Outline

1
Outline

• Capitalism and Class
• Organizing Labor Power
• Video Clip
• Rise and Fall of the Knights of Labor
• Mandatory assignments, review questions and extra
  credit good
• Will return at the end of class
• One point per question
• I write like a man who once had his hand
  crushedif you cant read my comments, let me
  know

2
Monopoly or Democracy

• 5.Unionize
• Cooperate with other workers to limit
  competition)
• Collectively demand that wages, hours and working
  conditions be subject of negotiation
• Replace Individual Bargaining with Collective
  Bargaining

• 5432
• Competition between workers in a free market for
  labor sets the price
• Each individual is pursuing his/her own self
  interest
• Employers cut individual deals with each worker

3
Human labor power is a special commodity

• Since it is inseparable from owner it can only be
  hired for a certain amount of time
• During this time the Buyer acquires the right to
  make use of the sellers capacity to work
• Seller of labor must deliver labor power to
  workplace must become subordinate to the
  directives of management.
• The system of wage labor creates relationships
  of authority and subordination among people and
  the basis for a division into classes. Korpi,
  p.16-17

4
Class

• Class
• A grouping of individuals with similar economic
  positions within a society
• Across space and time, different societies will
  possess different classes
• Unions will emerge in capitalist economies to
  craft advance the interests of members of the
  working class
• Different unions will advance different strategies

Upper Class
Upper Middle Class
Middle Class
Lower Middle Class
Lower Class
5
Working Class?

• 2. The authors note that the American working
  class is comprised of many different racial and
  ethnic groups. Marx expected that as capitalism
  turned people into wage workers their racial and
  ethnic identities would become less important.
  People would come to identify as members of the
  working class instead of as Whites and Blacks,
  or English and Italian. After reading the section
  Workers please tell me whether Marxs
  expectations were accurate. Be sure to cite the
  text as evidence in your answer.

6
Capitalism Development and Immigration
7
American Industry Depended On Foreign Born
Immigrant Labor, 1910
Industry Pct. Immigrant Labor
Iron Mines 67
Clothing Factories 76
Slaughter Houses 46
Auto Shops 46
Tanneries 53
Steel Mills 51
Textile Mills 49
Road Construction 46
8
Working Conditions

• 1. In their section Conditions the authors note
  that broad swathes of poverty and bleak
  prospects continued to characterize much working
  class life (Zieger and Gall 2002 9). Briefly
  describe how experience of one the following
  group of workers (i.e. phosphate workers,
  turpentine camp workers, Ford workers, or the
  Triangle Shirtwaist Factory workers) provide
  evidence for the authors assertion.

9
Working Conditions

• Fatal accidents in the steel millsaccounted for
  20 of all male deaths in Pittsburgh in the
  1880s. Newspaper lists of men killed and wounded
  each year were as long as a casualty list for a
  small battle in the American civil war. Carnegie
  could not have cared less. When a steel furnace
  exploded, he worried about loss of production,
  not loss of life. The lock-out was his favorite
  negotiating tactic and he hired Pinkertons to
  subjugate his workers when they resisted his
  incessant demands for lower wages for longer
  hours. By the age of 40, most of his men were
  rendered useless through working 12 hours a day,
  seven days a week and they were discarded.
• The Economist, February 1, 2003

10
Hours

• In an 1895 study the bureau did in cooperation
  with the bakers' union, it found that bakers
  worked inhumanly long hours, sometimes over 100
  per week and that 11 percent of them had been ill
  the previous year. Over a thousand bake shops in
  New York City were in basements. Some of them
  were "cellars of the worst description .... damp,
  fetid, and devoid of proper ventilation and
  light." Many of them had very low ceilings,
  forcing workers to labor in a stooped-over
  position all day. Two/thirds of the bakeries
  inspected were classed as "totally unfit.
• NY State Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1895
• Twin Relics of Barbarism Steel Industry 7 day
  a week, 12 hour day requirements

11
Working Conditions

• William Blake described the early factories as
  Satanic Mills
• Among the worst examples were the shops where
  old rags for papermaking were sorted. The workers
  were mostly poor, Eastern European immigrant
  women. The shops were "open to every sort of
  objection." They were dirty, poorly ventilated,
  unheated, usually on the cramped second floor of
  a dilapidated building and reached by steep
  cluttered stairways. An Inspector reported that
  "as the door was opened, it was at first
  impossible to see the sorters because of the
  clouds of dust." The investigator found it
  "difficult to give an adequate picture ...
  Without seeming to overstep the limits of truth.
• 1902 WI Bureau of Labor Statistics Report

12
Video Clip

• PBS Documentary on Early American Labor featuring
  Professor Melvyn Dubofsky and Professor Alice
  Kessler-Harris
• 1. According to Dubofsky, what effect did the
  mass immigration of the late 19th century have on
  wages?
• 2. Briefly describe working conditions at this
  time. How were workers treated?
• 3. In the 1870s and 1880s, workers begin to
  organize. Briefly describe what happened during
  the 1877 railroad strike. Was there violence? Was
  the strike successful? Did this seem like a
  viable way to solve conflict in the new
  capitalist society?
• 4. What was the Knights of Labor? Who did they
  try to unite? What were some of their demands?

