tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/labor-movement-27305/articlesLabor movement – The Conversation2023-10-20T12:27:13Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2115912023-10-20T12:27:13Z2023-10-20T12:27:13ZA memorial in Yiddish, Italian and English tells the stories of Triangle Shirtwaist fire victims − testament not only to tragedy but to immigrant women’s fight to remake labor laws<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554421/original/file-20231017-27-ejzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C16%2C5582%2C3710&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Victims' names engraved in a metal overhang, part of the Triangle Shirtwaist Memorial, are reflected in mirroring panels along the sidewalk.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Triangle%20Shirtwaist%20Memorial/d4e18df9d4384eab9925fac331f75255?Query=triangle%20shirtwaist&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=42&currentItemNo=2">AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 10-story Brown Building, site of one of the deadliest workplace disasters in United States history, stands one block east of Washington Square Park in New York City. Despite three bronze plaques noting its significance, it has long been easy to pass by without further thought.</p>
<p>On March 25, 1911, however, thousands of New Yorkers gathered outside what was then known as the Asch Building, home of <a href="http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/slides/150.html#screen">the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory</a>. Drawn by <a href="http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/newspapersMagazines/nyt_032611.html">a brief but raging inferno</a>, they bore horrified witness to dozens of factory workers with no way to escape gathering on the ninth-floor window sills, desperately jumping, and smashing onto the sidewalks far below.</p>
<p>Horse-drawn fire crews <a href="http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/slides/146.html#screen">responded within minutes</a> to reports of the fire, which broke out on a Saturday afternoon at closing time, and it took only a half-hour to douse the flames. But the fire had had its way.</p>
<p>One hundred and forty-six people lost their lives. Most of those who died worked on the ninth floor, where safety measures consisted of little more than pails of water, despite the potential fire bomb around them: overflowing bins of discarded cloth and lint, combined with tissue-paper patterns hung across the ceiling. Locked doors, an inadequate fire escape and other fire code violations meant many workers could find no way out except the windows.</p>
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<span class="caption">Trapped behind locked doors, some workers saw no escape but the windows.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/policeman-stands-in-the-street-observing-charred-rubble-and-news-photo/3112343?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Firemen were left to stack the lifeless bodies <a href="http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/slides/151.html#screen">on the sidewalk</a>. The vast majority were girls or young women: meagerly paid laborers, and most of them Jewish or Italian immigrants.</p>
<p>On Oct. 11, 2023, the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition <a href="https://apnews.com/article/triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire-memorial-6696231893baecf72da373ebd3a94680">dedicated a striking memorial</a> at the site of this tragedy. The initial installation features a stainless steel ribbon extending in two parallel strands along the ground floor, displaying victims’ names and survivors’ testimony, written in their native languages: English, Yiddish and Italian. Over the next few months, another gently twisting ribbon traveling from the window sill of the ninth floor to the ground level and back up again will be added.</p>
<p>The memorial offers a bold and graceful reminder not only of the fire but of its imprint on the world we inhabit today.</p>
<p>When I asked the students in my history class at the University of Michigan if they had heard of the Triangle fire, I was shocked to see almost all raise their hands. Many were familiar with how the disaster inspired <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/09/04/1033177379/labor-day-history-triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire-patco-strike">the growth of labor activism</a> and worker protections. Few of them, however, had thought about the central role of American Jewish women, <a href="https://ssw.umich.edu/faculty/profiles/tenure-track/kargold">the focus of my research</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554417/original/file-20231017-23-g9inov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photograph of a crowd of women in long coats, holding banners that say 'We mourn our loss.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554417/original/file-20231017-23-g9inov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554417/original/file-20231017-23-g9inov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554417/original/file-20231017-23-g9inov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554417/original/file-20231017-23-g9inov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554417/original/file-20231017-23-g9inov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554417/original/file-20231017-23-g9inov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554417/original/file-20231017-23-g9inov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Demonstrators from Local 25 and the United Hebrew Trades of New York mourn fire victims.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-mourn-for-the-deaths-of-victims-of-the-news-photo/642536674?adppopup=true">PhotoQuest/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Tense 2 years</h2>
<p>Only two years before the fire, a walkout over working conditions at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory had sparked a series of labor actions that culminated in the <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/uprising-of-20000-1909">Uprising of the 20,000</a>, the largest <a href="http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/slides/275.html#screen">American women’s strike</a> ever. </p>
<p>That disciplined activism was led by a small cadre of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography-clara-lemlich">young Jewish immigrant working-class women</a>. Years earlier, they had essentially created a branch of their own – Local 25 – within the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Their example led to a surge of strikes nationwide and forced the labor movement to finally take the needs of unskilled workers and women workers seriously.</p>
<p><a href="http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/slides/142.html#screen">The Triangle bosses</a> and other owners hired thugs to assault strike leaders and picketers. The police likewise felt free <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469635910/common-sense-and-a-little-fire-second-edition/">to beat the picketers</a>, which only abated when upper-class partners in the <a href="http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/slides/286.html#screen">Women’s Trade Union League joined the picket lines</a> – raising fear among the police that they might be striking society matrons. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554418/original/file-20231017-23-v5l3s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo of formally dressed women around a dining table decorated with plants and candles." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554418/original/file-20231017-23-v5l3s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554418/original/file-20231017-23-v5l3s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554418/original/file-20231017-23-v5l3s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554418/original/file-20231017-23-v5l3s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554418/original/file-20231017-23-v5l3s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554418/original/file-20231017-23-v5l3s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554418/original/file-20231017-23-v5l3s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Suffragettes and socialites attend a dinner held by Mrs. Martin Littleton in support of the striking workers, circa 1910.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-physician-anna-howard-shaw-leader-of-the-womens-news-photo/1393779912?adppopup=true">Paul Thompson/FPG/Archive Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The Triangle Factory was among the 339 shops that “<a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/uprising-of-20000-1909">settled” with the union</a> in February 1910, with concessions that included higher wages, a 52-hour week, four paid holidays per year and a promise to no longer discriminate against union members. </p>
<p>The strikers’ <a href="https://groveatlantic.com/book/triangle/">call for better safety standards</a>, however, <a href="https://groveatlantic.com/book/triangle/">had been ignored</a> by the male union representatives and owners who had worked out the settlement. </p>
<h2>Moral force</h2>
<p>Local 25 grew from a few hundred to 10,000 members over the course <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/uprising-of-20000-1909#pid-18206">of the 1909-10 strike</a>. That organizing prowess would be seen again in the wave of protest and indignation that followed the 1911 fire.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://groveatlantic.com/book/triangle/">unions’ strength</a> could be seen in the <a href="http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/slides/184.html#screen">funeral march</a> that accompanied the fire’s seven unidentified victims to a municipal burying ground, as a crowd of 400,000 assembled to march or <a href="http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/slides/187.html#screen">watch the procession</a>.</p>
<p>The power of the <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801477072/the-triangle-fire/#bookTabs=1">activists’ moral indignation</a> emerged in full force
at a memorial meeting held a few days later. Workers grew restive as wealthy philanthropists, city officials and liberal reformers promised investigatory commissions – which they feared would mean little real change.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554415/original/file-20231017-23-fagv3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A close-up formal portrait of a woman with dark hair in a black and white photograph." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554415/original/file-20231017-23-fagv3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554415/original/file-20231017-23-fagv3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554415/original/file-20231017-23-fagv3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554415/original/file-20231017-23-fagv3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554415/original/file-20231017-23-fagv3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554415/original/file-20231017-23-fagv3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554415/original/file-20231017-23-fagv3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Feminist and union labor activist Rose Schneiderman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-feminist-and-labor-union-leader-rose-news-photo/461192915?adppopup=true">Interim Archives/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/schneiderman-rose">Rose Schneiderman</a>, one of the working-class <a href="http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/slides/221.html">immigrant labor activists</a> who had helped organize the 1909 strike, was also on the platform. <a href="https://francesperkinscenter.org/learn/her-life/">Reformer Frances Perkins</a>, who would soon become a close ally, noted Schneiderman trembling over <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801477072/the-triangle-fire/#bookTabs=1">the loss of comrades, friends and co-workers</a>.</p>
<p>Schneiderman took the podium, excoriating the industry’s brutality and focusing on the unrealized power of the workers themselves. “I would be a traitor to those poor burned bodies,” <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/115844?lang=bi">she declared</a>, “if I were to come here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public – and we have found you wanting.”</p>
<p>“I know from experience it is up to the working class to save themselves,” Schneiderman told the audience.</p>
<h2>Birth of the New Deal</h2>
<p>Yet the working class ended up needing allies like Perkins, who was instrumental in establishing a citizens’ Committee on Safety, and then <a href="https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/mono-regsafepart07">a legislative Factory Investigating Commission</a> as well.</p>
<p>On the day of the fire, Perkins had been enjoying tea at a friend’s house on Washington Square and rushed toward the commotion across the park, arriving on the scene to see bodies falling from the sky. That scene and Schneiderman’s speech <a href="https://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/lectures/FrancesPerkinsLecture.html">left an indelible impression on her</a> – as they did on many New Yorkers. </p>
<p>For several reasons, including public outcry about the fire, this was the moment when New York City’s political machine began to shift its focus and <a href="https://groveatlantic.com/book/triangle/">address workers’ needs</a>. Schneiderman and other activists worked with Perkins on investigations that led to the overhaul of <a href="https://www.nysarchivestrust.org/exhibits/industrialization">New York’s safety and labor laws</a>, such as <a href="https://bklyn.newspapers.com/article/the-brooklyn-daily-eagle-hearing-about-t/91238764/?locale=en-US">a 54-hour maximum work week</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554420/original/file-20231017-15-vy8u4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Young men hold posters printed with black and white photographs of women as they stand on a city street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554420/original/file-20231017-15-vy8u4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554420/original/file-20231017-15-vy8u4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554420/original/file-20231017-15-vy8u4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554420/original/file-20231017-15-vy8u4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554420/original/file-20231017-15-vy8u4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554420/original/file-20231017-15-vy8u4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554420/original/file-20231017-15-vy8u4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">New York City commemorated the 108th anniversary of the fire in 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/holding-flowers-pictures-and-traditional-dresses-people-news-photo/1138302794?adppopup=true">Spencer Platt/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The young women whose pain had galvanized public response continued their union work, traveling around the country to help organize many of the strikes their activism inspired. Some also made an impact at the governmental level. Schneiderman became a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/schneiderman-rose">influenced her views on workers’ needs</a>, as well as those of her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt.</p>
<p>Perkins became President Roosevelt’s secretary of labor in 1933 and was the first woman to serve in a U.S. cabinet position. She brought the New York reforms born in the wake of the fire into <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/great-depression-and-world-war-ii-1929-1945/franklin-delano-roosevelt-and-the-new-deal/">the New Deal</a>, the slew of social programs the Roosevelt administration introduced to help Americans struggling through the Great Depression. </p>
<p>Schneiderman, too, had a role: the only woman to serve on the New Deal’s Labor Advisory Board. As Perkins later recalled, the day of the Triangle fire was “<a href="https://francesperkinscenter.org/learn/her-life/">the day the New Deal was born</a>.”</p>
<p>For 112 years, the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory have called out silently from the sidewalks and window frames of the Brown Building, which is now part of New York University’s campus. The new memorial calls on the passersby to stop, note and honor that one horrific half-hour, etched indelibly into the story of the city and the nation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211591/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karla Goldman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A memorial at the site of the 1911 fire remembers those who died; a cadre of young Jewish women helped push for change in the wake of the tragedy.Karla Goldman, Professor of Social Work and Judaic Studies, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2098192023-07-20T12:31:46Z2023-07-20T12:31:46ZUPS impasse with union could deliver a costly strike, disrupting brick-and-mortar businesses as well as e-commerce<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538363/original/file-20230719-19-vsufa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C0%2C5514%2C3689&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Placards are part and parcel of a protest.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/UPSLaborTalks/80443caf79fb48a894d4acfd6de53333/photo?Query=UPS%20teamsters&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=67&currentItemNo=7">AP Photo/Brittainy Newman</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Talks between the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and UPS over a new contract <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/05/business/ups-teamsters-negotiations/index.html">fell apart on July 5, 2023</a>. The union and the shipping and logistics company are <a href="https://www.freightwaves.com/news/ups-teamsters-talks-collapse">blaming each other for the collapse</a>, which occurred a few weeks after <a href="https://teamster.org/2023/06/teamsters-authorize-strike-at-ups/">97% of UPS’s Teamsters voted to strike</a> if the Teamsters and UPS don’t reach an agreement by midnight on July 31.</em></p>
<p><em>Without a deal in place, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ups-strike-teamsters-biden-delivery-cb586d2f6160a92cda9318d6290ac8ea">more than 300,000 Teamsters will stop working</a> on Aug. 1. It would mark the delivery service’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0160449X9902400106">first strike since 1997</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation asked <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=g_BdG-cAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Jason Miller</a>, a supply chain scholar at Michigan State University, to explain how likely it is that this will happen and what to expect if it does.</em></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A uniformed employee sits in the driver's seat of a truck with UPS written on the side." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538368/original/file-20230719-25-2rc536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538368/original/file-20230719-25-2rc536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538368/original/file-20230719-25-2rc536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538368/original/file-20230719-25-2rc536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538368/original/file-20230719-25-2rc536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538368/original/file-20230719-25-2rc536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538368/original/file-20230719-25-2rc536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Upward of 300,000 employees could take part in a strike.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/UPSLaborTalks/8d7eac1a06f94afc932a2cecab27a173/photo?Query=UPS%20teamsters&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=67&currentItemNo=28">AP Photo/Michael Dwyer</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What are the reasons for this impending strike?</h2>
<p>Before the talks collapsed, both sides had been negotiating extensively on a new five-year agreement that <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/07/11/ups-strike-2023-impact/70400086007/">would cover about 340,000 unionized UPS workers</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.fleetowner.com/operations/article/21269359/freightmarket-ripples-ahead-of-possible-ups-strike">The delivery company has agreed to some of the Teamsters’ demands</a>, pledging to:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>End a two-tiered wage system in which part-time workers earn an average of about US$5 per hour less than full-time workers;</p></li>
<li><p>Make <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/15-year-battle-martin-luther-king-jr-day">Martin Luther King Jr. Day</a>, the third Monday of January, a paid holiday;</p></li>
<li><p>Stop requiring UPS employees to work <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ups-strike-labor-contract-teamsters-3438edf86cb006a1685e29822399a4d9">overtime hours on their days off</a>;</p></li>
<li><p>Add fans and install <a href="https://teamster.org/2023/06/teamsters-secure-air-conditioning-for-ups-fleet-in-major-tentative-deal/">air conditioning in many trucks</a> to improve cooling.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The primary remaining sticking points concern <a href="https://twitter.com/CNBCOvertime/status/1678505073641390080?">part-time workers</a>. The Teamsters dispute UPS’s claim that part-time workers earn an average of $20 per hour. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien instead says they’re paid “<a href="https://twitter.com/Teamsters/status/1678799645336543233">poverty wages</a>.”</p>
<p>The Teamsters further want part-time workers to have earlier access to health insurance coverage and pension plans and a clearer pathway to full-time employment. The union also seeks to resolve safety and health concerns and “better pay for all workers,” as well as obtaining “<a href="https://teamster.org/2023/06/ups-pleads-to-keep-bargaining-with-more-money-teamsters-demand-more-progress/">stronger protections against managerial harassment</a>.”</p>
<p>The impasse comes after two years in which UPS posted record profits. The company cleared <a href="https://investors.ups.com/sec-filings/annual-filings/content/0001090727-23-000006/0001090727-23-000006.pdf">$12.9 billion and $11.5 billion</a>, respectively, in 2021 and 2022. The company <a href="https://investors.ups.com/sec-filings/annual-filings/content/0001090727-20-000005/0001090727-20-000005.pdf">nearly tripled its net income</a> from the levels seen in 2018 and 2019 of $4.8 billion and $4.4 billion.</p>
<p>The Teamsters argue that these record profits mean <a href="https://teamster.org/2023/07/after-marathon-sessions-ups-negotiations-collapse/">UPS can afford to pay higher wages</a>.</p>
<h2>What should consumers expect?</h2>
<p>If unionized UPS workers do go on strike, many U.S. consumers will surely fear delays in the delivery of their online purchases. In my view, that’s a reasonable concern, given that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/business/ups-strike-retail-shippers.html">UPS handles roughly 25%</a> of all U.S. package deliveries. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.cnn.com/US/9708/20/ups.update.early/">1997 strike, which lasted 16 days</a>, took place when e-commerce was in its infancy. The Census Bureau only began to track that slice of the economy in 1999, when <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ECOMPCTSA">online shopping amounted to about 0.6% of all retail sales</a>. Today, consumers spend about 15% of their shopping dollars on e-commerce purchases.</p>
<p>If a strike were to happen, UPS competitors, including FexEx Ground and the United States Postal Service, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jason-miller-32110325_supplychain-supplychainmanagement-ecommerce-activity-7084504099454390272-3iwR?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop">would likely be able to handle about 20%</a> of UPS’s deliveries because the industry currently has some excess capacity. </p>
<p>That’s due to delivery <a href="https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES4349200007?amp%253bdata_tool=XGtable&output_view=data&include_graphs=true">workers clocking fewer hours per week</a> today compared to the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. <a href="https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES4349200034?amp%253bdata_tool=XGtable&output_view=data&include_graphs=true">Parcel delivery demand peaked in 2021</a>, when millions of Americans were still social distancing. </p>
