Workers mock q Flashcards
5
To what extent did the position of workers and unions improve during the Gilded Age? - YES
Wages rose dramatically with an increase of 60% for some skilled workers, even though the size of the workforce was increasing due to immigration.
American industry overtook that of Britain to become the largest producer in the world, which created an increase in the demand for labour.
Unions such as the Knights of Labour saw a considerable increase in membership – from 20,000 in 1881 to 700,000 by 1886 following their victory in the Wabash Railroad Strike. This membership included both African Americans and women.
The American Federation of Labour (AFL, right) was formed in 1886 and was the first successful national labour federation with considerable bargaining power b/c it represented skilled workers. It won most disputes it was involved in & by 1900 had 500,000 members.
Unions were able to extend their power into politics at both a local and national level, e.g. the Knights of Labour campaigned for a 40 hour week, an end to child labour & consultation of workers by employers and there were sickness clubs
7
To what extent did the position of workers and unions improve during the Gilded Age? - NO
The Gilded Age was a period of growing inequality and poverty for the workforce – 2% of the population owned 30% of the wealth with tycoons like Carnegie (steel) & Rockefeller (oil) making huge profits from exploiting their workers.
An increase in mechanisation in the economy increased the demand for skilled labour whilst the wages of unskilled labour were around 30% of those of skilled workers. 20 million immigrants arrived in the USA 1880-1920.
The position of workers and unions were vulnerable to changes in the economy, especially the “Panic” of 1893-7 (the worst depression in US history before the Wall Street Crash) which led to widespread wage cuts & therefore to violent strikes like the Pullman Strike in 1894.
Workers had few rights – they worked long hours in dangerous conditions. In 1889 there were 2000 rail workers killed in accidents. The USA had the highest rate of industrial accidents in the world but in only 2% of cases did injured workers receive compensation. Female & ethnic minority workers were the worst treated.
Defeat in the Great South West Railroad Strike followed by the Haymarket Affair (both in in 1886) damaged the reputation of unions and caused a decline in the membership of the Knights of Labour (above right); it had lost over 90% of its membership by 1890 & had ceased to exist by 1900.
Black workers were treated even worse: when workers on the Louisiana sugar plantations went on strike in 1887, 35 members of their families were massacred by thugs hired by the landowners & the rest had to return to work on the employers’ terms. There was no union representation on Louisiana sugar plantations until the 1940s.
The government’s laissez-faire approach to the economy meant that workers were denied protective legislation and employers/corporations were encouraged maximise profits at the cost of workers’ rights. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act 1890 was used against workers wishing to create protective contracts with their employers but the fed. govt. ignored the march of “Coxey’s Army” in 1894 demanding that they intervene to create jobs.
7
Was the New Deal a turning point for labour and union rights? - YES
The NRA and the Wagner Act marked a change in government attitude towards labour and union rights from one of laissez-faire or support for employers, to government support and recognition.
By July 1933 half of the main ten US industries had joined the NRA – textiles, shipbuilding, woollens, electricals and the garment industry. They would be joined by the oil, automotive and coal industries later. These industries accepted the codes established by the NRA and the right of their workers to organise unions and collectively bargain.
By 1934, 557 codes had been agreed by companies joining the NRA, covering some 23 million workers. New Deal legislation encouraged a growth in membership of trade unions, from 3.7 million in 1933 to 9 million in 1938.
A new union, the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO), was formed in 1935 to take advantage of this more favourable political climate. Unlike the AFL it included unskilled, black & female workers. It gained 3.7 million members and developed new techniques such as ‘sit-in’ or ‘sit-down’ strikes.
This included growth in areas of employment that had traditionally been resistant to unionisation. For example, in 1937 the Union of Auto Workers was recognised by Chrysler and General Motors. By the end of the year it had 400,000 members. In the same year US Steel, the biggest steel company, also granted union recognition to SWOC (the Steel Workers Organising Committee) which was affiliated to the CIO.
