April 8, 2022 • 57 mins
While they're not as common as they once were, labor unions are back in the news as employees of companies like Amazon, Starbucks and more choose to organize, pushing for better pay, more rights and so on. In part one of this two-part episode, Ben and Matt explore the history of unions (which can themselves be conspiratorial)... as well as the powerful forces seeking to destroy unions, or prevent them from forming in the first place.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt. Our colleague Nol is on a
real adventure, but we'll be returning very soon. They call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Hall Mission controlled decade. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. This is uh special episode
(00:49):
for us. This is a two part episode, is the
whole week, so we do hope you like it. Uh.
We want to start out with some full disclosure and
transparency is very important here uh and stuff they want
want you to know. We would like to note that
our parent company are Corporate Overlord's I Heart Media, recently
(01:11):
recognize something called the I Heart Podcast Union. Now, Matt,
you and Nol and I are not involved with these negotiations,
but this did inspire us to take a closer look
at the concept as well as the conspiracies involved. Yes,
we've been watching the process happen right before our eyes.
(01:33):
We've been getting updates from our very own Paul mission
controled decade. Who I hope Paul, I hope you don't
mind us saying this, but you were involved and we
in a like in leading the charge and as you
listen to this series, if you have any questions, specifically
about the I Heeart Podcast Union, Paul has said he
is ready to hear those questions and will respond. You
(01:54):
can send those questions to us conspiracy at I heart
radio dot com. Here we go. If you live in
the United States, regardless of what sort of job or
career you have, you have probably heard of something called
unions labor unions specifically. In this two part episode, we're
(02:16):
exploring what a union is, where it comes from, and
why so many powerful people and institutions seem opposed to them.
Will also explore the controversies and corruption that have occurred
within unions themselves at times. In short, honestly, fellow conspiracy realist,
(02:37):
there's a lot of stuff they don't want you to
know here, So let's start at the beginning. Here are
the facts, Matt. What is a union? How did they begin?
Why is this a thing? Is this new? Is this old?
What's what's the school. Oh, this is quite old. Uh.
It's a common thing throughout history. When there are a
(02:58):
lot of individual a means, generally humans working together in
the same profession, they will often team up and say, hey, oh,
we're a lot like each other. We we have the
same needs and the same wants, and we do kind
of the same thing. How can we work together? If
you look to ancient Mesopotamia, there are laws there that
have really echoed from that time through until today. And
(03:23):
these things are like normalized wages, things that will moderately
protect workers. Let's say, moderately protect workers. That's the goal
at least from the workers perspective, not always from uh,
the employer's perspective of the people, you know, deciding what
those workers have to do. Um. And you can look
to also Egypt Rome. They're similar organizations that arise from
(03:47):
those civilizations. UM, similar kinds of rules as well. Yeah,
and then it's true. It's an ancient thing, and it
makes sense. Human beings are gregarious. They like to have
stuffing common, right, and most people like to think that
they're having an okay life. I don't think that's a
hot take. I mean, okay, so let's go right, the
(04:11):
The origins of these ideas are are quite ancient. Let's
go to Europe. It's uh, Matt, let's say it's like
the sixteenth or seventeenth century. At this point. Economies in
in that part of the world are largely run by
a series of things called guilds. Guilds are organizations of
(04:35):
merchants who all work in the same business. Now, yes, folks,
we'll do a City of London episode later. But the
City of London, that's in London, whatever, But it's a
whole thing. It's it's its own bag of badgers. Uh.
In theory, guilds were built with a good faith motivation.
(05:02):
They were protective outfits. Like if if Matt and Michigantrol
and I all sold wool, right, we're all somehow involved
in the wool game. We would join up with other
folks in that game, and then we would say, okay, look,
let's all sell stuff for roughly the same price, and
(05:27):
let's make sure that we can collectively not get screwed over.
And in these yeah, I mean, that's understandable. There's nothing
sinister about that. In these guilds, these workers would come
together again. Originally and then in theory to share expertise,
(05:49):
to support charities at times, like to take care of
you know, um, if if our fellow uh wool person
passed away, we would band together, we posse up, and
we take care of their family. Right. We will form
rules and policies for trade and commerce, and then we
(06:10):
would lobby whatever state or church or arbitrary monarchy was
in charge. We would lobby them to not scross over again.
It's a protective thing, right. Yeah, there's lots of working together,
and you you can kind of see some similarities here.
(06:31):
Maybe you're already hearing them between highly organized groups, especially
groups that exert some kind of power, right, and that's
not a bad thing. Like the point here is to
exert the the collective power of a group of people, right,
And you can it's just weird. Band I can already
see the threads of rumors and some of the older
(06:54):
issues with some unions where there's an organized uh not
necessarily criminal element, but an organized group maybe pulling strings
within the group. Oh yeah, yeah tail as old as time, Like, yes,
guilds decayed into corruption shoutout City of London. Uh, they
(07:16):
became increasingly unequal and oligarchical, and they repeated the same
problems of all monarchical systems, which is, ultimately they did
not manage to stay meritocracies, right. They ultimately began um
(07:38):
trying to become the governing structure that they originally opposed,
which happens with so many revolutions. It's just humans are
good at a lot of stuff. Group work is not one. Uh.
They like what one thing that really stands out is
if you look at the the old school Western European
(08:02):
or Central European guild system, you've got three stages. Right,
You've got the apprentice, You've got the journeyman, you've got
the master, the journeyman, and well it's also a different degree. Wow, alright,
(08:26):
we're right. And if you got that one. So the
journeyman were these folks who had moved up from their apprenticeship.
They had a little bit of agency in theory. They
could they could go learn from someone in another city, right,
And then ultimately the idea was for them to become
(08:47):
a master. They would create a masterpiece, that's where the
term masterpiece comes from. Uh. And this would elevate them
to a level such that they could also higher on apprentices,
grow them into journeymen, and then if they're you know,
not a terrible person, they would ultimately they would ultimately
(09:11):
facilitate those journeyman becoming masters. The thing is, these journeymen
were often getting getting the short end of the stick
or the fuzzy side of the lollipop. They were they
were getting underpaid, their work was uncredited, they were getting
(09:36):
a lot of restrictions, and so occasionally, sporadically they would
vultron up together and they would you know, it often
happened in capitals of this era, like because a lot
of people from rural environments would become journeyman, and then
they would go to the capital because that's where most
(09:58):
of the work was. And then they would say, okay, everybody,
and you know, Prague or whatever, uh, we all the
journeyman in charge of wool in Prague are gonna say
you have to you have to pay us, and you
have to pay us a standard wage, and we also
have to get like one day off one day. This
(10:21):
is before the concept of the weekend, by the way. Yes, yes,
well think think about this. Really, at the heart of it,
a a journeyman within that system, and you know, to
be described as a journeyman at that time. You have
all of the necessary skills of a master, of the
essential skills of a master, but you have none of
the power of a master. Right and two. And if
(10:44):
you get stuck in that spot where you cannot exert
a power, you cannot grow. You are just kind of
left there as a journeyman with the wages you have,
and everyone above you is satisfied with the work you're producing.
But there's no reason they don't benefit from elevating you
to master, at least not directly. Right. So keeping journeyman
(11:06):
at that level is beneficial for those above them, right.
And of course you can see the perspective of the masters,
you can see the perspective of the journeyman here. And
then banding together. That's kind of a forerunner of what
(11:28):
we would call unions in the West. That's not a
modern labor union because these were just a bunch of
people who basically got together and said, what's going on
here in Prague is malarkey, you know, or what's it
going out here in Paris is not working for us.
If you look at modern labor unions, you're really looking
(11:51):
at the industrial revolution in probably the late seventeen hundreds
in Europe. This was a huge social shift. Why is that?