<p>If a prolonged strike happens, UPS could lose up to <a href="https://www.freightwaves.com/news/consultant-strike-could-cost-ups-30-of-diverted-volume">30% of its business</a>, experts warn, as <a href="https://www.freightwaves.com/news/fedex-advises-ups-shippers-to-get-on-board-now">customers switch to rival services</a>.</p>
<p>The risk of losing market share is leading many industry experts to believe that if a strike were to occur, <a href="https://www.fleetowner.com/operations/article/21269359/freightmarket-ripples-ahead-of-possible-ups-strike">it wouldn’t last long</a>.</p>
<h2>What about businesses?</h2>
<p>Roughly 57.3% of the packages UPS delivers <a href="https://www.freightwaves.com/news/tough-quarter-starts-the-year-for-ups">are shipped straight to consumers</a>. The rest go to retailers and other businesses.</p>
<p>Based on <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=g_BdG-cAAAAJ">my years of researching</a> transportation operations and supply chain disruptions, I believe Americans should recognize that the impact of a UPS strike would stretch far beyond delayed delivery of everything from pet food to tennis rackets that they buy online.</p>
<p>A UPS strike could disrupt the availability of <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/07/11/ups-strike-2023-impact/70400086007/">spare parts for cars</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/12/1187354600/ups-workers-could-be-on-course-for-a-historic-strike-within-weeks">wholesale medical supplies</a>, just to name a few essentials. Consumers will also find it harder to get clothing and shoes in stores, as retail locations are typically replenished by parcel carriers. </p>
<p>The supply chain for manufacturing computer and electronics products would probably be disrupted too, according to <a href="https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2017/econ/cfs/historical-datasets.html">my analysis of data</a> from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics that <a href="https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cfs/technical-documentation/methodology/2017cfsmethodology.pdf">tracks how different industries transport products to their customers</a>. Farmers and construction companies trying to get spare parts for heavy equipment would see delays in those shipments, which might result in downtime that costs tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.</p>
<p>Consequently, a strike would leave many businesses scrambling to fulfill customers’ orders, which may force them to spend more money on higher-priced air freight shipping. </p>
<p>Even a 10-day strike could <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/14/economy/ups-strike-economic-impact/index.html">cost the U.S. economy an estimated $7.1 billion</a> , according to <a href="https://www.andersoneconomicgroup.com/potential-ups-strike-could-be-costliest-in-a-century/">Anderson Economic Group</a> – a research firm – making it potentially the costliest strike in U.S. history. These costs stem from the 340,000 striking workers losing an estimated $1.1 billion in wages and UPS losing $816 million in earnings. The balance of this estimate would result from the disruptions incurred by UPS customers. </p>
<h2>What do you think will happen?</h2>
<p>Unlike the threatened <a href="https://theconversation.com/railroads-and-unions-reach-deal-to-avert-devastating-strike-keeping-americas-trains-and-the-economy-on-track-for-now-190600">railroad strikes of 2022</a>, there is no system in place for the federal government to prevent a UPS strike. On that occasion, Congress had the option of intervening, but a deal was reached before the government had to step in.</p>
<p>However, it seems likely that there <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ups-strike-teamsters-biden-delivery-cb586d2f6160a92cda9318d6290ac8ea">will be calls for the White House</a> to get both parties back to the negotiating table.</p>
<p>Given that both the Teamsters and UPS have an incentive to not see the company lose customers to rival shipping operations, I believe that they may reach a deal soon enough to avoid a costly and disruptive strike. Consistent with this, UPS announced on July 19, 2023, that it and the Teamsters will <a href="https://www.freightwaves.com/news/ups-teamsters-to-return-to-table">return to the negotiating table</a> before their July 31 deadline.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209819/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jason Miller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Talks between the the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and company bosses have broken down. A supply chain expert explores what could happen next.Jason Miller, Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2098242023-07-14T19:12:44Z2023-07-14T19:12:44ZHollywood on the picket line – 5 unsung films that put America’s union history on the silver screen<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537548/original/file-20230714-19-zejzwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C34%2C3859%2C2549&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Actors Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh were among those who walked out of the premiere of 'Oppenheimer.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-cast-of-oppenheimer-including-british-actress-emily-news-photo/1531859433?adppopup=true">Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some of Hollywood’s top stars are <a href="https://apnews.com/article/hollywood-actors-writers-strike-1da6262b2506d64822201d53e5d76c43">joining screenwriters on the picket line</a> after the main U.S. actors union voted to take part in an ongoing strike.</p>
<p>SAG-AFTRA, which represents more than 150,000 screen and stage actors, announced on July 13, 2023, that its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/actors-strike-why.html">members would go on strike</a>. </p>
<p>In so doing, they join members of the Writers Guild of America who have been on strike for several weeks. </p>
<p>Battles between Hollywood unions and the studios have <a href="https://laist.com/news/la-history/hollywood-strike-1945-unions-iatse-bloody-friday">taken place since the 1940s</a>. But this is the first time since the Eisenhower administration that the two major Hollywood unions have been on strike at the same time. The action – sparked by a long-running dispute over pay and greater protection against use of artificial intelligence and the rise of streaming services like Netflix – has shut down productions and become increasingly acrimonious. One Hollywood source <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/07/studios-allegedly-wont-end-strike-til-writers-start-losing-their-apartments">told a reporter</a> that the studios want these strikes to “drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” </p>
<p>The strikes come at a time when polls suggest <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/354455/approval-labor-unions-highest-point-1965.aspx">unions are more popular in the U.S. than at any time since 1965</a>, and the labor movement is experiencing a resurgence of organizing.</p>
<p>Since the mid-1900s, Hollywood studios have depicted the collective efforts of working people to improve their lives and gain a voice in their workplaces and the larger society with both sympathy and hostility. Independent producers, who gained a foothold starting in the 1970s, have generally been friendlier toward workers and their unions. </p>
<p>Some of the most well-known labor movies champion the struggle of the everyday worker: “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027977/">Modern Times</a>,” released in 1936, stars Charlie Chaplin going crazy due to his job on an assembly line. It features the famous image of Chaplin caught in the gears of factory machinery. “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032551/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Grapes of Wrath</a>,” a 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel, tells the story of sharecropper Tom Joad’s radicalization after his family and other migrant workers experience destitute conditions in California’s growing fields and overcrowded migrant camps. </p>
<p>1979’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079638/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Norma Rae</a>” is based on the life of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/us/15sutton.html">Crystal Lee Sutton</a>, who worked in a J.P. Stevens mill in North Carolina. The textile worker and single mom inspires her fellow workers to overcome their racial animus and work together to vote in a union. “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212826/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Bread and Roses</a>,” a 2000 film about low-wage janitors in Los Angeles, is based on the Service Employees International Union’s <a href="https://www.labor.ucla.edu/what-we-do/research-tools/campaigns-and-research/justice-for-janitors/">Justice for Janitors</a> movement.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZdvEGPt4s0Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In an iconic scene from ‘Modern Times,’ Charlie Chaplin gets caught in the gears of factory machinery.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s also an anti-labor strain of Hollywood history, particularly during <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691153964/the-second-red-scare-and-the-unmaking-of-the-new-deal-left">the post-World War II Red Scare</a>, when studios purged left-wing writers, directors and actors through <a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/hollywoods-red-scare-spread-stigma-association">an industrywide blacklist</a>. Red Scare-era releases such as 1952’s “Big Jim McLain” and the 1954 film “On the Waterfront” often depicted unions as corrupt or infiltrated by communist subversives.</p>
<p>When I teach labor history, I’ve used films to supplement books and articles. I’ve found that students more easily grasp the human dimensions of workers’ lives and struggles when they are depicted on the screen. </p>
<p>Here are five unsung labor movies, all based on real-life events, that, in my view, deserve more attention. </p>
<h2>1. ‘<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078008/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_6">Northern Lights</a>’ (1978)</h2>
<p>This is a fictionalized account of a fascinating but little-known political movement: <a href="https://www.history.nd.gov/ndhistory/npl.html">the Non-Partisan League</a>, which organized farmers in the upper Midwest in the early 1900s. </p>
<p>During this period, Midwestern farmers worked long hours to harvest grain that they were then forced to sell for low prices to elevators, while paying high prices to the big railroad companies and banks. Economic insecurity was a part of life, and foreclosures were routine. </p>
<p>The film follows Ray Sorenson, a young farmer influenced by socialist ideas who leaves his North Dakota farm to become a Non-Partisan League organizer. In his beat-up Model T, he travels the back roads, talking to farmers in their fields or around the potbellied stoves of country stores. He eventually persuades skeptical farmers that electing NPL candidates could get the government to create cooperative grain elevators, state-chartered banks with farmers as stockholders, and limits on the prices that railroads can charge farmers to haul their wheat. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NGMMmD7ty5c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Northern Lights’ is based on an early-20th-century farmer-led political uprising in the Midwest.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1916, the Non-Partisan League did, in fact, elect farmer <a href="https://www.history.nd.gov/exhibits/governors/governors12.html">Lynn Frazier</a> as governor of North Dakota with 79% of the vote. Two years later, the NPL won control of both houses of the state legislature and created the North Dakota Mill, still the only state-owned flour mill, and the <a href="https://ilsr.org/rule/bank-of-north-dakota-2/">The Bank of North Dakota</a>, which remains the nation’s only government-owned general-service bank.</p>
<h2>2. ‘<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033533/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Devil and Miss Jones</a>’ (1941)</h2>
<p>In this screwball comedy with a pro-union twist, Charles Coburn plays John P. Merrick, a fictional New York City department store owner.</p>
<p>After his employees hang him in effigy, the tycoon goes undercover to ferret out the agitators of a union drive led by a store clerk in the shoe department and a union organizer. </p>
<p>As he learns more about their lives, Merrick grows sympathetic to his workers – and even falls in love with one of his employees – none of whom know his true identity. As the workers prepare to go on strike, and even picket his house, Merrick reveals that he owns the store and agrees to their demands over pay and hours – and even marries the employee he’s fallen for. </p>
<p>The film was likely inspired by <a href="http://msr-archives.rutgers.edu/archives/Issue%2016/essays/Opler.htm">the 1937 sit-down strikes</a> by employees of New York City’s department stores. </p>
<h2>3. 'Salt of the Earth’ (1954)</h2>
<p>Decades ahead of its time, this story of New Mexico mine workers deals with issues of racism, sexism and class.</p>
<p>After a mine accident, the Mexican-American workers decide to strike. They demand better safety standards and equal treatment, since white miners are allowed to work in pairs, while Mexican ones are forced to work alone. The strikers expect the women to stay at home, cook and take care of the children. But when the company gets an injunction to end the men’s protest, the women step up and maintain the picket lines, earning greater respect from the men.</p>
<p>Made at the height of the Red Scare, the film’s writer, producer and director <a href="https://www.highonfilms.com/salt-of-the-earth-1954-essay/">had been blacklisted</a> for their leftist sympathies, so the film was sponsored by the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, not a Hollywood studio. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002095/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Will Geer</a>, a blacklisted actor who later portrayed Grandpa Walton on the TV drama “The Waltons,” played the repressive sheriff. Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas played the leader of the wives. The other characters were portrayed by real miners and their wives who participated in the strike against <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/empire-zinc-strike/">the Empire Zinc Company</a>, which served as the inspiration for the film. </p>
<p>The film itself was blacklisted, and no major theater chain would show it, but has since become a cult favorite among union activists and on college campuses.</p>
<h2>4. ‘<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280377/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">10,000 Black Men Named George</a>’ (2002)</h2>
<p>Andre Braugher stars as <a href="https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-people/asa-philip-randolph">A. Philip Randolph</a>, who organized the <a href="https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-depression/brotherhood-of-sleeping-car-porters-win-over-pullman-company/">Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters</a>, the first Black-run union. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2009/05/08/103933268/pullman-porters-creating-a-black-middle-class">Being a porter on a Pullman railroad car</a> was one of the few jobs open to Black men. But wages were low, travel was constant and trains’ white passengers patronized the porters by calling all of them “George,” after <a href="https://www.nps.gov/people/george-m-pullman.htm">George Pullman</a>, the mogul who owned the company. </p>
<p>The company hired thugs to intimidate the porters, but Randolph and his top lieutenants persisted. They began their crusade in 1925 but didn’t get the company to sign a contract with the union until 1937, <a href="http://www.pennfedbmwe.org/Docs/reference/RLA_Simplified.html">thanks to a New Deal law</a> that gave railroad workers the right to unionize. Randolph became American’s leading civil rights organizer during the 1940s and 1950s and orchestrated the 1963 March on Washington. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black men stand on a stage holding an American flag and a union flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480118/original/file-20220819-26-jduttq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480118/original/file-20220819-26-jduttq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480118/original/file-20220819-26-jduttq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480118/original/file-20220819-26-jduttq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480118/original/file-20220819-26-jduttq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480118/original/file-20220819-26-jduttq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480118/original/file-20220819-26-jduttq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters display their banner at a 1955 ceremony celebrating the organization’s 30th anniversary.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/fight-or-be-slaves-members-of-the-brotherhood-of-sleeping-news-photo/515296680?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>5. 'North Country’ (2005)</h2>
<p>Charlize Theron portrays Josey Aimes, a desperate single mom who flees her abusive husband, returns to her hometown in northern Minnesota, moves in with her parents and takes a job at an iron mine. </p>
<p>There, she is constantly groped, insulted and bullied by the male workers. She complains to the company managers, who don’t take her seriously. The male-dominated union claims there’s nothing they can do. Aimes sues the company, which, after a dramatic courtroom scene, is forced to settle with her and other women. </p>
<p>With stellar performances by Theron, Sissy Spacek, Frances McDormand and Woody Harrelson, “North Country” is based on <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/real-women-north-country">a groundbreaking lawsuit</a> brought by female miners at Minnesota’s Eveleth Mines in 1975 that helped make sexual harassment a violation of workers’ rights.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an article that was <a href="https://theconversation.com/5-unsung-films-that-dramatize-americas-rich-labor-history-188442">first
published</a> on The Conversation on Aug. 22, 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209824/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Dreier does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As actors join screenwriters in a strike that has shut down movie productions, a labor historian looks back at union action on the silver screen.Peter Dreier, E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, Occidental CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2049842023-05-05T12:17:13Z2023-05-05T12:17:13ZThe exploitation of Hollywood’s writers is just another symptom of digital feudalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524444/original/file-20230504-17-q7bqzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=112%2C22%2C4865%2C3285&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Striking workers picket outside of Warner Bros. Studios on the second day of the Hollywood writers strike on May 3, 2023, in Burbank, Calif.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-picket-outside-of-warner-bros-studios-on-the-second-news-photo/1252595408?adppopup=true">David McNew/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The current Hollywood writers strike has drawn international attention to the plight of TV and film writers <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1108/9781839827686">in the streaming era</a>. </p>
<p>Much has been made of television’s <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/welcome-to-tvs-second-golden-age/">golden age</a>, during which streaming platforms have offered audiences an abundance of well-written, highly produced television shows, often called “<a href="https://www.vulture.com/2017/03/prestige-tv-signs-youre-watching.html">prestige TV</a>.” </p>
<p>Whereas older television shows tended to be formulaic sitcoms or crime dramas, newer shows more closely mimic <a href="https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2021/10/serial-fiction-part-1/">the serialized novels of the 19th century</a>, with cliff-hangers that encourage <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-behind-tv-bingeings-bad-rap-74399">binge-watching</a>. </p>
<p>But not everyone in the industry has equally reaped the rewards. While there are certainly more writing jobs to go around, these roles <a href="https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-amptp-contract-strike-deadline-1235599161/">often pay less and place writers on short-order contracts</a>.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the unyielding demand for content, as more and more platforms compete for subscriptions, has trapped writers in what I call “<a href="https://books.emeraldinsight.com/book/detail/digital-feudalism/?k=9781804557693">digital feudalism</a>.” </p>
<h2>Echoes from medieval Europe</h2>
<p>I use the phrase digital feudalism because today’s version of capitalism increasingly mirrors the transition from feudalism to capitalism in 16th-century England.</p>
<p>Beginning in the 16th century, the English Parliament passed <a href="https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/the-enclosure-acts/">a number of enclosure acts</a>, which abolished common land and defined it as private property that the government reallocated to the elites.</p>
<p>These laws kicked peasants, <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/Serf/">known as serfs</a>, off the land where they had lived and worked for generations. Many of them ended up heading to cities in order to find work. The ensuing oversupply of workers drove down wages, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01c.htm">and many ex-serfs couldn’t find jobs or housing</a>, becoming vagabonds.</p>
<p>In other words, serfs lost stability in their everyday lives as they were thrust into a new economic system.</p>
<p>Precarity, debt and a lack of stability <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/2023/05/the-age-of-the-crisis-of-work-quiet-quitting-great-resignation/">are again the dominant themes</a> in today’s digital economy. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/05/what-gig-economy-workers/">The gig economy</a>, in which people can juggle two or three part-time roles to make ends meet, is largely to blame. These jobs <a href="https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-gargantuan-gig-swindle-albert">usually don’t offer</a> full-time benefits, livable wages or job security. The roles – whether they’re working as an Uber driver, delivering food for DoorDash or cleaning homes through Task Rabbit – are often managed through digital platforms owned by powerful corporations that give their workers a pittance in exchange for their labor.</p>
<h2>The serfs of Hollywood</h2>
<p>So, why are TV writers feeling the pinch of digital feudalism if this is the golden age of television? </p>
<p>Streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu and HBO Max brought about the golden age. <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2023/03/peak-tv-over-golden-age-hbo-streaming.html">But the gold prospecting has slowed</a>, as the number of <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2017/03/prestige-tv-signs-youre-watching.html">prestige TV shows</a> seems to have hit a saturation point. </p>
<p>Starting in the 2010s, streaming platforms began hiring more and more writers. To lure customers, platforms needed quality content – otherwise, viewers wouldn’t continue paying <a href="https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/is-streaming-actually-cheaper-than-cable-we-do-the-math/">the US$8 to $15 monthly cost</a> of a subscription.</p>
<p>Platforms couldn’t market their content like network sitcoms, so they had to constantly develop new ideas for shows. Large stables of creative writers ended up forming the core of studio strategy.</p>
<p>Yet, as TV writers <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/notes-on-hollywood/why-are-tv-writers-so-miserable">flocked to Los Angeles</a> and New York City, entertainment companies took a page from the gig economy playbook in ways that worked against writers’ livelihoods.</p>
<p>The contracts were short and <a href="https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-amptp-contract-strike-deadline-1235599161/">the pay lower</a>. The formats of streaming shows – more one-off miniseries rather than sitcoms that could run for as long as a decade – rarely guaranteed work for any lengthy period of time.</p>
<p>Furthermore, streaming shows tend to have fewer episodes per season, with larger gaps between seasons, known as “<a href="https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-amptp-contract-strike-deadline-1235599161/">short order</a>.” An eight-episode season of a popular show that has a two-year gap between seasons leaves TV writers scrambling to figure out ways to pay the bills in between seasons.</p>
