemployment that stalled the Order’s growth and reduced its membership, which stood at about 6,000 in 1877.

Storming the fort. In the late 1870s and 1880s, however, the Order grew rapidly. As the economy began to improve and unemployment declined, membership in the Order rose to nearly 30,000 by 1880. In 1882, the Order expanded even further after its members decided to eliminate the policy of secrecy and began to organize in public. Two years after the Order’s activities became visible to the masses of workers, its membership increased to 100,000. The Order experienced its most dramatic growth in response to a series of successful strikes against the hated "Wizard of Wall Street," Jay Gould, and his railroad lines. In 1884 and 1885, railroad workers in the Order throughout the southwest led strikes that forced Gould to rescind wage cuts and rehire fired union members. These strikes were often dramatic and inspiring. In 1885, in Denver, almost 2,000 workers held rallies, parades, and boycotted merchants who accepted Gould stock. At one point, members of the Order gathered in front of a Denver jail to raise the spirits of arrested union members and sang a popular song called "Storm the Fort" that declared:

                                        Toiling millions now are waking,

                                        See them marching on;

                                        All the tyrants now are shaking,

                                        Ere their power is gone.

                                        Storm the fort, ye Knights of Labor,

                                        Battle for your cause;

                                        Equal rights for every neighbor,

                                        Down with tyrant laws!

The inspiring and successful railroad strikes combined with the Order’s policy to admit all kinds of workers, not just skilled craftsmen, led to an upsurge in membership. Between July, 1885 and July 1886, the number of district assemblies in the Order increased from 4,800 to over 11,000 and membership jumped from 110,000 to over 750,000 members.

Women and African Americans: Not to be ignored. Many of these new members were women. At first, the Order did not admit women, partly because many of its male leaders viewed women workers as competitors. The Order, however, could not afford to ignore the rapidly growing number of women in the workforce. In 1881, the Order admitted women into its ranks and by 1886, had nearly 50,000 women members. A worker named Rebecca joined the Knights to improve the conditions in the clothing factory where she earned $5 a week, worked for ten hours a day, and listened to the supervisor shout and call her a "liar," "hussy," and a "lazy good-for-nothing." Thousands of women like Rebecca joined the Knights to end such abuse. They called strikes and boycotts and formed strong shop committees that met with managers to resolve grievances like the speed of work, firings, and fines.

African-Americans also swelled the ranks of the Order. By 1886, almost 60,000 African-American workers belonged to a number of integrated and all-black assemblies. (The first all-black assembly was founded in Ottumwa, Iowa in 1881.) Many black and white Knights used their power to fight against laws and customs that oppressed African-Americans. At the Order’s 1886 general assembly meeting in Richmond, Virginia, black and white delegates waged a campaign against racial segregation. After a whites-only hotel refused service to an African-American Knight named Frank Ferrell, the white delegates from his District Assembly canceled their reservations and joined Ferrell at a black boardinghouse. Soon other black and white delegates violated the South’s rigid color line and stayed together at black boardinghouses during the two-week convention. The militant spirit of the general assembly spread among African-American workers in the city and led one wealthy white woman to complain that since the Knights arrived, "her colored cook and servant have been trifling and impudent." However, the members of the Knights of Labor shared the anti-Chinese sentiments of other white Americans and excluded Chinese workers from the Order.

Many of the 600,000 new members who joined the Knights between 1885 and 1886 worked for ten or more hours a day in sweatshops and factories under the rigid discipline of machines and foremen. These workers began to demand more leisure time for themselves and started a movement to get an eight-hour day. They testified before Congress where one worker declared, "A Workingman wants something besides food and clothes in this country ... He wants recreation. Why should not a workingman have it as well as other people." Workers also wrote numerous poems in the Knights’ newspaper, the Journal of United Labor, about the social and moral benefits of the eight-hour day. One poem read:

                                        The hours you toil now more than EIGHT

                                        Don’t as a rule, invigorate;

                                        Don’t help the man, don’t help the state,

                                        Don’t manly virtues, elevate.

In the winter and spring of 1886, workers in the Knights developed more militant tactics to force their employers to give them the eight-hour day. They held rallies and marches, and led strikes and boycotts against employers who forced their employees to work more than eight-hours.

The Great Strike. On Saturday, May 1, 1886, the eight-hour day movement reached its height when over 300,000 workers across the country went on a general strike for the eight-hour day. Two years earlier, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions had set May 1, 1886, as a deadline for employers to grant the eight-hour day. In Chicago, 80,000 workers and their supporters marched down Michigan Avenue. In Milwaukee, close to 400 striking Polish laborers marched to the railroad tracks in West Milwaukee and convinced the yard laborers and shovelers to join their ranks. The growing strike procession then marched into the machine shops and "hustled and yelled" until the machinists agreed to stop work and join the strike. Over the next four days, thousands of workers in big cities and small towns struck for eight hours. The strikes began to end on May 4 after a bomb exploded and killed eight policemen during a rally in Haymarket square in Chicago. The rally had been called by anarchists to protest police violence against workers involved in the eight-hour strikes.

The holy order—decline and legacy. In the years after the Haymarket incident, the Knights of Labor began to disintegrate. Some Knights faced increased government repression. Albert Parsons, a leading member of the Order, along with seven other anarchists, was sentenced to death for the Haymarket square bombing. Although the government produced no evidence that connected Parsons and the anarchists to the bombing, Parsons and three others were eventually executed. Many employers also began to aggressively attack the Knights of Labor. In the months following Haymarket, employers locked out and defeated over 100,000 workers in disputes with the Order. By 1891, membership in the Order declined from almost a million in 1886 to fewer than 100,000. Although membership in the Knights of Labor continued to decline, its vision of militant action and solidarity among workers regardless of gender, skill, and race influenced future generations of labor activists.

The labor movement upsurge continued even after the Order disappeared. Seven months after the May 1 Haymarket incident, skilled craftsmen from 12 national trade unions formed a new organization called the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Many of these craftsmen had been active Knights but had come to believe that its militant tactics, especially mass strikes, led to employer and state repression and destroyed unions. They believed that in order to survive, unions affiliated with the AFL should focus on negotiating wages and working conditions with their employers and should represent workers from a single craft. The AFL admitted primarily unions of skilled white craftsmen like machinists, molders, brewers, building tradesmen, and locomotive engineers and firemen. Many of these unions excluded women and people of color.

The struggle continues: Craftsmen strike for the eight-hour day. Despite its conservatism, the AFL grew rapidly and its members began to wage militant struggles to improve their conditions in the workplace. In 1890, the AFL affiliated United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners led a series of successful strikes to achieve the eight-hour day. By the end of the year, building contractors in over 100 cities had granted skilled construction workers eight-hour days. AFL unions also led numerous sympathy strikes, where workers of one union called a strike to support a group of striking workers in another workplace. In 1892, in New York, 11 trade unions affiliated with the AFL went on strike in solidarity with striking cabinetmakers. Like the Knights of Labor, unions in the AFL also used boycotts to strengthen their position in the workplace. AFL members refused to handle or buy material made by a company involved in a labor dispute or strike with another union.

One of the most militant struggles waged by an AFL union occurred at the Carnegie Steel Company in Homestead, Pennsylvania. In late June 1892, the manager of the Carnegie Steel Works, Henry Clay Frick, closed the Homestead mill and announced that it would re-open on July 6 with non-union workers. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steelworkers called a strike to preserve their union. Strike leaders formed committees of workers that patrolled the town’s streets and guarded the mill to keep strikebreakers out. On July 6, workers and their families successfully defended the mill in a deadly twelve-hour battle with Pinkerton detectives sent by river to occupy the mill and re-open it with strikebreakers. The battle left seven workers and three Pinkertons dead. Several days later, however, eight thousand Pennsylvania state militia occupied Homestead and seized the mill, which soon re-opened without the union. The defeat of the Amalgamated led to the introduction of more machines to replace skilled iron puddlers and ended the power iron workers had to negotiate wages and work rules.