Why does that sound like a tongue of This is
just a huge social shift anyway, not for nothing. Right
is it called a revolution? People don't think about that
(12:13):
as often as they should. Industrial revolution. It's like American revolution,
It's like French revolution. It is an upending of the
status quo. The here's what happened, and we don't have
to point to villains or heroes here. Uh, this is
something that happened to everybody, from the bottom of the
(12:35):
socioeconomic strata to the very top. A ton of people
used to work in agriculture or they worked in things
that were called cottage industries, and they found their jobs
disappearing because things were increasingly automated. Mechanization came in cottage industry.
(12:57):
Just to be clear for everyone. Uh, disc vibes kind
of like a system of subcontracting. So like you are tailor, right,
and you make um fancy I don't know whatever is
fancy at that time, Like dumb looking tunics that are
(13:18):
very ornate. You make those and as part of your
job as the tailor, you have a bunch of friends.
You get by with a little help from your friends.
You got somebody you know who lives at home. They
make lace. You've got someone you know who like is
in the wool game, and uh, and you sort of
(13:40):
get this all together, you agglomerate it, and then you know,
you end up with um extraordinarily fancy tunic. I don't
mean to call them silly, It's just not my thing anyway.
So some tunics are dope, Okay, yes, hashtag not all tunics,
I got you, man. So the uh, The the is
(14:00):
that when the industrial Revolution occurred in Europe for the
first time in known history, all of that stuff that
people used to do on their own and then send
to some sort of overseer, it all could happen in
the same place. This is the emergence of the factory
(14:24):
and thus the emergence of the factory town. So people
poured into industrial areas. There were a flood of what
you would call like low skilled workers, and they had
absolutely no rights. They were ground to the bones. They died,
They died making those stupid tunics, and their standard of
(14:46):
living plummeted. I just want to point this out. They
probably would have been better on the farm, even as
it's messed up. Well, yeah, because now the master work
is being done by machines, and so now you literally
need hands to move things along that production line. And
(15:07):
that's why, that's why the skill, the skill level requirement
to actually function and create the you know, the same
tunic or you know who whatever it is, is lowered
so much because you're not actually making the tunic. Now
you're perhaps making a part of the tunic with the
help of machines, and then that the tunic itself is
(15:28):
being put together through the machines. And you can just
see how again, like I'm trying to show the perspective
on both sides here. From the perspective of the worker
you are, you don't need to know as much to
create a thing or to be functional in your position,
and from the people who are running the factory, those
(15:48):
people who are now the actual humans who are creating
your goods are just pieces in this machine that are
manufacturing your goods. It is not you know, several prized
individuals who have the skills required to make the thing.
It's people who move the thing along well, put yeah,
cogs right, moving parts and and that's you know, uh, folks,
(16:13):
long time listeners, you know that Matt, and I take
great offense to the idea or the term low skill worker. Agreed, agreed, Yeah,
I'm sorry, and I don't. I only use that even
framing of it as in the way that workers began
to be viewed from that perspective. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah,
(16:38):
Like we obviously know and hopefully everybody knows that there's
not really such a thing as a low skilled worker.
Maybe some executives there there are may be some executives
like skating by on nepotism, you know what I mean? Fine, Uh, no,
(17:02):
I disagree with you, Matt. Matt, you are quite talented
as a very fact. The the the only thing, the
only thing that I think, uh that I think you're
not good at is having high standards and friends. So
thank you for hanging out with me. Sure, so alright,
trade unions is the real thing. So the the what
(17:25):
you need to know is that in the United Kingdoms specifically,
you see the first arrival of modern trade unions, and
they're usually going to be sporadic. Uh, they're restricted to
certain regions or professions. But the governing powers were aware
of this, right because this is a lower class speaking
(17:48):
truth to the people. In power. So it should not
surprise anyone that at various times throughout history, especially in
Western Europe, these things were explicitly outlawed. The concept itself
had not reached a tipping point. If you want to
look at the tipping point, the emergence of the concept
(18:13):
of workers representing themselves, you have to look to the
United States now. Yes, of course, if you listen to
this show, uh, you know that the US gets a
lot of things wrong. And edit me here, Paul, we
rightly on Uncle Sam at times, uh, and I think
we do it in a very fair way. But it
(18:33):
may surprise, it may surprise many of us to know
that the the US now is known as a pretty
anti labor union country, but in many ways it was
home to the modern labor movement. It was. I just
love the concept that every once in a while we
give Uncle Sam a right fair, very British of us. Yes, Ben,
(19:00):
why don't we Why don't we hear a word from
our sponsor and then come right back and learn a
little bit about the history of unions within the United States. Ah,
we have returned, and we are headed to the United States,
the good old US of a. Yes, So the interesting
(19:23):
thing here is that the history of labor disputes the
working class versus the ownership class, the employees versus the employers.
It's older than the American Revolution. If you look back
in sixteen thirty six, you'll see that a bunch of
(19:46):
people working in the fishing industry on this one island
off the coast of Maine went on strike. In sixteen
seventies seven, people working in the transportation industry went on
strike in New York City. And most of those incidents
are temporary and they're isolated, and it was very rare
(20:12):
for these incidents to result in a formation of a
permanent group that would try to bargain with the powers
that be. Uh, mainly because they had very little legal ability,
they have very little agency. UH. If if they were
(20:33):
injured in the result of a strike or something, then
the going consensus was, it's on you, it's your bad. Uh.
There was one criminal prosecution in the colonial era in Savannah,
Georgia in seventy six a bunch of carpenters went on
(20:57):
strike and and the law officially got on them. Now,
don't get us wrong, folks, these people were getting their
heads bashed left and right, and that is typically well. Often,
as you'll see him part two of this week's episode.
Often that remains the case in some way. So the
(21:21):
US gets this tradition of unions or something like unions
and European guilds from their friends across the pond. And
this is where we want to introduce this guy named
Samuel Gompers. I'm sorry to say his name like that.
I think it's a great name anyway, Samuel Gompers. Uh,
(21:43):
don't don't let don't let that delightful name fool you.
He's a big deal. In six he brought together a
couple of craft unions and specifically cigar makers, and he
forms something called the American Federation of Labor the a
f L. That was one of the first big, big
(22:07):
unions in the US. And then fast forward seventy years,
the a f L merges with something called the Congress
of Industrial Organizations. This creates the a f L dash
c i O, and this is one of the largest
(22:27):
labor organizations around. Look, there's a ton of history when
it comes to unions. We're just giving you the highlights
from a very Western perspective. There there is also a
dark side to this history because it turns out pretty
much from the beginning of the concept of unions centuries
(22:51):
and centuries ago, people in power have been trying to
abolish them. Why here's where it gets well, because if
there's a union, then I have to provide my cogs
with things that they want, like wages that are fit
to live within society as well, you know, as well
(23:13):
as healthcare perhaps benefits if you're in the United States
because you have to provide healthcare through a private insurance company, uh,
you know, or things like time off on a regular basis,
not working their hands with their bone. Um, it's it's unions.
I'm been opposed because it does kind of put a
(23:34):
hamper on theoretically your ability to make goods in a
profit at a pace that perhaps you would wish as
an employer, which is well, I mean that you can
at least see that viewpoint right as from historically and
(23:55):
there that that is a feeling I think a thread
that that goes all throughout history and that continues on
today and and there is a deep desire I would say,
on behalf of a large organization's large corporations too, to
stop unionization from happening. Because of the fears of what
(24:18):
may happen to your company, to your profitability, to what
your shareholders will think about your company. If there is
a union within your organization, and it's it's really interesting
something that we found out. Uh. I mean, I would
say a bit firsthand recently, forming a union from within
(24:38):
a company is in itself, necessarily I think, a bit
of a conspiracy. Yeah, yeah, you're agree. You can say
that unions function in their nascent days as a conspiracy
of sorts, and it's it's a conspiracy by necessity at times,
(25:00):
you know, if there are well, talk in a second
about how bad to get, but it's not people necessarily
being extra. It's not people who just have a love
of subterfuge or something like that. They are trying to
avoid retaliation at times, retaliation that includes murder. This is
(25:23):
a real thing that happened. Uh. The on the other
side of this, I like that we're looking at at
multiple angles here. On the other side of this, you
can also absolutely say that anti union activities union busting
falls into the realm of conspiracy. Like union union busting.