<p>Then came COVID-19. While people were stuck at home binge-watching TV, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2021/03/10/how-pandemic-changed-tv-and-how-much-last/6826073002/">it became difficult to produce television</a>. There was a major backlog in TV production because of the difficulties shooting TV shows in studios while complying with COVID-19 health regulations. </p>
<p>This created <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2021/03/10/how-pandemic-changed-tv-and-how-much-last/6826073002/">a major slowdown in TV production</a>. At the height of the pandemic, TV studios closed to limit the number of people inside. With the slowdown of production, there wasn’t the demand for writers. As a result, many of the TV writers who had recently moved to Log Angeles and other big cities with high costs of living were faced with challenges finding jobs.</p>
<h2>Core demands</h2>
<p>Writers want to fix this by raising their minimum wage; they want writers for streaming platforms to receive the same royalties that theatrical film writers get; and they want to end <a href="https://variety.com/2021/tv/features/mini-rooms-writers-tv-pilot-series-orders-1235061733/">the practice of mini rooms</a>, where small groups of writers hash out scripts but often receive less compensation for a series that may not even get ordered.</p>
<p>Another key demand is to limit the use of artificial intelligence in television production. </p>
<p>Writers fear that studios will use AI to hire workers, select which shows to produce and, in the worst-case scenario, replace writers altogether. Interestingly, limits on AI have been the one point of contention that <a href="https://deadline.com/2023/05/wga-strike-chris-keyser-interview-failed-negotiations-amptp-ai-1235354566/">studios have been unwilling to even discuss</a>.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see whether the writers will be able to claw back some of the financial security that’s vanished across many industries, or if the larger economic forces that have powered the gig economy will work in studio executives’ favor.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204984/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Arditi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The writers strike lays bare all the ills of working on one of the lowest rungs of the entertainment industry.David Arditi, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Texas at ArlingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2003352023-02-24T13:12:31Z2023-02-24T13:12:31ZHistoric UAW election is bringing profound union leadership changes – and chances of more strikes and higher car prices<p>Ballot counting is underway in a runoff election to decide who will lead the powerful United Auto Workers union as its president. But the <a href="https://uaw.org/2022iebelections/">historic election</a> is already transforming the union’s leadership in ways that could bring an end to decades of declining blue-collar compensation in this key sector of the economy.</p>
<p>This was the first direct leadership election in the UAW’s 88-year history, following a series of corruption scandals that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/business/uaw-gary-jones-investigation.html">sent two former presidents to prison</a>. With most of the other leadership races already determined, it’s clear that <a href="https://uaw.org/newly-elected-uaw-international-executive-board-members/">the union’s leadership</a> will be closely divided between the old guard and the challengers.</p>
<p>This transformation of how the UAW is governed sets up what is widely expected to be a more adversarial relationship between the union and <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bigthree.asp">the Big Three</a> domestic car producers. Regardless of who wins the presidency, a more combative stance with automakers is likely to result in <a href="https://uaw.org/uaw-statement-increasing-strike-pay-500-per-week/">more strikes</a>, higher car prices and also greater competitive pressure on domestic companies to outsource or challenge unionization at new plants opening to make electric vehicles and their components.</p>
<p>I have written about trade unions in the United States and Europe for over three decades. My latest book is “<a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501769702/the-uaws-southern-gamble/#bookTabs=1">The UAW’s Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-owned Vehicle Plants</a>.” The direct elections, while making the UAW better reflect the interests of workers, will challenge companies at the same time the Biden administration is trying to revive manufacturing and <a href="https://joebiden.com/empowerworkers/">boost union influence</a>. The results could reverberate through the nation’s fragile economy.</p>
<h2>How a scandal gave workers more power</h2>
<p>The UAW held a first round of direct elections for the union’s president and leadership board in late 2022, with ballots mailed to working members and retirees. </p>
<p>This new election format is a product of a 2021 <a href="https://uaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/CONSENT-DECREE-updated-9-17-21.pdf">consent decree</a> between the UAW and the Justice Department to settle a sprawling <a href="https://www.autonews.com/static/section/report05.html">corruption scandal</a> in which several top union officials were convicted of taking bribes from the auto companies and spending millions of dollars of union funds intended for worker training on luxuries for themselves, including trips and a Ferrari.</p>
<p>During the campaign, the incumbents, led by current UAW president Ray Curry, <a href="https://www.currysolidarityteam.org/">have depicted their slate</a> as a safer and more experienced set of hands, which would be particularly valuable in troubled economic times. <a href="https://uawd.org/">The challengers</a>, led by <a href="https://uawmembers.org/">Shawn Fain</a>, have accused incumbents of conceding too readily to management, tolerating a culture of patronage and scandal and failing to practice democracy. Curry was never implicated in the scandal.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three officials answer questions from reporters holding up microphones. A truck is in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512095/original/file-20230223-5743-d72pev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512095/original/file-20230223-5743-d72pev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512095/original/file-20230223-5743-d72pev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512095/original/file-20230223-5743-d72pev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512095/original/file-20230223-5743-d72pev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512095/original/file-20230223-5743-d72pev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512095/original/file-20230223-5743-d72pev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">UAW President Ray Curry, center, flanked by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Ford Motor Co. President and CEO Jim Farley, spoke on Feb. 13, 2023, after Ford announced plans for a new electric vehicle battery plant in Michigan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/FordBatteryPlant/98a55e53e73c406396d1457a55a90b60/photo">AP Photo/Carlos Osorio</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For decades, UAW leaders were chosen through an indirect process common to many unions. Delegates to the UAW convention chose top officers, and regional conventions picked regional directors.</p>
<p>This system was raucous in the union’s early days. <a href="https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/american-vanguard">Ferocious struggles</a> among communist, socialist and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41831041">voluntarist</a> factions at UAW conventions rocked the union in the 1930s and 1940s until the socialists under the leadership of Walter Reuther prevailed. Reuther consolidated power through an internal group, which eventually became known as the Reuther Administrative Caucus, or RAC, and came to dominate UAW conventions. Joining and adhering to the positions of the RAC was a prerequisite to advancement within the union.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.intpubnyc.com/browse/the-communist-party-and-the-auto-workers-union/">Critics compared</a> the RAC to a one-party state. <a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=shotwell&commit=%C2%A0">Union dissidents</a> accused the RAC’s leaders of being too quick to crush dissent and to make concessions to the auto companies. Ultimately, the dominance of the RAC <a href="https://labornotes.org/2018/02/interview-corruption-and-collaboration-uaw">left the UAW vulnerable to scandal</a>, which is why the consent decree mandated a referendum to decide whether to have direct elections of top union officers. Union members voted in favor.</p>
<p>Two sides quickly formed in the lead-up to direct elections for the UAW’s top governing body, the International Executive Board: the <a href="https://www.currysolidarityteam.org/">Curry Solidarity Team</a>, which was the informal successor to the Reuther Administrative Caucus, and challengers who called themselves <a href="https://uawmembers.org/">UAW Members United</a>. The challengers blame the incumbent leadership for a much-hated two-tier wage structure that compensates new hires at a lower rate and say the incumbents haven’t done enough to secure jobs in the transition to electric vehicles. The incumbents say the challengers are <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2023/01/13/uaw-president-candidates-debate-offer-competing-visions-as-runoff-starts/69803789007/">armchair critics</a> without answers to tough problems.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2022/12/01/challengers-gain-edge-over-incumbents-in-uaw-election-of-top-leaders/69691769007/">UAW Members United group exceeded expectations</a> in the December 2022 elections, winning five of the 14 International Executive Board seats, including two of three vice-president posts and the secretary-treasurer, the second-highest position in the union. The Curry Solidarity Team won six seats, an independent won a seat, and the runoff will decide the winner of the presidency and one district head.</p>
<h2>Expect internal conflict</h2>
<p>Bringing together an International Executive Board that is evenly divided between the two slates will be a challenge regardless of who wins the presidency.</p>
<p>Direct elections will make it far more difficult for the UAW leadership to agree to difficult trade-offs between decent compensation and job security on the one hand and preserving the competitiveness of the domestic auto producers on the other, because dissatisfied members can now challenge leaders through direct elections. </p>
<p>Being elected to a top position in the UAW is now much more like running for Congress. Candidates need to appeal to base voters and take positions that can feed polarization. Top union officers will have less room to deviate from campaign promises because direct elections make it far easier to challenge them. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of autoworkers hold picket signs reading UAW on strike" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512096/original/file-20230223-22-x5sss2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512096/original/file-20230223-22-x5sss2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512096/original/file-20230223-22-x5sss2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512096/original/file-20230223-22-x5sss2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512096/original/file-20230223-22-x5sss2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512096/original/file-20230223-22-x5sss2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512096/original/file-20230223-22-x5sss2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The UAW in February 2023 increased strike pay from $400 to $500 a week. A more aggressive union could mean more strikes like this one, at a plant in Indiana.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/workers-from-united-auto-workers-local-440-picket-outside-news-photo/1169393987">Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Having a sharply divided leadership board could also make union policies less coherent and lead to internal paralysis, which would be disastrous for not only the union but also for companies with union contracts. Union members vote to ratify all contracts, and a dispute could make ratification less likely. It would also be harder for a union with a leadership riven with strife to organize new workplaces.</p>
<p>Both camps within the UAW recognize the grave risks of internal division and have been careful so far to remain civil. It is an open question, however, whether mutual accommodation is durable given the intense views of many rank-and-file members.</p>
<h2>What will the election mean for negotiations?</h2>
<p>The first major test of the new UAW will be this fall’s collective bargaining negotiations with the Big Three: Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, which includes Chrysler.</p>
<p>Both factions agree on opening demands: the restoration of cost-of-living adjustments to the new contract and the elimination of the two-tier wage system. It is too soon to tell whether they will turn on each other in the heat of negotiations. </p>
<p>One thing is certain, however: The UAW’s experiment with more direct democracy will shake both the auto industry and the economy, as it permits a much less mediated expression of worker concerns – replete with contradictions and disagreements – to come to the fore. As newly elected <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2022/12/01/challengers-gain-edge-over-incumbents-in-uaw-election-of-top-leaders/69691769007/">UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock put it</a>, “the companies should prepare for a new, more aggressive UAW.”</p>
<p><em>This article was updated March 1, 2023, with the runoff vote count beginning.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200335/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen J. Silvia does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Results already in from the first direct leadership election in the UAW’s 88-year history present a sharply divided leadership.Stephen J. Silvia, Professor of International Relations, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1879002022-11-10T14:33:27Z2022-11-10T14:33:27ZRemembering the veterans who marched on DC to demand bonuses during the Depression, only to be violently driven out by active-duty soldiers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494229/original/file-20221108-26-o0msbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=935%2C352%2C4535%2C3453&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Bonus Army protesting on the U.S. Capitol steps on Jan. 2,1932.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/newspaper-report-of-the-bonus-army-made-up-of-unemployed-news-photo/1404441226?phrase=bonus%20army&adppopup=true">Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/macarthur-bonus-march-may-july-1932/">Bonus Army March</a> is a forgotten footnote of American history.</p>
<p>It involved as many as 30,000 <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/bonus-expeditionary-forces-march-on-washington.htm">mostly unemployed veterans</a> who converged on Washington, D.C. in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand an early cash payment of a bonus they were promised for their volunteer service in World War I. </p>
<p>The bonus was due in 1945, but the Great Depression created financial panic across the country, and <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/bonus-army-march-4147568">the WWI veterans wanted their money</a> sooner rather than later.</p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Bonus-Army">the U.S. Senate refused</a> to pass a bill to make the payments, many of the veterans returned home. But the great majority remained and set up camps and occupied buildings near the Capitol – much to the dismay of local police, who tried to evict the demonstrators from their makeshift campgrounds. </p>
<p>A riot ensued, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/marching-on-history-75797769/">leaving two demonstrators dead</a> and dozens injured. </p>
<p>At that point, on July 28, 1932, the police asked for federal help. In <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-about-the-bonus-marchers">a written statement</a>, President Herbert Hoover deployed his Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, to settle the matter.</p>
<p>“In order to put an end to this rioting and defiance of civil authority,” Hoover wrote, “I have asked the Army to assist the District authorities to restore order.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/07/28/the-veterans-were-desperate-gen-macarthur-ordered-u-s-troops-to-attack-them/">MacArthur’s orders</a> were to secure the buildings and contain the protesters by surrounding their campsite in Anacostia Flats located near the Capitol.</p>
<p>But as <a href="https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1051&context=history_honproj">MacArthur would do throughout his career</a> – most notably in Korea when his disobedience resulted in his firing – he exceeded his orders. </p>
<p>Late that afternoon, <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/bonus-army-attacked/">historians have written</a>, nearly 500 mounted cavalry men and 500 infantry soldiers, with bayonets drawn, were accompanied were accompanied by six tanks and another 800 local police officers to Anacostia Flats. It didn’t take long before the protesters were chased out of the city and their encampments burned to the ground.</p>
<p>Aides to MacArthur would later say he <a href="https://explorethearchive.com/bonus-army">never received the orders</a> to simply contain the Bonus Army. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two white men dressed military uniforms are standing next to each other." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494208/original/file-20221108-18-ax4heg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494208/original/file-20221108-18-ax4heg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494208/original/file-20221108-18-ax4heg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494208/original/file-20221108-18-ax4heg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494208/original/file-20221108-18-ax4heg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494208/original/file-20221108-18-ax4heg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494208/original/file-20221108-18-ax4heg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After his troops had ousted the Bonus Army, General Douglas MacArthur, left, stands with his second-in-command, Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/after-his-troops-had-ousted-the-bonus-army-from-its-news-photo/515553566?phrase=mcarthur%20bonus%20army&adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Bonus Army March was one of the few times in American history when the U.S. military was used to shut down a massive demonstration of peaceful protesters. The debacle also came to symbolize Hoover’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/herbert-hoover/">perceived callousness toward the unemployed</a> during the Great Depression and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1932">led to his defeat</a> by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election. </p>
<p>What the military response did not do was deter the Bonus Army demonstrators for long. </p>
<h2>The fight for bonus checks</h2>
<p>At the <a href="https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1946110600">end of the First World War in 1918</a>, the U.S. government wanted to provide bonus pay to the soldiers who volunteered to fight in the American Expeditionary Force.</p>
<p>The volunteers were given certificates promising a bonus in 1945. <a href="https://www.americanheritage.com/bonus-march">Under the agreement</a>, each veteran would receive US$1 for every day served at home, and $1.25 for every day served overseas. According to the <a href="https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1399.html">World War Adjusted Compensation Act</a>, a maximum of $625 plus compound interest per veteran was set.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Groups of men are eating lunches as they sit and stand near dozens of tents." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494214/original/file-20221108-9155-acv2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494214/original/file-20221108-9155-acv2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494214/original/file-20221108-9155-acv2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494214/original/file-20221108-9155-acv2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494214/original/file-20221108-9155-acv2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494214/original/file-20221108-9155-acv2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494214/original/file-20221108-9155-acv2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the Bonus Army are shown eating their lunches beside their tents in this May 12, 1932, photograph.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-bonus-expeditionary-force-also-called-bonus-news-photo/514685392?phrase=bonus%20army&adppopup=true">Bettmann/GettyImages</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But by the winter of 1931, many veterans, like most Americans, were desperately in need of cash. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/bonus_army/#.Y2u4JuzMLt0">Starting in Portland, Oregon</a>, about 300 of them <a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/history/2020/08/oregon-wwi-vet-led-20000-strong-bonus-army-in-1932-that-marched-on-nations-capital-met-brutal-resistance.html">decided to travel</a> to Washington to make their case to the government. Their journey gained national attention and prompted other veterans to travel to Washington as well. As time went on, families began to join the men.</p>
<h2>Congressional gridlock</h2>
<p>The Bonus Army became a problem for Hoover and congressional leaders as local authorities grew tired of an estimated 30,000 people camping out in their streets and squatting in city buildings. </p>
<p>But faced with a shrinking federal budget and precarious national economy, neither Hoover nor Congress <a href="https://www.americanheritage.com/bonus-march">wanted to authorize further depletion</a> of the national treasury. Estimates were as high as <a href="https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1932092700">$2.3 billion for the federal government</a> to pay the bonuses. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Thousands of black and white men are seen cheering with their arms waving in the air." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494222/original/file-20221108-4292-r3ej3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494222/original/file-20221108-4292-r3ej3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494222/original/file-20221108-4292-r3ej3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494222/original/file-20221108-4292-r3ej3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494222/original/file-20221108-4292-r3ej3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494222/original/file-20221108-4292-r3ej3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494222/original/file-20221108-4292-r3ej3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this June 16, 1932, photograph, thousands of Bonus Army demonstrators are cheering for U.S. Rep. Wright Patman, who demanded immediate payment of their promised bonuses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-bonus-army-a-demonstration-largely-made-up-of-world-war-news-photo/1243625943?phrase=bonus%20army&adppopup=true">FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bonus marchers tried to pressure congressional leaders by having veterans in the waiting rooms of the offices of each member of the Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the federal budget. But they were losing the public relations war turning against them. </p>
<p>By that time, rumors spread by opponents of the marchers were flying among congressional leaders and military officials about the unsanitary conditions at the camp, as well as possible communist infiltration. </p>
<p>When the bill to pay the bonus was defeated in July 1932, an estimated 8,000 Bonus Army marchers were at the Capitol. With that many angry men surrounding the building, local police feared potential violence. </p>
<p>But instead of launching a violent attack, the marchers began singing “My Country Tis of Thee” and “America the Beautiful” as they walked back to their camp. </p>
<h2>Use of military force</h2>
<p>On July 28, 1932, the local and federal governments decided that time had run out for Bonus Army demonstrators. </p>
