LABOR MOVEMENT

In the last decades of the nineteenth century it appeared that labor was unable effectively to challenge the combined wealth and power that capitalism in its industrial phase had created. The merger movement brought corporations together into vast concentrations of economic power resting in the hands of relatively few men. These trusts, pools, mergers, "gentlemen's agreements," and other instruments of capital consolidation transformed the structure of whole industries, from oil to coal mining, railroads, iron and steel, and meat packing.

This had a major impact on labor relations. On the one hand, the concentration of capital increased the economic power of the "captains of industry." These vertical and horizontal monopolies brought them the ability, seemingly, to do whatever they liked. Even the growing power of the government seemed unable to contain the power of capital. By the end of the nineteenth century the power among the monopolists seemed to be shifting towards the bankers. An example of this preeminent power of finance capital occurred during Theodore Roosevelt's administration. Roosevelt, who believed that the government must be strong enough to curb the "bad trusts," prosecuted and "busted" the Northern Securities railroad holding company in 1904. J. P. Morgan, who was behind the trust, had pleaded unsuccessfully with Roosevelt that "if we have done something wrong send your man to my man and they can fix it up." In 1904, when the Supreme Court sustained the President's prosecution under the Sherman Anti-trust Act and the Northern Security trust was dissolved, Morgan quietly sustained this challenge to his authority.

Then a few years later, Morgan quietly stepped in to save Roosevelt's political hide when the financial panic of 1907 threatened to scuttle a number of New York banks which might set off a general depression. Working behind the scenes, Morgan constructed a pool of financial support from other banks. Morgan, however, told Roosevelt that the crisis could be avoided only if the government agreed not to prosecute a trust involving U.S. Steel and the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, whose stock was held by one of the threatened banks. Roosevelt had to promise to let the deal go through. To observers it was obvious that the bombastic, trust-busting Roosevelt might make more noise in a confrontation with finance capital, but that the real power was in Morgan's hands.

With this kind of power arrayed against labor, what was the use in trying to organize trade unions? The answer, at least in part, is that by bringing capital together, the merger movement also brought workers together in larger concentrations. One example of this, taken from the 1930s and early 1940s, was the anti-union measures taken by the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford resisted unionization for decades, but when he built the Dearborn, Michigan Rouge River complex of auto factories and steel mills with a workforce in excess of 80,000, it was only a matter of time before the United Automobile Workers Union (UAW) would successfully organize the plant. It is no coincidence that the first nation-wide strikes in the nineteenth century were called by unions in the railroad industry. The railroads were powerful in their resistance to unions, it is true, but they were also vulnerable. Though they both failed, the "Rebellion of 1877" and the Pullman strike in 1894 demonstrated the strategic strength of labor in these new industries.

As for the rest of the economy, labor in the 1880s seemed to be combative, but generally too weak successfully to press its claims for higher wages, shorter hours, and safer working conditions. One of the most interesting workers' associations of the time was the Knights of Labor. This group was less successful in winning strikes than in laying the groundwork for a strong culture which emphasized solidarity among workers. Their mode of labor organizing was to found "regional assemblies" which included workers in several nearby industries. This approach stimulated a class-conscious culture, but it was hard to fight strikes when the union was not organized to concentrate on the target industry. Led by a machinist, Terence V. Powderly, the Knights were eclectic in their organizing strategy. They sought to enroll all workers into their lodges: women and African Americans were not excluded; only the "parasitic" elements in the communities were not allowed to join—the lawyers, the tavern keepers, bankers and gamblers.

With the Haymarket Riots in Chicago in May 1886, the deteriorating relations with the employers and the government led the labor movement to split in two. One part was the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Like the Knights of Labor, the IWW sought to organize all workers in "One Big Union." Also called, affectionately, the "Wobblies," the IWW's roots lay in the unskilled and unruly lumber workers of the northwest, the migrant agricultural workers of the great plains, the Western Federation of Miners, and the textile workers of Lawrence, Massachusetts. They expressed a political culture of American working class radicalism—a political culture that is so complex as to challenge definition. They engaged in free-speech campaigns in southern California during the repressive days of World War I, stepping up to give anti-war speeches on soap-boxes; being dragged away by police; only to be replaced by another speaker. They also most probably murdered mine owners whenever they could get close enough to them. In the exchange of violence, however, they were more often the victims than the perpetrator. They were what political scientists call "Anarcho-Syndicalists," (or anarchist-unionists). They believed that there can only be warfare between labor and capitalism and that either capitalism or socialism would emerge from the battle. They refused to negotiate or sign labor contracts with management because that would signify an accommodation between labor and management. Instead, they simply instigated strikes, something they were very good at. Eventually, as American labor became institutionalized, the Wobblies faded away.