(25:44):
All right, there's a ton of consulting agencies who don't
like when we use that phrase. Just like, there's a
ton of crooked, crooked people out there who don't like
being called body brokers. There are companies that exist entire
now they call themselves like employee relationship consultancies or whatever.
(26:07):
If you're seeing this on YouTube, I'm doing a very
disrespectful kind of dance because I don't respect it what
they're doing. They don't like the term union busting, but
you'll hear that term a lot, and union busting collectively
describes a bunch of activities that are meant to either
(26:29):
um at the very least, disrupt an existing trade union
or labor union, or most often nowadays, to prevent them
from forming in the first place. And you have to
ask yourself, regardless of how you feel about a union
or the concept of it, why would these powerful entities
(26:53):
care so much? You know, where's the beef? Well, like
you said, Matt, it would increase cost for a company,
very likely, And it would increase the cost not just
by standardizing a wage or something, but by also guaranteeing
things like healthcare, vacation time, a weekend, which used to
(27:15):
be a hot take for any for anybody who's very
against the idea of unions, like I don't know what
propaganda side you fall on, if it's pro union or
anti union, if you're reading it on a Saturday or
a Sunday, you're reading it because the union stuff will
(27:37):
worked for a second. Uh, Like remember back when, back
when those British people we mentioned earlier, before the break,
when they came to those factory towns, they had zero rights,
no vacation or guarantee of wages. Obviously people were paid
according to their demographic rather than they're a bill city. Uh.
(28:01):
And they had no like guarantee that they would have
a job tomorrow. Is zip zilch, not a you get
nothing Lebowski. And there's there's this thing called the Combination laws,
And in eighteen twenty four Britain repealed those laws. This
meant that it was no longer illegal to have a
(28:25):
labor organization. Unions used to be such a big deal
that state powers banned them. It was it was like
selling meth or something. You know, it was treated with
that level of um tyranny. So once it's no longer illegal,
(28:47):
these groups of employees they posse up, they vultron up,
and they start things like the Friendly Society of Agricultural
Laborers spelled with a you in there right because it's
it's British. Uh. They this was two and these folks
mainly wanted to make sure that their wages stopped going down.
(29:12):
They weren't trying to make a bunch of money. They
were trying to make sure that they made something close
to the same amount of money each year. And any
employer they agreed this is price fixing. Basically, they agreed
that anybody who was going to hire a member of
(29:33):
the agriculture the Friendly Society of Agricultural Laborers, would need
to pay them a minimum wage. Now that is not
a hot take, but just two years after that, the
members of the landowning class complained, and they complained to
their friends who are in power, and the leaders of
(29:56):
that movement, leaders of that organization were arrested, they were charged,
and they were convicted. I'm laughing because this is a
silly law. They were convicted not of organizing labor. They
were convicted of Get this match the swearing of secret oaths.
(30:19):
That sounds a lot like the anti Freemason movement that came.
I want to say after maybe that's around the same
time the anti Mason movement. You can't that's that's a
multiple nations in Europe had that idea, like one cannot
(30:39):
be a member of a secret society, but the swearing
of secret oaths. I get where they're going, but they're
better ways to write that, I think. So anyway, these
guys they don't get killed. They're sentenced to a very
specific kind of punishment at that time, transportation, which meant
(31:01):
they were sent to the continent of Australia and they
were going to be sent there for seven years. But
there's this huge grassroots public backlash and they eventually are released.
But we say all this, yeah, we see all this
to point out the odds were originally retty stacked against
(31:21):
the concept of unions because again, as as you said,
it doesn't make sense from the perspective of the people
at the top. Absolutely, I know it's just an a
side guys, But just to throw it in, we're talking
about eighteen thirty four when the Friendly Society of Agricultural
Laborers got shipped off to Australia. The Anti Masonic Party
(31:44):
within the United States formed in eighteen eight so just
a little bit before that, and um just for that
history and only functioned until eighteen forty and then it
came back and had like a second run. But just
it's interesting that there was an anti secret oaths trend
going on. So let's talk about let's talk about some
(32:08):
of this stuff. Uh, let's talk about strikes. So a strike,
you've heard of this. A strike is when a group
of workers stops working and they're protesting maybe unsafe working
conditions or they're using it as of flex during negotiations
(32:28):
between a union and management. Today, strikes are largely, at
least in the US, they're largely peaceful events. This was
very much not the case back in the day. If
you look back through let's say the eighteen hundreds, you
will see that numerous strikes were put down hard hired militia, police,
(32:57):
actual US government troops reigned fire on on people who
were just like, again, these are not you know, these
are not bad faith actors. These are people who are
saying stuff like, hey, please spend a couple of bucks
to make the uh, the lumber mill less dangerous. I
(33:18):
would like to have both of my hands at the
end of the day. And then multiple forces were like, no,
we're gonna shoot you. That's what happened. And I would
say the one of The major thrust of this episode
is to talk about this and the groups that physically
pushed back and fought human beings that were attempting to
(33:41):
strike for all the things we've mentioned, better wages and everything. Um,
there's a group ben I believe they're called the Pinkerton's
or is it the Pinkerton Detective Detective Agency was? Yeah, ah,
these guys ak Matt Frederick's favorites. Yeah, as I stayed
(34:08):
in clearly previously in the episode. You now they're they're
they're they're pretty horrified. These the Pinkerton Detective Agency is.
They're the guys who would go in and intimidate striking workers,
would uh escort people who were not striking but needed
to like move through a big crowd of strikers, especially scabs, right,
(34:32):
or the idea of other workers who were hired to
replace striking workers at least temporarily, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, yeah,
the Pinkerton's story is worthy of its own episode. It
is at its origin, it's um kind of an American
success story because we're talking the guy who started at
(34:55):
Pinkerton himself Scottish immigrant, very good at detective work. And
then it just sort of went off the rails. We'll
talk more about Pinkerton's in the second part of this
week's episode, but for now, we want to give you
a sense of how how strikes worked um and and
(35:16):
what happens when they go wrong. So on May one,
there was a nationwide strike leading to something called the
Haymarket Riot. This remains one of the most infamous and
tragic events of this story. Here's what they were striking for,
(35:38):
by the way, an eight hour work day. That's it.
They wanted at nine to five. That's all they wanted,
and something many of us love, slash, enjoy, slash, get
to have right right, Yes, I like the slashes there.
(35:58):
Uh so there was is after this strike. So three
we said May first, So three days later there's a
rally in a place in Chicago, Haymarket, and this rally
is protesting the laws, crackdown, violent crackdown to a strike
(36:21):
by employees at a place called McCormick Reaper Works, not
related to our good friend Joe McCormick of stuff to
play your mind or death themselves as in the Reapers.
It's a hay Market, guys. Yeah. And the thing about
(36:41):
this rally is the weather sucked that day, So there
weren't a ton of people. There weren't as many people
as they were hoping, right or the rallies organizers. There
were a few hundred police move in, they want to
disperse the crowd and someone, this person has lost to history.
(37:01):
We don't know whether it was a protester or an
agent provocateur, or whether this is a bill of goods
that you're sold in textbooks. Somebody threw a bomb and
it blew up in the mob, and then pandemonium strikes.
The police are firing guns. Um, it's likely that some
(37:24):
of the protesting workers at firearms. There's no official tally
even now in there's no official tally of how many
civilians died, but we know seven h seven police died
and sixty more were injured, and a lot of those
injuries for that sixty officers came from their fellow officers
(37:48):
friendly fire, you would call it. So anyway this happens,
it's crazy. You know, Chicago is super corrupt at this
time and maybe today, but even more corrupt back then.