<p>Around 11 p.m., MacArthur called a press conference to justify his actions.</p>
<p>“Had the President not acted today, had he permitted this thing to go on for 24 hours more, he would have been faced with a grave situation which would have caused a real battle,” <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/marching-on-history-75797769/">MacArthur told reporters</a>. “Had he let it go on another week, I believe the institutions of our government would have been severely threatened.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="With the dome of the U.S. capitol in the background, a group of men are seated near the ruins of their camps." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494218/original/file-20221108-20-fkumk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494218/original/file-20221108-20-fkumk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494218/original/file-20221108-20-fkumk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494218/original/file-20221108-20-fkumk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494218/original/file-20221108-20-fkumk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494218/original/file-20221108-20-fkumk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494218/original/file-20221108-20-fkumk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this 1932 photograph, a group of men huddle near the ruins of their Bonus Army camp.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/bonus-army-in-washington-d-c-united-states-washington-news-photo/535780959?phrase=bonus%20army&adppopup=true">Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With MacArthur in command, shacks were set on fire, and even the tents loaned by the National Guard were destroyed. Tanks and soldiers blocked several bridges in order to prevent people from re-entering the city.</p>
<p>Images of children and women driven out by tear gas and flames shocked and appalled the American public when they were published by newspapers across the country. </p>
<p>Despite their apparent defeat, Bonus Army veterans continued to push for early payments. </p>
<p>Four years later, in January 1936, <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-1932-bonus-army.htm">Congress passed the long-stalled Bonus bill</a> that called for payments of nearly $2 billion to the mostly men who volunteered their services during World War I. </p>
<p>Congress overrode Roosevelt’s veto and paid the veterans an average of $580 per man, which was slightly less than the $600 they would have received had they waited until 1945.</p>
<p>Today, the <a href="https://auislandora.wrlc.org/islandora/object/auislandora%3A12752">Anacostia field</a> is a largely overgrown meadowland and only has one very small sign marking that the Bonus Army was ever there.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon Bow O'Brien does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Thousands of volunteers joined the military during World War I. But when the war ended and the Great Depression began, the volunteers wanted a bonus to be paid in 1932, not in 1945 as planned.Shannon Bow O'Brien, Associate Professor of Instruction, The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal ArtsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1898262022-09-02T12:18:33Z2022-09-02T12:18:33ZAmerica is in the middle of a labor mobilization moment – with self-organizers at Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s and Chipotle behind the union drive<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482372/original/file-20220901-27-7ytxub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C3988%2C2365&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A revised movement on the backs of young workers?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/union-leaders-gather-in-front-of-the-ldj-5-amazon-warehouse-news-photo/1241255197?adppopup=true">Calla Kessler for The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Labor Day 2022 comes smack bang in the middle of what is increasingly looking like a pivotal year in the history of American unions.</p>
<p>The summer has seen a steady stream of workforce mobilizations. Employees at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/28/trader-joes-union-employees-massachusetts">Trader Joe’s locations in Massachusetts</a> <a href="https://www.wgbh.org/news/national-news/2022/08/15/trader-joes-unions-could-signal-the-future-of-grocery-store-organizing-food-writer-says">and Minneapolis</a> both voted to unionize. Meanwhile, restaurant chain Chipotle saw the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/25/chipotle-union-victory-fastfood-michigan/">first of its stores unionize</a>, following a vote by workers at an outlet in Lansing, Michigan.</p>
<p>It comes on the back of a wave of successful efforts to mobilize at Starbucks and Amazon. The growth of unionized stores at Starbucks in particular has been stunning. Since baristas <a href="https://apnews.com/article/starbucks-union-vote-buffalo-c7dc3c2ec8b838e9f4ed641f54fc9035">in Buffalo, New York, became the first at the chain to unionize</a> in December 2021, colleagues at a further 234 outlets have followed suit in recent months.</p>
<p>Likewise, the success of an independent <a href="https://www.amazonlaborunion.org/">Amazon Labor Union</a> – <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/01/chris-smalls-amazon-union/">formed in 2020 by Chris Smalls</a>, an <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/04/02/1090353185/amazon-union-chris-smalls-organizer-staten-island">Amazon worker fired</a> for protesting what he saw as inadequate COVID-19 safety precautions – in forming the <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/23005336/amazon-union-new-york-warehouse">first plant of the retail giant to have a unionized workforce</a> has inspired others to do likewise.</p>
<p>It comes as polling shows that public support of unions is at its <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-highest-point-1965.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosmarkets&stream=business">highest since 1965</a>, with the backing of 71% of Americans. Something is definitely happening in the labor movement in 2022.</p>
<h2>A different kind of organizing</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://cob.sfsu.edu/directory/john-logan">scholar of the labor movement</a> who has observed union drives for two decades, what I find almost as striking as the victories is the unconventional nature of the organizing campaigns. </p>
<p>Workers at Amazon and Trader Joe’s are setting up independent unions, whereas at Starbucks and Chipotle, employees are teaming up with established unions. But that difference apart, the dynamics at play are remarkably similar: The campaigns are being led by <a href="https://prospect.org/labor/generational-worker-revolt-hits-its-stride-amazon-union/">determined young workers</a>. For the most part, it is bottom-up unionizing, rather than being driven by official, seasoned union representatives.</p>
<p>Inspired by pro-union sentiment in political movements, such as <a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/workplace-democracy/">Bernie Sanders’ presidential bids</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/10/black-lives-matter-labor-unions-factory-workers-unite">Black Lives Matter</a> and the <a href="https://labor.dsausa.org/">Democratic Socialists of America</a>, individuals are spearheading the efforts for workplace reform rather than professional union organizers. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find many experienced organizers among the recent successful campaigns. </p>
<p>Instead, the campaigns have involved a significant degree of “self-organization” – that is, workers “talking union” to each other in the warehouse and coffee shops and reaching out to colleagues in other shops in the same city and across the nation. <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801457227/building-more-effective-unions/#bookTabs=1">This marks a sea change</a> from the way the labor movement has traditionally operated, which has tended to be more centralized and led by seasoned union officials. </p>
<h2>A labor revival</h2>
<p>Perhaps more important than the victories at Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s and Chipotle themselves is their potential for creating a sense of optimism and enthusiasm around union organizing, especially among younger workers. </p>
<p>The elections follow <a href="https://psmag.com/economics/what-caused-the-decline-of-unions-in-america">years of union decline in the U.S.</a>, both in terms of membership and influence.</p>
<p>Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, these recent labor wins would probably have seemed unimaginable. Powerful, wealthy <a href="https://www.engadget.com/amazon-spent-43-million-on-anti-union-consultants-in-2021-alone-082051777.html">corporations like Amazon</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/23/starbucks-aggressive-anti-union-effort-new-york-stores-organize">and Starbucks</a> appeared invincible then, at least in the context of <a href="https://www.nlrb.gov/">National Labor Relations Board</a> rules, which are stacked heavily <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/unprecedented-the-trump-nlrbs-attack-on-workers-rights/">against pro-union workers</a>. Under NLRB rules, employers can – and do – force workers, on the threat of dismissal, to attend <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/23/starbucks-aggressive-anti-union-effort-new-york-stores-organize">anti-union sessions</a>, often led by <a href="https://www.engadget.com/amazon-spent-43-million-on-anti-union-consultants-in-2021-alone-082051777.html">highly paid external consultants</a>.</p>
<p>Starbucks <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-15/starbucks-retaliated-against-pro-union-staff-nlrb-alleges">has said it has been</a> “consistent in denying any claims of anti-union activity. They are categorically false.” But the NLRB has alleged that the coffee chain <a href="https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/nlrb-region-15-wins-injunction-requiring-starbucks-to-rehire-seven">has fired and coerced workers</a>, placed union supporters <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/06/starbucks-accused-of-more-than-200-labor-violations-in-nlrb-complaint.html">under surveillance and retaliated</a> against them.</p>
<p>The NLRB has also <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/labor-board-files-complaint-against-starbucks-for-withholding-raises-from-unionized-stores">filed a complaint against Starbucks</a> for unlawfully withholding wage and benefit increases from pro-union workers, and currently has almost 300 open unfair labor practices charges lodged against Starbucks management. Amazon, which in the past <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/01/amazon-seeks-intelligence-analyst-to-track-labor-organizing-threats.html">has advertised for analysts to monitor “labor organizing threats</a>,” has said it <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/24/how-amazon-prevents-unions-by-surveilling-employee-activism.html">respects workers’ rights to join or not join unions</a>.</p>
<p>The significance of the recent victories is not primarily about the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/04/01/1089318684/amazon-labor-union-staten-island-election-bessemer-alabama-warehouse-workers">8,000 new union members</a> at Amazon or a gradual flow of new union members at Starbucks. It is about instilling in workers the belief that if pro-union workers can win at Amazon and Starbucks, they can win anywhere.</p>
<p>Historic precedents show that labor mobilization can be infectious.</p>
<p>In 1936 and 1937, workers at the Flint plant of General Motors <a href="https://www.history.com/news/flint-sit-down-strike-general-motors-uaw">brought the powerful automaker to its knees</a> in a sit-down strike that <a href="https://labornotes.org/2009/07/once-started-sit-downs-spread-wildfire">quickly inspired similar action</a> elsewhere. In the reported words of a Chicago doctor, when explaining a subsequent sit-down strike by wet nurses in the city: “It’s just one of those funny things. They want to strike because everyone else is doing it.”</p>
<h2>Seizing the moment</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/10/17/1046850192/the-pandemic-could-be-leading-to-a-golden-age-for-unions">pandemic has created an opportunity for unions</a>.</p>
<p>After working on the front lines for over two years, many essential workers such as those at Amazon and Trader Joe’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/26/starbuck-employees-intense-work-customer-abuse-understaffing">believe they have not been adequately rewarded</a> for their service during the pandemic and have not been treated with respect by their employers. </p>
<p>This appears to have helped spur <a href="https://prospect.org/labor/generational-worker-revolt-hits-its-stride-amazon-union/">the popularity</a> of smaller, workplace-specific unions.</p>
<p>The homegrown nature of these campaigns deprives chains of employing a decades-old trope at the heart of corporate anti-union campaigns: that a <a href="https://one.starbucks.com/">union is an external “third party</a>” that doesn’t understand or care about the concerns of employees and is more interested in collecting dues.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A pro-union poster is seen on a lamp pole says 'union busting is disgusting' over a Starbucks logo." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455938/original/file-20220403-23-b2ptyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455938/original/file-20220403-23-b2ptyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455938/original/file-20220403-23-b2ptyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455938/original/file-20220403-23-b2ptyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455938/original/file-20220403-23-b2ptyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455938/original/file-20220403-23-b2ptyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455938/original/file-20220403-23-b2ptyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Attempts to disparage outside unionizers are blunted when drives are led by company workers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pro-union-poster-is-seen-on-a-lamp-pole-outside-starbucks-news-photo/1239452047?adppopup=true">Toby Scott/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>But those arguments mostly ring hollow <a href="https://labornotes.org/2022/04/amazon-workers-staten-island-clinch-historic-victory?fbclid=IwAR1pwcYb45xVPpvkuWV0JmkHb_1jwEwkUIwF56-aJFsT2B9O_AahdQj8Kdk">when the people doing the unionizing</a> are colleagues they work alongside day in and day out.</p>
<p>It has the effect of nullifying that central argument of anti-union campaigns despite the <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/unlawful-employer-opposition-to-union-election-campaigns/">many millions of dollars</a> that companies often pumped into them.</p>
<h2>An unfavorable legal landscape</h2>
<p>This “self-organization” is consistent with what was envisioned by the authors of the <a href="https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/who-we-are/our-history/1935-passage-of-the-wagner-act">1935 Wagner Act</a>, the statute that provides the foundation of today’s union representation procedures. </p>
<p>The National Labor Relations Board’s first chair, J. Warren Madden, understood that self-organization could be fatally undermined if corporations were allowed to engage in anti-union pressure tactics: </p>
<p>“Upon this fundamental principle – that an employer shall keep his hands off the self-organization of employees – the entire structure of the act rests,” <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1631&context=sulr">he wrote</a>.“ Any compromise or weakening of that principle strikes at the root of the law.” </p>
<p>Over the past half century, anti-union corporations and their consultants and law firms – assisted by <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-labor-nlrb/unions-brace-for-big-changes-under-republican-led-u-s-labor-board-idUSKBN1HI328">Republican-controlled NLRBs</a> and right-wing judges – have <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-greenhouse-janus-supreme-court-20180627-story.html">undermined that process</a> of worker self-organization by enabling union elections to become employer-dominated.</p>
<p>But for the long-term decline in union membership to be reversed, I believe pro-union workers will need stronger protections. Labor law reform is essential if the <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1177/0019793918806250">almost 50% of nonunion American workers</a> who say they want union representation are to have any chance of getting it. </p>
<h2>Dispelling fear, futility and apathy</h2>
<p>Lack of popular interest <a href="https://www.filesforprogress.org/memos/worker-power.pdf">has long been an obstacle</a> to labor law reform. </p>
<p>Meaningful labor law reform is unlikely to happen unless people are engaged with the issues, understand them and believe they have a stake in the outcome.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://theconversation.com/union-battles-at-amazon-and-starbucks-are-hot-news-which-can-only-be-good-for-the-labor-movement-172932">media interest in the campaigns at Starbucks and Amazon</a> suggests the American public may finally be paying attention.</p>
<p>It isn’t known where this latest labor movement – or moment – will lead. It could evaporate or it may just spark a wave of organizing across the low-wage service sector, stimulating a national debate over workers’ rights in the process. </p>
<p>The biggest weapons that anti-union corporations have in suppressing labor momentum are the fear of retaliation and a sense that unionization is futile. The recent successes show unionizing no longer seems so frightening or so futile. </p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/amazon-starbucks-and-the-sparking-of-a-new-american-union-movement-180293">an article originally published</a> on April 4, 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189826/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Logan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Public support for unions is at a near 60-year high. Meanwhile, self-organizers at major American chains are spearheading a new movement to mobilize.John Logan, Professor and Director of Labor and Employment Studies, San Francisco State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1893412022-08-30T12:17:59Z2022-08-30T12:17:59ZAmazon, Starbucks worker wins recall earlier period of union success – when Central American migrants also expanded US labor movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480911/original/file-20220824-10117-pwpqn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=214%2C223%2C6281%2C4041&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of a union representing workers who clean New York City offices march in 2019.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/UnionRally/aa4c7fffe7b54fffa5b90f35134d6013/photo?Query=justice%20for%20janitors&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=4&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tech workers, warehouse employees and baristas <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/recent-us-union-wins-amazon-starbucks-more-2022-04-01/">have notched many victories in recent months</a> at major U.S. companies long deemed long shots for unions, including Apple, Amazon and Starbucks. </p>
<p>To me, these recent union wins recall another pivotal period in the U.S. labor movement several decades ago. But that one was led by migrants from Central America.</p>
<p>I’ve been researching human rights and immigration from Central America since the 1980s. In today’s <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/11/26/president-trump-migrant-caravan-criminals/2112846002/">polarized debates</a> over immigration, the substantial contributions that Central American immigrants have made to U.S. society over the past 30 years rarely come up. One contribution in particular is how Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants helped expand the U.S. labor movement in the 1980s, organizing far-reaching workers’ rights campaigns in immigrant-dominated industries that mainstream unions had thought to be untouchable.</p>
<h2>Migrants and unions</h2>
<p>More than <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/central-americans-and-asylum-policy-reagan-era">1 million</a> Salvadorans and Guatemalans came to the United States from 1981 to 1990, fleeing army massacres, political persecution and civil war. </p>
<p>Since the 1980s, I have <a href="https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/ua-professor-s-trial-testimony-highlights-importance-of-public-scholarship">researched, taught and written about</a> this wave of migrants. Back then, President Ronald Reagan warned apocryphally that Central America was a threat to the United States, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/04/28/world/president-reagan-s-address-on-central-america-to-joint-session-of-congress.html">telling Congress</a> in 1983 that “El Salvador is nearer to Texas than Texas is to Massachusetts.”</p>
<p>Just 2% of Salvadorans and Guatemalans who applied <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1990-12-20/news/mn-9376_1_asylum-cases">received asylum in the 1980s</a> – so few that a 1990 class-action lawsuit alleging discrimination compelled the U.S. government to reopen tens of thousands of cases. In recent years, about <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/united-states-america/fact-sheet-us-immigration-and-central-american-asylum-seekers">10% to 25%</a> of their asylum petitions were granted.</p>
<p>Then, as now, many undocumented immigrants in the U.S. worked in agriculture or service industries, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-care-about-undocumented-immigrants-for-one-thing-theyve-become-vital-to-key-sectors-of-the-us-economy-98790">often under exploitative conditions</a>. Unionization barely touched these sectors in the 1980s.</p>
<p>More broadly, the bargaining power of labor unions was suffering under Reagan, whose <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-07/trump-is-no-reagan-when-it-comes-to-union-busting">presidency</a> started with his <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2008/08/reagan-fires-11-000-striking-air-traffic-controllers-aug-5-1981-012292">firing of 11,0000 striking air traffic controllers</a>. Downsizing and outsourcing at American companies in the 1980s also <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/618-an-injury-to-all">eroded union membership</a> and pushed wages down. </p>
<p>Many Guatemalans and Salvadorans were veteran community organizers. They had faced down government terror to participate in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-El-Salvador-Strife-Second/dp/0813300711">unions</a>, peasant leagues, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cry-People-Struggle-Catholic-Conflict/dp/0140060472">Catholic social justice campaigns</a> or <a href="https://unmpress.com/books/every-indio-who-falls/9780826348654">Indigenous rights</a> initiatives – all currents in 1980s revolutionary Central America. </p>
<p>Drawing on these experiences, many Central American immigrants began to organize in their U.S. workplaces, demanding higher wages and safer conditions. </p>
<h2>Salvadorans led Justice for Janitors to victory</h2>
<p>Salvadoran immigrants in California were pivotal in <a href="https://talkpoverty.org/2015/06/16/justice-for-janitors">Justice for Janitors</a>, a <a href="https://www.seiu.org/about#campaigns">pioneering</a> low-paid workers’ movement that inspired today’s <a href="https://fightfor15.org">US$15 minimum wage campaign</a>. </p>
<p>Justice for Janitors began in Los Angeles in 1990. It aimed to reverse the wage drops that janitors suffered over the past decade. </p>
<p>Rather than do battle with the small subcontractors that hired cleaning crews for big office buildings, Justice for Janitors targeted the corporations that owned those buildings. Led by experienced Salvadoran unionists – some of whom had <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1996-03-03/news/ls-42727_1_yanira-merino/2">fled death squad violence</a> back home – the movement used nonviolent civil disobedience and strikes to expose exploitative labor practices. </p>
<p>Speaking out could be dangerous. Police once clubbed participants at a <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/25-years-later-lessons-from-the-organizers-of-justice-for-janitors/">peaceful march</a> through Los Angeles’ Century City neighborhood on June 15, 1990. Undocumented workers feared deportation. </p>
<p>But it worked. Janitors in Los Angeles won a <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/justice-for-janitors-seiu-raise-america/">22% raise</a> after their 1990 citywide strike, <a href="https://www.labor.ucla.edu/what-we-do/research-tools/campaigns-and-research/justice-for-janitors/">showing</a> mainstream labor unions that even the city’s most marginalized workers – undocumented Central Americans, many of them women – had real organizing power. </p>
