Labor History in 2:00

December 10 - The Real Henry Ford Story

On this day in labor history, the year was 1915.

That was the day the one millionth Model T rolled off the Ford assembly line in Highland Park, near Detroit.

Henry Ford started Model T production seven years earlier. For nearly 20 years, the Tin Lizzie served as the first affordable vehicle, opening up travel and leisure to a new middle class.

Ford refashioned the packing house conveyor to develop the assembly line.

Before production moved to the sprawling modern River Rouge complex, the Highland Park plant was considered the factory that changed the world.

Ford’s ambition to produce cars for the multitudes extended to his workers. As part of his campaign to beat back organizing drives by the Industrial Workers of the World, Ford instituted the $5 day at the Highland Park plant.

For auto workers, buying a Model T even with the $5 day wasn't so easy.

The $5 day actually amounted to $2.34 in wages and an additional $2.66 a day in profit sharing if Ford determined the worker was actually “living right.”

Investigators from his Sociological Department visited workers in their homes.

The routine intrusions into the personal lives of workers away from the job included determining spending and cleanliness habits, whether they drank or smoked, whether they were married or single, the state of workers’ marital relations and family values.

Workers who failed these home inspections were given six months to shape up or be fired.

Ford ruled young single men, women and blacks completely ineligible from the wage program. For a time, employee turnover plummeted and production increased.

But wartime inflation and deteriorating working conditions all but killed the $5 day, which ended in 1921.

December 9 - Billionaire-Backed Attack Group Founded

On this day in labor history, the year was 1958.

That was the day twelve ultra-conservatives, including industrialists Robert Welch, Fred Koch and Harry Lynde Bradley gathered in Indianapolis to found the John Birch Society.

These men saw secret cabals and communist conspiracy everywhere.

They mobilized their vast financial resources to fuel Cold War paranoia.

They opposed New Deal policies, the Civil Rights Movement, President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs and the Equal Rights Amendment. They funded Barry Goldwater’s presidential bid

in 1964, denounced Nixon as a fake and warned of his establishment of diplomatic ties with China. The Birchers also opposed water fluoridation, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

They pressed for the U.S to withdraw from the United Nations and viewed the U.S. war in Vietnam as a plot to bring Communism to the United States.

Welch, a candy manufacturer, even asserted that President Dwight Eisenhower was a simply a tool for the communists and advocate of a “One-World New Order.”

More recently, many Birchers have also helped to found and fund the National Right to Work Committee, whose legal defense arm has pushed hard for anti-union legislation.

Prominent members like the Koch Brothers have funneled millions into the NWRC in order to bust unions, kill the Employee Free Choice Act and weaken the regulatory authority of the National Labor Relations Board.

Their current headquarters are in Appleton, Wisconsin, hometown of Red Scare warrior, Senator Joseph McCarthy.

December 8 - Labor Activists Targeted

On this day in labor history, the year was 1941.

That was the day eighteen supporters of the Socialist Workers Party were sentenced in the first Smith Act trial.

Earlier that summer, twenty-nine militants had been targeted and arrested for their leadership of events in Minneapolis during the 30s.

They had led the 1934 Teamsters strikes that made Minneapolis a union town, successfully confronted the fascist Silver Shirts in 1938 and led a WPA strike the following year.

By 1941, federal agents were raiding SWP offices in Minneapolis and St. Paul, seizing boxes of documents, books, pamphlets and other material.

The trial began October 27. The prosecution alleged the 29 had conspired to advocate the violent overthrow of the government, were stockpiling weapons and encouraging insubordination among the armed forces.

The defendants insisted that advocating class struggle to achieve a peaceful transition to socialism was not the equivalent of violent overthrow.

They added the trial was a government witch hunt, bent on suppressing their first amendment rights. Six were released, another five were acquitted.

But the remaining 18 were sentenced to between twelve and sixteen months in jail. Dozens of CIO unions including the UAW, USWA, URW and UE all rallied to the defense of the convicted militants.

The ACLU, central in the defense case, now mounted the appeals campaign. They failed to overturn the convictions and the 18 surrendered to authorities two years later to begin serving their sentences.

For historian Donna Haverty-Stacke, the case showed “how far the Roosevelt administration went to prosecute political dissent—even to the point of targeting the labor-liberal left.”

The Act would be repealed in 1952 and hundreds of convictions under the Act would finally be reversed as unconstitutional by 1957.

December 7 - National Union of Steam Engineers is Founded

On this day in labor history, the year was 1896.

That was the day eleven steam engineers met in Chicago to found the National Union of Steam Engineers, the forerunner of the International Union of Operating Engineers.

Ten of the eleven came from the stationary field. They often worked 60-90 hours a week in dangerous working conditions.