A slow recovery from defeat. The defeat of the iron and steelworkers at Homestead and the onset of a severe economic depression in 1893 slowed AFL organizing for several years. But as the economy strengthened, workers renewed their struggle to be treated with dignity and to control their work. Between 1897 and 1904, the number of people organized into trade unions jumped from under 500,000 to over 2 million. Most of the new union members were skilled white workers in metal work, railroads, construction, and coal mining. But the AFL did organize some people of color and unskilled workers, including African-American carpenters, cigar makers, bricklayers, long-shoremen, and laborers. By 1902, 20,000 African-American coal miners, more than half of the AFL’s total African-American membership, belonged to the United Mine Workers.

The United Mine Workers became one of the AFL’s strongest unions and its members forcefully claimed their right to work without the interference of employers. The union protected miners’ rights to make decisions about how to do their work--like where to drill holes, place explosive charges, and erect the timber poles that held up the roof. Union miners also refused to let employers set their hours. In 1904 at a UMW meeting in Pennsylvania, the delegates rejected a proposed clause in their contract requiring, "that the men stay in the mine the full eight hours." One delegate asked, "That’s taking away a little freedom from a man, hain’t it?" and declared, "I think a man ought to know when he is tired." Miners’ resistance to supervision was so strong that they often stopped working when the boss was near. One experienced union coal miner reported that he told his new assistant to "Always sit down when the boss is around."

By the turn of the century, many business owners in the United States had come to believe that workers, especially skilled craftsmen, had become too powerful. After 1900, they began a campaign to destroy the labor movement. Under the guidance of a manager named Frederick Winslow Taylor, businesses began to adopt "scientific management" methods to force workers to "do what they are told promptly and without asking questions or making suggestions...." Factory owners hired supervisors who timed workers with stopwatches and studied craftsmen at work. Employers used these "time and motion studies" to re-organize a job so that it could be completed more quickly by a less skilled worker. Factory owners installed machines that replaced skilled craftsmen and divided the process of producing goods so that an unskilled worker did a single, simple repetitive task throughout the day. Manufacturers hired more supervisors who imposed fines for violations of work rules and paid workers based on how fast they worked. A worker who tried to form a union or lead a strike was likely to be fired and could be easily replaced by another untrained worker.

Automobile manufacturer Henry Ford reorganized production along the lines outlined by Taylor. In the early years of the auto industry, skilled craftsmen controlled their work and took their time producing most parts of the car from start to finish. Ford, however, wanted to replace these skilled craftsmen with untrained workers who "... will simply do what they are told to do, over and over again, from bell-time to bell-time." So in 1910, he built a plant in Highland Park, Michigan that required very few skilled craftsmen. Instead, close to 15 thousand unskilled workers were assigned thousands of small repetitive tasks on chain-drive assembly lines. One worker, for example, might tighten the bolt nuts on the motor pan all day. Ford also hired 255 overseers who closely supervised each worker. Ford also established a Sociological Department to investigate his workers’ habits, hygiene, and beliefs. Workers who met Ford’s moral standards earned higher wages.

An open shop battle is launched. Scientific management wasn’t the only tool employers used to control workers and undermine the strength of the labor movement. In 1903, the National Association of Manufacturers at its convention in New Orleans launched an "open shop" campaign to drive trade unions and the AFL out of American workplaces. The Association passed a "Declaration of Principles" that denounced the union workplace and union tactics like the boycott that it claimed interfered "...with the personal liberty of employer and employee."

Yellow dogs and spies. The open shop drive quickly gained momentum. Employers refused to negotiate with unions, and made workers sign "yellow dog" contracts that banned union membership. They also used spies. In Portland, Oregon, for example, the Metal Trades Association used spies to find out which machinists in the city were in a union. The Association then called the machinists individually to its office and threatened to fire them if they didn’t quit the union. Anti-union business leaders also formed organizations that distributed millions of anti-union pamphlets to schools and churches, led boycotts of union goods, and pressured businesses to hire non-union workers.

Governments against workers. Businesses also convinced a number of judges, police, and politicians to support the crusade against the labor movement. Business owners filed numerous lawsuits under the Sherman Antitrust Act to halt union boycotts and sympathy strikes. Congress had passed the Act in 1890 to prevent business monopolies, but now conservative judges began to apply the law to unions and rule in favor of employers. The courts declared that boycotts and sympathy strikes, two of labor’s strongest weapons, were illegal restraints on trade. Between 1900-1910, judges issued hundreds of injunctions to stop union boycotts and strikes. Courts even issued injunctions to prevent union organizing and picketing, and fined and jailed union leaders who violated them. Anti-union politicians actively enforced injunctions and often ordered the police and the National Guard to arrest striking workers and protect strikebreakers.

Many workers fought against these attacks from employers and kept the labor movement alive. Despite employer and government attacks, new immigrants initiated a number of massive strikes to improve their conditions and bring unions to their workplaces. Between 1900 and 1920, over 14 million people, mostly from Italy and Slavic countries in southern and southeastern Europe, emigrated to the United States in search of work and opportunity. These new immigrants found employment in large factories that were now highly mechanized or in construction work, in coal mines, or on the docks as longshoremen. A number of these immigrants had been active in working-class political movements in Europe and brought to the United States a strong commitment to building unions. And even new immigrants, who had never worked in factories and had few industrial skills, organized against oppression in the workplace.

Immigrant Italian and Jewish women and girls who made clothes in sweatshops and factories waged some of the most militant union drives and strikes during this time. These garment workers faced horrible conditions. Factory overseers frequently increased the number of pieces they had to sew each day, reduced their wages, charged them for needles and thread, fined them for damaged cloth, harassed them, hired children as young as eight years old, and forced them to work as long as sixteen hours per day. Factory owners also ignored safety and fire hazards. On March 25, 1911, a deadly fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City and claimed the lives of 146 workers, mostly young women and girls, and became a symbol of the need for unions. A reporter from the New York Times witnessed the horrifying incident and wrote:

"I could see smoke pouring from the eighth and ninth floors... The faces of young women pressed up against the windows-- hundreds of screaming heads. At one window a young man helped a girl onto the sill and let her drop ... That’s when I heard my first thud ... The girls had no way out. The management had locked all the doors to keep them from going to the bathroom...Thud ... Another thud ... The thuds of falling bodies grew so loud I thought they’d be heard all over the city."

Between 1909 and 1915, clothing workers joined unions in growing numbers and led a series of massive strikes known as "uprisings" to gain a voice in the workplace and put an end to these kinds of working conditions.

A 20-year old leads a walkout of thousands. The garment workers’ upsurge began in New York City in 1909 at a meeting of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL). Three thousand workers had gathered in an auditorium to decide whether to call a strike against the shirtwaist manufacturers in the city. After two hours of discussion, a twenty-year old clothing worker named Clara Lemlich stood up and declared, "I have listened to all the speakers and I have no further patience for talk. I move we go on a general strike." The crowd exploded into feet stamping, cheering, and shouting and voted to walk out of their shops. On the first day of the strike, 20,000 workers closed almost 500 shops. Within four days, almost half of the strikers returned to work after their employers signed union contracts. The owners agreed to hire only union workers, stop charging workers for needles and thread, cut back on mandatory overtime, and to negotiate over wage rates.

Many of the larger firms refused to settle with the garment workers and hired strikebreakers to end the strike. Strikers also faced daily attacks from police and private guards who charged picket lines and beat them until they were bruised and bloody. In court they often confronted judges who fined, jailed, and sentenced them to hard labor. Many middle class and upper class women were outraged by the treatment of the strikers, most of who were young Russian and Italian women, and joined the Women’s Trade Union League to support the strike. They joined picket lines, gave speeches at churches and to civic groups, helped publish a newsletter, and lobbied the Mayor to end police violence against pickets. Although the strike ended unsuccessfully on February 15, it inspired future strikes and union organizing among garment workers in other workplaces in cities like Chicago.

The ILGWU wasn’t the only union to challenge employers’ control over workers. In 1905, a group of 200 socialists and trade unionists formed the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the Wobblies. Wobblies, like the Knights of Labor, sought to create "One Big Union" open to all workers. The Wobblies also advocated the syndicalist idea that workers should own industry and manage the economy for the benefit of everyone, not just a few. IWW organizers led militant strikes, gave speeches on street corners, wrote pamphlets and songs and were beaten, jailed, and even executed for their activities. But nothing seemed to dampen their optimism and energy. Before he was shot by a firing squad on what many claimed were false charges of murder, the Wobbly songwriter, Joe Hill, declared, "Tomorrow I expect to take a trip to the planet Mars and, if so, will immediately commence to organize the Martian canal workers into the IWW."