The Fair Labour Standards Act (1938) created a minimum weekly wage for industrial workers of $25 and a payment of time and a half for any fork over 40 hours a week. The act also banned the employment of children under 16 years of age.
The rapid increase in the number of strikes (4,470 in 1937 compared with only 637 in 1930) at a time of high unemployment shows how determined workers were to enforce their newly gained rights.
6
Was the New Deal a turning point for labour and union rights? - NO
Neither Roosevelt nor Wagner wanted to empower organised labour and meant instead their measures to improve employment relations for economic reasons.
The NRA and its codes of practice were voluntary and employers such as Henry Ford refused to sign up, continuing their policies of welfare capitalism instead. The NRA also found it difficult in practice to enforce the term giving workers of its members the right to form unions.
The NRA and its head, Hugh Johnson, faced intense opposition. The NRA was accused of being a dangerous example of government intervention. Johnson was accused of having pro-Fascist tendencies. The NRA was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935.
The trade union movement remained divided after the creation of the NRA and the Wagner Act. The American Federation of Labour (AFL) catered only for skilled white men, leading the creation of the CIO.
Agricultural workers were excluded from the NRA & Wagner Act b/c of lobbying from southern senators like Joseph Robinson of Arkansas (right, leader of the Democrats in the Senate) whose support FDR needed to pass his New Deal legislation. Robinson was in the pocket of southern planters who were determined to keep govt. subsidies under the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) to themselves & not pass them on to their tenants or sharecroppers (white or black). When the planters used violence & intimidation to stop the sharecroppers forming a union (the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, STFU), FDR did not intervene.
As this example shows, many employers were willing to use violence to resist unionisation. When members of the UAW tried to recruit at the Ford factory in Detroit in 1937, they were beaten up by Ford’s “security” staff. Apart from US Steel, the other steel employers (“Little Steel”) incited the police to fire on a demonstration by strikers at the Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago (below), also in 1937, killing 10 of them. Neither Ford nor “Little Steel” recognised unions until 1941.
African Americans continued to suffer discrimination: 2/3 of them worked in agricultural or domestic employment, which for precisely that reason were deliberately excluded from the Wagner Act & other New Deal protection. Many black farmers lost their land & migrated to cities to find work but entered at the bottom of the unskilled wage scale.
Native Americans also did not receive new employment opportunities.
A number of women’s unions were formed but the New Deal legislation upheld the pay gap between men and women.
7
WAS BLACK POWER GOOD OR BAD FOR WORKERS’ RIGHTS? - Good
It helped to focus attention on the question of poverty which was a significant problem for African American workers. This may have contributed to Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ reforms such as the Economic Opportunity Act on 1964, which aimed to attract more young Americans into vocational training or education that would make getting a job easier.
One of Nixon’s motives in following a policy of affirmative action was to reduce the appeal of Black Power’s economic arguments. It nevertheless provided real employment benefits to African Americans.
Black Power kept the issue of black unemployment on the political agenda: in the early 1960s, 46% of unemployed Americans were black, many having lost jobs as factories became more automated.
There were some signs of a more assertive black trade union movement in this period, above all with the formation of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) in 1972. The first meeting attracted 37 national unions to Chicago and was at that point the largest single gathering of black unionists.
Black workers at Chrysler’s Dodge Main factory in Detroit formed a militant Black Power group called DRUM b/c the white dominated UAW (United Automobile Workers) restricted black representation in the union hierarchy (despite over ½ the workers there being black) & even collaborated with the company in keeping AAs out of skilled positions. DRUM combined a belief in Black Power with a belief in workers’ power, white as well as black.
The integrationist civil rights movement tended to support the leadership of racially mixed unions like the CIO & the UAW who gave lip service to racial equality but discriminated against AA workers & sometimes (as at the Chrysler factory in Detroit in 1973) even helped management to break strikes. CORE decided not to set up independent black trade unions in the construction industry b/c they relied on financial support from the CIO despite the fact that the white dominated construction unions (as well as the UAW) discriminated against AAs by restricting their access to more highly skilled work.