<p>Over the next decade, some <a href="http://socialjusticehistory.org/projects/justiceforjanitors/items/index/page/2">100,000 janitors nationwide joined the campaign</a>, under the banner of the <a href="http://www.seiu.org/justice-for-janitors">Service Employees Industrial Union</a>. The movement negotiated contracts that increased wages and health benefits for janitors across the U.S. </p>
<h2>Guatemalans defended Florida farmworkers</h2>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of people fled Guatemala during the early 1980s, escaping a <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781403964472">genocidal army campaign</a> against Indigenous communities that left entire regions of its highlands charred and empty.</p>
<p>Roughly 20,000 of these Guatemalan refugees, many of whom spoke <a href="https://mayanlanguageimmigrationlawinfo.wordpress.com/languages/">Mayan languages</a>, landed in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Maya-Exile-Guatemalans-Allan-Burns/dp/1566390362">Florida</a> in 1982, finding work in sweltering tomato farms and citrus groves. </p>
<p>Up to 90% of the fresh tomatoes in U.S. supermarkets <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/business/in-florida-tomato-fields-a-penny-buys-progress.html">come from Florida</a>. </p>
<p>Working conditions in the state’s tomato fields were dismal in the 1980s. Migrants <a href="https://www.pbs.org/now/society/ciw.html">earned just 40 cents</a> per 32-pound bucket of tomatoes picked. Some were <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/30/world/ciw-fair-food-program-freedom-project/index.html">forced by armed guards to work against their will</a>, as a 1997 <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/1997/November97/482cr.htm.html">court case about the use of slave labor in Florida’s tomato fields</a> exposed. </p>
<p>In 1993, Guatemalan immigrants joined with Florida’s Haitian and Mexican farmworkers to form the <a href="https://ciw-online.org/">Coalition of Immokalee Workers</a>, a community worker alliance that began in the basement of a local church in Immokalee, Florida. It <a href="https://legacy-etd.library.emory.edu/view/record/pid/emory:cr197">used strategies</a> common to Latin American protest movements, including street theater and socially conscious radio broadcasts, to unite Florida’s agricultural workers.</p>
<p>After five years of work stoppages, hunger strikes and marches, Florida’s tomato pickers won wage increases of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/now/society/ciw.html">up to 25%</a>. A multiyear nationwide boycott of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18187-2005Mar8.html">Taco Bell</a> convinced the fast-food chain in 2005 to increase the earnings of the farmworkers who supply its ingredients. Other fast-food giants followed suit. </p>
<p>In 2015, the Immokalee coalition launched the <a href="http://www.fairfoodprogram.org/">Fair Food Program</a>, an industrywide agreement with Florida tomato growers to promote strict health and safety standards and allow outside monitors to oversee working conditions. That same year, President Barack Obama gave the Coalition of Immokalee Workers the <a href="https://ciw-online.org/slavery/">Presidential Award for Extraordinary Efforts</a> in Combating Modern Day Slavery. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="a farmworker on the ground passes a bucket of tomatoes to a worker in a truck full of tomatoes" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481639/original/file-20220829-8654-b44wb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481639/original/file-20220829-8654-b44wb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481639/original/file-20220829-8654-b44wb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481639/original/file-20220829-8654-b44wb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481639/original/file-20220829-8654-b44wb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481639/original/file-20220829-8654-b44wb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481639/original/file-20220829-8654-b44wb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Farmworkers with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, one of the United States’ most successful agricultural labor unions, collect tomatoes in Naples, Fla.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ImmigrationFlosridaAgriculturalWorkers/ab05c294590d44ca8f949ec97019ebf0/photo?Query=Immokalee%20farmworker&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=49&currentItemNo=39">AP Photo/Wilfredo Leef</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Guatemalans organized North Carolina poultry plants</h2>
<p>As Guatemalan migrants <a href="https://www.amazon.com/New-Faces-Places-Geography-Immigration/dp/0871545683">spread across the South</a> during the late 1980s, recruited by labor contractors in other states, they soon became a powerful organizing force in North Carolina, too. </p>
<p>Case Farms, a poultry company that supplies KFC, Taco Bell, Boar’s Head and the federal school lunch program, was a <a href="https://www.osha.gov/news/newsreleases/region5/08132015-0">notoriously dangerous</a> place to work. Safety regulations were routinely ignored to increase output, and workers suffered serious injuries – including losing limbs to cutting machines.</p>
<p>In 1990, the Guatemalan immigrants at Case Farms’ plant in Morganton, North Carolina, organized a union drive.</p>
<p>As labor historian Leon Fink describes in his book “<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807854471/the-maya-of-morganton/">The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South</a>,” Guatemalan poultry workers drew on prior organizing experiences back home – including coffee plantation strikes and Mayan pride movements – to organize workers. </p>
<p>After <a href="https://sohp.org/research/past-projects/listening-for-a-change/new-immigrants-and-labor/">five years</a> of walkouts, marches and hunger strikes, the Case Farm workers voted in 1995 to join the Laborers’ International Union of North America. The company refused to negotiate, however, and the union pulled out of contract talks after six years. </p>
<p>In 2017, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio challenged Case Farms to <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/senator-demands-answers-from-case-farms">explain its alleged violations of U.S. law</a>, after a New York Times and ProPublica investigation exposed ongoing abusive labor practices there. </p>
<p>These unionization stories show Central American migrants in a new light – not as criminals or victims, but as people who have helped make the U.S. a safer place for workers.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-central-american-migrants-helped-revive-the-us-labor-movement-109398">article originally published</a> on Jan. 18, 2019.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189341/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Oglesby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Often overlooked in the immigration debate are the contributions of migrants, such as how they helped organize workers in the 1990s.Elizabeth Oglesby, Associate Professor of Latin American Studies and Geography, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1884422022-08-22T17:36:56Z2022-08-22T17:36:56Z5 unsung films that dramatize America’s rich labor history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480123/original/file-20220819-3561-cpqei8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C613%2C471&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The Salt of the Earth,' made during the height of the post-World War II Red Scare, was blacklisted.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047443/mediaviewer/rm2354993408?ref_=ttmi_mi_all_sf_38">IMDB</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/354455/approval-labor-unions-highest-point-1965.aspx">Unions are more popular now than at any time since 1965</a>, and the U.S. is in the midst of a new upsurge of union organizing. Is a Hollywood drama about angry Starbucks baristas or frustrated Amazon warehouse workers far behind?</p>
<p>Hollywood studios and independent producers have long depicted the collective efforts of working people to improve their lives and gain a voice in their workplaces and the larger society.</p>
<p>Some of the most well-known labor movies champion the struggle of the everyday worker: “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027977/">Modern Times</a>,” released in 1936, stars Charlie Chaplin going crazy due to his job on an assembly line. It features the famous image of Chaplin caught in the gears of factory machinery. “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032551/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Grapes of Wrath</a>,” a 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel, tells the story of sharecropper Tom Joad’s radicalization after his family and other migrant workers experience destitute conditions in California’s growing fields and overcrowded migrant camps. </p>
<p>1979’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079638/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Norma Rae</a>,” is based on the life of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/us/15sutton.html">Crystal Lee Sutton</a>, who worked in a J.P. Stevens mill in North Carolina. The textile worker and single mom inspires her fellow workers to overcome their racial animus and work together to vote in a union. “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212826/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Bread and Roses</a>,” a 2000 film about low-wage janitors in Los Angeles, is based on the Service Employees International Union’s “<a href="https://www.labor.ucla.edu/what-we-do/research-tools/campaigns-and-research/justice-for-janitors/">Justice for Janitors</a> movement.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">In an iconic scene from ‘Modern Times,’ Charlie Chaplin gets caught in the gears of factory machinery.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s also an anti-labor strain of Hollywood history, particularly during <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691153964/the-second-red-scare-and-the-unmaking-of-the-new-deal-left">the post-World War II Red Scare</a>, when studios purged left-wing writers, directors and actors through <a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/hollywoods-red-scare-spread-stigma-association">an industrywide blacklist</a>. Red Scare-era releases such as 1952’s "Big Jim McLain” and the 1954 film “On the Waterfront” often depicted unions as corrupt or infiltrated by communist subversives.</p>
<p>When I teach labor history, I’ve used films to supplement books and articles. I’ve found that students more easily grasp the human dimensions of workers’ lives and struggles when they are depicted on the screen. </p>
<p>Here are five unsung labor movies, all based on real-life events, that, in my view, deserve more attention. </p>
<h2>1. ‘<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078008/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_6">Northern Lights</a>’ (1978)</h2>
<p>This is a fictionalized account of a fascinating but little-known political movement: <a href="https://www.history.nd.gov/ndhistory/npl.html">the Non-Partisan League</a>, which organized farmers in the upper Midwest in the early 1900s. </p>
<p>During this period, Midwestern farmers worked long hours to harvest grain that they were then forced to sell for low prices to elevators, while paying high prices to the big railroad companies and banks. Economic insecurity was a part of life, and foreclosures were routine. </p>
<p>The film follows Ray Sorenson, a young farmer influenced by socialist ideas who leaves his North Dakota farm to become a Non-Partisan League organizer. In his beat-up Model T, he travels the back roads, talking to farmers in their fields or around the potbellied stoves of country stores. He eventually persuades skeptical farmers that electing NPL candidates could get the government to create cooperative grain elevators, state-chartered banks with farmers as stockholders, and limits on the prices that railroads can charge farmers to haul their wheat. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Northern Lights’ is based on an early-20th-century farmer-led political uprising in the Midwest.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1916, the Non-Partisan League did, in fact, elect farmer <a href="https://www.history.nd.gov/exhibits/governors/governors12.html">Lynn Frazier</a> as governor of North Dakota with 79% of the vote. Two years later, the NPL won control of both houses of the state legislature and created the North Dakota Mill, still the only state-owned flour mill, and the <a href="https://ilsr.org/rule/bank-of-north-dakota-2/">The Bank of North Dakota</a>, which remains the nation’s only government-owned general-service bank.</p>
<h2>2. ‘<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033533/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Devil and Miss Jones</a>’ (1941)</h2>
<p>In this screwball comedy with a pro-union twist, Charles Coburn plays John P. Merrick, a fictional New York City department store owner.</p>
<p>After his employees hang him in effigy, the tycoon goes undercover to ferret out the agitators of a union drive led by a store clerk in the shoe department and a union organizer. </p>
<p>As he learns more about their lives, Merrick grows sympathetic to his workers – and even falls in love with one of his employees – none of whom know his true identity. As the workers prepare to go on strike, and even picket his house, Merrick reveals that he owns the store and agrees to their demands over pay and hours – and even marries the employee he’s fallen for. </p>
<p>The film was likely inspired by <a href="http://msr-archives.rutgers.edu/archives/Issue%2016/essays/Opler.htm">the 1937 sit-down strikes</a> by employees of New York City’s department stores. </p>
<h2>3. 'Salt of the Earth’ (1954)</h2>
<p>Decades ahead of its time, this story of New Mexico mine workers deals with issues of racism, sexism and class.</p>
<p>After a mine accident, the Mexican-American workers decide to strike. They demand better safety standards and equal treatment, since white miners are allowed to work in pairs, while Mexican ones are forced to work alone. The strikers expect the women to stay at home, cook and take care of the children. But when the company gets an injunction to end the men’s protest, the women step up and maintain the picket lines, earning greater respect from the men.</p>
<p>Made at the height of the Red Scare, the film’s writer, producer and director <a href="https://www.highonfilms.com/salt-of-the-earth-1954-essay/">had been blacklisted</a> for their leftist sympathies, so the film was sponsored by the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, not a Hollywood studio. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002095/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Will Geer</a>, a blacklisted actor who later portrayed Grandpa Walton on the TV drama “The Waltons,” played the repressive sheriff. Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas played the leader of the wives. The other characters were portrayed by real miners and their wives who participated in the strike against <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/empire-zinc-strike/">the Empire Zinc Company</a>, which served as the inspiration for the film. </p>
<p>The film itself was blacklisted, and no major theater chain would show it.</p>
<h2>4. ‘<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280377/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">10,000 Black Men Named George</a>’ (2002)</h2>
<p>Andre Braugher stars as <a href="https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-people/asa-philip-randolph">A. Philip Randolph</a>, who organized the <a href="https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-depression/brotherhood-of-sleeping-car-porters-win-over-pullman-company/">Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters</a>, the first Black-run union. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2009/05/08/103933268/pullman-porters-creating-a-black-middle-class">Being a porter on a Pullman railroad car</a> was one of the few jobs open to Black men. But wages were low, travel was constant and trains’ white passengers patronized the porters by calling all of them “George,” after <a href="https://www.nps.gov/people/george-m-pullman.htm">George Pullman</a>, the mogul who owned the company. </p>
<p>The company hired thugs to intimidate the porters, but Randolph and his top lieutenants persisted. They began their crusade in 1925 but didn’t get the company to sign a contract with the union until 1937, <a href="http://www.pennfedbmwe.org/Docs/reference/RLA_Simplified.html">thanks to a New Deal law</a> that gave railroad workers the right to unionize. Randolph became American’s leading civil rights organizer during the 1940s and 1950s and orchestrated the 1963 March on Washington. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black men stand on a stage holding an American flag and a union flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480118/original/file-20220819-26-jduttq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480118/original/file-20220819-26-jduttq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480118/original/file-20220819-26-jduttq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480118/original/file-20220819-26-jduttq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480118/original/file-20220819-26-jduttq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480118/original/file-20220819-26-jduttq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480118/original/file-20220819-26-jduttq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters display their banner at a 1955 ceremony celebrating the organization’s 30th anniversary.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/fight-or-be-slaves-members-of-the-brotherhood-of-sleeping-news-photo/515296680?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. 'North Country’ (2005)</h2>
<p>Charlize Theron portrays Josey Aimes, a desperate single mom who flees her abusive husband, returns to her hometown in northern Minnesota, moves in with her parents and takes a job at an iron mine. </p>
<p>There, she is constantly groped, insulted and bullied by the male workers. She complains to the company managers, who don’t take her seriously. The male-dominated union claims there’s nothing they can do. Aimes sues the company, which, after a dramatic courtroom scene, is forced to settle with her and other women. </p>
<p>With stellar performances by Theron, Sissy Spacek, Frances McDormand and Woody Harrelson, “North Country” is based on <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/real-women-north-country">a groundbreaking lawsuit</a> brought by women miners at Minnesota’s Eveleth Mines in 1975 that helped make sexual harassment a violation of workers’ rights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188442/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Dreier does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Inspired by real events, the films tackle issues of race, gender and class in ways that will resonate with many of today’s viewers.Peter Dreier, E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, Occidental CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1825492022-05-10T12:04:18Z2022-05-10T12:04:18ZStarbucks’ caffeinated anti-union efforts may leave a bitter taste – but are they legal?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461638/original/file-20220505-1367-ilvqwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=52%2C0%2C5808%2C3860&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A long-brewing dispute?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-hold-signs-while-protesting-in-front-of-starbucks-on-news-photo/1391508710?adppopup=true">Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Good news greeted Starbucks workers on May 3, 2022, in the shape of a promise of new pay increases. But there was a catch: Employees at unionized stores – or those planning to unionize – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/03/business/economy/starbucks-howard-schultz-union-pay.html">shouldn’t expect to see a dime</a> of this hike.</p>
<p>As far as efforts to discourage workers from supporting union drives go, the move by Starbucks appears pretty blatant. And it comes as the coffee chain sees a <a href="https://perfectunion.us/map-where-are-starbucks-workers-unionizing/">massive surge of union activity</a>.</p>
<p>Since its first victory at two stores in Buffalo in December 2021, Starbucks Workers United has now filed for union elections <a href="https://abc7ny.com/starbucks-union-labor-workers-united/11825879/#:%7E:text=As%20of%20this%20week%2C%20workers,the%20Service%20Employees%20International%20Union.">at over 250 stores</a> – comprising over 6,600 employees – in over 30 states, according to the National Labor Relations Board. Moreover, the union has won 54 of the 64 elections conducted to date, many by overwhelming margins. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://cob.sfsu.edu/directory/john-logan">scholar of organized labor</a>, I find the growth of the union movement at Starbucks remarkable. But it has also prompted what I would characterize as a remarkably aggressive stance against unions among executives at the coffee chain. Starbucks management appears intent on halting unionizing momentum among employees – even if that means risking sanction from the federal watchdog. Indeed, on May 6, a regional director of the NLRB <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/starbucks-firings-threats-store-closures-labor-board_n_6275802ce4b009a811c39513">issued a complaint against the coffee chain</a> over prior instances of anti-union tactics that the labor official deemed to have strayed across the line of what is legal.</p>
<h2>Anti-union or pro-Starbucks?</h2>
<p>In announcing the promised pay raise to nonunionized workers, Howard Schultz, who returned to Starbucks as interim CEO in March 2022, suggested that federal law prohibits Starbucks “from promising new wages and benefits at stores involved in union organizing.” Union representatives counter that nothing in law stops Starbucks from offering such benefits to workers at unionized stores.</p>
<p>Moreover, they say that threatening to withhold wage increases amounts to an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/03/business/economy/starbucks-howard-schultz-union-pay.html">illegal attempt to coerce workers</a> and have <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/02/starbucks-union-files-nlrb-complaint-citing-ceo-schultzs-benefits-comments.html">filed a formal complaint</a> with the NLRB.</p>
<p>It is not the first time Schultz, who says he is not “<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/09/starbucks-ceo-howard-schultz-has-history-of-opposing-unions.html">anti-union” but “pro-Starbucks</a>,” has picked a fight with workers looking to unionize. In April, he told workers at a public forum that if they are unhappy working at Starbucks, they <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/04/11/starbucks-ceo-lashes-out-at-unionizing-baristas/">should seek employment elsewhere</a> and claimed that American corporations nationwide are “under assault” by unions.</p>
<p>The CEO also blamed organizing at Starbucks stores on “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/starbucks-union-fight-intensifies-under-ceo-howard-schultz-11651483981">so-called workers” and an “outside force</a>” – comments that appear at odds with the reality of what is going on at his stores. A quirk of the recent spate of unionizing efforts at Starbucks is that it is <a href="https://theconversation.com/amazon-starbucks-and-the-sparking-of-a-new-american-union-movement-180293">worker-driven</a>, in that it is young employees spearheading the drive and spreading the word to other stores.</p>
<p>This grassroots approach is nullifying many of the traditional anti-union tactics. Not only does it counter the claim that unionizing is being forced on workers from outsiders who may not have their best interests in mind, it also makes it harder for anti-union messages to go unchallenged. For example, <a href="https://cwad1.org/banning-captive-audience-meetings#:%7E:text=Captive%20audience%20meetings%20are%20mandatory,materials%20like%20videos%20and%20flyers.">group captive audience meetings</a> – in which employees are mandated to attend sessions at which they are urged not to join a union – have proved less effective in part because pro-union workers have ensured that at least one activist is present to counter what is being said. And I have been told by organizers that at several Starbucks stores, workers have made a <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/starbucks-organizing-union-labor-coffee-historic-campaign">collective decision to refuse to attend</a> such meetings.</p>