Unions in politics. The workplace wasn’t the only place that workers fought against the power of employers and the campaign to create union-free workplaces, called "open shops." They also entered the political arena to break the stranglehold big business exerted over the political system. In 1901, workers in San Francisco formed the Union Labor Party and elected three trade unionists to the city council and the president of the Musicians’ Union, Eugene E. Schmitz as mayor. During the Labor Party’s first year in office, 25,000 workers joined unions, police stopped protecting strikebreakers, and the Employers’ Association disbanded. Even the national leaders of the AFL, who believed that workers should build trade unions not political parties, began a campaign to elect pro-labor candidates to office. During the 1906 elections, the AFL remained officially non-partisan, but aggressively campaigned for pro-labor candidates and tried to defeat anti-union politicians.

The Socialist Party and a workers’ agenda. Workers’ political activism also strengthened the Socialist Party. The Socialist Party was founded in 1901 after several socialist groups merged. The Socialist Party, led by the well known labor leader Eugene V. Debs, sought to replace capitalism with a cooperative economic system controlled by a government that represented the working class. The Socialist Party supported unions, free public education, welfare for the elderly and unemployed, and government ownership of transportation, corporate monopolies, and public utilities. Some of the more radical members of the Socialist Party were active in the Wobblies. Many workers responded enthusiastically to the Party’s platform and by 1908, the Party had 3,000 local branches and three years later, elected candidates to municipal offices in 340 cities, including 74 mayoral seats. In 1912, the Socialist Party had 118,000 members and its candidate for president of the U.S., Eugene V. Debs, received almost one million votes.

State governments start to respond. Many politicians responded to the political action and pressure of unionists, socialists, workers, and middle-class reformers, and began to pass legislation at the state level to protect workers from abusive corporations. In 1911, the New York state legislature created a "factory commission" to investigate the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire. The legislature appointed a middle-class reformer named Frances Perkins and the president of the AFL, Samuel Gompers, to the factory commission. The commission listened to hundreds of workers testify and proposed fifty-six laws to raise wages and improve working conditions. A number of states also began to pass laws that outlawed prison and child labor, required safety inspections of factories, and set maximum work hours for women and some groups of men workers.

Out of suffering, strength. In the summer of 1914, a war began that quickly engulfed Europe. Although World War I caused tremendous suffering, it also led to significant advances for workers and the labor movement. First, the war caused a shortage of labor, which made employers less likely to fire workers who went on strike or formed unions. The war also strengthened unions through labor boards that the government created to settle labor disputes and to ensure steady war production. The War Labor Board guaranteed workers the right to organize and often sided with unions in labor disputes. Many workers also believed that the country’s fight to "make the world safe for democracy" would not be complete without a union fight to bring "industrial democracy" to American workplaces.

The demand for workers, the activities of the war labor boards, and workers’ quest for industrial democracy triggered a massive upsurge in strikes. In many cases, strikes were the only tool workers had to gain a voice in the workplace and convince employers to improve working conditions. In Bridgeport, Connecticut, workers at the Remington Arms Company led numerous strikes during the war to increase wages, gain equal pay for women, and eliminate piecework. Between 1916 and 1920, in cities across the country, over one million workers a year went on strike to achieve "industrial democracy." Union organizing and membership also increased. Between 1910 and 1920, the International Association of Machinists grew from 54,000 to over 300,000, the United Mine Workers increased to almost 500,000 members, the membership of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers doubled, and almost all white railroad workers joined unions. By 1920, unions had almost five million members.

The war also brought new challenges to the labor movement. One of the greatest was to overcome racist attitudes among many white workers and organize the thousands of African-Americans who had moved north during the war. Before World War I, most African-Americans were poor tenant farmers or sharecroppers in the South. Few African-Americans left the South because most employers, especially in the heavy industries like steel, auto, and meat-packing refused to hire African-American workers, except as strikebreakers. The wartime labor shortage, however, forced employers to hire African-Americans and between 1910-1920 over 500,000 African-Americans migrated to northern cities from the rural South. Chicago was a major destination for African-American migrants who often found work in the city’s meat-packing plants that were feeding the soldiers in Europe.

The jungle of the packinghouse. The Chicago meat-packing plants that African-Americans entered in World War I were diverse. German, Irish, and Bohemian men did skilled knife jobs and Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, and Slovak men and women did less skilled jobs like making sausage casings or carting fat. African-Americans did mostly unskilled jobs like mopping blood off the floor. The conditions in the plants were harsh and dangerous. In 1917, over 10,000 of the 22,000 workers at the Armour Company became injured or ill from conditions in the plants. Some of these conditions were vividly described in the novel The Jungle, which was written in 1906 by Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote that in the winter the factories became so cold that, "The men would tie up their feet in newspapers and old sacks, and these would be soaked in blood and frozen, and then soaked again, and so on until by night-time a man would be walking on great lumps the size of the feet of an elephant." Many of these workers earned as little as 15 cents per hour and had to confront foremen who hired friends and favorites and continually increased the speed of their work.

A challenge to horrific conditions. During World War I, the diverse group of workers in the meat-packing plants joined together into unions to challenge these working conditions. In July 1917, the Chicago Federation of Labor formed the Stockyards Labor Council to organize all of the stockyards. Thousands of skilled, unskilled, native-born, and foreign-born workers responded enthusiastically to the Labor Council drive and joined the union. The Labor Council made special efforts to organize the new African-American migrants, who had become almost one-quarter of the stockyard labor force. The vice president of the Labor Council was an African-American man named G. W. Downing and white workers often elected African-American workers as their stewards. The Labor Council also held interracial rallies and meetings where black and white workers pledged to work together. The growing power of the union, along with pressure from the government, forced the packers to recognize the union and give workers an eight-hour day, seven paid holidays, a one dollar raise, and equal pay for women doing the same jobs as men. Workers also began to form strong shop floor committees that had three elected representatives who resolved grievances with managers.

In November 1918, World War I ended. The following year the labor upsurge that began at the start of the war reached its highest point yet. In 1919, four million workers went on strike to extend the gains they had achieved during the war. In Seattle, 110 unions representing 60,000 workers went on strike to increase their wages. The unions established a General Strike Committee that set up community kitchens, neighborhood milk stations, cooperative butcher shops and laundries, and enlisted war veterans to maintain order on the streets. Following the Seattle strike, numerous strikes occurred, involving textile workers in New England, police in Boston, and cigar makers, shirt makers, bakers, barbers, and carpenters in New York. In September, over 350,000 steelworkers in steel mills across the country, including the major steel producing Pittsburgh region, began an unsuccessful ten-week strike for an eight hour day, a six day week, and an increase in their wages.

"Unions: Un-American!" Many employers felt threatened by the growing power and militancy of the labor movement and following the 1919 strike wave, launched a campaign called the "American Plan," to drive trade unions out of their workplaces. Manufacturers and other anti-union business leaders formed Open Shop Associations that fought to eliminate "closed shops" where employers hired only union workers. These Associations denounced unions as "un-American," boycotted businesses that had "closed shops," and urged consumers to buy products made by non-union workers. By the end of 1920, 240 cities and 44 states had Open Shop Associations. Although unions fought back and called a number of strikes between 1920 and 1922, the Open Shop drive took a toll on the labor movement. By 1923, union membership dropped to less than four million. Unions in textiles, steel, auto, rubber, coal, and meat-packing had been severely weakened or completely destroyed.

Employers exploit racial divisions. There were other factors that contributed to the decline of the labor movement after World War I. First, racial divisions between white and black workers weakened unions. Many white workers, like most whites in society at the time, supported segregation and in some cases excluded African-Americans from union membership. As a result, many African-Americans believed that the only way to get a job was to cross the union picket lines during the 1919 strike wave. Employers exploited these racial divisions to further weaken unity among workers and to prevent unionization. The meat-packers in Chicago used several tactics to increase animosity between black and white workers. They intentionally used African-Americans as strikebreakers, gave preferential treatment to African-American workers opposed to unions, and gave financial support to institutions in the African-American community that opposed unions.