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Video Clip

• 5. In a strike, did the authorities tend to side
  with employers or workers? Why?
• 6. Kessler discusses what we she perceives to be
  an interesting conflict within American society.
  She suggests a conflict between the individualism
  of the American spirit and the collective
  instinct of unionized American workers.
• Work and youll succeed. Do your best and youll
  make it up in the world. Nothing prevents you
  from going anywhere
• The power of employers and the oppression of
  employers in fact prevented workers from living a
  decent life, earning a decent wage. Only the
  collective efforts of workers could counteract
  that power.
• Is she onto something? Do you think such a
  conflict exists? Why or why not?

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The Knights of Labor

• Founded in Philly by a group of tailors in 1869
• Due to repression, initially very secretive
  organization
• After 1877 Strike KOL commits to Build Publicly
  Open National Organization
• Terence C. Powderly Takes Helm in 1879
• Irish Catholic Machinist who is Mayor of Scranton
• KOL open to all workers, regardless of job
• Women and Blacks included
• Irish workers stream into organization and move
  to the center of the American labor movement
  (Who Built America 1992 113)
• Chinese Excluded KOL would work to end
  immigration WHY?

15
Outline

• Knights of Labor
• Injunctions Against Labor
• American Federation of Labor (AFL)
• Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
• Strategic ChoicesGroup Work
• Extra Credit Optionwatch a movie answer 1
  questionget 4 points
• Matewan http//www.videodetective.com/movies/trail
  ers/matewan-trailer/570
• 4pm Thursday or 515pm Monday
• Need 7 to commit for it to happen

16
Context Lots of different people competing to
sell their labor in Americas labor market

• Old Immigrants/Native Born
• (English, Swedes, Dutch, Irish)
• New Immigrants
• (Italians, Russians, Poles, Mexicans, Japanese,
  Chinese)
• Descendants of slave labor
• African Americans
• Protestants, Catholics, Jews
• Men and women
• Skilled and Unskilled

17
The Knights of Labor

• Founded in Philly by a group of tailors in 1869
• Due to repression, initially very secretive
  organization
• After 1877 Strike KOL commits to Build Publicly
  Open National Organization
• Terence C. Powderly Takes Helm in 1879
• Irish Catholic Machinist who is Mayor of Scranton
• KOL open to all workers, regardless of job
• Women and Blacks included
• Irish workers stream into organization and move
  to the center of the American labor movement
  (Who Built America 1992 113)
• Chinese Excluded KOL would work to end
  immigration WHY?

18
The way the Knights of Labor saw things

• Business Monopolies, Corruption and Wage Labor
  were destroying the nation
• We declare an inevitable and irresistible
  conflict between the wage system of labor and
  republican system of government. (Who Built
  America 1992 111)
• Saw society as consisting of producers and
  parasites
• Producers farmers and workers and honest
  manufacturers
• Parasites bankers, lawyers, speculators

19
The way the Knights of Labor saw things

• KOL had long term goal of abolishing wage labor,
  but in the short term they addressed issues of
  wages, hours and working conditions
• Success in reversing wage cuts by Railroads in
  the 1880s leads to rapid growth
• By 1886 they represent 1 million workers and have
  15,000 local assemblies
• 10 of workforcesimilar to the percentage of
  American workers currently in unions

20
Knights of Labor

• KOL growth is met by employer counter offensive
  and increased refusal to recognize unions
• Employers were not legally bound to recognize
  unions
• Employers did not see unions as a democratic
  expression of collective voice, they saw unions
  as
• Criminal conspiracies
• Sellers of something (labor power) getting
  together to fix the price
• Monopolies
• Unions as sole seller of labor, and thus able to
  distort the market

21
Knights of Labor

• KOL growth is met by employer counter offensive
• Increased refusal to recognize unions
• Employers were not legally bound to
• Blacklisting of workersBlacklisting?