<h2>Reputational risk</h2>
<p>In the face of diminishing returns for traditional efforts to persuade workers against unionizing, Starbucks appears to be upping the intensity. But going to war with its pro-union workers involves significant reputation risk for Starbucks – something the company itself has seemingly acknowledged. In a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company <a href="https://www.levernews.com/starbucks-stunning-admission-about-its-union-busting/">warned investors</a>: “Our responses to any union organizing efforts could negatively impact how our brand is perceived and have adverse effects on our business, including on our financial results.”</p>
<p>Starbucks is already facing uncomfortable headlines over its anti-union practices and the mounting number of complaints that they have prompted.</p>
<p>Since the union campaign started in August 2021, Starbucks Workers United has filed 112 separate unfair labor practices charges against the company, prompting former NLRB chair William Gould <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/starbucks-store-unionizing-surge-tests-cash-strapped-labor-board">to note</a>, “I can’t think of anything that has generated this many cases.” </p>
<p>Then on May 6, 2022, a director for the NLRB’s Buffalo region issued <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/starbucks-firings-threats-store-closures-labor-board_n_6275802ce4b009a811c39513">a sweeping complaint against Starbucks</a>. It covered over 200 instances of what it claims to be unlawful anti-union behavior. They included allegations of terminating, disciplining and surveilling pro-union workers; closing pro-union stores for several months and promising increased benefits to staff who refuse to unionize.</p>
<p>Such NLRB complaints follow an investigation into claims of labor violations and indicate that the board has found merit in the complaints.</p>
<p>To provide relief, the<a href="https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=https://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/athena/files/2022/05/06/62759426e4b009a811c3ad5f.pdf"> complaint requires Starbucks</a> to put in place what amounts to a laundry list of remedies, including reinstating fired workers, providing training for Starbucks managers on workers’ rights and allowing equal time for unions to address employees.</p>
<p>It also calls on Schultz or Starbucks’ executive vice president Rossann Williams – who ran the anti-union campaign in Buffalo last year – to record themselves reading a notice explaining to staff that they have a right to form a union, and for that recording to be distributed to every store in the U.S.</p>
<p>Starbucks has indicated that it will contest the regional NLRB complaint. In a statement, <a href="https://www.bloomberglaw.com/product/labor/bloomberglawnews/daily-labor-report/BNA%2000000180a525d12ea5cfe767d9100003?bna_news_filter=daily-labor-report">the company said</a>, “We believe the allegations contained in the complaint are false, and we look forward to presenting our evidence.”</p>
<h2>An NLRB with more bite?</h2>
<p>Regardless of what the NLRB complaint says, or what the board rules in regard to the denial of promised pay increases, Starbucks’ apparent efforts to slow union momentum may have some success.</p>
<p>The Starbucks union recently suffered <a href="https://www.staradvertiser.com/2022/05/03/breaking-news/effort-to-unionize-first-starbucks-store-in-hawaii-fails/">unexpected losses in Hawaii</a> <a href="https://www.tag24.com/justice/activism/starbucks-union-organizers-see-mixed-results-in-pittsburgh-estero-and-oklahoma-city-2445581">and Florida</a>.</p>
<p>Part of the problem facing worker-organizers is that it can take time to make charges of unfair anti-union practices stick.</p>
<p>The NLRB has for decades been hampered by delays in its processes. It can take months for a ruling to come down, and if a company appeals the board’s decision to a federal court, it can take years – by which time the <a href="https://www.jwj.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/UROCUEDcompressedfullreport.pdf">damage to a union campaign may have already been done</a>. </p>
<p>Labor organizers will be hoping that the recent complaint against Starbucks will portend a decisiveness and desire to move more quickly at the NLRB under the Biden administration.</p>
<p>President Joe Biden likes to tout his pro-union credentials. Indeed, he recently welcomed a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/06/starbucks-criticizes-biden-visit-with-union-leaders-requests-white-house-meeting.html">pro-union Starbucks worker</a> to the White House, prompting the company to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/06/starbucks-criticizes-biden-visit-with-union-leaders-requests-white-house-meeting.html">demand that it get a similar invitation</a>. </p>
<p>But Biden’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/09/08/remarks-by-president-biden-in-honor-of-labor-unions/">credentials as the self-proclaimed</a> “most pro-union president in American history” may hang on how his administration, through the NLRB, is able to crack down on anti-union practices when they cross over the line.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182549/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Logan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A regional director of the National Labor Relations Board has issued a complaint over instances of anti-union practices at Starbucks. And that was before the company’s boss threatened to withhold wages.John Logan, Professor and Director of Labor and Employment Studies, San Francisco State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1802932022-04-04T12:29:42Z2022-04-04T12:29:42ZAmazon, Starbucks and the sparking of a new American union movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456103/original/file-20220404-19-yuez6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C16%2C3594%2C2376&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The start of a movement or a moment?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Amazon-Union-Elections/cc69d97c3a4341ebad070944d2f4bbc8/photo?Query=staten%20island%20amazon&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=118&currentItemNo=4">AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez</a></span></figcaption></figure><iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/amazon-starbucks-and-the-sparking-of-a-new-american-union-movement-180293&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p><em>You can listen to more narrated articles <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/audio-narrated-99682">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>April 1, 2022, may go down as a pivotal day in the history of American unions. </p>
<p>In a result that could reverberate in workplaces across the U.S., the independent <a href="https://www.amazonlaborunion.org/">Amazon Labor Union</a> – first <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/01/chris-smalls-amazon-union/">formed in 2020 by Chris Smalls</a>, an <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/04/02/1090353185/amazon-union-chris-smalls-organizer-staten-island">Amazon worker fired</a> for protesting what he saw as inadequate COVID-19 safety precautions – got the better of the previously successful anti-union efforts of the online retailer. It means that Smalls’ warehouse in Staten Island, New York, will be <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/23005336/amazon-union-new-york-warehouse">the first to have a unionized workforce</a>.</p>
<p>On the same day, <a href="https://sbworkersunited.org/">Starbucks Workers United</a> – an organization affiliated with Service Employees International Union – won yet another election, making it <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22993509/starbucks-successful-union-drive">10 out of 11 wins</a> for the union since <a href="https://apnews.com/article/starbucks-union-vote-buffalo-c7dc3c2ec8b838e9f4ed641f54fc9035">first succeeding in Buffalo</a> in December 2021. This time, it was the <a href="https://twitter.com/SBWorkersUnited/status/1510037854306590726/photo/1">chain’s flagship roastery</a> in New York City that opted to unionize. The organizing campaign <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/02/10/nyc-area-starbucks-locations-file-to-unionize-in-national-push/">has now spread</a> to over 170 Starbucks stores nationwide. Several more Starbucks elections will take place in the coming weeks.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a re-run election at a Amazon factory in Bessemer, Alabama, will <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/31/1090123017/do-over-union-election-at-amazons-bessemer-warehouse-is-too-close-to-call">depend on the outcome of several hundred contested ballots</a>. Even if Amazon wins, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union has – at very least – came tantalizingly close in what was deemed a long-shot union vote. </p>
<p>Something is definitely happening in the labor movement. </p>
<h2>A different kind of organizing</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://cob.sfsu.edu/directory/john-logan">scholar of the labor movement</a> who has observed union drives for two decades, what I find almost as striking as the victories is the unconventional nature of the organizing campaigns. Both the Starbucks and Amazon-Staten Island campaigns have been led by <a href="https://prospect.org/labor/generational-worker-revolt-hits-its-stride-amazon-union/">determined young workers</a>.</p>
<p>Inspired by pro-union sentiment in political movements, such as <a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/workplace-democracy/">Bernie Sanders’ presidential bids</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/10/black-lives-matter-labor-unions-factory-workers-unite">Black Lives Matter</a> and the <a href="https://labor.dsausa.org/">Democratic Socialists of America</a>, these individuals are spearheading the efforts for workplace reform rather than professional union organizers. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find many experienced organizers among the recent successful campaigns. </p>
<p>Instead, the campaigns have involved a significant degree of “self-organization” – that is, workers “talking union” to each other in the warehouse and coffee shops and reaching out to colleagues in other shops in the same city and across the nation. <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801457227/building-more-effective-unions/#bookTabs=1">This marks a sea change</a> from the way the labor movement has traditionally operated, which has tended to be more centralized and led by seasoned union officials. </p>
<h2>A labor revival</h2>
<p>Perhaps more important than the victories at Starbucks and Amazon themselves are their potential for creating a sense of optimism and enthusiasm around union organizing, especially among younger workers. </p>
<p>The elections follow <a href="https://psmag.com/economics/what-caused-the-decline-of-unions-in-america">years of union decline in the U.S.</a> – both in terms of membership and influence.</p>
<p>Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, these recent labor wins would probably have seemed unimaginable. Powerful, wealthy <a href="https://www.engadget.com/amazon-spent-43-million-on-anti-union-consultants-in-2021-alone-082051777.html">corporations like Amazon</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/23/starbucks-aggressive-anti-union-effort-new-york-stores-organize">and Starbucks</a> appeared invincible then, at least in the context of <a href="https://www.nlrb.gov/">National Labor Relations Board</a> rules, which are stacked heavily <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/unprecedented-the-trump-nlrbs-attack-on-workers-rights/">against pro-union workers</a>. Under NLRB rules, Amazon and Starbucks can – and do – force workers, on the threat of dismissal, to attend <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/23/starbucks-aggressive-anti-union-effort-new-york-stores-organize">anti-union sessions</a>, often led by <a href="https://www.engadget.com/amazon-spent-43-million-on-anti-union-consultants-in-2021-alone-082051777.html">highly paid external consultants</a>.</p>
<p>Starbucks <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-15/starbucks-retaliated-against-pro-union-staff-nlrb-alleges">has said it has been</a> “consistent in denying any claims of anti-union activity. They are categorically false.” But in March 2022, the NLRB alleged that the coffee chain had coerced workers, placed union supporters under surveillance and retaliated against them. Similarly Amazon – which has in the past <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/01/amazon-seeks-intelligence-analyst-to-track-labor-organizing-threats.html">advertised for analysts to monitor “labor organizing threats</a>” has said it <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/24/how-amazon-prevents-unions-by-surveilling-employee-activism.html">respects workers’ rights to join or not join unions</a>.</p>
<p>The significance of the recent victories is not primarily about the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/04/01/1089318684/amazon-labor-union-staten-island-election-bessemer-alabama-warehouse-workers">8,000 new union members</a> at Amazon or a gradual flow of new union members at Starbucks. It is about instilling in workers the belief that if pro-union workers can win at Amazon and Starbucks, they can win anywhere.</p>
<p>Historic precedents show that labor mobilization can be infectious.</p>
<p>In 1936 and 1937, workers at the Flint plant of General Motors <a href="https://www.history.com/news/flint-sit-down-strike-general-motors-uaw">brought the powerful auto-marker to its knees</a> in a sit-down strike that <a href="https://labornotes.org/2009/07/once-started-sit-downs-spread-wildfire">quickly inspired similar action</a> elsewhere. In the reported words of a Chicago doctor, when explaining a subsequent sit-down strike by wet nurses in the city, “It’s just one of those funny things. They want to strike because everyone else is doing it.”</p>
<h2>Seizing the moment</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/10/17/1046850192/the-pandemic-could-be-leading-to-a-golden-age-for-unions">pandemic has created an opportunity for unions</a>.</p>
<p>After working on the front lines for over two years, many essential workers such as those at Amazon and Starbucks <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/26/starbuck-employees-intense-work-customer-abuse-understaffing">believe they have not been adequately rewarded</a> for their service during the pandemic and have not been treated with respect by their employers. </p>
<p>This appears to have helped spur <a href="https://prospect.org/labor/generational-worker-revolt-hits-its-stride-amazon-union/">the popularity</a> of the Amazon Labor Union and Starbucks Workers United.</p>
<p>The homegrown nature of these campaigns deprives Amazon and Starbucks of employing a decades-old trope at the heart of corporate anti-union campaigns: that a <a href="https://one.starbucks.com/">union is an external “third party</a>” that doesn’t understand or care about the concerns of employees and is more interested in collecting dues.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A pro-union poster is seen on a lamp pole says 'union busting is disgusting' over a Starbucks logo." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455938/original/file-20220403-23-b2ptyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455938/original/file-20220403-23-b2ptyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455938/original/file-20220403-23-b2ptyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455938/original/file-20220403-23-b2ptyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455938/original/file-20220403-23-b2ptyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455938/original/file-20220403-23-b2ptyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455938/original/file-20220403-23-b2ptyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Attempts to disparage outside unionizers are blunted when drives are led by company workers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pro-union-poster-is-seen-on-a-lamp-pole-outside-starbucks-news-photo/1239452047?adppopup=true">Toby Scott/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But those arguments mostly ring hollow <a href="https://labornotes.org/2022/04/amazon-workers-staten-island-clinch-historic-victory?fbclid=IwAR1pwcYb45xVPpvkuWV0JmkHb_1jwEwkUIwF56-aJFsT2B9O_AahdQj8Kdk">when the people doing the unionizing</a> are colleagues they work alongside day in and day out.</p>
<p>It has the effect of nullifying that central argument of anti-union campaigns despite the <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/unlawful-employer-opposition-to-union-election-campaigns/">many millions of dollars</a> that companies often pumped into them.</p>
<h2>An unfavorable legal landscape</h2>
<p>This “self-organization” at Starbucks and Amazon is consistent with what was envisioned by the authors of the <a href="https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/who-we-are/our-history/1935-passage-of-the-wagner-act">1935 Wagner Act</a>, the statute that provides the foundation of today’s union representation procedures. </p>
<p>The National Labor Relations Board’s first chair, J. Warren Madden, understood that self-organization could be fatally undermined if corporations were allowed to engage in anti-union pressure tactics: </p>
<p>“Upon this fundamental principle – that an employer shall keep his hands off the self-organization of employees – the entire structure of the act rests,” <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1631&context=sulr">he wrote</a>.“ Any compromise or weakening of that principle strikes at the root of the law.” </p>
<p>Over the past half century, anti-union corporations and their consultants and law firms – assisted by <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-labor-nlrb/unions-brace-for-big-changes-under-republican-led-u-s-labor-board-idUSKBN1HI328">Republican-controlled NLRBs</a> and right-wing judges – have <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-greenhouse-janus-supreme-court-20180627-story.html">undermined that process</a> of worker self-organization by enabling union elections to become employer-dominated.</p>
<p>But for the long-term decline in union membership to be reversed, I believe pro-union workers will need stronger protections. Labor law reform is essential if the <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1177/0019793918806250">almost 50% of non-union American workers</a> who say they want union representation are to have any chance of getting it. </p>
<h2>Dispelling fear, futility and apathy</h2>
<p>Lack of popular interest <a href="https://www.filesforprogress.org/memos/worker-power.pdf">has long been an obstacle</a> to labor law reform. </p>
<p>Meaningful labor law reform is unlikely to happen unless people are engaged with the issues, understand them and believe they have a stake in the outcome.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://theconversation.com/union-battles-at-amazon-and-starbucks-are-hot-news-which-can-only-be-good-for-the-labor-movement-172932">media interest in the campaigns at Starbucks and Amazon</a> suggests the American public may finally be paying attention.</p>
<p>It isn’t known where this latest labor movement – or moment – will lead. It could evaporate or it may just spark a wave of organizing across the low-wage service sector, stimulating a national debate over workers’ rights in the process. </p>
<p>The biggest weapons that anti-union corporations have in suppressing labor momentum are the fear of retaliation and a sense that unionization is futile. The recent successes show unionizing no longer seems so frightening or so futile. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Logan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Successful union drives at two of America’s biggest companies were led by committed individuals, rather than established unions.John Logan, Professor and Director of Labor and Employment Studies, San Francisco State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1425382020-08-25T19:18:13Z2020-08-25T19:18:13ZWhy police unions are not part of the American labor movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351761/original/file-20200807-22-13k8xdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=111%2C296%2C4762%2C3051&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Minneapolis Police create a blockade after a campaign rally for President Donald Trump on October 10, 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/minneapolis-police-create-a-blockade-after-a-campaign-rally-news-photo/1175240291?adppopup=true">Stephen Maturen/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, news reports have suggested that <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/06/27/police-unions-blamed-for-rise-in-fatal-shootings-even-as-crime-plummeted/">police unions bear some of the responsibility</a> for the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/us/derek-chauvin-george-floyd.html">violence perpetrated against African Americans</a>.</p>
<p>Critics have assailed these unions for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/09/limits-when-police-can-use-force-is-better-solution-than-banning-police-unions/">protecting officers who have abused their authority</a>. Derek Chauvin, the former police officer facing <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/03/868910542/chauvin-and-3-former-officers-face-new-charges-over-george-floyds-death">second-degree murder charges for Floyd’s death</a>, had nearly <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/30/minneapolis-officers-work-personal-background-detailed-2/">20 complaints filed against him during his career</a> but only received two letters of reprimand.</p>
<p>Many people who support labor unions in principle, who view them as a countervailing force against the power of employers, have only recently <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-06-15/police-unions-george-floyd-reform">come to view police unions as problematic</a> – as entities that <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-police-union-power-helped-increase-abuses">perpetuate a culture of racism and violence</a>.</p>
<p>But this sentiment reverberates through the history of the U.S. labor movement. As a <a href="https://ler.la.psu.edu/people/pfc2">labor scholar</a> who has <a href="https://theconversation.com/essential-us-workers-often-lack-sick-leave-and-health-care-benefits-taken-for-granted-in-most-other-countries-136802">written about unions</a> for <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjir.12526">decades</a>, I think this viewpoint can be explained by the fact that police unions differ fundamentally from almost all trade unions in America.</p>
<h2>Foot soldiers for the status quo</h2>
<p>For many veterans of the labor movement, <a href="https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-3">police have been on the wrong side</a> of the centuries-old struggle between workers and employers. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mayhem-in-madison-police-remove-protesters-lockdown-capitol-2011-3">Rather than side with other members of the working class</a>, police have used their legal authority to protect businesses and private property, enforcing laws viewed by many as anti-union. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351762/original/file-20200807-14-1ftxpa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351762/original/file-20200807-14-1ftxpa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351762/original/file-20200807-14-1ftxpa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351762/original/file-20200807-14-1ftxpa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351762/original/file-20200807-14-1ftxpa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351762/original/file-20200807-14-1ftxpa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351762/original/file-20200807-14-1ftxpa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351762/original/file-20200807-14-1ftxpa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Washington State Police use tear gas to disperse a crowd in Seattle on May 30, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/washington-state-police-uses-tear-gas-to-disperse-a-crowd-news-photo/1216441447?adppopup=true">Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The strain between law enforcement and labor goes back to the origins of <a href="https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-3">American unions in the mid 19th century</a>. Workers formed unions to fight for wage increases, reduced working hours and humane working conditions. </p>