And someone's like her rub for up for um, something
must be done, so they arrest a lot of protesters.
(38:11):
This is before cops were really arrested for doing crime. Uh.
They arrest folks who have ideologies like socialism or anarchists. Right.
Eight of them are charged and convicted for not swearing
secret oaths this time, but inflammatory speeches and publications that
(38:32):
allegedly caused the violence. This is a kangaroo court. There's
no there's no way to escape it. It's a kangaroo court.
And everybody who is outside of this, everybody who is
essentially not controlled by the people in power, are like,
they're saying, what gives. Four of those who are convicted
(38:56):
are hanged in One guy doesn't get hanged because he
kills himself by putting a stick of dynamite in his
own mouth while he's in prison, which makes you wonder,
you know, shades of Epstein. But on June there's this
(39:22):
guy's a new governor of Illinois. His name is John
p Altgeld, and he says, hey, the three of you
who are still alive, I'll give you a full pardon.
And this is the reason that may first became the
(39:43):
like international Celebration of Workers, because other labor leaders saw
this and they thought there was some light at the
end of the tunnel. Uh, but you you may be
asking yourself, what about Labor Day? Is this where Matt
and Ben talked about Labor Day, Well, it's called May
(40:03):
Day in some countries and throughout a lot of the world,
it's celebrated on May one. Here in the US, it
is I think it's the first Monday in September. And
uh that is like some stuff they don't want you
to know history about it. I don't know about you,
but growing up, whenever I heard Labor Day, I always
(40:25):
thought it was kind of paradoxical. You know, it's a
day off, but it's called Labor Day. A kid, you, Matt,
I used to think. I used to think it was
like a commemoration of what women have to go through
giving birth. Oh, like a target that you could aim for, like, oh,
we gotta hit Labor Day this year. Uh so let's
(40:50):
get started. It's you know, it's late December, early January. No, alright, So, um, yeah,
I don't know. I didn't know much about Labor Day
until I got to college, and so I wonder how
many people out there listening even knew that, um that
May Day exists. And then also, you know, Labor Day
(41:13):
within the United States and as it's celebrated in September. Ben,
I really want to look. I said it was one
of the most import parts of this episode. I may
have been a little wrong there, but I really want
to get back into the Pinkerton's. We do that. Yeah,
let's you know what, let's pause for a word from
our sponsors, and let's get back to some villains. And
(41:39):
we've returned. It is pretty obvious that union slash anti
union conflicts were way more blatantly violent back in the day.
We're talking about Robert Barrens. You know, we're talking about
decade aristocrats, uh nepotistic ne'er do wells, murderous bosses, crooked cops,
(42:02):
you name it. They're all there, all the hits, all
the good ones. And out of all of these rapscallions,
the most fascinating are probably the Pinkerton's, the Peakerton National
Detective Agency. Let's talk a little bit more about that.
So the Pinkerton's, they were founded as a private police
(42:25):
force in Chicago in eighteen fifty by a Scottish immigrant.
And this guy's story is is pretty interesting. The founder
was actually a Scottish immigrant who started off as a
barrel maker, but he was so good at catching local
ne'er do wells that eventually he stopped making and repairing
(42:48):
barrels and started, uh started making a difference in Chicago's
crime scene. Yeah, barrels can wait, we got crooks to catch.
That's kind of cool to kind of respect to that,
Like I feel like that's cool. It's just it's it
becomes a weapon, right, Any any police force, any law
(43:10):
enforcement agency, is a weapon against the whatever the thing
is that it's aimed at. And in this case, the Pinkerton's,
in my opinion, got aimed at the wrong thing. Agreed me,
Because there's one thing that you don't often here described
in a lot of media, but it's true. One of
(43:30):
the powers of the state really is just the monopoly
on violence, the monopoly on legal violence. And the Pinkerton's
were became something that blurred that line between private militia
and state power when they became the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
When they went official, they first were focused on catching
(43:53):
street level crime, you know, thieves, burglars, but they got
a reputation for results, and powerful people started paying attention,
and so the Pinkerton's branched out. They diversified and they
became the bane of the labor movement. They were enthusiastic, ruthless,
(44:13):
vicious strike breakers, and they could break the law because
the people who made the laws were hiring them. It
feels like we experienced some of the same things, at
least in our lifetime. I think, Ben, it's it's really frustrating,
and you know, there's um it's depicted in fiction a
lot the Pinkerton's or or Pinkertons like organizations companies that
(44:37):
do this, the police force that's hired specifically to break strikes,
and the severity that you're I just don't want it
to be lost on people, the severity of the beatings
and the violence that was enacted by these guys. Yeah,
it bears further scrutiny because the story is often swept
under the rug, as is a lot of the story
(44:59):
of the La Aber movement in the United States. Whether
you love it or hate it, whatever your personal ideology is,
knowledge is power, and so we should all be very
aware of the moments when someone doesn't want you to
know about a thing. I mean, I I just accidentally
talked about the point of our show anyway. Yeah, how
(45:21):
ruthless are the Pinkerton's. Uh you could classify their actions
against strikers or the working class under something like by
any means necessary. Remember those anarchists we mentioned earlier in
the show, the ones who were arrested after the Haymarket
riot with zero proof. By the way, it was a
kangaroo court. The Pinkerton's sent those folks down the river,
(45:45):
and they even had a Pinkerton's operative perjur themselves go
to the sham trial and just make stuff up to
send these folks to their deaths to the gallows. And
that's only one example. There are multiple examples, so more
recent than you might think. Another example of Pinkerton's approach
to unions can be found in something called the eighteen
(46:08):
two Homestead Strike. It features our old pal Andrew Carnegie,
steel tycoon, but a person like anybody else. He has
good days, he has bad days. When this story takes place,
Andy is having just a bad week. It's having a
bad week, Matt. You know, he's worried about rich guy
(46:30):
problems because the employees at his steel mill over in Homestead,
Pennsylvania are also having a bad week. They've been having
a series of bad years they're fed up. You know,
there were labor discussions occurring at his steel mill between
I guess Carnegie and his representatives and the workers, and
he drapped it up a new contract that actually lowered
(46:54):
the workers wages UM and that didn't go well. Uh,
probably not a great idea. But again, as we've been
talking throughout these episodes, I don't know the real pressures
that Carnegie was under, or of that the steel mill
itself was under, or whatever. Those pressures were economic pressures
(47:15):
that made him believe the right move was to lower
wages to lower the production costs UM. But those are
human beings with families, and it was probably just not
the smartest move, but somebody had to test it out
throughout history. What if we lower the employees wages. Let's
just give it a go, you know what I mean,
(47:35):
Like like those people who are pick up artists and
just say the same terrible line to a hundred folks,
thinking it's not thee that are too smart to fall
for this, it's the one that this will work on.
So yes, Carnegie, Carnegie said, just shoots his shot, as
you would say in the parlance of our day, and surprise, surprise,
(47:57):
the employees refused to sign it because it is in
fact a much worse steal than what they had in
the beginning. You could almost say, and I'm sure many
members of the union thought this. Uh, you could almost
say that it was an offer made in retaliation for
the inconvenience of of asking for some basic considerations. So
(48:20):
Carnegie gets his boy, Henry Frick to come in come
into play. Henry Frick is the technical term here, a
real pill. He is a piece of work as a person,
and given his personality and his bedside manner, Uh, he
is what hr would call an area of opportunity, and
(48:44):
not as a compliment, but because in general is an
area of an opera of opportunity. As as a person,
he has the opportunity to be better. Uh. Here's how
he responds. He looks at the employees of this steel
mill and they're about three thousand, eight hundred of them,
and he says, okay, you're all fired. All of you
(49:07):
were fired. And furthermore, I'm bringing in the Pinkerton's. So
he gets the Pinkerton Agency, He gets three hundred of
their operatives who are armed by the way to occupy
the property. The former employees don't like this. Tensions are high.