The other side of the split in American labor in the late nineteenth century was the American Federation of Labor. In an era in which the employers seemed to be bent on merger and monopoly, other labor leaders began to think of consolidating the labor movement in a different way—by combining the existing trade unions into a national federation similar to the British Trades Union Congress (TUC). In response to management's monopoly of capital, they set out to monopolize labor, but they did so in a very different way than the Wobblies. This new federation, the American Federation of Labor, was formed in 1886. It did not shrink from the IWW's fear of "legitimizing" normal relationships between labor and capital. That, in fact, was its goal—to become a legitimate voice of labor in a democratic capitalist society (a contradiction in terms, the Wobblies would have argued). It intended to use whatever tools it could to improve the condition and the wages of labor. It would lobby for legislation in Washington and the state capitals. Of it would go on strike. Like the British TUC, it was composed of craft unions and it promised its constituent unions complete autonomy in the operation of their relations with management. Meeting in Pittsburgh in November 1881, the national trades unions formed the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada. The federation grew slowly, hindered at first by the economic recession from 1883 to 1885, and also by defeats in a number of labor disputes. Eventually, in 1886 they formed the American Federation of Labor.

The AFL called for solidarity among workers, but they did so through supporting each others' boycotts and refusals to "handle struck goods." They didn't call for the end of the wage labor system. They called for an alliance of labor unions committed to bread-andbutter wage and working conditions, rather than political or social issues and advocacy. At the convention in December 1886, the American Federation of Labor was born. Samuel Gompers of the Cigarmakers' International Union was elected president. Eschewing utopianism and espousing practical objectives, the AFL was able to survive the disastrous strikes of the early 1890s, and emerged in 1897 from the depression of that decade with 265,000 members and uncontested dominance in the American labor movement.

With the revival of traditional conservative pro-business politics after World War I (1914–1918), and the anti-Communism of the first "red scare" (1919–early 1920s) labor evinced a desire to appear "legitimate" and non-controversial. As would happen in the second "red scare" of the early 1950s, the leaders of the AFL denounced the radicals in the labor movement. They stood by as several union leaders accused of instigating the Haymarket Riot in Chicago were indicted, tried, found guilty, and hanged (although the accused were not present at the riot).

Pressing their advantage during the 1920s, the company-sponsored offensive against unions included hard-nosed policies like hiring armed company guards, strikebreakers, and agents provocateurs (hired infiltrators who instigated violence to bring down the repression by the police and the courts), as well as the tactic of founding non-controversial and ineffective "company unions." Capitalizing on anti-labor sentiments in the population at large, employers drew upon local and state authorities to deploy mounted police and militia to harass and arrest union organizers and disrupt picket lines. Yellow-dog contracts, which threatened workers with dismissal should they join a union, became commonplace. Under the auspices of the National Association of Manufacturers, anti-labor propaganda circulated widely, systematically arguing in favor of open shops, which allowed nonunion workers to be employed even though a union may have organized the workplace.

The protective legislation that Gompers and his fellow labor leaders thought they saw in the 1914 Clayton Act's provisions excluding unions from prosecution for being "in restraint of trade" was shredded by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1921. In Duplex Printing Press Company v. Deering, the Supreme Court interpreted the Sherman and Clayton Acts as protecting employers from labor violence, from secondary boycotts, and from the use of other labor tactics that could be construed as unlawful interference with interstate commerce.

Speaking for a conservative Court, Justice Mahlon Pitney held that certain union tactics constituted unlawful interference with interstate commerce and therefore were subject to antitrust laws. By holding unions accountable under antitrust laws for anything the Court deemed to be other than normal and legitimate union activity, the Court effectively nullified the Clayton Act's labor provisions, and made it almost impossible for unions to organize workers in nonunion companies.

But under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration (1933–1945), things changed for labor. Title 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), gave labor unions the legal right to bargain collectively, and Roosevelt often backed labor in efforts to put forth its side of the story in disputes with management. It was mainly the Congress of Industrial Organizations that benefited from the government's decision not to repress labor. (Under the leadership of United Mineworker President John L. Lewis, the CIO split from the AFL in 1935 and set about organizing the semi-skilled labor in the new mass production industries like auto, steel, and rubber. The CIO demanded that all labor must be organized, not just the skilled trades).

A conservative Supreme Court struck down NIRA, but Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act), which upheld the right to bargain collectively, authorized the Fair Labor Standards Act (which continued the 40-hour workweek) and prohibited child labor, and established the National Labor Relations Board to mediate during industrial disputes. When labor unions added the clout of the sit-down strike to government assistance, they secured for themselves living wages and purchasing power.

The 1955 merger that created the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) healed a serious rift in the American labor movement, but a number of critical problems haunted AFL-CIO leadership during the next 15 years. The nation's political mood following passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947—and the state "right to work" laws that ensued—continued to be generally hostile toward organized labor. Much of this hostility was rooted in public perceptions that many unions were infiltrated and dominated by Communists or, equally menacing to the public welfare, that they were run by corrupt officials in collaboration with organized crime.