The federal government turns against labor. The anti-labor actions of the federal government after World War I also made it difficult for the labor movement to survive the "Open Shop" drive. First, the government ended its support for unions and dismantled the labor agencies that protected unions and gave workers some voice in managing the economy. In June 1919, the government shut down the War Labor Board, and in 1920, the Railway Administration returned the railroads, which it had managed during the war, to private owners. Second, the government became more hostile to radical political ideas and arrested or deported thousands of socialists and Wobblies who helped build the labor movement and kept it strong. In December 1919, the government deported over two hundred immigrants it suspected were socialists and anarchists.

The open shop drive was only one tool employers used to drive unions from workplaces during the 1920s. Throughout the decade, a number of employers undermined union strength with a new set of management initiatives called "Welfare Capitalism." Employers believed that welfare capitalism would convince their employees that they didn’t need unions or the government to protect their interests and create a loyal workforce. The system of welfare capitalism at the Morrell meat-packing plant in Ottumwa, Iowa is representative of the welfare capitalist programs that emerged in workplaces across the country in the 1920s. Morrell officials sponsored company picnics, choral groups, and baseball and basketball leagues for workers in the plant. They also created a company union, known as the plant council, which was supposed to bring elected worker representatives and management together to set work policies and resolve grievances. Morrell also instituted new financial benefits for employees, like life insurance, paid vacation, and disability benefits.

Problems with welfare capitalism in Ottumwa. Welfare capitalism, however, did not improve working conditions on the job, create a loyal workforce, or give workers a meaningful voice. Company welfare programs did not provide job security and throughout the 1920s companies regularly laid-off workers at will. Welfare capitalism failed to raise wages or shorten hours. The wages of a number of workers at the Morrell plant, for example, actually declined during the 1920s. In 1929, Gilbert Baker earned five cents less per hour than the forty cents per hour minimum wage workers earned at the plant in 1920. Morrell workers, along with workers in other workplaces in the 1920s, also continued to confront dangerous working conditions and foremen who harassed people they disliked, promoted favorites, and fired people at will. Workers did not find recourse in company unions, which were under the tight control of management. At the Morrell plant, the company president and plant supervisor had the final authority to approve or reject the recommendations of the plant council.

During the 1920s, very few workers could turn to unions to oppose the control employers had over their lives. The government backlash against unions, the open shop drive, and the rise of welfare capitalism severely weakened unions and reduced their membership. Between 1920 and 1928, the membership of the once powerful United Mine Workers (UMW) decreased from 500,000 to 80,000. As the United Mine Workers became less powerful, the standard daily wage for many union miners dropped from $7.50 in 1925 to below $2 in 1929. Many other unions lost membership during the 1920s. By 1929, the membership of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers had dropped from 105,000 in 1920 to 32,000. Some growing industries like steel, auto, and electrical equipment manufacturing remained almost entirely unorganized. By 1929, the percentage of all workers in unions had declined from 19% in 1920 to 17%.

Workers look at a third political party. Despite the decline of the labor movement during the 1920s, many workers, labor activists, and unions continued to fight against a political and economic system that ignored workers’ interests. In 1922, the railroad unions helped form the Conference for Progressive Political Action (CPPA) which fought to challenge the control big business had over the political system. Progressive social reformers, along with hundreds of delegates from unions such as the Machinists and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers attended the first CPPA gathering. In 1924, the CPPA, with the endorsement of the AFL, led a campaign to get the pro-labor Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette elected as a third party candidate for president of the U.S. La Follette, who called for government ownership of railroads and an end to anti-union injunctions, did not do well in the pro-business climate of the 1920s and only won 16.5% of the vote.

The collapse of an unjust system. In late 1929, after ten years of decline for the labor movement, the U.S. economy collapsed and entered into a Depression that lasted for over ten years. The Depression was triggered primarily by overproduction and unequal distribution of wealth during the 1920s. In the 1920s, the economy grew rapidly and corporations began to expand their factories, which soon produced vast amounts of consumer goods like radios and cars. Many business owners became extremely wealthy and the decade became known as the "roaring twenties." For most workers, however, the decade was not "roaring." Despite increased corporate profits, employers continued to pay workers low wages. As a result, most Americans could not afford to continually consume the goods companies were producing. By the late 1920s, inventories began to pile up in warehouses and manufacturers were forced to cut production and lay off workers. In October 1929 after the stock market crashed, the recession became a full-blown Depression. Between 1929 and 1932, the country’s gross national product dropped from over 100 billion dollars to under 60 billion dollars and by 1933, 9,000 banks failed and almost 100,000 businesses closed.

The onset of the Great Depression further weakened an already weak labor movement. Hundreds of thousands of workers in unionized industries lost their jobs and left their unions. Building construction, for example, came to a standstill and tens of thousands of unemployed carpenters, ironworkers, bricklayers, and electricians, stopped paying their union dues and dropped out of their unions. By 1933, these once powerful construction unions lost almost half a million members and the total union membership dropped to less than three million. Unions also found it extremely difficult to organize employed workers. With one-third of the workforce unemployed, most workers did not want to get involved in union organizing and risk losing their jobs. Also some employers fired workers who did try to organize unions.

The Depression also worsened workers’ already poor working and living conditions. As business profits declined, many employers eliminated company benefit programs they had offered workers during the 1920s. Employers cut pensions, eliminated paid vacations, group insurance policies, and subsidies for home mortgages--all programs of welfare capitalism. Employers also cut workers’ wages, shortened their hours, or laid them off. Millions of workers could no longer afford to pay their rents and mortgages. In 1932, Virgil Bankson, who worked at the Morrell meat-packing plant in Ottumwa, Iowa, was forced to build a one-room wood shack for his family after he could no longer afford to pay rent. Bankson remembered that the shack had no lining and stated he doesn’t know " ... how we kept from freezing in the wintertime."

The unemployed fight back. Working-class families across the country faced similar conditions. In many cases workers could not afford to buy food and stood in long bread and soup lines to receive food from charities. By the summer of 1933, after four harsh years of the Depression, workers had started to awaken to the realization that they needed to act together to improve their conditions. In the summer of 1932, close to 15,000 World War I veterans gathered in Washington D. C. to demand government relief from poverty and unemployment. The veterans set up a campsite in the city and demanded immediate payment of a cash "bonus" Congress had promised to pay them in 1945. In July, under orders from President Herbert Hoover, the U.S. army destroyed the "Bonus" camp and ended the protest.

Other unemployed workers in cities across the country organized Unemployed Councils that fought against harsh Depression conditions. Councils led marches of tens of thousands of people demanding that the government provide food and work. Council activists also fought evictions. They confronted police as they tried to evict tenants and in some cases, were able to move evicted tenants and their furniture back into their apartment.

Good laws help workers rebuild unions. The unemployed weren’t the only workers who began to join together to improve their lives and confront the devastating effects of the Depression. In the summer of 1933, workers in thousands of workplaces across the United States had begun to organize unions and rebuild the labor movement. This massive upsurge in union activism in the summer of 1933 occurred in large part in response to the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which remained a law for two years until it was declared unconstitutional in May, 1935. The NIRA, which the newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt signed in June, gave "... employees the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing," and declared that workers’ organizing efforts "... shall be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers...." This promise of government protection of workers’ right to organize encouraged workers to begin building and supporting unions.

Union organizers quickly took advantage of the new law. United Mine Workers President, John L. Lewis, who was born and grew up in the coal region of south central Iowa, told workers that the NIRA means, "The president wants you to join a union." Labor activist Don Harris recalled that within a year after the NIRA passed, he and other workers had organized a union at the Rollins Hosiery plant in Des Moines, Iowa. The new hosiery workers’ union, which was one of the largest in the state, became active in organizing drives around the city. In one instance, hundreds of members of the hosiery local joined a mass picket line to support a union drive at a Des Moines power plant of the Iowa Power and Light Company. The workers at the power plant eventually gained union recognition. Thousands of Iowans in workplaces across the state such as packinghouses, cornstarch plants, and farm implement factories also began to rebuild unions and revive the labor movement.