This leads to a twelve hour gun battle. You thought
(49:27):
the Amazon stuff was acrimonious, folks, No, these people are
bringing heat and they're not doing it a posture. They
are firing live rounds at each other. Eventually, three Pinkerton's
go down. At least seven employees are murdered. The Pinkerton's
get the word to stand down, but the damage is done.
(49:52):
The strike ends up collapsing. And this guy, by by
the way, also Frick was taken at home. Dude. He
he was threatening to evict workers from their houses, not
just fire them. Yeah, think about what it would take
for you to show up to your job site wherever
(50:12):
it is that you work with, maybe with a gun,
maybe with a pipe, maybe with just yourself, but with
a willingness to go to battle to keep your job.
What would it take. Not only is that a lot
of fortitude, that's you can you can tell that people
needed that job. The individual of the three thousand, eight
(50:32):
hundred employees needed that job. And uh wow, I can't
believe it was a gun battle at their job site
to keep their job. That's just that blows my mind. Yeah,
and now we have to well, you know, I want
to say, in this case, it's clear that the Pinkerton's
(50:54):
and Carnegie and Frick, they were doing evil things right
there is all. You know, the old adage is true
when you talk about conflict, if you are in conflict
and active conflict, then you have already messed up because
you should be able to In most conflicts you should
(51:15):
be able to de escalate into some sort of negotiation.
But this, yeah, this is just again a couple of
cases of Pinkerton's doing some very villainous things. You can, however,
learn more about Pinkerton's. We're We're excited. I think they're
an episode all their own, if you you can go.
(51:38):
They're still around obviously, I think we established this before.
They're going by Pinkerton Comprehensive Risk Management. Uh. You can
hop on their website pinkerton dot com right now and
you'll see some very interesting things about the Pinkerton's stuff
that we may not get to in part two of
(52:00):
this episode, but we will definitely get to in a
third episode. Um, we're going to be examining the current
state of unions or collective bargaining as well as the
future of union busting. Conspiracies. Oh my gosh. I don't
want to spoil it, Matt, but it's it's really tough.
We're We're also going to, by the way, talk a
(52:20):
little bit about the imperfections of unions, because unions, being
organizations created by humans, have all the foibles of any
other human created organization, you know, like unions did work
actively to suppress some demographics in the past, you know,
(52:41):
and they have been um leveraged by organized crime, etcetera, etcetera.
But it goes so much deeper than the conspiracies of history.
There are active anti union conspiracies today. That's what I
would say. What do you think, Yeah, I mean, for sure,
there are active conspiracies against those who want to organize, uh,
(53:03):
for the purposes of more fair labor practices and you know,
payment and everything. Um. Sorry, Ben, I got stuck on
the Pinkerton website. Here I went on, I went under
our approach and then checked out our story and under
our under our story, Ben, the last thing it says
(53:24):
in that section is being a Pinkerton agent means we
are your trusted partner, because at Pinkerton we never sleep.
I know. I love it. Uh, It's it's true. It is.
It is true. I wouldn't say it's strong, brave, tender,
and true, but it is true that they don't sleep.
(53:46):
If you want to understand that reference, check out the
part of the website Matt's talking about. There's a neat
little video that is kind of propaganda that's fun to watch.
And and this is just a quick disclaimer here. We
have no idea what the Pinkerton Agency is actually like
right now to work there or to be whatever it
is that an agent is now. Uh, we're describing the
(54:08):
Pinkerton's back in the day in this episode. Yes, yes,
we're describing them back in the day. But we will
talk a little bit more about the modern day in
the future. In the meantime, we can't wait to hear
your opinions, fellow conspiracy realists, because you know, Matt and
Mission Control and I are well aware that unions have
(54:31):
become a highly divisive, highly politicized concept here in the US.
We are pretty sure that we know the reasons why,
some of which verge into the realm of propaganda conspiracy.
But but again, we want to provide a balanced look
(54:52):
at this. So now you know a little bit of
the history of labor movements from their roots in Europe
all the way up and now. And you know some
of the problems. But what about the future. That's the
question we're going to ask, So stay tuned and in
the meantime, we can't wait to hear from you. What
(55:12):
do you think? Do you think unions are divisive? Do
you have your own personal war stories or anecdotes or
experiences with labor organizations? And if so, uh, what do
you wish your fellow conspiracy realists knew about them? For
the good or for the ill? Uh? We can't wait
(55:33):
to share those stories. We try to be easy to
find online. Yes, just search for conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy
Stuff Show and whichever app you use on Twitter, Facebook,
and YouTube. We are conspiracy Stuff on Instagram Conspiracy Stuff Show.
We would love to hear from you, so please reach
out in those ways if you'd like. If not, you
(55:53):
can use your mouth and your phone to give us
a call and leave a voicemail. That's correct one Pinkerton
No I'm kidding. It is a free number to call.
That is one eight three three st d w y
t K. You will hear a familiar voice letting you
know you're in the right place you left three minutes.
(56:14):
Those three minutes are yours. Go nuts, go ham on it,
get weird, give yourself a cool nickname or moniker. Let
us know whether we can use your name and or
voice on the air. Tell us what's on your mind.
Tell your fellow listens what's on your mind. And most importantly,
don't feel like you have to edit yourself. That goes
(56:37):
against the mission of this show. It's antithetical to us.
It's anathema and just taking out the A words here
matt uh. Instead, if you have some links you want
to provide, if you have some photographs you want to send,
if you want to usher us further into the rabbit hole,
let's keep the thunder here. If if it's if you
(56:58):
can hear it, it is becoming a dark, stormy night
here in our fair metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia, which means
it's time for us to sign off. It's time for
you to sign on. Do check out our book coming
out in October. And if you want to help us
find the new rabbit holes and to help us figure
out more stuff they don't want you to know, then
(57:22):
all you have to do is shoot us a good
old fashioned email. We'd love to hear from you. We
are conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they
(57:49):
Don't want you to know is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt. Our colleague Nol is on a
real adventure, but we'll be returning very soon. They call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Hall Mission controlled decade. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. This is uh special episode
(00:49):
for us. This is a two part episode, is the
whole week, so we do hope you like it. Uh.
We want to start out with some full disclosure and
transparency is very important here uh and stuff they want
want you to know. We would like to note that
our parent company are Corporate Overlord's I Heart Media, recently
(01:11):
recognize something called the I Heart Podcast Union. Now, Matt,
you and Nol and I are not involved with these negotiations,
but this did inspire us to take a closer look
at the concept as well as the conspiracies involved. Yes,
we've been watching the process happen right before our eyes.
(01:33):
We've been getting updates from our very own Paul mission
controled decade. Who I hope Paul, I hope you don't
mind us saying this, but you were involved and we
in a like in leading the charge and as you
listen to this series, if you have any questions, specifically
about the I Heeart Podcast Union, Paul has said he
is ready to hear those questions and will respond. You
(01:54):
can send those questions to us conspiracy at I heart
radio dot com. Here we go. If you live in
the United States, regardless of what sort of job or
career you have, you have probably heard of something called
unions labor unions specifically. In this two part episode, we're
(02:16):
exploring what a union is, where it comes from, and
why so many powerful people and institutions seem opposed to them.
Will also explore the controversies and corruption that have occurred
within unions themselves at times. In short, honestly, fellow conspiracy realist,
(02:37):
there's a lot of stuff they don't want you to
know here, So let's start at the beginning. Here are
the facts, Matt. What is a union? How did they begin?
Why is this a thing? Is this new? Is this old?
What's what's the school. Oh, this is quite old. Uh.