The U.S. Secretary of Labor, James P. Mitchell, reflecting the views of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration (1953–1961), announced to the 1957 AFL-CIO convention that the president would soon propose legislation to protect union members from "crooks and racketeers." That prediction anticipated passage of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (Landrum-Griffin Act) two years later. When the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Senator John L. McClellan (D-Arkansas) and its chief counsel, Robert F. Kennedy, shifted its focus toward union corruption and racketeering, labor leaders began to realize the disruptive potential of union reform. Within months, committee revelations concerning corruption among unions of operating engineers, plumbers, and retail clerks became national news.

Aware that the image of organized labor had become badly tarnished, labor leaders during the 1960s attempted to take the lead in cleansing the unions of communist influences as well as dishonest union officials and mobsters. After the merger, the burden of these efforts fell to the AFL-CIO's first president, George Meany, a New York City plumber by trade and a respected organizer and union leader. In his capacity as the McClellan Committee's chief counsel, Robert F. Kennedy personally presented Meany with damning evidence against the AFL–CIO's largest constituent union, the Teamsters.

The Kennedy-Mollenhoff materials specifically alleged corruption involving, among others, Teamster president Dave Beck. Beck, an AFL-CIO vice president and executive committee member, testified in 1957 before the McClellan Committee about his purported theft of $300,000 of union funds as well as his acceptance of money from employers. Meany was outraged that Beck invoked the Fifth Amendment ninety times. Meany stripped Beck of his AFL-CIO offices and his Teamster presidency and planned to present the Teamsters's 1957 convention with details of Beck's corruption. Under Beck's successor, Jimmy Hoffa, the presentation of the AFL-CIO report on Teamster corruption at the Teamster's 1957 convention was jeered and expunged from the record. Hoffa declared his union ready to "tell the AFL-CIO to go to hell." Thus, in December 1957 the AFL-CIO expelled its largest union, the Teamsters.

Hoffa by that point was standing trial in New York for wiretapping the telephones of Teamsters who were to appear before the McClellan Committee. While under indictment, Hoffa presided over the Teamsters from 1957 until 1967, the year in which appeals from his 1964 conviction on separate charges of jury tampering, fraud, and conspiracy were exhausted and he began serving the remainder of a 13-year sentence in federal prison. In 1971, with his sentence commuted by President Richard Nixon (1961–1974), Hoffa retired from all Teamster offices with his union's thanks and an award of __BODY__.7 million, or about a dollar per member. In 1975, as news reports were circulating that the Teamster leader might be about to reenter active leadership of the union, Hoffa disappeared and was presumed murdered.

Meany's efforts to clean house and refurbish labor's name produced significant changes in the AFLCIO. The AFL-CIO constitution prohibited union corruption and criminality; it did not, however, prescribe enforcement powers. Meany and his aides and committees expelled errant officials or unions, placed them on probation or under monitors, or gave them dated ultimatums to produce reforms. In initiating these actions, Meany challenged the historic autonomy that many unions, particularly those of the old AFL, had cherished as their right. Although Meany largely abandoned his drive against union corruption and criminality by 1963, leaving further measures to the U.S. Attorney General and Senate investigators, one momentous consequence of his reformism was the centralization of authority in the hands of AFL-CIO leaders. Management found themselves dealing less with a federation of unions than with the federation itself— the world's largest labor organization.

Critics from within the labor movement were quick to observe that a more centralized AFL-CIO was also more conservative and complacent. Some critics attributed a relative decline in nationwide union strength to this complacency. Although no observers lamented the convictions of expelled Teamster officials, least of all Beck and Hoffa, most noted that the Teamsters offered many workers one of few alternatives to the giant federation after the Teamsters' return to political favor during the Nixon administration. The union failed in its efforts between the 1960s and 1987 to reenter the AFL-CIO.

The post-Hoffa Teamsters displayed an interest in organizing almost any workers. This approach to organization, pushed regardless of organizational expense and with great daring, accelerated after 1975. The AFL-CIO avoided trying to unionize companies with only a handful of workers, but the Teamsters, in a spirit that strangely recalled the idealism of the Knights of Labor or the I.W.W., often sought recruits in shops with fewer than a dozen employees. It made no economic sense, but, to many Teamster organizers and rank and file, it was the right thing to do. The overall strength of the union rose only modestly to 1.8 million members by the end of the 1970s. In effect, the Teamsters were the AFL-CIO's only formidable and dynamic competition. This remained true until 1968, when Walter Reuther pulled his United Auto Workers (UAW) out of the AFL-CIO and promptly entered an alliance with the Teamsters. The UAW and the Teamsters each launched vigorous and innovative organizing campaigns that were supposed to put labor on the march again. (Reuther, however, died in a plane crash in 1970.)

After many attempts, the Teamsters were allowed to rejoin the AFL-CIO in 1987. Meany's AFL-CIO tried to maintain its membership during a lengthy relative decline in union membership. By the 1990s the labor scene was businesslike, closely monitored by law and by union leadership. A measure of respectability, if not huge popularity, had returned to a more centralized AFL-CIO.

LABOR MOVEMENT

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