Workers rise to the call. The call to "join the union" rang across the country in the two years after the passage of the NIRA. Workers at the Hormel meat-packing plant in Austin, Minnesota, organized the Independent Union of All Workers. One worker vividly remembered the excitement of the workers who attended the union’s founding meeting in Sutton Park. "You could see purpose in the eyes of these fellows," he recalled, "New hope was shining in them." The IUAW soon had local unions in North and South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Hundreds of thousands of other workers also began to see "hope" for a better future in the labor movement. Mexican and Filipino farm laborers in California, truck drivers in Minneapolis, textile mill workers in the south, auto parts assemblers in Toledo, longshoremen in San Francisco, and many other workers began to organize unions that led to higher wages, respect, and dignity. The AFL grew rapidly in response to this union upsurge. Between June and October 1934, the AFL created 3,537 new local unions. In 1934, the proportion of workers who belonged to unions had increased from 17% in 1929 to 33%.

In the 1930s, unlike the 1920s, politicians began to support unions and workers and passed pro-labor legislation. In 1935, Franklin Roosevelt signed "New Deal" legislation that created millions of jobs on public works projects and provided Social Security for the retired workers. A stronger labor law, called the National Labor Relations Act, made it illegal for companies to finance their own unions, fire people for joining a union, use spies, and refuse to bargain with unions. The new law, known as the Wagner Act, created the National Labor Relations Board to oversee elections for union representation and to ensure that employers bargained in good faith with the union that won the election.

Union power and workers’ rights were further strengthened in 1938 with the National Fair Labor Standards Act that mandated overtime pay for work over 40 hours a week, set a minimum wage, and made the use of child labor a violation of federal law. While the New Deal benefited workers, it did not end the Depression. The economy began to recover in 1939 after World War II started in Europe and American manufacturers increased the production of war materials, which they supplied to the Allies, England and France. The economy did not fully recover until the U.S. entered World War II on the side of the Allies in December 1941 and the government increased its spending on military production.

A powerful idea: Industrial unionism. Several months after the New Deal summer of 1935, the AFL became embroiled in a bitter internal dispute over how to incorporate the hundreds of thousands of new union members into the AFL. Initially, the AFL put its new members into federal local unions controlled directly by the AFL. It also required that the craftsmen in a newly organized factory, like carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and machinists, be separated from the federal union and be placed in their respective craft unions. Some AFL leaders opposed the separation of skilled craft workers from unskilled and semi-skilled workers. They believed that workers would be much stronger in industrial unions that organized all of the workers from the same factory or industry into a single union. In the fall of 1935, the opponents of craft unionism in the AFL, led by United Mine Workers’ president, John L. Lewis, created the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) to begin to build industrial unions.

Many workers across the country supported the CIO and began to lead some very dramatic organizing drives to bring industrial unions to their workplaces. On December 30, 1936, for example, autoworkers in Flint, Michigan seized General Motor’s Fisher Body plants No.1 and No.2. The workers refused to leave the plant until GM recognized their union, the United Automobile Workers. Over the next six weeks, the sit-down strikers organized committees to provide recreation, education, sanitation, security, and mail delivery. The strikers’ wives ran the UAW food committee that provided three meals per day to workers inside the plants. They also formed a Women’s Emergency Brigade that fought off police attacks and helped capture other plants. The striking workers also sang. Before and after each mass meeting inside the occupied plants, workers sang a popular labor song the Wobblies used to sing called Solidarity Forever:

                                   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.

                                   Solidarity forever

                                   Solidarity forever

                                   Solidarity forever

                                   For the union makes us strong

On February 11, GM surrendered and signed an agreement with the head of the CIO, John L. Lewis, to recognize the UAW.

"Join the CIO…come on join the CIO!" After the GM strike, the CIO expanded rapidly. Millions of workers in all kinds of workplaces began to realize the importance of solidarity and organized unions that improved their lives. Unions emerged among farm laborers, drugstore clerks, farm equipment workers, rapid transit operators, government employees, workers in laundries and dry cleaners, waitresses, hotel workers, and many others. Many of the workers in these new unions sought to join the CIO. By the fall of 1937, the CIO had issued charters to 600 unions that represented close to 225,000 workers.

The CIO also formed its own organizing committees. These committees received financial support from the CIO’s leading unions such as the United Mine Workers, led by John Lewis and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, led by Sidney Hillman. In June 1936, the CIO organized the Steelworkers Organizing Committee (SWOC) to build an industrial union among steelworkers. By February 1937, SWOC won a contract from U.S. Steel that included a 5 percent wage increase and time and a half for overtime. By April, SWOC claimed 280,000 members. Similar CIO committees, such as the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC) and the Textile Workers Organizing Committee (TWOC) helped build unions among thousands of workers in meat-packing and textile plants around the country. By September 1937, the CIO had over 3.7 million members. In 1938, the unions affiliated with the CIO gathered at a convention to separate permanently from the AFL, adopt a constitution, and change its name to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

Conflict comes amidst success. These new CIO unions did not exert a significant amount of power in the workplace immediately. Conflict with the AFL weakened the CIO. The AFL continued to insist on its right to represent skilled workers and often organized unions to compete with CIO unions for recognition from employers. Employer opposition to unions also weakened the CIO. Many employers aggressively opposed the CIO and its attempt to give workers greater control over their working conditions. Employers often refused to recognize the results of NLRB elections and ignored collective bargaining agreements. They also regularly fired union supporters and used company security guards to intimidate and in some cases physically assault workers on union picket lines. As a result, many workers continued to avoid union activism.

The entrance of the United States into World War II in 1941, however, strengthened the AFL and CIO unions, and led to significant advances for the labor movement. The high demand for workers to produce war goods, coupled with a labor shortage, made employers less likely to fire workers who were active in the union. The government also created labor agencies, like the National War Labor Board (NWLB) to ensure labor peace during the war. These labor agencies guaranteed union representation, set wages, and mediated labor-management disputes. In early 1942, the NWLB greatly strengthened unions when it issued a policy called "maintenance of membership." The policy required workers who had joined unions to pay their dues for the length of the collective bargaining agreement. In return, unions agreed to a no-strike pledge. And, as during World War I, workers demanded that the fight to bring democracy to the rest of the world should also include a fight to bring democracy to American workplaces.

Mass industry – mass organizing. The labor shortage, government support, and workers’ fight for democracy in the workplace led to an incredible expansion of AFL and CIO membership during the war years. Between June 1940 and December 1941, the month the U.S. entered the war, the combined membership of the AFL and CIO increased by 1.5 million. The new CIO affiliated unions had a foothold in mass production industry and a commitment to organizing all workers regardless of skill, race, gender, and nationality. That commitment made them grow especially rapidly. Between 1939-1944, the UAW’s membership increased from 165,000 to over one million and the Shipbuilders’ union went from 35,000 members to 209,000. In the same period of time, over 450,000 workers joined the CIO’s United Steelworkers of America, which swelled its membership to 700,000. The CIO’s United Packinghouse Workers increased its membership from 39,000 to 100,000.

Power and growing control. The growing power of unions during the war allowed workers to regain some of the control over their jobs that they had lost during the 1920s. Employers were forced to respect the results of NLRB elections and found they could live with collective bargaining agreements that guaranteed workers decent wages. These contracts also often included seniority provisions and grievance procedures. Seniority ensured that workers were promoted or laid off based on their length of employment, not on the favoritism of supervisors. Grievance procedures set up a formal system where company and union representatives resolved workers’ complaints about violations of the contract or unfair discipline. Union members also began to exert more control over work rules on the shop floor. At the Brewster Aeronautical plant in New York, UAW stewards had the power to overturn a manager’s decision to fire a worker. In some cases, workers walked off their jobs to challenge an unfair decision by a supervisor. Gus Morkel, who worked at the Chamberlin munitions plant in Waterloo, remembers that if " ... a guy got fired for no reason, workers sometimes shut their machines off, walked out of the plant and did not return until the supervisor agreed to hire the fired worker back."

Unions fight for racial justice. Many CIO union activists also used their power to fight against employers who refused to hire and promote African-Americans. African-American auto workers in Detroit, Michigan walked out of Chrysler plants three times in 1941 to protest the promotion of white workers over more qualified blacks. African-Americans also used their unions to fight for racial equality outside the workplace. In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, CIO activists from the R.J. Reynolds tobacco factory led campaigns to force white city officials to hire more African-American police and firefighters and to allow African-Americans to register to vote. During the 1930s and early 1940s, many whites in the CIO had started to realize that racial unity made the labor movement stronger and, like the Knights of Labor, often supported civil rights activism. The CIO had a prohibition against segregated unions and some unions created anti-discrimination committees that pressured companies, local unions, and city officials to eliminate discrimination against African-Americans.