22
Knights of Labor

• KOL growth is met by employer counter offensive
• Increased refusal to recognize unions
• Employers were not legally bound to
• Blacklisting of workersBlacklisting?
• List of workers circulated among employers
  containing names of undesirable employees
• Lockouts used more frequentlyLockouts?

23
Knights of Labor

• KOL growth is met by employer counter offensive
• Increased refusal to recognize unions
• Employers were not legally bound to
• Blacklisting of workersBlacklisting?
• List of workers circulated among employers
  containing names of undesirable employees
• Lockouts used more frequentlyLockouts?
• Employer may withhold employment during a labor
  disputeequivalent of a strike by management

24
Employer Actions Aided by Court Injunctions and
Antitrust Rulings

• Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 declared every
  contract, combination, or conspiracy that
  restrained trade illegal
• Business monopolies were the target of the law,
  but courts applied Sherman to the unions viewing
  their actions as combinations or conspiracies to
  restrain trade
• 20 guys agree to not work for less than 5 is a
  restraint of trade
• A truck driver refuses to cross a picket line to
  deliver to a store that is on strikerestraint of
  trade
• Katz and Kochan 2004

25
Anti Trust Rulings and Unions

• Danbury Hatters Case of 1908
• United Hatters of America called for consumer
  boycott of D.E. Loewe Co. in order to gain union
  recognition
• Union also called a successful secondary
  boycott directed at firms doing business with
  Loewe i.e. stores that sold their hats
• U.S. Supreme Court ruled that unions were covered
  by Sherman, and ordered the union to pay 250,000
  in treble damages.
• Katz and Kochan 2004

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Injunctions

• If unions were violating the law, then
  injunctions could be issued
• 6. When it came to the question of labor
  relations your authors argue that the courts and
  legal system favored employers. Please explain
  what an injunction is and comment on how
  injunctions would weaken unions?

27
Injunctions

• Injunctions
• Court orders issued by judges that prohibited any
  activity that might cause irreparable harm
• Injunctions were regularly used to block union
  activities
• Typically these writs also prohibited union
  leaders from encouraging or advising any form of
  collective action(Zieger and Gall 2002 29)
• Limit union organizing, boycotts, sympathy
  strikes and picketing during a strike
• Basis for bringing in militia and army
• One judge described an injunction as Gatling gun
  on paper note next slide (Who Built America
  1992 125)

28
Injunctions Severely Limit Unions

• 1880-1930 courts estimated to have issued 4,300
  injunctions against unions
• Very, very interesting exercise of power that
  severely limits efforts to build unions
• No picketshard to keep replacement workers from
  taking your job
• No boycottslimits ability to have others
  demonstrate support for strike
• No sympathy strike
• A strike by workers not directly involved in a
  labor dispute an attempt to demonstrate labor
  solidarity (Herman 1998 532)

29
Decline of the Knights

• Knights could not withstand the pressure and
  challenges
• 1886 at 1million
• 1887 down to 500,000
• 1890 100,000
• Into the dustbin of history

30
Choices emerge

• With demise of the KOLnew organizations will
  develop strategies to organize labor
• Sam Gompers (AFL) Big Bill Haywood (IWW) John
  Lewis (CIO

31
The AFL

• 2. What was the American Federation of Labor? Who
  was its leader? The AFLs strategy is often
  described as pure and simple unionism. What
  does this term refer to?

32
The AFL

• American Federation of Labor (AFL)-
• organization founded in 1886 by Samuel Gompers
  and other labor leaders to facilitate cooperation
  between different craft unions and to encourage
  the organization of more craft unions
• Craft unions?

33
AFL

• Craft Union
• a union that limits its membership to workers in
  a particular craft usually one which requires
  extensive training and a high degree of skill.
• Often a very Narrow Jurisdiction
• jurisdiction refers to the group of workers
  represented by a given union
• Instead of organizing one union for all
  construction workers, construction workers are
  SEPARATED into many different unions with narrow
  jurisdiction defined by craft
• Carpenters, Electricians, Ironworkers, Plumbers,
  Tin-knockers, Glazers, Steamfitters, Operating
  Engineers, Elevator Operators, Sheet metal
  workers, Laborers, etc.
• This choice has ramifications right through 2011
• Pros and cons of this model? Anyone?