It's a common thing throughout history. When there are a
(02:58):
lot of individual a means, generally humans working together in
the same profession, they will often team up and say, hey, oh,
we're a lot like each other. We we have the
same needs and the same wants, and we do kind
of the same thing. How can we work together? If
you look to ancient Mesopotamia, there are laws there that
have really echoed from that time through until today. And
(03:23):
these things are like normalized wages, things that will moderately
protect workers. Let's say, moderately protect workers. That's the goal
at least from the workers perspective, not always from uh,
the employer's perspective of the people, you know, deciding what
those workers have to do. Um. And you can look
to also Egypt Rome. They're similar organizations that arise from
(03:47):
those civilizations. UM, similar kinds of rules as well. Yeah,
and then it's true. It's an ancient thing, and it
makes sense. Human beings are gregarious. They like to have
stuffing common, right, and most people like to think that
they're having an okay life. I don't think that's a
hot take. I mean, okay, so let's go right, the
(04:11):
The origins of these ideas are are quite ancient. Let's
go to Europe. It's uh, Matt, let's say it's like
the sixteenth or seventeenth century. At this point. Economies in
in that part of the world are largely run by
a series of things called guilds. Guilds are organizations of
(04:35):
merchants who all work in the same business. Now, yes, folks,
we'll do a City of London episode later. But the
City of London, that's in London, whatever, But it's a
whole thing. It's it's its own bag of badgers. Uh.
In theory, guilds were built with a good faith motivation.
(05:02):
They were protective outfits. Like if if Matt and Michigantrol
and I all sold wool, right, we're all somehow involved
in the wool game. We would join up with other
folks in that game, and then we would say, okay, look,
let's all sell stuff for roughly the same price, and
(05:27):
let's make sure that we can collectively not get screwed over.
And in these yeah, I mean, that's understandable. There's nothing
sinister about that. In these guilds, these workers would come
together again. Originally and then in theory to share expertise,
(05:49):
to support charities at times, like to take care of
you know, um, if if our fellow uh wool person
passed away, we would band together, we posse up, and
we take care of their family. Right. We will form
rules and policies for trade and commerce, and then we
(06:10):
would lobby whatever state or church or arbitrary monarchy was
in charge. We would lobby them to not scross over again.
It's a protective thing, right. Yeah, there's lots of working together,
and you you can kind of see some similarities here.
(06:31):
Maybe you're already hearing them between highly organized groups, especially
groups that exert some kind of power, right, and that's
not a bad thing. Like the point here is to
exert the the collective power of a group of people, right,
And you can it's just weird. Band I can already
see the threads of rumors and some of the older
(06:54):
issues with some unions where there's an organized uh not
necessarily criminal element, but an organized group maybe pulling strings
within the group. Oh yeah, yeah tail as old as time, Like, yes,
guilds decayed into corruption shoutout City of London. Uh, they
(07:16):
became increasingly unequal and oligarchical, and they repeated the same
problems of all monarchical systems, which is, ultimately they did
not manage to stay meritocracies, right. They ultimately began um
(07:38):
trying to become the governing structure that they originally opposed,
which happens with so many revolutions. It's just humans are
good at a lot of stuff. Group work is not one. Uh.
They like what one thing that really stands out is
if you look at the the old school Western European
(08:02):
or Central European guild system, you've got three stages. Right,
You've got the apprentice, You've got the journeyman, you've got
the master, the journeyman, and well it's also a different degree. Wow, alright,
(08:26):
we're right. And if you got that one. So the
journeyman were these folks who had moved up from their apprenticeship.
They had a little bit of agency in theory. They
could they could go learn from someone in another city, right,
And then ultimately the idea was for them to become
(08:47):
a master. They would create a masterpiece, that's where the
term masterpiece comes from. Uh. And this would elevate them
to a level such that they could also higher on apprentices,
grow them into journeymen, and then if they're you know,
not a terrible person, they would ultimately they would ultimately
(09:11):
facilitate those journeyman becoming masters. The thing is, these journeymen
were often getting getting the short end of the stick
or the fuzzy side of the lollipop. They were they
were getting underpaid, their work was uncredited, they were getting
(09:36):
a lot of restrictions, and so occasionally, sporadically they would
vultron up together and they would you know, it often
happened in capitals of this era, like because a lot
of people from rural environments would become journeyman, and then
they would go to the capital because that's where most
(09:58):
of the work was. And then they would say, okay, everybody,
and you know, Prague or whatever, uh, we all the
journeyman in charge of wool in Prague are gonna say
you have to you have to pay us, and you
have to pay us a standard wage, and we also
have to get like one day off one day. This
(10:21):
is before the concept of the weekend, by the way. Yes, yes,
well think think about this. Really, at the heart of it,
a a journeyman within that system, and you know, to
be described as a journeyman at that time. You have
all of the necessary skills of a master, of the
essential skills of a master, but you have none of
the power of a master. Right and two. And if
(10:44):
you get stuck in that spot where you cannot exert
a power, you cannot grow. You are just kind of
left there as a journeyman with the wages you have,
and everyone above you is satisfied with the work you're producing.
But there's no reason they don't benefit from elevating you
to master, at least not directly. Right. So keeping journeyman
(11:06):
at that level is beneficial for those above them, right.
And of course you can see the perspective of the masters,
you can see the perspective of the journeyman here. And
then banding together. That's kind of a forerunner of what
(11:28):
we would call unions in the West. That's not a
modern labor union because these were just a bunch of
people who basically got together and said, what's going on
here in Prague is malarkey, you know, or what's it
going out here in Paris is not working for us.
If you look at modern labor unions, you're really looking
(11:51):
at the industrial revolution in probably the late seventeen hundreds
in Europe. This was a huge social shift. Why is that?
Why does that sound like a tongue of This is
just a huge social shift anyway, not for nothing. Right
is it called a revolution? People don't think about that
(12:13):
as often as they should. Industrial revolution. It's like American revolution,
It's like French revolution. It is an upending of the
status quo. The here's what happened, and we don't have
to point to villains or heroes here. Uh, this is
something that happened to everybody, from the bottom of the
(12:35):
socioeconomic strata to the very top. A ton of people
used to work in agriculture or they worked in things
that were called cottage industries, and they found their jobs
disappearing because things were increasingly automated. Mechanization came in cottage industry.
(12:57):
Just to be clear for everyone. Uh, disc vibes kind
of like a system of subcontracting. So like you are tailor, right,
and you make um fancy I don't know whatever is
fancy at that time, Like dumb looking tunics that are
(13:18):
very ornate. You make those and as part of your
job as the tailor, you have a bunch of friends.
You get by with a little help from your friends.
You got somebody you know who lives at home. They
make lace. You've got someone you know who like is
in the wool game, and uh, and you sort of
(13:40):
get this all together, you agglomerate it, and then you know,
you end up with um extraordinarily fancy tunic. I don't
mean to call them silly, It's just not my thing anyway.
So some tunics are dope, Okay, yes, hashtag not all tunics,
I got you, man. So the uh, The the is
(14:00):
that when the industrial Revolution occurred in Europe for the
first time in known history, all of that stuff that
people used to do on their own and then send
to some sort of overseer, it all could happen in
the same place. This is the emergence of the factory
(14:24):
and thus the emergence of the factory town. So people
poured into industrial areas. There were a flood of what
you would call like low skilled workers, and they had
absolutely no rights. They were ground to the bones. They died,
They died making those stupid tunics, and their standard of
(14:46):
living plummeted. I just want to point this out. They
probably would have been better on the farm, even as
it's messed up. Well, yeah, because now the master work
is being done by machines, and so now you literally
need hands to move things along that production line. And
(15:07):
that's why, that's why the skill, the skill level requirement
to actually function and create the you know, the same
tunic or you know who whatever it is, is lowered
so much because you're not actually making the tunic. Now
you're perhaps making a part of the tunic with the
help of machines, and then that the tunic itself is
(15:28):
being put together through the machines. And you can just
see how again, like I'm trying to show the perspective
on both sides here. From the perspective of the worker
you are, you don't need to know as much to
create a thing or to be functional in your position,
and from the people who are running the factory, those
(15:48):
people who are now the actual humans who are creating
your goods are just pieces in this machine that are
manufacturing your goods. It is not you know, several prized
individuals who have the skills required to make the thing.