"Sex discrimination’s got to go!" A growing number of women union members also began to challenge sexism in the workplace and in the labor movement. During the war, millions of women entered previously all-male manufacturing jobs making battleships, guns, airplanes, and ammunition. Many of these women joined unions and organized committees in their unions that fought for equal pay with men, child care, and maternity leave. The leadership of some unions supported women’s demands for equal treatment. In 1942, the United Electrical Workers and the UAW convinced the National War Labor Board to force companies to pay the same wages to women and men doing comparable jobs. After the war, employers replaced many women workers with returning soldiers. The experience of defense work and union activism, however, gave millions of women a new sense of confidence and willingness to challenge sexism and traditional gender roles. Over the next five decades, women would continue to enter into wage work, to join unions, and demand equality.

The gradual acceptance of collective bargaining…. When the war ended in August 1945, unions had become more powerful and stable than at any other point in U.S. history. Officials in government agencies like the War Labor Board believed that stable unions would help prevent labor disputes and guarantee a steady production of war goods. During the war these agencies had mediated labor conflicts and instituted policies like "maintenance of membership" that increased union membership and gave union’s new legitimacy. The support of the government, combined with the wartime labor shortage, convinced many employers to accept unions as legitimate organizations. Increasingly, employers negotiated contracts that guaranteed workers grievance procedures, wage increases, and seniority. Foremen on the shop floor also began to respect or at least accept union stewards’ input regarding work rules and the speed of work.

After the war ended in August 1945, union workers in numerous workplaces across the country exerted their new power and called a series of strikes to increase their wages and improve their living standards. The striking workers had made many sacrifices during the war. They had worked long hours to ensure a steady production of war goods and were forced to accept government-imposed limits on wage increases. Workers also paid high war taxes, which further reduced their paychecks. In the months after the end of the war, workers’ wages and income declined sharply. Many corporations lost valuable military contracts and began to cut labor costs. They laid off workers, shortened the workweek, and eliminated overtime. The loss of overtime alone led to a 30% loss in wages.

Union workers, whose sacrifices and labor had helped the U.S. win the war, quickly mobilized to reverse their declining living standards. The striking workers accurately claimed that corporations had earned enormous profits during the war and could easily afford to increase wages. In November 1945, 180,000 UAW members struck General Motors for higher wages. The striking auto workers also wanted to protect the public from inflation and demanded that GM not raise the prices of its cars to cover the cost of higher wages. They challenged the company to "open the books" to prove that it could not afford the UAW’s proposal. In January 1946, 500,000 members of the United Steelworkers, 200,000 members of the United Electrical Workers, and 150,000 Packinghouse workers struck for higher pay. Between August 1945 and 1946, thousands of other workers in oil refineries, coal mining, textile factories, lumber and ship yards, and many other industries called strikes to improve their standard of living and working conditions.

The strike becomes an accepted institution. Unlike the strike wave of 1919 that followed World War I, this time the government and most employers had come to respect union power and did not try to crush the strikes. Most picket lines were orderly and many strikers held signs that had slogans like, "We Will Not Go Back to the Old Days." In most cases, the police and company guards did not arrest or harass strikers on these picket lines and the great majority of corporations did not attempt to reopen their factories with strikebreakers. Instead, management met with union representatives who negotiated settlements that ended the strikes and improved working conditions. A number of employers, many of whom had made huge profits during the war, agreed to union contracts that, according to the CIO, increased wages between 15% to 20% for 1.7 million of its members. It seemed that a new day had dawned for organized labor and that it had achieved the CIO’s first objective: "to bring about the effective organization of working men and women of America and unite them for common action into labor unions for their mutual aid and protection."

A counter attack against unions and workers. But not everybody celebrated the rise of the labor movement. Many conservative politicians and employers feared the strength unions displayed in the 1945-1946 strike wave and mobilized to pass anti-labor legislation to limit union power and give employers more control in the workplace. In 1947, a Republican-controlled Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act that increased corporate power and slowed the momentum of the labor movement. The Act made it illegal for unions to give money to political campaigns and outlawed secondary boycotts against a company that handled goods produced by another employer involved in a labor dispute. Taft-Hartley also outlawed sympathy strikes and wildcat strikes. Wildcats are strikes that aren’t officially sanctioned by the union.

"Right to work" laws weaken unions. One of the most harmful parts of the Act for unions was the provision that allowed states to pass so-called "right to work" laws banning the union shop. Soon after Congress passed the Act, a number of states including Iowa, passed "right to work" laws that prohibited union and management negotiators from even discussing union security provisions in their contracts. This meant that in "right to work" states, workers who were employed at a union workplace could refuse to join the union, even as they benefited from the higher wages and the improved working conditions secured in the union contract.

Communism and unions. The Taft-Hartley Act also contained a controversial provision that caused internal division in the CIO. The provision required union officers to sign an affidavit that they did not belong to the Communist Party. During the 1930s and early 1940s, the CIO had generally tolerated a wide range of political beliefs. It had members whose political affiliations ranged from the Republican Party to a number of dedicated organizers from the Communist Party who helped build such CIO unions as the United Electrical Workers and the Farm Equipment Workers. After the end of World War II, however, some segments of the CIO like many Americans at the time, became increasingly fearful of the Soviet Union and communism. This segment of the CIO believed that union officers should sign the affidavits. Other CIO members opposed the government’s attempt to limit the political views of union members and believed that union officers should refuse to sign the affidavits. In 1949, after bitter internal fights, the group that believed union officers should sign the affidavits, which was the dominant group in the CIO, expelled eleven unions whose officers refused to sign the affidavits.

Despite the division the Taft-Hartley Act generated in the CIO, the labor movement united to wage a political battle against the Act and its supporters. In Iowa, 100,000 workers stayed away from work on April 22, 1947 to protest the Taft-Hartley bill, and nearly 50,000 workers attended a rally at the state capitol in Des Moines to protest a proposed right-to-work bill. During the 1948 elections, the CIO’s Political Action Committee (PAC) and the AFL’s Labor’s League for Political Education mobilized union members to defeat politicians who voted for Taft-Hartley. During the campaign, the AFL and CIO put advertisements on radio, canvassed union members at their homes, and drove people to the polls. The labor movement’s political action helped elect 188 pro-labor candidates to Congress and defeat sixty-six representatives in Congress who voted for the Taft-Hartley bill. But the Taft-Hartley bill and the "right to work" bill in Iowa passed and are still on the books. Today, there are twenty-one states that have "right to work" laws.

The Labor Movement Survives and Expands

The labor movement survived Taft-Hartley, and between 1945 and 1972 built powerful institutions that improved communities, politics, and workers’ lives. By the mid-1950s, most national and international unions had central headquarters and employed numerous people to coordinate their expanding activities. A number of unions had publicity departments that published newsletters, newspapers, and magazines and education departments that coordinated conferences, workshops, and summer schools. Unions also began to create research departments that collected data on working conditions. Unions such as the UAW had a Fair Practices Department that fought against employment discrimination against women and people of color. Some unions even had daily radio broadcasts that covered labor issues.

Labor takes its place in politics. The labor movement used its growing institutional strength to influence the direction of politics. During the 1950s, the CIO’s Political Action Committee had over thirty staff members who advanced workers’ interests in the political arena. The PAC, which sometimes cooperated with the AFL’s Labor’s League for Political Education, raised money to help labor friendly candidates get elected and sponsored conferences to educate workers about the political process and political issues. The PAC also had "community stewards" who canvassed workers at their homes and made telephone calls to get union members to register and to vote on Election Day. Unions also continued to lobby Congress to overturn the hated Taft-Hartley law and to pass legislation to ban employment discrimination, improve health care, gain affordable housing, create jobs, and raise wages.

The big merger. In 1955, the leaders of the AFL and CIO decided that the time had come to merge and coordinate the growing institutional strength of the two major wings of the labor movement. The organizations merged partly to end raids on the membership of each other’s unions. AFL and CIO unions often waged campaigns to get workers in a union from the rival federation to switch their membership. Labor leaders hoped that the merger would end these raids that created conflict among union workers. They also hoped it would create more of a united front against large and well-organized corporations. The merger also occurred because some of the divisions between the two groups had started to disappear. Some AFL and CIO members had started to cooperate with each other at a local level and each federation represented a significant number of both skilled craftsmen and industrial workers. In 1953, AFL President George Meany, and CIO President Walter Reuther met to begin planning the merger. In December 1955 the AFL and CIO merged and became the AFL-CIO. George Meany, a plumber by trade, led the AFL-CIO as its president until 1979.