Black Power campaigns like the Black Monday protests in 1969 led to the Philadelphia Plan which set targets & timetables for the for the hiring of black construction workers on federal govt. contracts. Far from causing lack of progress after 1968, militant locally based Black Power campaigns ensured that affirmative action was actually enforced after an initial lack of progress, as in Seattle. In these campaigns Black Power ideas & labour activism went together rather than being in confzkaslict with each other.
The riots of 1965-8 did not continue thereafter b/c local groups of activists inspired by Black Power channelled the anger of black communities against widespread discrimination into militant but non violent direct & industrial action, e.g. demanding local control of projects for reconstructing buildings destroyed in the riots.
5
WAS BLACK POWER GOOD OR BAD FOR WORKERS’ RIGHTS? - Bad
The militant methods and philosophy of Black Power, especially its open belief in Communism & armed resistance to the police, put off both white and black workers.
For the Black Panthers, the exploitation of black workers by white employers was only one of a range of issues they were concerned with.
More generally, Black Power focused on black culture and on separating the black community from White America more than economic or labour rights issues.
Black Power further divided the civil rights movement from the union movement by rejecting established mixed race unions like the CIO & encouraging black rather than worker solidarity. This was especially true of the Black Panthers and the Black Workers Congress, which collapsed after only a few months.
Nothing could be achieved unless black workers co-operated with whites, e.g. in the car industry in 1968 less than 15% of workers were black.
Some DRUM (Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement) activists like Mike Hamlin thought black workers would have to organise separately from whites b/c many white workers saw blacks as their enemies rather than management.
Black Power ideas had no resonance in the rural South, only in the industrial North.
4
DID THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HELP OR HINDER TRADE UNION & LABOUR RIGHTS? - Trade union rights
In 1914 the Clayton Act aimed to guarantee workers’ rights to organise, bargain collectively, strike etc.
In both world wars the National War Labor Board (NWLB) was set up to arbitrate in industrial disputes.
The New Deal was the first time a federal govt. clearly sided with workers against employers: key measures included the NRA, NLRA & the Fair Labor Standards Act.
From the New Deal onwards Democratic presidents in particular were sympathetic to workers’ rights: FDR tried to veto the Smith-Connally Act, Truman the Taft-Hartley Act.
5
DID THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HELP OR HINDER TRADE UNION & LABOUR RIGHTS? - not trade union rights
Most federal govts. before the New Deal pursued “laissez faire” policies which protected employers from govt. regulation while frequently intervening on their side in industrial disputes, e.g. in the Pullman Strike 1894 when 12,000 federal troops killed 30 strikers.
The Supreme Court was consistently hostile to workers’ rights until 1935: in 1895 it approved the use of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act against strikers, in the Lochner Case in 1905 it struck down a New York law limiting bakers’ working hours, in the Adair Case 1908 it upheld “yellow dog” contracts prohibiting workers from joining a union, in 1921 it declared unconstitutional the 1914 Clayton Act which had helped workers & in 1935 it declared the NIRA unconst.
The 1917 Espionage Act was used to suppress the IWOW & after both world wars “red scares” led to anti-union legislation.
In 1943 Congress passed the Smith-Connally Act preventing strike action in war industries.
After WW2 the Republican dominated Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act 1947 restricting the closed shop & the Landrum-Griffin Act 1959 banning secondary picketing.
3
DID THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HELP OR HINDER TRADE UNION & LABOUR RIGHTS? - working conditions
Theodore Roosevelt (President 1901-9) & Wilson (1913-21) both tried to improve working conditions.
During the New Deal the Fair Labor Standards Act 1938 established a minimum wage, limited working hours & banned child labour.
Truman’s Fair Deal extended the minimum wage, improved health & safety (especially in coal mining) & increased the pay of federal govt. employees.
2
DID THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HELP OR HINDER TRADE UNION & LABOUR RIGHTS? - not working conditions
Throughout the 19th century the prevailing “laissez faire” policy meant health & safety was ignored, resulting in tragedies like the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire 1911.