It's people who move the thing along well, put yeah,
cogs right, moving parts and and that's you know, uh, folks,
(16:13):
long time listeners, you know that Matt, and I take
great offense to the idea or the term low skill worker. Agreed, agreed, Yeah,
I'm sorry, and I don't. I only use that even
framing of it as in the way that workers began
to be viewed from that perspective. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah,
(16:38):
Like we obviously know and hopefully everybody knows that there's
not really such a thing as a low skilled worker.
Maybe some executives there there are may be some executives
like skating by on nepotism, you know what I mean? Fine, Uh, no,
(17:02):
I disagree with you, Matt. Matt, you are quite talented
as a very fact. The the the only thing, the
only thing that I think, uh that I think you're
not good at is having high standards and friends. So
thank you for hanging out with me. Sure, so alright,
trade unions is the real thing. So the the what
(17:25):
you need to know is that in the United Kingdoms specifically,
you see the first arrival of modern trade unions, and
they're usually going to be sporadic. Uh, they're restricted to
certain regions or professions. But the governing powers were aware
of this, right because this is a lower class speaking
(17:48):
truth to the people. In power. So it should not
surprise anyone that at various times throughout history, especially in
Western Europe, these things were explicitly outlawed. The concept itself
had not reached a tipping point. If you want to
look at the tipping point, the emergence of the concept
(18:13):
of workers representing themselves, you have to look to the
United States now. Yes, of course, if you listen to
this show, uh, you know that the US gets a
lot of things wrong. And edit me here, Paul, we
rightly on Uncle Sam at times, uh, and I think
we do it in a very fair way. But it
(18:33):
may surprise, it may surprise many of us to know
that the the US now is known as a pretty
anti labor union country, but in many ways it was
home to the modern labor movement. It was. I just
love the concept that every once in a while we
give Uncle Sam a right fair, very British of us. Yes, Ben,
(19:00):
why don't we Why don't we hear a word from
our sponsor and then come right back and learn a
little bit about the history of unions within the United States. Ah,
we have returned, and we are headed to the United States,
the good old US of a. Yes, So the interesting
(19:23):
thing here is that the history of labor disputes the
working class versus the ownership class, the employees versus the employers.
It's older than the American Revolution. If you look back
in sixteen thirty six, you'll see that a bunch of
(19:46):
people working in the fishing industry on this one island
off the coast of Maine went on strike. In sixteen
seventies seven, people working in the transportation industry went on
strike in New York City. And most of those incidents
are temporary and they're isolated, and it was very rare
(20:12):
for these incidents to result in a formation of a
permanent group that would try to bargain with the powers
that be. Uh, mainly because they had very little legal ability,
they have very little agency. UH. If if they were
(20:33):
injured in the result of a strike or something, then
the going consensus was, it's on you, it's your bad. Uh.
There was one criminal prosecution in the colonial era in Savannah,
Georgia in seventy six a bunch of carpenters went on
(20:57):
strike and and the law officially got on them. Now,
don't get us wrong, folks, these people were getting their
heads bashed left and right, and that is typically well. Often,
as you'll see him part two of this week's episode.
Often that remains the case in some way. So the
(21:21):
US gets this tradition of unions or something like unions
and European guilds from their friends across the pond. And
this is where we want to introduce this guy named
Samuel Gompers. I'm sorry to say his name like that.
I think it's a great name anyway, Samuel Gompers. Uh,
(21:43):
don't don't let don't let that delightful name fool you.
He's a big deal. In six he brought together a
couple of craft unions and specifically cigar makers, and he
forms something called the American Federation of Labor the a
f L. That was one of the first big, big
(22:07):
unions in the US. And then fast forward seventy years,
the a f L merges with something called the Congress
of Industrial Organizations. This creates the a f L dash
c i O, and this is one of the largest
(22:27):
labor organizations around. Look, there's a ton of history when
it comes to unions. We're just giving you the highlights
from a very Western perspective. There there is also a
dark side to this history because it turns out pretty
much from the beginning of the concept of unions centuries
(22:51):
and centuries ago, people in power have been trying to
abolish them. Why here's where it gets well, because if
there's a union, then I have to provide my cogs
with things that they want, like wages that are fit
to live within society as well, you know, as well
(23:13):
as healthcare perhaps benefits if you're in the United States
because you have to provide healthcare through a private insurance company, uh,
you know, or things like time off on a regular basis,
not working their hands with their bone. Um, it's it's unions.
I'm been opposed because it does kind of put a
(23:34):
hamper on theoretically your ability to make goods in a
profit at a pace that perhaps you would wish as
an employer, which is well, I mean that you can
at least see that viewpoint right as from historically and
(23:55):
there that that is a feeling I think a thread
that that goes all throughout history and that continues on
today and and there is a deep desire I would say,
on behalf of a large organization's large corporations too, to
stop unionization from happening. Because of the fears of what
(24:18):
may happen to your company, to your profitability, to what
your shareholders will think about your company. If there is
a union within your organization, and it's it's really interesting
something that we found out. Uh. I mean, I would
say a bit firsthand recently, forming a union from within
(24:38):
a company is in itself, necessarily I think, a bit
of a conspiracy. Yeah, yeah, you're agree. You can say
that unions function in their nascent days as a conspiracy
of sorts, and it's it's a conspiracy by necessity at times,
(25:00):
you know, if there are well, talk in a second
about how bad to get, but it's not people necessarily
being extra. It's not people who just have a love
of subterfuge or something like that. They are trying to
avoid retaliation at times, retaliation that includes murder. This is
(25:23):
a real thing that happened. Uh. The on the other
side of this, I like that we're looking at at
multiple angles here. On the other side of this, you
can also absolutely say that anti union activities union busting
falls into the realm of conspiracy. Like union union busting.
(25:44):
All right, there's a ton of consulting agencies who don't
like when we use that phrase. Just like, there's a
ton of crooked, crooked people out there who don't like
being called body brokers. There are companies that exist entire
now they call themselves like employee relationship consultancies or whatever.
(26:07):
If you're seeing this on YouTube, I'm doing a very
disrespectful kind of dance because I don't respect it what
they're doing. They don't like the term union busting, but
you'll hear that term a lot, and union busting collectively
describes a bunch of activities that are meant to either
(26:29):
um at the very least, disrupt an existing trade union
or labor union, or most often nowadays, to prevent them
from forming in the first place. And you have to
ask yourself, regardless of how you feel about a union
or the concept of it, why would these powerful entities
(26:53):
care so much? You know, where's the beef? Well, like
you said, Matt, it would increase cost for a company,
very likely, And it would increase the cost not just
by standardizing a wage or something, but by also guaranteeing
things like healthcare, vacation time, a weekend, which used to
(27:15):
be a hot take for any for anybody who's very
against the idea of unions, like I don't know what
propaganda side you fall on, if it's pro union or
anti union, if you're reading it on a Saturday or
a Sunday, you're reading it because the union stuff will
(27:37):
worked for a second. Uh, Like remember back when, back
when those British people we mentioned earlier, before the break,
when they came to those factory towns, they had zero rights,
no vacation or guarantee of wages. Obviously people were paid
according to their demographic rather than they're a bill city. Uh.
(28:01):
And they had no like guarantee that they would have
a job tomorrow. Is zip zilch, not a you get
nothing Lebowski. And there's there's this thing called the Combination laws,
And in eighteen twenty four Britain repealed those laws. This
meant that it was no longer illegal to have a
(28:25):
labor organization. Unions used to be such a big deal
that state powers banned them. It was it was like
selling meth or something. You know, it was treated with
that level of um tyranny. So once it's no longer illegal,
(28:47):
these groups of employees they posse up, they vultron up,
and they start things like the Friendly Society of Agricultural
Laborers spelled with a you in there right because it's
it's British. Uh. They this was two and these folks
mainly wanted to make sure that their wages stopped going down.