Strong contracts start to right a century of wrongs. The institutional, political, and economic power of the labor movement enabled unions to negotiate strong contracts for their members that led to a dramatic increase in the standard of living for millions of American workers. Unions convinced employers in major industries to increase wages as productivity rose and to adopt Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) that raised workers’ wages automatically as prices increased. The first contracts that included fringe benefits, such as employer contributions to pension funds and health insurance, also appeared in the 1950s. Some unions won other benefits like Supplementary Unemployment Benefits that guaranteed laid-off workers money to supplement state unemployment compensation. Grievance procedures also became a prominent feature of collective bargaining agreements and gave workers a forum to protest the actions of arbitrary foremen, unfair work rules and discipline, and violations of their union contracts. These union contracts dramatically improved workers’ standard of living. In 1965, production workers in manufacturing earned 81% more per hour than they did in 1950.

But employers continue to push for heavier workloads... These contracts and grievance procedures did not eliminate conflict between workers and foremen inside the workplaces. While many employers had come to accept the wage increases and benefits that came with collective bargaining, they did not want to give unions and workers any control over production decisions in the workplace. After World War II, corporations and their managers increasingly began to exert their control over work rules and the organization of production. Many employers introduced machines that replaced workers and led to an increase in the speed of work. In a meat-packing plant in Storm Lake, Iowa for example, the company introduced new devices to shave the hogs. These devices helped increase the speed of the chain and replaced one-third of the workers who once shaved the hogs. Employers in meat-packing and many other industries adopted other methods, such as incentive pay, to increase the speed of production. As the speed of work and the workload in plants increased, safety conditions began to deteriorate.

Workers and union activists fought to retain control over the pace of their work and working conditions. In the spring of 1949, 62,000 UAW members at the Ford factory in Dearborn, Michigan conducted a twenty-four day strike to force the company to slow down the assembly line. Workers also led spontaneous walkouts, called "wildcat" strikes, to exert some control over the speed of work and safety conditions. In 1954 alone, union members at the Firestone tire factory in Des Moines, Iowa, walked out of their plant fifty-three times to force managers to reduce their workload, improve safety conditions, or overturn a decision to discipline a fellow worker. Workers at this same plant also organized collective slowdowns, where they purposely kept production levels below standard rates until the company agreed to a fair speed of work.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the labor movement did not confine its activities solely to advancing the economic interests of workers. Many AFL-CIO members also became active supporters of the civil rights movement that captured America’s attention between 1955-1968.

In the 1950s and 1960s, African-Americans began to challenge the system of racial oppression that existed in the United States. In the early and mid 1950s, African-Americans in several southern cities led bus boycotts to end segregation in public transportation. And in the early 1960s, African-American college students and supportive whites, held sit-ins at stores like Woolworth’s and demanded to be served. Civil rights activists also led marches and protests to demand that southern whites let African-Americans exercise their right to vote.

Union activists played prominent roles in many of these struggles. In 1955, a leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids union named E.D. Nixon, along with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, helped organize a successful boycott of Montgomery, Alabama’s segregated bus system. In 1963, A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Walter Reuther, United Automobile Workers president, helped organize a civil rights march on Washington that was attended by over 250,000 people. A number of AFL-CIO unions also lobbied Congress to pass laws to protect African-Americans’ civil rights. Congress responded to the pressure of civil rights and union activists and in 1964 passed the Civil Rights Act. The Act outlawed discrimination in areas such as employment and in public accommodations like hotels and restaurants. The next year Congress passed the Voting Rights Act that protected African-Americans’ right to vote.

The labor movement also contributed a rich tradition of songs that sustained civil rights activists as they fought for freedom for African-Americans. Civil rights activist, James Farmer, for example, gave new lyrics to a famous union song "Which Side Are You On?" that was written in 1931 by Florence Reese, who was the wife of a Kentucky miner. The old song talked about workers fighting the mine bosses:

                                        Don’t scab for the bosses,

                                        Don’t listen to their lies.

                                        Us poor folks haven’t got a chance

                                        Unless we organize.

                                        Which Side Are You On?

                                        Which Side Are You On?

The new song talked about black people fighting racial oppression:

                                        My daddy fought for freedom and I’m a freedom’s son.

                                        I’ll stick right with this struggle until the battle’s won.

                                        Don’t Tom for Uncle Charlie, don’t listen to his lies,

                                        ‘Cause black folks haven’t got a chance unless we organize

                                        Which side are you on (Oh wont’ you tell me)

                                        Which side are you on (Sing it over now)

                                        Which side are you on (Once more now)

                                        Which side are you on?

The movements for civil rights and labor rights were often interwoven in the 1960s. In 1965 in Delano, California, Chicano (Mexican-American) and Filipino farm workers in the United Farm Workers led a five-year strike that became a struggle for labor and civil rights. While the strike was called to unionize the area’s grape fields and improve working conditions, it also shared the spirit and tactics of the civil rights movement in the South. During a twenty-five day march to the state capitol in Sacramento, striking farm workers sang the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome." In a display of cultural pride, the marchers also carried the Mexican and Filipino, as well as the American, flag. In 1970, five years after the strike began, the employers signed a union contract with UFW leaders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. The contract raised wages by 25 cents, created a grievance procedure, provided health benefits, and required growers to help fund a medical clinic.

No bathrooms for city workers. One of the clearest examples of the connection between the struggle for civil rights for people of color and for the rights of workers is the strike of African-American sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968. African-American sanitation workers faced deplorable and racist working conditions. The city did not provide bathrooms, showers, lunchrooms, or protective clothing for them; paid them as little as $1.10 per hour; and denied them vacations and job promotions. African-American sanitation workers also had no pensions and the city excluded them from workers’ compensation. Their work could also be dangerous. In January 1968, two African-American garbage men were crushed to death by their truck’s faulty packer. White city officials in Memphis paid the victim’s families only $500 for burial expenses and one month’s pay.

Two months after their co-workers’ death, 1,300 African-American sanitation workers joined the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union (AFSCME) and struck for union recognition and better working conditions. Civil rights groups and African-American churches in Memphis supported the strikers and provided food and clothing for their families. They also joined rallies and marches where sanitation workers carried signs that read "I AM A MAN." Martin Luther King Jr. also supported the sanitation workers and declared that the strike was "... important to every poor working man, black or white, in the South." On April 4, King came to Memphis to lead a march for the union. That night while standing on the balcony of his hotel room, King was killed by a sniper. Twelve days after King’s assassination, the city recognized the sanitation workers’ union and increased their wages by fifteen cents per hour.

In the two decades after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., both the labor movement and the U.S. economy suffered set backs. In the 1970s, companies from Asia and Europe began to compete in earnest with American corporations in the U.S. market. Cheaper and more fuel-efficient cars from Japan, for example, began to outsell many American-made cars. European and Asian companies also produced inexpensive and increasingly high-quality electronic equipment, like stereos and televisions, that outsold American-made products. Other foreign-made goods began to flood the U.S. market during the 1970s and 1980s and began to affect economic growth and business profits. U.S. corporations were partly responsible for the increase in imports. Since the end of World War II, many American corporations began to produce their goods in factories overseas in countries that had cheaper labor. By 1976, 29% of the imports that entered the U.S. were actually produced by workers in American-owned factories located outside the U.S. Economic growth in the U.S. declined to 2.9% per year in the 1970s from 4.1% per year in the 1960s.

Companies want workers to give back what they’d won. Arguing that they needed to compete with companies from Europe and Asia in this new global economy, corporations in the U.S. began to attack the strong contracts unions had negotiated during the 1950s and 1960s. In October 1979, Chrysler forced the UAW to accept concessions that froze wages for six months, cut six paid holidays, and stopped pension increases. Fifteen months later, the Chrysler company forced UAW workers to reduce their benefits and wages by $673 million. In 1982, the other auto companies, Ford and General Motors, forced the UAW to sign a contract that eliminated certain provisions like paid holidays, and did not include cost of living or pension increases. The contract cut workers’ incomes at each company by $1 billion. Employers in other industries also demanded concessions and by the end of 1982, unions in the profitable airline, meat-packing, trucking, and farm equipment industries were forced to agree to reductions in wages and benefits.