34
Initially Craft Unions Seek Closed Shops

• Closed Shop
• A contractual clause providing that individuals
  must be a member of the union in order to be
  eligible for hire into the bargaining unit
  (Kochan 453)
• Requirement that an employer hire non but union
  men (Zieger 2005 2)
• Often predicated on union training workers and
  supplying workers
• Acme Home Builders needs workers
• Needs 50 carpenters, contacts Carpenters Local 1
  hiring hall to get carpenterscarpenters work
  job, finish it, and then get back on list
• Contact Electricians Hiring Hall to get
  electricians

35
Visions collide

• How do these two ideas mesh?
• Closed Shop
• A contractual clause providing that individuals
  must be a member of the union in order to be
  eligible for hire into the bargaining unit
  (Kochan 453)
• Workers and employers should counter each other
  in the marketplace as free individuals, the
  employer at liberty to define the workers duties
  as he saw fit, the worker at liberty to accept or
  reject these terms. Tomlin, p.46

36
Visions collide

• How do these two ideas mesh?
• Closed Shop
• A contractual clause providing that individuals
  must be a member of the union in order to be
  eligible for hire into the bargaining unit
  (Kochan 453)
• Open Shop
• A business establishment in which there is no
  union or where union membership is not a
  condition of employment (Herman 1998 53)

37
AFL

• 3. There were many, many workers in the United
  States who might have been organized into unions.
  Did the AFL favor skilled or unskilled workers?
• Where there workers that AFL unions
  discriminated against? Why do you think the
  unions favored some workers over others?

38
AFL

• Focus on craft workers
• Overwhelmingly white menHigh skilled High dues
• Initially many affiliate unions would not permit
  women or Blacks
• Later most accept women Blacks in segregated
  localsbut neither are the key constituency
• If Asiantotal rejection
• Ignored a large segment of the working class

• Cigar Makers bylaws unless said person is a
  white practical cigar maker he could not be in
  the union.
• Brotherhood of Railway Carmen Qualifications for
  membership Any white person between the ages of
  16 and 65
• Clerks Freight Handlers All white persons,
  male or female, of good more character.
• Locomotive Firemen Enginemen He shall be
  white born
• Wire Weavers Christian, white, male of the full
  age 21

39
AFL
40
AFL position on capitalism and wage labor?

• KOL had long term goal of abolishing wage labor,
  but in the short term they addressed issues of
  wages, hours and working conditions
• AFL???

41
AFL position on capitalism and wage labor?

• Not interested in abolishing capitalism or
  creating a new and different society
• Pursued Business Unionism or Pure and Simple
  Unionism
• Any ideas what these term refer to?

42
AFL Business Unionism

• Business unionism
• using collective bargaining to improve the wages,
  hours and working conditions of members who
  belong to a particular union. Focus on
  bread-and-butter issues
• pure and simple agenda of improving wages and
  working conditions (Zieger 2002 25)

43
AFL Business Unionism

• Business unionism
• using collective bargaining to improve the wages,
  hours and working conditions of members who
  belong to a particular union. Focus on
  bread-and-butter issues
• pure and simple agenda of improving wages and
  working conditions (Zieger 2002 25)
• Limited political activity and no vision of large
  scale social transformation
• Early AFL ascribed to something called
  Voluntarism
• opposition to government relief and welfare
  legislation and stressing the need for workers to
  depend on their own economic strength (Zieger
  200262)

44
AFL Business Unionism

• Business unionism
• using collective bargaining to improve the wages,
  hours and working conditions of members who
  belong to a particular union. Focus on
  bread-and-butter issues
• pure and simple agenda of improving wages and
  working conditions (Zieger 2002 25)
• Limited political activity and no vision of large
  scale social transformation
• Early AFL ascribed to something called
  Voluntarism
• opposition to government relief and welfare
  legislation and stressing the need for workers to
  depend on their own economic strength (Zieger
  200262)
• Often little inter-union solidarity
• craft unions routinely crossed one anothers
  pickets and endlessly disputed jurisdictions
  (Folks, 145)

45
The IWW

• 4. The authors introduce the Industrial Workers
  of the World (IWW). How did the IWW strategy
  differ from that of the AFL?

46
One Big Unionto Abolish capitalism
47
Beyond conflict to exploitation

• For some in the labor movement, including the
  union that led the strike where were going this
  afternoon, capitalism is about more than
  conflictit is about exploitation of workers by
  capitalists
• Owners get rich by taking what workers produce
• Consider my blanket factory

48
Exploitation

• 10 workers _at_ 1 each a day 10
• 10 workers produce 500 of goods by lunch
• Paid 10made 500workers say Great. See you
  tomorrow, Boss And the Boss says?
• Uh-uh. Back to work10 workers produce another
  500 of goods by 8pm  

49
Low Wages for SomeRiches for Others

• 1000 of Wealth Created
• After paying 10 for wages, and 100 for the
  other costs of production there is 890 left
• WHO GETS THE 890?