Constructing and operating steam boilers was highly skilled, labor-intensive and potentially deadly work.

At the time, steam powered railroad and construction shovels, hoists and cranes for high-rise construction and electric power generation.

Many flocked to San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake to help rebuild that city. Others left for Panama to work on the Canal.

By 1912, the union was issuing charters to locals that represented construction steam engineers and locals that represented fixed boiler operators.

It was renamed the International Union of Operating Engineers in 1928. During World War II and after, thousands worked as Navy Seabees, building military bases, airfields and roads.

The Federal Highway Trust Program opened up work for thousands more in the construction of the nation’s highway system.

Today, you can find Operating Engineers on bridge and dam projects, skyscrapers and pipelines. Its logo, the steam gauge was originally set at 80 psi but now points towards 420 psi.

Some think the change came as a result of operating high-pressure boilers for naval ships and steamboats. Others speculate the change came when the 600-psi gauge became the industrial standard.

The International Union of Operating Engineers administers one hundred apprenticeships in state of the art facilities, requiring 6000 hours of on the job training and 400 hours of classroom instruction.

It represents more than 400,000 members in 170 locals throughout the United States and Canada.

December 6 - Deadliest Day in Mining History

On this day in labor history, the year was 1907.

That was the day an explosion rocked Fairmont Coal Company’s number 6 and number 8 coal mines in Monongah, West Virginia, killing 367 miners.

Newspaper reports estimated the number of dead to be as high as 500. It is considered the worst mine disaster in the history of the United States.

Most miners were killed instantly as the explosion destroyed the mine entrance and its ventilation system.

Those not killed instantly suffocated from poisonous gas.

Earth tremors were felt eight miles away. The force of the explosion buckled pavement, collapsed buildings and derailed streetcars. More than 3200 miners had died in 1907.

With three more mine disasters before the end of the year, the last month became known as Black December. In January, a coroner’s jury verdict ruled that a blow out shot ignited coal dust and made number of recommendations for safer practices.

But David McAteer tells a different story in his history of the disaster.

He argues that the tipple had a design flaw that led to occasional coal car derailments as they exited the mine.

On this day, there had been a derailment with coal cars crashing to the bottom of the shaft and taking out the electrical and ventilation systems with it, igniting the coal dust in the process.

The disaster generated a surge in demands for greater mine safety, leading to the creation of the Bureau of Mines in 1910.

The Bureau could conduct research and safety training but was powerless to conduct inspections or safety enforcement.

Miners would continue to fight for the better part of the century for safety regulations and enforcement.

December 5 - Reviving the Sit-Down Strike

On this day in labor history, the year was 2008.

That was the day UE local 1110 members at Republic Windows in Chicago began a five–day occupation to protest the imminent closure of their plant.

A month earlier, Republic workers witnessed management moving machinery out of the factory.

They began monitoring where the machinery was going and soon learned it was headed for a new, non-union plant in Iowa.

They planned a possible plant occupation. By December 2, management announced the plant was closing in just three days.

Republic Windows owner Richard Gillman blamed Bank of America for refusing to extend credit, just as the federal government had bailed out the banks in a $700 billion deal.

Workers learned they would receive no severance or vacation pay, despite WARN Act mandates.

The next day they rallied out in front of Bank of America, chanting, “You got bailed out, we got sold out.” Workers were determined to occupy the plant that Friday, when they went to pick up their last paychecks.

Police refused to remove the sit-downers and the occupation quickly made national news.

Local labor leaders and trade unionists, activists and politicians all visited strikers and lent their support. Journalist Kari Lydersen recounts the events in her book, Revolt on Goose Island, noting the “donations of food, blankets, pillows, sleeping bags and other necessities that poured into the factory.”

Protests of Bank of America spread across the country. By the following Wednesday, workers learned that though they could not keep their plant open, they would at least win severance and vacation pay.

In 2012, some of those workers reopened the plant under the name, New Era Windows, as a worker-run cooperative. They specialize in energy efficient vinyl windows.

December 4 - Contempt of Court

On this day in labor history, the year was 1946.

That was the day Federal Judge T. Alan Goldsborough fined John L. Lewis $10,000 and the United Mine Workers $3.5 million.

In what was characterized as “a roaring courtroom scene,” Lewis rose to challenge the judge to fine him whatever he wanted.

The judge had just found Lewis and the UMW in contempt of court for ignoring his November 18 order to head off a soft-coal strike, then in its fourteenth day.

Judge Goldsborough had replaced his order with a temporary injunction after the government demanded a judgment that the strike was illegal and must end.

