At Heart of Historic Labor Struggles: A Yearning for Dignity

It was inevitable that labor’s rich tapestry of successes and failures would fade with the passage of time and the subsequent arrival of new generations.

Family and friends, for example, know the names of 33 black sanitation workers in Memphis who were fired for seeking union representation during the turbulent 1960s. Yet the most visible monument to the workers who risked injury and death is embedded in the last two digits of AFSCME Local No. 1733’s name.

Similarly, the fledgling United Auto Workers secured a place in history with a successful 1937 sit-down strike in Flint, Mich. But even in Flint many residents don’t know that workers at General Motors Corp. wear white shirts each Feb. 11 to memorialize the strike.

“How people remember--or don’t remember--these events isn’t as important as the symbolic value they contain,” said Tacoma, Wash., historian Michael K. Honey. “They’re examples of people who have done something, and, through a combination of heroism and sacrifice, they make us think, ‘Who am I to not be willing to do things that can help make change?’ ”

At a time when doctors and aerospace engineers are contemplating union representation to improve working conditions, wages and benefits, historians sense a renewed interest in past lessons learned.

“There’s been an outburst of scholarship on labor issues,” said Neil Leighton, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Michigan at Flint. “It’s creating an archive for people to go back to as a guide to where they want to go. This is still very much a class-oriented society, and the basic struggle is very much the same as it always has been.”

Labor continues to cling to its past as it looks to the future.

United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez named the union’s pension fund after Juan de la Cruz--a perpetual reminder to members that De la Cruz was shot to death in 1973 while manning a Kern County picket line.

And each March, union activists gather in front of a New York University building in Manhattan to remember the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Co. fire of 1911, in which 146 workers, mostly women, perished. The fire was especially gruesome because managers had locked exit doors, forcing many victims to jump to their deaths in a vain effort to escape the flames and smoke.

The Triangle Shirtwaist fire was all the more bitter, historians say, because working conditions were a major issue in an unlikely strike two years earlier that crossed economic and ethnic divisions.

The 1909 strike was organized and led by an unlikely coalition of young Jewish and Italian immigrant women, according to Elizabeth Ewen, an American studies professor at State University of New York at Old Westbury who wrote a book about the era.

“The strike occurred even though it meant defying the traditional union male leadership,” Ewen said. “These girls--we’re talking very young girls between the ages of 12 and 17--not only kept a general strike going for three months, but also organized the middle class and the newspapers.”

Union leaders, including Samuel Gompers, subsequently described the strike as “a real wake-up call for labor,” Ewen said. “Gompers considered this strike like the sounding of a bell--and a lot of people heard it.”

“That these young women went on strike was an amazing event,” said Pennee Bender, who produced a 30-minute video describing the unusual ethnic partnership during the strike. “They were new immigrants, they were young women and their families were very much dependent upon their salaries,” Bender said. “Yet they were incredibly bold.”

Ewen notes that a supposedly impartial judge signaled his bias by telling the strikers that “they were not simply going on strike, they were going on strike against God.”

Labor’s inability to overcome ethnic and racial barriers--and, historians say, management’s ability to exploit those divisions--weighed heavily in union defeats.

When steelworkers struck in 1919, the job action was doomed to failure, historians say, in large part because of ethnic tensions involving recently arrived immigrants from Europe. “During the [unsuccessful] great steel strike of 1919, ethnic differences were still great,” Leighton said. “And when labor was defeated, [steel magnate Andrew Carnegie] called them back in messages written in 22 different languages.”

In contrast, a 1937 automobile industry strike wasn’t hampered by such deep ethnic divisions, Leighton said. “By then, the sons and daughters of those steelworkers had all gone to public school together, and when the call goes out in Flint for the sit-down strike, they spoke a common language . . . and the strike newspapers are printed in English.”

Labor’s image has been sullied over the decades by reports of strikers who resorted to violence and strong-arm tactics to keep replacement workers from taking their places. Historians also note that union leaders too often have talked about representing all workers--but effectively barred women and minorities from their ranks.

“When the AFL and CIO merged in the 1950s, a lot of civil rights organizations began to question AFL-CIO policies,” Honey said. “The CIO seemed to have been the better hope for black workers trying to make a breakthrough. But the AFL represented the old craft unions, and it had largely kept blacks and women out of skilled occupations.”

Union leaders, Ewen said, often were late to recognize that “often, the [workers] who lead the way are women, blacks, farm workers. They do it not only in the name of a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, but also in terms of having an understanding of the very important relationship between wages and human dignity.”

“It’s always been about human dignity,” Ewen said. “It’s always about ‘Don’t treat me like a thing, like a machine.’ ”

“It was about dignity the summer before last, when the UAW rank and file dragged union leadership kicking and screaming into the streets,” Leighton said. “It wasn’t about money. It was about overtime, not being able to take time off when they felt it was needed. It was about wanting to be treated like a human being.”

That was the case in 1937, Leighton said, when Chicago police killed 10 workers during what newspapers referred to as the Memorial Day Massacre.

“The cops shot down the workers, and there’s no way to describe that as a success,” Leighton said. “But, if you want to be cold-blooded about it, the “little steel strike” is successful because [media coverage] brings out the very cruel nature of the struggle. It’s now front-page news across the nation and it’s a horror story for Roosevelt if he doesn’t do anything to prevent it from happening again.”

That same year, respect was at the core of the auto workers strike in Flint. “The key point in the sit-down strike was a complete lack of dignity on the job,” Leighton said. “If a worker wanted to go to the bathroom, he had to go right there.”

Labor’s search for dignity on the job also fueled the Memphis sanitation workers strike in 1968. The strike produced haunting pictures of picketers carrying signs that bluntly reminded elected officials and taxpayers that “I am a man.”

“These workers had everything against them,” Honey said. “Sixty percent of the black population in Memphis in the 1960s was living below the poverty level. All steps to advancement were blocked. The sanitation workers simply took matters into their own hands. They didn’t set out to stage a civil rights battle--they just wanted the basic things like job security and seniority rights. They wanted to be treated with respect.”

Workers earned just $1.10 an hour to pick up and dispose of garbage--with no vacations, pensions or benefits. Workers hurt on the job “were out of luck,” Honey said. “It was their problem. White leaders had the ‘plantation mentality.’ They couldn’t conceive of an equal bargaining position for blacks, which meant workers had to fight basic racial issues to get respect as human beings.”

In a bitter twist, the lengthy struggle was pushed to a swift conclusion when civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. made the last of three trips to show support for strikers. During that visit, King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel. Within days, federal and state officials were pressuring Memphis’ city leaders to settle the strike.

“On one hand, the civil rights movement lost King, which was a horrible loss for the country and the world,” said Honey, who has interviewed strikers for a new book. “But, for these workers, he didn’t die in vain; if he hadn’t come to Memphis, they would have never won the strike so soon.”

Historians maintain that the twin issues of dignity and respect on the job will continue to fuel union activity. “The more vulnerable workers always end up in these jobs,” Honey said. “Now you’ve got immigrants coming from Mexico, Central America and Asia. And you’ve still got so many African American workers in that position.”

“It’s always about human dignity,” Leighton said. “The great strike of 1912 in Lawrence, Mass., became known as the Bread and Roses strike. They wanted to have some beauty in their lives--as well as some food.”