<p>For employers, this was an attack on the existing societal power structure. They enlisted the government as the defender of capital and property rights, and <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/12/22/police-unions-havealwaysbeenalabormovementapart.html">police officers were the foot soldiers</a> who defended the status quo.</p>
<p>When workers managed to form unions, companies called on local police to disperse union gatherings, marches and picket lines, using <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-1897-massacre-pennsylvania-coal-miners-morphed-galvanizing-crisis-forgotten-history-180971695/">violence and mass arrests to break the will of strikers</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353650/original/file-20200819-42970-1xypttm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353650/original/file-20200819-42970-1xypttm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353650/original/file-20200819-42970-1xypttm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353650/original/file-20200819-42970-1xypttm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353650/original/file-20200819-42970-1xypttm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353650/original/file-20200819-42970-1xypttm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353650/original/file-20200819-42970-1xypttm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353650/original/file-20200819-42970-1xypttm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mounted New York City police officers battle with striking members of the International Longshoremen’s Association, March 24, 1954.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A narrow focus</h2>
<p>Police work is a fundamentally conservative act. And police officers tend to be politically conservative and Republican.</p>
<p>A poll of police <a href="https://www.policemag.com/342098/the-2016-police-presidential-poll">conducted in September 2016 by POLICE Magazine</a> found that 84% of officers intended to vote for Donald Trump that November. And law enforcement unions like the Fraternal Order of Police, the International Union of Police Associations and the National Border Patrol Council <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/10/09/police-unions-reject-charges-of-bias-find-a-hero-in-donald-trump/">all endorsed Trump’s candidacy in 2016</a>. </p>
<p>This contrasts sharply with the 39% share of all <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-labor-to-stem-flow-of-union-voters-to-trump-11567422002">union voters who voted for Trump</a> and the fact that every other union which made an <a href="https://justfacts.votesmart.org/candidate/evaluations/55463/hillary-clinton">endorsement supported Hillary Clinton</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351765/original/file-20200807-14-1nkoc2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351765/original/file-20200807-14-1nkoc2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351765/original/file-20200807-14-1nkoc2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351765/original/file-20200807-14-1nkoc2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351765/original/file-20200807-14-1nkoc2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351765/original/file-20200807-14-1nkoc2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351765/original/file-20200807-14-1nkoc2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Police surround a protester in Boston, Massachusetts on May 31, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/police-surround-a-protester-during-clashes-after-a-news-photo/1216621057?adppopup=true">Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Exclusively protecting the interests of their members, without consideration for other workers, also sets police unions apart from other labor groups. Yes, the first priority of any union is to fight for their members, but most other unions see that fight in the context of a <a href="https://aflcio.org/what-unions-do/social-economic-justice">larger movement that fights for all workers</a>.</p>
<p>Police unions do not see themselves as <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-to-know-police-unions-labor-movement">part of this movement</a>. With one exception – the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/11/police-unions-american-labor-movement-protest">International Union of Police Associations</a>, which represents just <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ftelea9716.pdf">2.7% of American police</a> – law enforcement unions are not affiliated with the AFL-CIO, the U.S. labor body that unites all unions.</p>
<h2>Alternative justice system</h2>
<p>A central concern with police unions is that they use collective bargaining to negotiate contracts that reduce police transparency and accountability. This allows officers who engage in excessive violence to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/10/police-unions-violence-research-george-floyd/">avoid the consequences of their actions</a> and remain on the job.</p>
<p>In a way, some police unions have created an <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/restorative-justice-police-violence/489221/">alternative justice system</a> that prevents police departments and municipalities from disciplining or discharging officers who have committed crimes against the people they are sworn to serve. </p>
<p>In Minneapolis, residents filed more than <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-problem-with-police-unions-11591830984">2,600 misconduct complaints</a> against police officers between 2012 and 2020. But only 12 of those grievances resulted in discipline. The most significant <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/us/derek-chauvin-george-floyd.html">punishment any officer received was a 40-hour suspension</a>.</p>
<p>Besides collective bargaining, police have used the political process – including <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/23/police-unions-spending-policy-reform-chicago-new-york-la">candidate endorsements and lobbying</a> – to secure local and state legislation that protects their members and quells efforts to provide greater police accountability. </p>
<p>Police officers are a formidable political force because they represent <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-gop-and-police-unions-a-love-story">the principle of law and order</a>. Candidates endorsed by the police unions can claim they are the law and order candidate. Once these candidates win office, police unions have <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/george-floyd-protests-police-abuse-reform-qualified-immunity-polls.html">significant leverage to lobby for policies</a> they support or block those they oppose. </p>
<p>Because of this power, critics claim that police unions don’t feel accountable to the citizens they serve. An attorney who sued the Minneapolis Police Department on behalf of a Black resident who was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/us/derek-chauvin-george-floyd.html">severely beaten by police officers</a> said that he is convinced that Minneapolis “officers think they don’t have to abide by their own training and rules when dealing with the public.” </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>George Floyd’s death has raised serious concerns about the current role of police and police unions in our society. Several unions have demanded that the International Union of Police Associations be expelled from the U.S. labor federation. Other <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/national-labor-groups-mostly-close-ranks-defend-police-unions-n1231573">unions oppose expulsion</a>. They argue that the labor movement can have a greater impact on a police union that is inside the “House of Labor.”</p>
<p>In any case, there is a growing recognition that police unions differ significantly from other unions. And there is a growing acceptance that they are not part of the larger American labor movement but rather a narrowly focused group pursuing their own self-interests, often to the detriment of the nation at large.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142538/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul F. Clark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>George Floyd’s death has thrust police unions into the spotlight amid a growing recognition that they are not part of the U.S. labor movement but a narrow interest group pursuing their self-interests.Paul F. Clark, School Director and Professor of Labor and Employment Relations, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1100042019-01-18T13:27:30Z2019-01-18T13:27:30ZMartin Luther King Jr., union man<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254390/original/file-20190117-32834-zaluvd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the picket line at the Scripto plant in Atlanta, Ga., December, 1964.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-GA-USA-APHS465028-Martin-Luther-King/a6837bc0cfcc4d00941a4d2c78cb5b86/6/0">AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If Martin Luther King Jr. still lived, he’d probably tell people to join unions.</p>
<p>King understood racial equality was inextricably linked to economics. He asked, “What good does it do to be able to eat at a lunch counter if you can’t buy a hamburger?” </p>
<p>Those disadvantages have persisted. Today, for instance, the wealth of the average white family is more than <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianthompson1/2018/02/18/the-racial-wealth-gap-addressing-americas-most-pressing-epidemic/#50e91ba77a48">20 times that of a black one</a>.</p>
<p>King’s solution was unionism. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254431/original/file-20190117-32819-1heolvc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254431/original/file-20190117-32819-1heolvc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254431/original/file-20190117-32819-1heolvc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254431/original/file-20190117-32819-1heolvc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254431/original/file-20190117-32819-1heolvc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254431/original/file-20190117-32819-1heolvc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254431/original/file-20190117-32819-1heolvc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254431/original/file-20190117-32819-1heolvc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The union newspaper reported that King appealed in his Sept. 21, 1967 address to Local 10 ‘for unity between the labor movement and the Negro freedom movement.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://archive.ilwu.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/19670929.pdf">The Dispatcher archives, ILWU</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Convergence of needs</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.afscme.org/union/history/mlk/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-on-labor">In 1961, King spoke before the AFL-CIO</a>, the nation’s largest and most powerful labor organization, to explain why he felt unions were essential to civil rights progress.</p>
<p>“Negroes are almost entirely a working people,” he said. “Our needs are identical with labor’s needs – decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community.”</p>
<p>My new book, “<a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/48ydk2be9780252042072.html">Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area</a>,” chronicles King’s relationship with a labor union that was, perhaps, the most racially progressive in the country. That was Local 10 of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, or ILWU. </p>
<p>ILWU Local 10 represented workers who loaded and unloaded cargo from ships throughout San Francisco Bay’s waterfront. Its members’ commitment to racial equality may be as surprising as it is unknown.</p>
<p>In 1967, the year before his murder, King visited ILWU Local 10 to see what interracial unionism looked like. King met with these unionists at their hall in a then-thriving, portside neighborhood – now a <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/Who-s-moving-to-San-Francisco-The-rich-the-12805760.php">gentrified</a> tourist area best known for Fisherman’s Wharf, Pier 39.</p>
<p>While King knew about this union, ILWU history isn’t widely known off the waterfront. </p>
<h2>Civil rights on the waterfront</h2>
<p><a href="http://depts.washington.edu/dock/longshore_intro.shtml">Dockworkers had suffered for decades</a> from a hiring system compared to a “slave auction.” Once hired, they routinely worked 24 to 36 hour shifts, experienced among the highest rates of injury and death of any job, and endured abusive bosses. And they did so for incredibly low wages.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254396/original/file-20190117-32804-p0ssqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254396/original/file-20190117-32804-p0ssqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254396/original/file-20190117-32804-p0ssqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254396/original/file-20190117-32804-p0ssqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254396/original/file-20190117-32804-p0ssqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254396/original/file-20190117-32804-p0ssqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254396/original/file-20190117-32804-p0ssqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254396/original/file-20190117-32804-p0ssqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marching in the San Francisco Waterfront Strike of 1934.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Waterfront_Strike">San Francisco Public Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1934, San Francisco longshoremen – who were non-union since employers had crushed their union in 1919 – reorganized and led a coast-wide “<a href="http://depts.washington.edu/dock/34strike_intro.shtml">Big Strike</a>.” </p>
<p>In the throes of the Great Depression, these increasingly militant and radicalized dockworkers walked off the job. After 83 days on strike, they won a huge victory: wage increases, a coast-wide contract and union-controlled hiring halls.</p>
<p>Soon, these “wharf rats,” among the region’s poorest and most exploited workers, became “lords of the docks,” commanding the highest wages and best conditions of any blue-collar worker in the region.</p>
<p>At its inception, Local 10’s membership was 99 percent white. But <a href="http://depts.washington.edu/dock/Harry_Bridges_intro.shtml">Harry Bridges</a>, the union’s charismatic leader, joined with fellow union radicals to commit to racial equality in its ranks. </p>
<p>Originally from Australia, Bridges started working on the San Francisco waterfront in the early 1920s. It was during the Big Strike that he emerged as a leader. </p>
<p>Bridges coordinated during the strike with <a href="https://blackpast.org/aaw/dellums-c-l-1900-1989">C.L. Dellums</a>, the leading black unionist in the Bay Area, and made sure the handful of black dockworkers would not cross picket lines as replacement workers. Bridges promised they would get a fair deal in the new union. One of the union’s first moves after the strike was integrating work gangs that previously had been segregated.</p>
<h2>Local 10 overcame pervasive discrimination</h2>
<p>Cleophas Williams, a black man originally from Arkansas, was among those who got into Local 10 in 1944. He belonged to a wave of African-Americans who, due to the massive labor shortage caused by World War II, fled the racism and discriminatory laws of the Jim Crow South for better lives – and better jobs – outside of it. Hundreds of thousands of blacks moved to the Bay Area, and tens of thousands found jobs in the booming shipbuilding industry. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520207011/the-second-gold-rush">Black workers in shipbuilding experienced pervasive discrimination</a>. Employers shunted them off into less attractive jobs and paid them less. Similarly, the main shipbuilders’ union proved hostile to black workers who, when allowed in, were placed in segregated locals.</p>
<p>A few thousand black men, including Williams, were hired as longshoremen during the war. <a href="http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/SCHSOL.html">He later recalled to historian Harvey Schwartz</a>: “When I first came on the waterfront, many black workers felt that Local 10 was a utopia.” </p>
<p>During the war, when white foremen and military officers hurled racist epithets at black longshoremen, this union defended them. Black members received equal pay and were dispatched the same as all others.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254398/original/file-20190117-32819-1i9ybpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254398/original/file-20190117-32819-1i9ybpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254398/original/file-20190117-32819-1i9ybpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254398/original/file-20190117-32819-1i9ybpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254398/original/file-20190117-32819-1i9ybpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254398/original/file-20190117-32819-1i9ybpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254398/original/file-20190117-32819-1i9ybpa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A gang of welders at the Marinship yard, Sausalito, California, in around 1943.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nps.gov/safr/learn/historyculture/africanamericanhistory.htm">National Park Service</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For Williams, this union was a revelation. Literally the first white people he ever met who opposed white supremacy belonged to Local 10. These longshoremen were not simply anti-racists, they were communists and socialists.</p>
<p>Leftist unions like the ILWU embraced black workers because, reflecting their ideology, they contended workers were stronger when united. They also knew that, countless times, employers had broken strikes and destroyed unions by playing workers of different ethnicities, genders, nationalities and races against each other. For instance, when 350,000 workers went out during the mammoth <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/foster/1926/strikestrategy/ch02.htm">Steel Strike of 1919</a>, employers brought in tens of thousands of African-Americans to work as replacements.</p>
<p>Some black dockworkers also were socialists. <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/paul-robeson-black-dockworkers-and-labor-left-pan-africanism/">Paul Robeson</a>, the globally famous singer, actor and left-wing activist had several friends, fellow socialists, in Local 10. Robeson was made an honorary ILWU member during WWII. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254400/original/file-20190117-32825-1l5pw55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254400/original/file-20190117-32825-1l5pw55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254400/original/file-20190117-32825-1l5pw55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=881&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254400/original/file-20190117-32825-1l5pw55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=881&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254400/original/file-20190117-32825-1l5pw55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=881&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254400/original/file-20190117-32825-1l5pw55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1107&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254400/original/file-20190117-32825-1l5pw55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1107&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254400/original/file-20190117-32825-1l5pw55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1107&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">King speaks at Local 10 in San Francisco, September 1967.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ILWU Archives</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Martin Luther King, union member</h2>
<p>In 1967, King walked in Robeson’s footsteps when he was inducted into Local 10 as an honorary member, the same year Williams became the first black person elected president of Local 10. By that year, roughly half of its members were African-American.</p>
<p>King addressed these dockworkers, declaring, “I don’t feel like a stranger here in the midst of the ILWU. We have been strengthened and energized by the support you have given to our struggles. … We’ve learned from labor the meaning of power.”</p>
<p>Many years later, Williams discussed King’s speech with me: “He talked about the economics of discrimination. … What he said is what Bridges had been saying all along,” about workers benefiting by attacking racism and forming interracial unions.</p>
<p>Eight months later, <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89372561">in Memphis to organize a union, King was assassinated</a>.</p>
<p>The day after his death, longshoremen shut down the ports of San Francisco and Oakland, as they still do when one of their own dies on the job. Nine ILWU members attended King’s funeral in Atlanta, including Bridges and Williams, honoring the man who called unions “<a href="http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2012/mar/16/african-american-history-and-the-2012-elections/">the first anti-poverty program</a>.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110004/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Cole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most people think of Martin Luther King Jr. as a civil rights leader who led the nation in addressing the evils of systemic racism. What many don’t know is that he also championed labor unionism.Peter Cole, Professor of History, Western Illinois UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1093982019-01-18T11:41:19Z2019-01-18T11:41:19ZHow Central American migrants helped revive the US labor movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253695/original/file-20190114-43535-y6pwuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Salvadoran immigrants were pivotal in the Justice for Janitors campaign in Los Angeles in 1990. It earned wage increases for custodial staff nationwide and inspired today's $15 minimum wage campaign. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-California-Unite-/68d1fe11ffe6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/1/0">AP Photo/Chris Pizzello</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>An updated version of this article was published on Aug. 30, 2022. <a href="https://theconversation.com/amazon-starbucks-worker-wins-recall-earlier-period-of-union-success-when-central-american-migrants-also-expanded-us-labor-movement-189341">Read it here</a>.</em></p>
<p>In the United States’ heated immigration debate, two views have predominated about Central American migrants: President Donald Trump portrays them as a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/11/26/president-trump-migrant-caravan-criminals/2112846002/">national security threat</a>, while others respond that they are <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-there-a-crisis-at-the-us-mexico-border-6-essential-reads-109547">refugees from violence</a>.</p>
<p>Little is said about the substantial contributions that Central Americans have made to U.S. society over the past 30 years. </p>
<p>For one, Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants have helped expand the U.S. labor movement, organizing far-reaching workers rights’ campaigns in migrant-dominated industries that mainstream unions had thought to be untouchable.</p>
<h2>Migrants and unions</h2>
<p>More than <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/central-americans-and-asylum-policy-reagan-era">1 million</a> Salvadorans and Guatemalans came to the United States between 1981 and 1990, fleeing army massacres, political persecution and civil war. </p>
<p>Since the 1980s, I have <a href="https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/ua-professor-s-trial-testimony-highlights-importance-of-public-scholarship">researched, taught and written about</a> this wave of migrants. Back then, President Ronald Reagan warned apocryphally that Central America was a threat to the United States, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/04/28/world/president-reagan-s-address-on-central-america-to-joint-session-of-congress.html">telling Congress</a> in 1983 that “El Salvador is nearer to Texas than Texas is to Massachusetts.”</p>
<p>Just 2% of Salvadorans and Guatemalans <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1990-12-20/news/mn-9376_1_asylum-cases">received asylum in the 1980s</a> – so few that a 1990 class action lawsuit alleging discrimination compelled the U.S. government to reopen tens of thousands cases. Last year, about <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/united-states-america/fact-sheet-us-immigration-and-central-american-asylum-seekers">10% to 25%</a> of their asylum petitions are granted.</p>