Reagan was the only president not to raise the minimum wage.
5
DID THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HELP OR HINDER TRADE UNION & LABOUR RIGHTS? - welfare
Before WW1 both Theodore Roosevelt & Wilson passed legislation to improve consumer protection, housing & education.
The New Deal included the Social Security Act 1935 to improve welfare.
FDR set up the Fair Employment Commission 1941 which banned racial discrimination in federal govt. employment; Truman established it on a permanent basis.
JFK’s New Frontier included the Equal Pay Act 1963 & set up public work schemes to create jobs, while LBJ’s Great Society included the 1964 Civil Rights Act & more generous welfare benefits.
Carter extended the minimum wage.
DID THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HELP OR HINDER TRADE UNION & LABOUR RIGHTS? - not welfare
“Reaganomics” meant a decisive rejection of the New Deal interventionist philosophy & a return to “laissez faire” favouring employers rather than unions to an extent not seen since the 1920s.
6
“THE INTERNAL DIVISIONS WITHIN THE TRADE UNION & LABOUR MOVEMENT IN THE USA WERE THE MOST IMPORTANT OBSTACLE TO THE PROGRESS OF LABOUR RIGHTS IN THE PERIOD 1865-1992”. HOW FAR DO YOU AGREE? - internal divisions
The “Molly Maguires” (founded in 1865 by Pennsylvania coal miners) were radical, secretive & sometimes violent whereas the AFL was much more moderate.
The union movement was divided over membership (skill level, race & gender), organisation & tactics.
Some unions like the Knights of Labor & the United Mine Workers (founded in 1890) were organised by industry rather than craft & were at least in some cases prepared to admit unskilled workers, women, immigrants & blacks, whereas the AFL was organised by craft & generally excluded the unskilled, women & ethnic minorities.
Even the Knights of Labor were anti-Chinese & were implicated in the Rock Springs Massacre in 1885.
In the Pullman Strike 1894, the strike of mainly immigrant unskilled workers was undermined both by the skilled WASP workers who refused to join the strike & the black workers who were used by the company as strikebreakers.
The United Mine Workers & the IWOW (also founded by miners, in 1905) both had a socialist political agenda, whereas the more moderate AFL was less political & sought the best deal for their members within the capitalist system.
The Salad Bowl Strike in 1970 was as much a dispute between the UFW & the Teamsters as against the growers.
Most workers disapproved of the PATCO strike in 1981, b/c the strikers broke an agreement & demanded much higher wage increases than most other workers could aspire to
3
“THE INTERNAL DIVISIONS WITHIN THE TRADE UNION & LABOUR MOVEMENT IN THE USA WERE THE MOST IMPORTANT OBSTACLE TO THE PROGRESS OF LABOUR RIGHTS IN THE PERIOD 1865-1992”. HOW FAR DO YOU AGREE? - not internal divisions
AFL was organised by craft & generally excluded the unskilled, women & ethnic minorities.
Dissatisfaction with the AFL led to the formation of the CIO in 1935 to recruit unskilled workers, organise them by industry & (encouraged by favourable New Deal legislation) adopt more radical tactics.
The Teamsters remained aloof from the AFL-CIO merger in 1955 & discredited the union movement b/c of their reputation for corruption, violence & links with organised crime.
The merger of the AFL with the CIO in 1955 brought an unprecedented degree of unity to the union movement.
3
“THE INTERNAL DIVISIONS WITHIN THE TRADE UNION & LABOUR MOVEMENT IN THE USA WERE THE MOST IMPORTANT OBSTACLE TO THE PROGRESS OF LABOUR RIGHTS IN THE PERIOD 1865-1992”. HOW FAR DO YOU AGREE? - employers
Employers used state militia & white supremacist paramilitaries to break the Louisiana Sugar Strike in 1887.
Pullman used black strikebreakers to break the Pullman Strike in 1894.