Corporations developed other tactics to cut labor costs and reduce the power of unions during the 1970s and 1980s. Manufacturers eliminated millions of jobs, including many union jobs, by re-organizing production. Many corporations closed their unionized plants and reopened them in another region with non-union workers. In the 1970s, meat-packing companies closed their unionized plants in Chicago and Omaha and built new non-union plants in rural areas of Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska. A number of corporations also moved their unionized factories to "right to work" states in the South and overseas to Third World countries. The big three automobile manufacturers, GM, Ford, and Chrysler eliminated numerous union jobs by closing plants in UAW cities like Flint and Detroit and building new ones in countries such as Mexico.

Corporate decisions to automate, shut down plants, and cut production levels also took a toll on union jobs. Increasingly in the 1970s, manufacturers in steel, meat-packing, and auto eliminated many well-paid union jobs by installing more labor saving machines in their factories. These machines often could complete tasks once completed by human beings or enable one worker to do the work of three. Union jobs also began to disappear as manufacturers reduced production or completely shut down plants. During the 1970s and 1980s, plant closings and scaled back production cost the United States millions of jobs. Many workers throughout the state of Iowa lost their jobs as a result of plant closings. Machinist Dick Sturgeon remembers when 1200 people in Sioux City lost their jobs when the Zenith radio plant closed. The loss of these jobs was devastating. Sturgeon recalled that, "You have people who have their dreams shattered right in front of them, who felt that they’d be working for that company until retirement, and boom, there’s no more company."

"Captive audiences" forced to hear anti-union speeches. Businesses were also determined to keep new unions and higher wages out of their workplaces and began to more aggressively fight union organizing drives. Many employers regularly threatened and fired union supporters during organizing drives. Some researchers have estimated that during the 1980s, 100,000 workers were fired for trying to exercise their legal rights to form unions. Businesses also began to hire management-consulting agencies that grew up as a new industry specializing in defeating organizing drives. Some of the tactics management consultants advocated included firing union leaders and forcing workers to attend "captive audience meetings." At these "captive audience meetings" employers tried to scare workers out of joining the union by giving anti-union speeches. After workers voted for the union, employers stalled during negotiations and refused to agree to contracts. In fact, employer opposition to collective bargaining was so strong during the 1980s that only one-quarter of all union drives in the decade led to a signed union contract.

Ronald Reagan heads up attacks on union rights. Some politicians supported this corporate assault on the labor movement. In 1981 a Republican, Ronald Reagan, became president of the United States and launched a government attack on unions. Soon after Reagan became president, 13,000 government employed air traffic controllers, members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers’ Organization (PATCO), went on strike for a better contract. Instead of negotiating with the striking controllers in PATCO, Reagan permanently replaced them with non-union controllers. Reagan’s decision weakened workers’ legal right to strike. After Reagan fired the controllers, it became more common for corporations to replace workers who struck legally to achieve better wages, hours, and working conditions and hire non-union workers to take their jobs.

During the 1980s, Ronald Reagan also replaced neutral or pro-union members of the National Labor Relations Board with conservatives who opposed unions. Under the control of Reagan appointees, the Labor Relations Board, which had once protected workers’ right to form unions, began to side with big business. The Labor Board often refused to punish companies that violated the law by stalling during negotiations and very often did not penalize or fine companies that fired or intimidated union organizers. Reagan also appointed an anti-union businessman, Raymond Donovan, as his Secretary of Labor. Donovan, who served as Secretary until 1984, cut the budget of programs that protected workers’ safety and was often charged by the AFL-CIO of advancing employers’ interests over those of unions.

The economic, institutional, and political assaults on unions during the 1970s and 1980s greatly reduced the power of the labor movement. In 1970, over 27% of all the workers in the U.S. were members of unions. Over the next two decades, however, union membership declined drastically as many of the labor movement’s most powerful unions suffered serious setbacks as a result of these forces. The membership of the United Steelworkers of America declined from over one million in 1975 to under 500,000 by 1987 and the United Automobile Workers union lost 500,000 of its members in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Between 1975 and 1985, an anti-union campaign, led by construction employers and an economic recession in the early 1980s, reduced the proportion of construction workers who belonged to building trades unions from 65% to around 30%. By 1990, only 16% of all workers belonged to unions.

Union workers in manufacturing jobs resisted the corporate assault on unions and difficult conditions in the workplace. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, union activists built a strong movement to improve health and safety conditions. In 1970, in response to pressure from the growing safety movement, Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). OSHA gave workers an important tool to keep their jobs safe. OSHA sets safety standards and makes workplace safety inspections when workers file complaints. Workers in coal mines, steel mills, oil fields, textile factories, and in nuclear power plants used OSHA to pressure the government to protect them from unsafe conditions. In many factories, union members also formed safety committees that organized pickets, inspected their own plants, handed out safety literature, researched safety laws, and led strikes to protest dangerous and stressful conditions.

Unions test their strength in politics. Union members also fought for workers’ rights in the political arena. In 1977, many unions and the major federation of unions, the AFL-CIO, lobbied the federal government to increase the minimum wage from $2.30 to $3.00 an hour. Congress eventually passed a compromise increase of 35 cents to $2.65. Labor leaders also tried to pass national health insurance legislation and a job creation program that included increased spending on public works projects. In 1978, the AFL-CIO and other unions fought to reform labor laws that weakened unions. They lobbied for passage of a comprehensive labor reform bill that would increase the number of members on the National Labor Relations Board, force employers to give back-pay to workers fired illegally for union activity, give union organizers equal time to talk to workers forced to attend "captive audience meetings," make companies bargain in good faith with unions, and deny federal contracts to employers who violated labor law. Despite labor’s aggressive political activism in support of the bill, anti-union employers and politicians defeated the labor law.

Miners use civil rights tactics to win an important strike. Although many union workers were forced to accept concessions during the anti-union climate of the 1970s and 1980s, some union workers successfully fought concessions. In 1989, coal miners in Virginia led a successful strike to reverse the Pittston Coal Company’s decision to cut health benefits to 1,500 retired and disabled miners and the widows of miners. The members of the United Mine Workers boycotted two banks that loaned Pittston money to bring in strikebreakers, invited thousands of union activists from all over the country to visit "Camp Solidarity" in southwest Virginia, and organized massive rallies of miners. Using tactics from the civil rights movement, miners also led non-violent demonstrations and sat down on roads to block coal trucks. And for the first time since the 1930s, miners led a sit-down strike that shut down the company’s largest coal preparation plant for four days. Eleven months after the union called the strike, Pittston surrendered and agreed to restore health benefits to miners and widows who collected pensions.

Public jobs. New groups of workers also kept the vision of the labor movement alive during the seventies and eighties and for the first time they joined unions. The largest group of workers to join unions during the 1970s and 1980s were public employees--people employed by federal, state, and local governments. In 1956, 7.3 million Americans were employed in the public sector and only 12.5% of them belonged to unions. In the 1960s, however, the number of public employees increased as governments at all levels invested more money in schools, hospitals, public transportation, and social service programs. Between 1956 and 1993, the government had created 11.3 million new jobs in public employment. These public employees, however, faced difficult conditions: overcrowded classrooms for teachers, large case loads for social workers, speed-ups for postal workers, and lack of respect and low pay for clerical workers at public universities. To these workers it seemed that the public wanted services, but was unwilling to create decent jobs to provide them.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, over 2 million public employees turned toward unions to gain dignity, more control over their work, and higher wages. Blue-collar public employees who collected garbage, cleaned city parks, and streets joined AFSCME, the Service International Employees Union (SEIU), and the Teamsters. Postal workers organized in the 1960s, and by the early 1990s, almost all of the 800,000 postal workers were represented by a union. Unions with a long history of representing workers in the public sector like AFSCME, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA), and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) saw gains among workers like teachers and social workers. By 1993, over 40% of all public employees were union members.

Service jobs. The majority of new jobs created during the 1970s and 1980s, however, were not in public employment. Most of the millions of new jobs created during