Goldsborough ruled the strike was “an evil, demonic, monstrous thing that meant hunger and cold, unemployment and destitution--a threat to democratic government itself.”

He insisted he was a friend of labor, but that Lewis should be sent to prison.

UMW chief counsel, Welly K. Hopkins, snapped back defiantly, stating that the government was seeking to “break the union politically, financially and morally.”

The federal government had seized the mines in May and was now threatening to run them with Army engineers if Lewis didn’t order miners back to work.

AFL, CIO and Railway Brotherhoods all rallied to Lewis’ defense.

The Detroit labor movement vowed a 24-hour general strike in support. But by the 7th, Lewis retreated, ordering miners back to work until March 31st.

Facing the real threat of the Supreme Court action to uphold the $3.5 million fine, Lewis stated he wanted the Court to “be free from public pressure superinduced by the hysteria and frenzy of an economic crisis.”

Lewis and the UMW were tied up in appeals court for months while they attempted to negotiate new contract terms.

December 3 - The 1946 Oakland General Strike

On this day in labor history, the year was 1946. That was the day a general strike erupted in Oakland, California.

Workers, mostly women, had been on strike for a month at two downtown department stores.

Teamsters honored their picket lines and refused to make deliveries. Infuriated owners of Hastings and Kahn’s demanded their merchandise and turned to the city for help.

On this day, police assembled early in the morning to clear the streets of picketers. They attacked strikers, forced them off the streets and set up a perimeter of machine guns to escort scab delivery trucks through.

One striker recalled, “I was black and blue for six months from their clubs.” Outraged truck drivers, bus drivers and streetcar operators all stopped, got out of their vehicles and joined the strikers, quickly filling downtown Oakland.

By the end of the day, the city was completely shut down. 142 AFL unions called for a labor holiday in support of the strikers and now 130,000 workers were on strike in solidarity.

UAW member Stan Weir recalled that it was the bus drivers, many just returned from the war, who led the strike. The streets that night had a carnival like atmosphere. War vets led a march to City Hall to demand the resignation of the Mayor and the City Council for their attempts to break the strike.

The general strike quickly forced the administration to stop the scabhearding. But local labor leaders were divided over what some considered a near insurrection and called the strike off 54 hours later.

The retail workers were left to fight on their own for another five months. But for a few days, workers got a taste of their own power.

December 2 - John Brown Hanged

On this day in labor history, the year was 1859.

That was the day John Brown was hanged in Charles Town, Virginia in what is now West Virginia.

He had been sentenced to death on charges of treason, murder and insurrection for his role in the raid on the United States Federal Armory at Harper’s Ferry.

Brown and twenty-one abolitionists intended to seize the arsenal there, then build a free settlement in the Appalachian Mountains.

From there, abolitionists and free people of color would wage a guerrilla war against the slave labor system throughout the South.

Convicted on November 2, Brown resisted plans for rescue and prepared to die a martyr. 

On this day, John Brown wrote his last statement: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done.”

He was marched out of the Jefferson County Jail through a crowd of onlookers that included Stonewall Jackson and John Wilkes Booth to the gallows, where he was hanged.

While many abolitionists distanced themselves from his actions, they defended him and memorialized him after his death.

Fredrick Douglass remarked many years later, “His zeal in the cause of my race was far greater than mine-it was as the burning sun to my taper light-mine was bounded by time, his stretched away to the boundless shores of eternity. I could live for the slave, but he could die for him.”

December 1 - Exploitation in the Mines

On this day in labor history, the year was 1912. That was the day the Anaconda Copper Company instituted its rustling card system at its copper mines in Butte, Montana.

The company used the rustling card in two ways: as a work permit and as way to keep track of miners. A miner looking for work would first have to apply for a card. Miners had to present information about citizenship status, English literacy skills, work history and two years of employer references. Once the card was approved, the miner would then be allowed to apply for work. 

The Butte Miners’ Union charged it was the company’s way of blacklisting those who had quit, been fired or known as a union militant. By 1917, the Metal Mine Workers Union and the IWW added that the company was looking to “nip agitation in the bud.” They alleged employers were holding on to cards or denying them altogether for no reason.

According to historian Paul Brissenden, both unions maintained the company was looking “to punish those who were at one time active in the socialist administration of Butte Mayor Lewis J. Duncan, to prevent the Socialist Party from again securing a foothold in Butte, to strengthen the hands of the more conservative unions and to curb the industrial unionism of the IWW and Metal Mine Workers Union.” The company asserted its right to keep its enemies out of the mines, alleging they presented a danger to mine safety.

But the unions shot back, stating the blacklist meant the hiring of untrained, inexperienced workers who presented the real danger. Brissenden notes that many union radicals continued to work in the mines despite the card system.