Employers also used “yellow dog” contracts to ban unions & were upheld in this by the Supreme Court in the Adair case in 1908.
Southern planters used violence & intimidation to break the STFU in the 1930s.
Ford by using his security guards to beat up UAW recruiters at his River Rouge factory & “Little Steel” by using the police to fire on union demonstrators at the “Memorial Day Massacre” in Chicago, both in 1937, delayed union recognition for their employees until 1941.
4
“THE INTERNAL DIVISIONS WITHIN THE TRADE UNION & LABOUR MOVEMENT IN THE USA WERE THE MOST IMPORTANT OBSTACLE TO THE PROGRESS OF LABOUR RIGHTS IN THE PERIOD 1865-1992”. HOW FAR DO YOU AGREE? - federal government
Presidents sometimes intervened to break strikes, as Hayes & Cleveland did by sending armed federal troops to break the Great Rail & Pullman Strikes in 1877 & 1894 respectively.
Cleveland rejected the demands of “Coxey’s Army” in 1894 & refused even to meet them.
Reagan broke the PATCO Strike in 1981 by threatening to sack the strikers. the use of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act agt. strikers.
The Attorney General issued an injunction in effect breaking the Pullman Strike in 1894.
The Supreme Court gave a series of anti-union judgements including the misuse of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act 1895-1940 (confirmed in 1921). In the Lochner Case in 1905 it overruled a law limiting bakers’ working hours & in the Adair Case in 1908 it ruled that it was constitutional for employers to impose “yellow dog” contracts.
When the fed. Gov. was more sympathetic, as during the New Deal or in the 1960s under JFK & LBJ, more progress was made.
4
“THE INTERNAL DIVISIONS WITHIN THE TRADE UNION & LABOUR MOVEMENT IN THE USA WERE THE MOST IMPORTANT OBSTACLE TO THE PROGRESS OF LABOUR RIGHTS IN THE PERIOD 1865-1992”. HOW FAR DO YOU AGREE? - immigration
In the late 19th & early 20th centuries immigration (over 20 million immigrants arrived from Europe 1880-1920) seriously weakened workers’ bargaining power.
In strikes like Pullman in 1894 employers were able to exploit divisions between immigrant & WASP workers.
Immigrants from Asian countries like S Korea & Vietnam after WW2 reduced workers’ bargaining power b/c they were willing to work long hours for low wages.
Similarly the UFW in California was undermined after 1975 by continuing immigration from Mexico which created a surplus of cheap labour.
3
“THE INTERNAL DIVISIONS WITHIN THE TRADE UNION & LABOUR MOVEMENT IN THE USA WERE THE MOST IMPORTANT OBSTACLE TO THE PROGRESS OF LABOUR RIGHTS IN THE PERIOD 1865-1992”. HOW FAR DO YOU AGREE? - economic trends
The Crash of 1873 & the Panic of 1893 led to wage cuts which provoked strikes like the Pennsylvania Coal Strike 1874-5 & the Pullman Strike in 1894. Both strikes failed arguably b/c poverty forced strikers to return to work more than b/c of internal divisions.
Mass unemployment had more impact in the 1930s in enabling employers like Ford & “Little Steel” to resist union recognition until 1941 than the division between the AFL & the CIO.
Union power after WW2 was reduced as “white collar” increasingly replaced “blue collar” jobs, reducing union membership & therefore power. As a result union membership declined from 27% of employees to 15% 1970-92.
“THE INTERNAL DIVISIONS WITHIN THE TRADE UNION & LABOUR MOVEMENT IN THE USA WERE THE MOST IMPORTANT OBSTACLE TO THE PROGRESS OF LABOUR RIGHTS IN THE PERIOD 1865-1992”. HOW FAR DO YOU AGREE? - political radicalism
Unions were sometimes discredited by association with radical politics, as in the Haymarket bombing in 1886, the murder of Frick in the Homestead Strike in 1892 & the “red scares” after both world wars. The “Molly Maguires” & the IWOW in particular were viewed as dangerously radical.