50
In this new game called CapitalismThe owner gets
itthose are the rules

• Owner Gets the 890 created by the workers
• Can buy a nice house, a horse, a fancy Monet
  painting, bury it in his yard, reinvest it in the
  factory, give workers a raiseIts his decision
  to be made
• Workers Get to go home with their 1 and get
  ready for the next day
• Owners get rich by taking what workers produce

51
American labor market generates Widespread
Poverty

• AFL sought to address widespread poverty by
  bargaining better wages
• IWW seeks to change entire structure of economy

52
Industrial Workers of the World

• IWW provided workers with a radical alternative
  to AFLthe labor fakirs
• Willingly organized those the AFL ignored
• Unskilled, minorities, women
• Syndicalism
• direct action on the job to build industrial
  unions until they were strong enough to launch a
  general strike and take over business and
  government. (Folks 157)
• The workers of the world have nothing to do but
  fold their arms and the world will stop.

53
Choices

• You are a (skilled White weaver/unskilled woman,
  Black,Hispanic or Asian) who works in a Silk
  factory. You work constantly, and have trouble
  making ends meet. You are approached by different
  union organizers and invited to a meeting. You
  can be fired for just attending a meeting. If you
  are unskilled, there are many waiting to take
  your job. Every week, the news is full of stories
  about workers being killed during strikes.
• Organizer 1) Mr. Haywood tells you that the new
  system of wage labor is morally wrong based on
  exploitation. People shouldnt have to sell
  themselves and toil in degrading, awful
  conditions. Mr. Haywood tells you that you should
  unite with workers of all races and ethnicities
  to build a class wide movement that can create a
  society without wage labor, where workers own and
  control the factories, sharing the profits for
  the common good. Join the IWW.

54
Choices

• You are a (skilled White weaver/unskilled woman,
  Black, Hispanic or Asian) who works in a Silk
  factory. You work constantly, and have trouble
  making ends meet. You are approached by different
  union organizers and invited to a meeting. You
  can be fired for just attending a meeting. Every
  week, the news is full of stories about workers
  being killed during strikes.
• Organizer 2 Mr. Gompers of the AFL tells you
  that Mr. Haywood is a dreamer whose goals are not
  realistic. You should accept the wage system, and
  try to force employees to give you a better deal.
  Throwing your lot in with all workers will weaken
  your bargaining position, because unskilled
  workers are so easy to replace. He also questions
  whether you want to be in a union with women,
  immigrant riff-raff and Blacks. You should join
  with the other skilled weavers, and as a smaller
  group, you should demand better wages, hours and
  working conditions in the short term. To help
  strengthen your position, you should work to end
  the immigration of undesirable groups like the
  Chinese who are willing to work for low wages.

55
Choices

• IWW, AFLforget about it?
• If youre a skilled White Weaver, do you go to a
  meeting or stay home? If you go to a meeting,
  whose meeting do you go to? Why?
• If youre an unskilled man, a women, Hispanic,
  Black or Asian, do you go to a meeting or stay
  home? Why?

56
Initially, most White skilled workers who opt for
unions choose the AFL

• Ideas that one should find an individual solution
  to economic problems rejected
• Yet what force is weaker than the feeble
  strength of one- From the union anthem
  Solidarity Forever
• But so are radical ideas about revolutionary
  movements to abolish wage labor implement
  collective ownership
• I have come to the conclusion . . . that it is
  our duty  to live our lives as workers in the
  society in which we live, and not to work for the
  downfall or the destruction or the overthrow of
  that society, but for the fuller development and
  evolution of the society in which we live to
  make life the better worth living.- Samuel
  Gompers (Testimony, Congress, House Select
  Committee, 1913)

57
AFLs narrow definition of worker leaves many
out

• AFL Preferred White Native Born Male Workers
• Women
• noble beings, but helplessnot an organizing
  focus
• Blacks
• ambivalent toward at best, excluded at worst,
  maybe Jim Crow localsNot an organizing focus.
• New immigrants (Italians, Jews, Poles, Mexicans)
• ambivalent toward at best, ignored at worstNot
  an organizing focus
• Founding Document called for a ban on foreign
  workers
• Asians
• demonized and excludedNote next slide

58
AFL Growth

• Despite the exclusions, millions of workers opt
  to pursue group mobility via the AFL
• 1897 447,000 in unions
• 1904 2,072,000 in unions
• Union density grows from basically 0 to around
  10

59
Next

• Videos on the late 19th Century and Ludlow
• World I begins to change things