<p>Then, as now, many undocumented immigrants in the U.S. worked in agriculture or service industries, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-care-about-undocumented-immigrants-for-one-thing-theyve-become-vital-to-key-sectors-of-the-us-economy-98790">often under exploitative conditions</a>. Unionization barely touched these sectors in the 1980s.</p>
<p>More broadly, the bargaining power of labor unions was suffering under Reagan, whose <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-07/trump-is-no-reagan-when-it-comes-to-union-busting">presidency</a> started with his <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2008/08/reagan-fires-11-000-striking-air-traffic-controllers-aug-5-1981-012292">firing of 11,0000 striking air traffic controllers</a>. Downsizing and outsourcing at American companies in the 1980s also <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/618-an-injury-to-all">eroded union membership</a> and pushed wages down. </p>
<p>Many Guatemalans and Salvadorans were veteran community organizers. They had faced down government terror to participate in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-El-Salvador-Strife-Second/dp/0813300711">unions</a>, peasant leagues, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cry-People-Struggle-Catholic-Conflict/dp/0140060472">Catholic social justice campaigns</a> or <a href="https://unmpress.com/books/every-indio-who-falls/9780826348654">indigenous rights</a> initiatives – all currents in 1980s revolutionary Central America. </p>
<p>Drawing on these experiences, many Central American immigrants began to organize in their U.S. workplaces, demanding higher wages and safer conditions. </p>
<h2>Salvadorans led Justice for Janitors to victory</h2>
<p>Salvadoran immigrants in California were pivotal in <a href="https://talkpoverty.org/2015/06/16/justice-for-janitors">Justice for Janitors</a>, a <a href="https://www.seiu.org/about#campaigns">pioneering</a> low-paid workers’ movement that inspired today’s <a href="https://fightfor15.org">US$15 minimum wage campaign</a>. </p>
<p>Justice for Janitors began in Los Angeles in 1990. It aimed to reverse the wage drops that janitors suffered over the past decade. </p>
<p>Rather than do battle with the small subcontractors that hired cleaning crews for big office buildings, Justice for Janitors targeted the corporations that owned those buildings. Led by experienced Salvadoran unionists – some of whom had <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1996-03-03/news/ls-42727_1_yanira-merino/2">fled death squad violence</a> back home – the movement used nonviolent civil disobedience and strikes to expose exploitative labor practices. </p>
<p>Speaking out could be dangerous. Police once clubbed participants at a <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/25-years-later-lessons-from-the-organizers-of-justice-for-janitors/">peaceful march</a> through LA’s Century City neighborhood on June 15, 1990. Undocumented workers feared deportation. </p>
<p>But it worked. Janitors in LA won a <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/justice-for-janitors-seiu-raise-america/">22% raise</a> after their 1990 citywide strike, <a href="https://www.labor.ucla.edu/what-we-do/research-tools/campaigns-and-research/justice-for-janitors/">showing</a> mainstream labor unions that even the city’s most marginalized workers – undocumented Central Americans, many of them women – had real organizing power. </p>
<p>Over the next decade, some <a href="http://socialjusticehistory.org/projects/justiceforjanitors/items/index/page/2">100,000 janitors nationwide joined the campaign</a>, under the banner of the <a href="http://www.seiu.org/justice-for-janitors">Service Employees Industrial Union</a>. The movement negotiated contracts that increased wages and health benefits for janitors across the U.S. </p>
<h2>Guatemalans defended Florida farmworkers</h2>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of people fled Guatemala during the early 1980s, escaping a <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781403964472">genocidal army campaign</a> against Indigenous communities that left entire regions of its highlands charred and empty.</p>
<p>Roughly 20,000 of these Guatemalan refugees – many of whom spoke <a href="https://mayanlanguageimmigrationlawinfo.wordpress.com/languages/">indigenous Mayan languages</a> – landed in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Maya-Exile-Guatemalans-Allan-Burns/dp/1566390362">Florida</a> in 1982, finding work in sweltering tomato farms and citrus groves. </p>
<p>Up to 90% of the fresh tomatoes in U.S. supermarkets <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/business/in-florida-tomato-fields-a-penny-buys-progress.html">come from Florida</a>. </p>
<p>Working conditions in the state’s tomato fields were dismal in the 1980s. Migrants <a href="https://www.pbs.org/now/society/ciw.html">earned just 40 cents</a> per 32-pound bucket of tomatoes picked. Some were <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/30/world/ciw-fair-food-program-freedom-project/index.html">forced by armed guards to work against their will</a>, as a 1997 <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/1997/November97/482cr.htm.html">court case about the use of slave labor in Florida’s tomato fields</a> exposed. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253692/original/file-20190114-43510-12eppge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253692/original/file-20190114-43510-12eppge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253692/original/file-20190114-43510-12eppge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253692/original/file-20190114-43510-12eppge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253692/original/file-20190114-43510-12eppge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253692/original/file-20190114-43510-12eppge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253692/original/file-20190114-43510-12eppge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253692/original/file-20190114-43510-12eppge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Farmworkers pick tomatoes in Immokalee, Florida, home to one of the United States’ most successful agricultural labor unions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Florida-United-S-/21d7bffb33e9da11af9f0014c2589dfb/14/0">AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1993, Guatemalan immigrants joined with Florida’s Haitian and Mexican farmworkers to form the <a href="https://ciw-online.org/">Coalition of Immokalee Workers</a>, a community worker alliance that began in the basement of a local church in Immokalee, Florida. It <a href="https://legacy-etd.library.emory.edu/view/record/pid/emory:cr197">used strategies</a> common to Latin American protest movements, including street theater and socially conscious radio broadcasts, to unite Florida’s agricultural workers.</p>
<p>After five years of work stoppages, hunger strikes and marches, Florida’s tomato pickers won wage increases of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/now/society/ciw.html">up to 25%</a>. A multi-year nationwide boycott of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18187-2005Mar8.html">Taco Bell</a> convinced the fast food chain in 2005 to increase the earnings of the farmworkers who supply its ingredients. Other fast food giants followed suit. </p>
<p>In 2015, the Immokalee coalition launched the <a href="http://www.fairfoodprogram.org/">Fair Food Program</a>, an industry-wide agreement with Florida tomato growers to promote strict health and safety standards and allow outside monitors to oversee working conditions. That same year, President Barack Obama gave the Coalition of Immokalee Workers the <a href="https://ciw-online.org/slavery/">Presidential Award for Extraordinary Efforts in Combating Modern Day Slavery</a>.</p>
<h2>Guatemalans organized North Carolina poultry plants</h2>
<p>As Guatemalan migrants <a href="https://www.amazon.com/New-Faces-Places-Geography-Immigration/dp/0871545683">spread across the South</a> during the late 1980s, recruited by labor contractors in other states, they soon became a powerful organizing force in North Carolina, too. </p>
<p>Case Farms – a poultry company that supplies KFC, Taco Bell, Boar’s Head and the federal school lunch program – was a <a href="https://www.osha.gov/news/newsreleases/region5/08132015-0">notoriously dangerous</a> place to work. Safety regulations were routinely ignored to increase output, and workers suffered serious injuries – including losing limbs to cutting machines.</p>
<p>In 1990, the Guatemalan immigrants at Case Farms’ plant in Morganton, North Carolina, organized a union drive.</p>
<p>As labor historian Leon Fink describes in his book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Maya-Morganton-Community-Nuevo-South/dp/0807854476">The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South</a>,” Guatemalan poultry workers drew on prior organizing experiences back home – including coffee plantation strikes and Mayan pride movements – to organize workers. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253698/original/file-20190114-43541-1i1dkm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253698/original/file-20190114-43541-1i1dkm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253698/original/file-20190114-43541-1i1dkm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253698/original/file-20190114-43541-1i1dkm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253698/original/file-20190114-43541-1i1dkm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253698/original/file-20190114-43541-1i1dkm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253698/original/file-20190114-43541-1i1dkm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253698/original/file-20190114-43541-1i1dkm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poultry plants across the southeast U.S. rely heavily on immigrant labor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Nebraska-United-/ff317024b9e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/152/0">AP Photo/Nati Harnik</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After <a href="https://sohp.org/research/past-projects/listening-for-a-change/new-immigrants-and-labor/">five years</a> of walkouts, marches and hunger strikes, the Case Farm workers in 1995 voted to join the Laborers’ International Union of North America. The company refused to negotiate, however, and the union pulled out of contract talks after six years.</p>
<p>In 2017, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio challenged Case Farms to <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/senator-demands-answers-from-case-farms">explain its alleged violations of U.S. law</a>, after a New York Times and ProPublica investigation exposed ongoing <a href="http://labornotes.org/2010/07/immigrant-workers-non-union-chicken-plant-stop-work-over-dangerous-conditions">abusive labor practices there</a>. </p>
<p>These unionization stories show Central American migrants in a new light – not as criminals or victims, but as people who have helped make the U.S. a safer place for workers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109398/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Oglesby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Central Americans who came to the US in the 1980s fleeing civil war drew on their background fighting for social justice back home to help unionize farmworkers, janitors and poultry packers in the US.Elizabeth Oglesby, Associate Professor of Latin American Studies and Geography, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/585862016-05-06T21:43:52Z2016-05-06T21:43:52ZThe Easter Rising 100 years on: how the Irish revolution fired up American politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121583/original/image-20160506-32047-etdljp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dublin's General Post Office on fire after the 1916 Easter Rising. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/kman999/159727615/in/photolist-bGM5fa-22j2ZU-f7Dsp-4rhbnF-edYKAK-ecDTJ9-o1CHuK-psS58u-dibRLV-Gmp1Cc-oqgJUU-otG2yb-9MYVE5-otFKRG-edYB94-FBsiRZ-5qjCvi-nUjqHP-nUfJyQ-edYyYV-5zt45o-edYyTc-4xQyP2-ee5g5W-5ogP5X-76xoxd-8NM9kq-FGMwyB-2jsj4v-psQ5Q2-pKgnXv-EK8anK-FJ6hP2-GwnTrB-gQrWg-gQrnX-6eCGo9-ee5e5y-7TvHBB-edYxxk-edYxAz-5zt4Yw-ee5mNq-edYziV-edYzyv-dodrLi-rn4kNK-ee5ebd-6fcVPd-ee5oNb">Kmann999</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On July 27, 1919, Marcus Garvey, the African-American nationalist then nearing the height of his influence, <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520044562">rose to address a crowd</a> of almost 6,000 people who had come to dedicate Liberty Hall, on Harlem’s 138th Street, as the new headquarters of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). </p>
<p>The UNIA, which Garvey had originally founded five years earlier in his native Jamaica, had grown rapidly since its relocation to the United States. By the early 1920s, it had chapters in more than 30 American cities and African-American supporters that historians believe numbered in the millions. </p>
<p>Yet the major focus of Garvey’s speech on this particular occasion was not the African-American freedom struggle but the Irish one: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The time has come for the Negro race to offer up its martyrs upon the altar of liberty even as the Irish has given a long list from Robert Emmet to Roger Casement.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121584/original/image-20160506-32034-1j35zt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121584/original/image-20160506-32034-1j35zt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121584/original/image-20160506-32034-1j35zt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121584/original/image-20160506-32034-1j35zt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121584/original/image-20160506-32034-1j35zt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121584/original/image-20160506-32034-1j35zt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121584/original/image-20160506-32034-1j35zt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marcus Garvey (1887-1940).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a03567/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, the very name of the building that Garvey dedicated, “Liberty Hall,” reflected his admiration of this struggle. It was named after Dublin’s Liberty Hall, the site from which the 1916 Easter Rising had been launched. </p>
<p>How did this veneration of Ireland’s revolution in the U.S. come about?</p>
<h2>The American connection</h2>
<p>Over the last few months, the United States has been marking its connection to the Easter Rising of 100 years ago. </p>
<p>In a series of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/nyregion/a-celebration-in-song-and-dance-of-irelands-independence-and-culture.html">public celebrations</a>, <a href="http://1916.nd.edu/1916-the-irish-rebellion/">film screenings</a> and <a href="http://irelandhouse.fas.nyu.edu/object/ne.independentspiritsymposium">academic symposia</a>, we have learned about the many ways in which America influenced <a href="https://theconversation.com/ireland-in-1916-the-rising-the-war-and-controversial-commemorations-58121">the events</a> that took place in Dublin in Easter Week 1916.</p>
<p>Irish immigrants and their descendants (our “exiled children in America,” in the words of the <a href="https://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/20century/topic_3_05/easter1916.htm">Proclamation of the Irish Republic</a>) played a leading part. </p>
<p>They <a href="http://www.mercierpress.ie/irish-books/1916_the_long_revolution/">supported revolutionary organizations and sent money</a> back to those who were planning the rebellion. At a deeper level, the United States – with its own revolution against the British Empire and a Declaration of Independence that the Irish Proclamation resembled in striking ways – provided a source of inspiration for many of the Rising’s leaders. </p>
<p>“No America. No Easter Rising,” the distinguished Irish historian <a href="http://www.irelandhouse.fas.nyu.edu/object/americaandeaster1916.html">Joe Lee</a> has stated. “Simple as that.”</p>
<p>But the influences and inspiration worked in the other direction as well, especially in the tumultuous years following the Easter Rising.</p>
<h2>How Irish republicanism inspired Americans</h2>
<p>As I have documented in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/irish-nationalists-in-america-9780195331776?cc=us&lang=en&">a recent book</a>, in the five short years between 1916 and 1921, revolutionary Irish republicanism became a mass movement of breathtaking proportions in the United States. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/archives/irish-american-diaspora-nationalism/">Friends of Irish Freedom</a>, formed in 1916 with the composer <a href="http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/exhibits/bio/C290">Victor Herbert</a> at its helm, claimed nearly 300,000 members by 1919. Its later rival, the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic, counted 700,000 members and had raised over US$10 million for the Irish republican movement by 1921.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121585/original/image-20160506-32044-6jp3yc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121585/original/image-20160506-32044-6jp3yc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121585/original/image-20160506-32044-6jp3yc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121585/original/image-20160506-32044-6jp3yc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121585/original/image-20160506-32044-6jp3yc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121585/original/image-20160506-32044-6jp3yc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121585/original/image-20160506-32044-6jp3yc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leaders of the Friends of Irish Freedom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ggbain.29023/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As <a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/s/sclead/umich-scl-finerty?subview=standard;view=reslist">one veteran of the cause recalled</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sentiment in favor of the Irish Republic swept over this country so strongly that it was felt in every city and town in the nation. It permeated all walks of life. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So what were these “walks of life”? </p>
<p>One was the world of labor. This was hardly surprising given the concentration of Irish-Americans in working-class occupations and their prominent place in the leadership of many US trade unions – in fact, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Biographical_Dictionary_of_American_Labo.html?id=2WZmAAAAMAAJ">no less than a quarter</a> of all prominent labor leaders between 1830 and 1970 were Irish immigrants or their descendants. </p>
<p>The Irish-American-dominated <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Labor-Democratic-Diplomacy-1914-1924/dp/0801429056">Chicago Federation of Labor</a> was typical in denouncing “the domination of the Celtic people of Ireland by alien people and powers.” </p>
<p>Labor leaders were already suspicious of the growing drumbeat of U.S. opinion favoring entry into World War I. </p>
<p>Many of them believed that the so-called preparedness campaign was a smokescreen for a campaign against unions. The Easter Rising and its suppression only intensified their opposition to military intervention in support of Britain. </p>
<p>More surprising was the Easter Rising’s impact on American feminism.</p>
<h2>Impact on suffragists and African-Americans</h2>
<p>Inspired by the Irish Proclamation’s call for “equal rights and equal opportunities” and its endorsement of the principle of women’s suffrage – a full four years before American women obtained the vote – American suffragists and feminists like <a href="http://www.alicepaul.org/who-was-alice-paul/">Alice Paul</a> and <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1931/addams-facts.html">Jane Addams</a> rallied to the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/irish-nationalists-in-america-9780195331776?cc=us&lang=en&">Irish cause</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121586/original/image-20160506-32019-1guww6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121586/original/image-20160506-32019-1guww6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121586/original/image-20160506-32019-1guww6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121586/original/image-20160506-32019-1guww6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121586/original/image-20160506-32019-1guww6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121586/original/image-20160506-32019-1guww6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121586/original/image-20160506-32019-1guww6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A pro-Irish independence demonstration in the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b13575/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Irish-American women filled halls across the country for the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Irish_Republican_Women_in_America.html?id=ZLJnAAAAMAAJ">lecture tours</a> of high-profile Irish republican activists like <a href="http://womensmuseumofireland.ie/articles/hanna-sheehy-skeffington">Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington</a> and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/easterrising/profiles/po10.shtml">Countess Constance Markievicz</a>. </p>
<p>Though the Irish Free State government that emerged in 1922 <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-women-got-involved-in-the-easter-rising-and-why-it-failed-them-55771">retreated</a> from the promise of gender equality announced in the Proclamation, that promise had a significant impact in encouraging American women’s support of the Irish revolution.</p>
<p>Most surprising of all in light of the deep currents of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Irish-History-Studies-Modern/dp/058227818X">anti-black racism</a> that ran through the history of the Irish in America was the enthusiasm of Marcus Garvey and other African-American protest leaders for the Irish cause. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121582/original/image-20160506-32040-150aduj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121582/original/image-20160506-32040-150aduj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121582/original/image-20160506-32040-150aduj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121582/original/image-20160506-32040-150aduj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121582/original/image-20160506-32040-150aduj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121582/original/image-20160506-32040-150aduj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121582/original/image-20160506-32040-150aduj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marcus Garvey commemorated in New Orleans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/howieluvzus/1599511297/in/photolist-3rkUYZ-5CT2Ki-8z6psq-ecdrGH-ecj64U-62ZWbd-ecdrE2-5YZiT8-n9WNJ-A4mQLY-n9Sn3-n9UNe-n9Tiz-n9U9V-n9VTA-n9WNB-oEfC1h-oG3bk2-oG3bua-oG3bJD-oE1DJK-onMKdk-onMSMh-oG3bqT-oG3bn6-onMRNJ-onMJN2-onNner-oE4H7d-oEhiZX-oG3bMp-oEhiiX-oEfCVJ-oG3byi-wiNBtG-oG3brK-oCfwLA-oE1DFD-onMKhD-oCfwHj-onMxmq-oG3aBD-onMSNu-oEhixK-oG3bti-onMKht-oCfwSY-onMxJj-oCfwy1-oEhipD">Mark Gsthohl</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p><a href="http://www.upne.com/0819564699.html">Hubert Harrison</a>, the intellectual and activist sometimes described as “the father of Harlem radicalism,” built on the work of the Irish political party, Sinn Féin, in his 1917 campaign to increase black electoral representation. </p>
<p>When he organized the secret African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption two years later, <a href="http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-8827.html">Cyril Briggs</a> drew explicitly on the model of the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood, which had been at the center of the Easter Rising. </p>
<p>In February 1921, Briggs hailed “the Irish fight for liberty” as “the greatest epic of modern times and a sight to inspire to emulation all oppressed groups.” </p>
<p>Briggs’ words, like those of Marcus Garvey, point to the most far-reaching significance of the Easter Rising. It provided a deep source of inspiration to a range of other “oppressed groups,” in America <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719081712/">and beyond</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58586/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Brundage has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Irish American Cultural Institute.</span></em></p>Irish immigrants and their descendants played a leading part in the Easter Rising of 1916 and Ireland’s subsequent rebellion. But the inspiration worked in the other direction as well.David Brundage, Professor and Graduate Program Director, History Department , University of California, Santa CruzLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.