5
Assess the extent to which internal divisions within the trade union and labour movement limited the development of their civil rights in the period from 1865 to 1992 - union activism
The union movement was divided over membership (skill level, race & gender), organisation (e.g. the AFL was organised by craft, other unions by industry), tactics (unions like the CIO which represented unskilled workers were more militant than the AFL) & politics (the IWOW was much more radical than the AFL).
The Pennsylvania Coal Strike 1874-5 & the Pullman Strike 1894 failed b/c of divisions between unskilled immigrant strikers & WASP skilled workers who refused to strike: the Pullman company also broke the strike by using black “scab” labour.
The UFW was constantly undermined by the Teamsters & the Salad Bowl Strike in 1970 was as much directed against the Teamsters as against the employers.
The Teamsters remained aloof from the AFL-CIO merger in 1955 & discredited the union movement b/c of their reputation for corruption, violence & links with organised crime.
Most workers disapproved of the PATCO strike in 1981, b/c the strikers broke an agreement & demanded much higher wage increases than most other workers could aspire to.
2
Assess the extent to which internal divisions within the trade union and labour movement limited the development of their civil rights in the period from 1865 to 1992 - not union activism
BUT the merger of the AFL with the CIO in 1955 brought an unprecedented degree of unity to the union movement, embracing 85% of US industrial workers.
It could also be argued that hostility by employers (e.g. the use of Pinkerton agents to break the Homestead Strike in 1892) & by the federal govt. (e.g. the use of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act against unions by the Supreme Court or the decision by President Cleveland to send federal troops to break the Pullman Strike in 1894) did far more than any internal divisions to hinder the development of trade union rights.
2
Assess the extent to which internal divisions within the trade union and labour movement limited the development of their civil rights in the period from 1865 to 1992 - political developments
Unions which represented unskilled workers, immigrants & ethnic minorities like the “Molly Maguires”, Knights of Labor & the United Mine Workers during the Gilded Age, the International Workers of the World (IWOW) in the early 20th century & the CIO from 1935 onwards tended to be more politically radical than unions like the AFL which admitted only skilled white men & avoided any association with such radicalism, which provoked the “red scares” after both world wars, including the Taft-Hartley Act 1947.
The “Molly Maguires” were broken in the 1870s by concerted action by the police & courts against them & the Haymarket Affair in 1886 discredited the Knights of Labor. The Knights of Labor & IWOW aimed to represent all workers to achieve progress towards socialism but never had much success in attracting skilled white WASPs.
2
Assess the extent to which internal divisions within the trade union and labour movement limited the development of their civil rights in the period from 1865 to 1992 - not political developments
BUT unions learnt during the 1930s to use their links with the Democratic Party to gain fed gov support, e.g. steelworkers in forcing “Little Steel” to recognise SWOC 1941.
It could also be argued that the hostile political environment in which unions had to operate (e.g. throughout the Gilded Age, the “Red Scares” after both world wars & the 1980s under Reagan) had more impact on workers’ political influence than internal divisions.
Assess the extent to which internal divisions within the trade union and labour movement limited the development of their civil rights in the period from 1865 to 1992 - social rights/working conditions and welfare
The failure of industrial workers (most of whom were white & male) to make common cause with agricultural, domestic or retail employees (many of whom were female or from ethnic minorities) contributed to the lack of social protection for the latter group, as shown in the exclusion of them from New Deal protection in terms of welfare, minimum wages & maximum working hours.
2
Assess the extent to which internal divisions within the trade union and labour movement limited the development of their civil rights in the period from 1865 to 1992 - not social rights/working conditions and welfare
BUT political lobbying in the 1960s led to new measures in the New Frontier & Great Society which extended all these protections to previously disadvantaged groups.
It could also be argued that other factors had more impact, e.g. the “laissez faire” ideology of 19th century govts., Roosevelt’s need during the New Deal to appease racist southern senators & the impact of immigration during the Gilded Age which reduced workers’ bargaining power.