(29:12):
They weren't trying to make a bunch of money. They
were trying to make sure that they made something close
to the same amount of money each year. And any
employer they agreed this is price fixing. Basically, they agreed
that anybody who was going to hire a member of
(29:33):
the agriculture the Friendly Society of Agricultural Laborers, would need
to pay them a minimum wage. Now that is not
a hot take, but just two years after that, the
members of the landowning class complained, and they complained to
their friends who are in power, and the leaders of
(29:56):
that movement, leaders of that organization were arrested, they were charged,
and they were convicted. I'm laughing because this is a
silly law. They were convicted not of organizing labor. They
were convicted of Get this match the swearing of secret oaths.
(30:19):
That sounds a lot like the anti Freemason movement that came.
I want to say after maybe that's around the same
time the anti Mason movement. You can't that's that's a
multiple nations in Europe had that idea, like one cannot
(30:39):
be a member of a secret society, but the swearing
of secret oaths. I get where they're going, but they're
better ways to write that, I think. So anyway, these
guys they don't get killed. They're sentenced to a very
specific kind of punishment at that time, transportation, which meant
(31:01):
they were sent to the continent of Australia and they
were going to be sent there for seven years. But
there's this huge grassroots public backlash and they eventually are released.
But we say all this, yeah, we see all this
to point out the odds were originally retty stacked against
(31:21):
the concept of unions because again, as as you said,
it doesn't make sense from the perspective of the people
at the top. Absolutely, I know it's just an a
side guys, But just to throw it in, we're talking
about eighteen thirty four when the Friendly Society of Agricultural
Laborers got shipped off to Australia. The Anti Masonic Party
(31:44):
within the United States formed in eighteen eight so just
a little bit before that, and um just for that
history and only functioned until eighteen forty and then it
came back and had like a second run. But just
it's interesting that there was an anti secret oaths trend
going on. So let's talk about let's talk about some
(32:08):
of this stuff. Uh, let's talk about strikes. So a strike,
you've heard of this. A strike is when a group
of workers stops working and they're protesting maybe unsafe working
conditions or they're using it as of flex during negotiations
(32:28):
between a union and management. Today, strikes are largely, at
least in the US, they're largely peaceful events. This was
very much not the case back in the day. If
you look back through let's say the eighteen hundreds, you
will see that numerous strikes were put down hard hired militia, police,
(32:57):
actual US government troops reigned fire on on people who
were just like, again, these are not you know, these
are not bad faith actors. These are people who are
saying stuff like, hey, please spend a couple of bucks
to make the uh, the lumber mill less dangerous. I
(33:18):
would like to have both of my hands at the
end of the day. And then multiple forces were like, no,
we're gonna shoot you. That's what happened. And I would
say the one of The major thrust of this episode
is to talk about this and the groups that physically
pushed back and fought human beings that were attempting to
(33:41):
strike for all the things we've mentioned, better wages and everything. Um,
there's a group ben I believe they're called the Pinkerton's
or is it the Pinkerton Detective Detective Agency was? Yeah, ah,
these guys ak Matt Frederick's favorites. Yeah, as I stayed
(34:08):
in clearly previously in the episode. You now they're they're
they're they're pretty horrified. These the Pinkerton Detective Agency is.
They're the guys who would go in and intimidate striking workers,
would uh escort people who were not striking but needed
to like move through a big crowd of strikers, especially scabs, right,
(34:32):
or the idea of other workers who were hired to
replace striking workers at least temporarily, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, yeah,
the Pinkerton's story is worthy of its own episode. It
is at its origin, it's um kind of an American
success story because we're talking the guy who started at
(34:55):
Pinkerton himself Scottish immigrant, very good at detective work. And
then it just sort of went off the rails. We'll
talk more about Pinkerton's in the second part of this
week's episode, but for now, we want to give you
a sense of how how strikes worked um and and
(35:16):
what happens when they go wrong. So on May one,
there was a nationwide strike leading to something called the
Haymarket Riot. This remains one of the most infamous and
tragic events of this story. Here's what they were striking for,
(35:38):
by the way, an eight hour work day. That's it.
They wanted at nine to five. That's all they wanted,
and something many of us love, slash, enjoy, slash, get
to have right right, Yes, I like the slashes there.
(35:58):
Uh so there was is after this strike. So three
we said May first, So three days later there's a
rally in a place in Chicago, Haymarket, and this rally
is protesting the laws, crackdown, violent crackdown to a strike
(36:21):
by employees at a place called McCormick Reaper Works, not
related to our good friend Joe McCormick of stuff to
play your mind or death themselves as in the Reapers.
It's a hay Market, guys. Yeah. And the thing about
(36:41):
this rally is the weather sucked that day, So there
weren't a ton of people. There weren't as many people
as they were hoping, right or the rallies organizers. There
were a few hundred police move in, they want to
disperse the crowd and someone, this person has lost to history.
(37:01):
We don't know whether it was a protester or an
agent provocateur, or whether this is a bill of goods
that you're sold in textbooks. Somebody threw a bomb and
it blew up in the mob, and then pandemonium strikes.
The police are firing guns. Um, it's likely that some
(37:24):
of the protesting workers at firearms. There's no official tally
even now in there's no official tally of how many
civilians died, but we know seven h seven police died
and sixty more were injured, and a lot of those
injuries for that sixty officers came from their fellow officers
(37:48):
friendly fire, you would call it. So anyway this happens,
it's crazy. You know, Chicago is super corrupt at this
time and maybe today, but even more corrupt back then.
And someone's like her rub for up for um, something
must be done, so they arrest a lot of protesters.
(38:11):
This is before cops were really arrested for doing crime. Uh.
They arrest folks who have ideologies like socialism or anarchists. Right.
Eight of them are charged and convicted for not swearing
secret oaths this time, but inflammatory speeches and publications that
(38:32):
allegedly caused the violence. This is a kangaroo court. There's
no there's no way to escape it. It's a kangaroo court.
And everybody who is outside of this, everybody who is
essentially not controlled by the people in power, are like,
they're saying, what gives. Four of those who are convicted
(38:56):
are hanged in One guy doesn't get hanged because he
kills himself by putting a stick of dynamite in his
own mouth while he's in prison, which makes you wonder,
you know, shades of Epstein. But on June there's this
(39:22):
guy's a new governor of Illinois. His name is John
p Altgeld, and he says, hey, the three of you
who are still alive, I'll give you a full pardon.
And this is the reason that may first became the
(39:43):
like international Celebration of Workers, because other labor leaders saw
this and they thought there was some light at the
end of the tunnel. Uh, but you you may be
asking yourself, what about Labor Day? Is this where Matt
and Ben talked about Labor Day, Well, it's called May
(40:03):
Day in some countries and throughout a lot of the world,
it's celebrated on May one. Here in the US, it
is I think it's the first Monday in September. And
uh that is like some stuff they don't want you
to know history about it. I don't know about you,
but growing up, whenever I heard Labor Day, I always
(40:25):
thought it was kind of paradoxical. You know, it's a
day off, but it's called Labor Day. A kid, you, Matt,
I used to think. I used to think it was
like a commemoration of what women have to go through
giving birth. Oh, like a target that you could aim for, like, oh,
we gotta hit Labor Day this year. Uh so let's
(40:50):
get started. It's you know, it's late December, early January. No, alright, So, um, yeah,
I don't know. I didn't know much about Labor Day
until I got to college, and so I wonder how
many people out there listening even knew that, um that
May Day exists. And then also, you know, Labor Day
(41:13):
within the United States and as it's celebrated in September. Ben,
I really want to look. I said it was one
of the most import parts of this episode. I may
have been a little wrong there, but I really want
to get back into the Pinkerton's. We do that. Yeah,
let's you know what, let's pause for a word from
our sponsors, and let's get back to some villains. And
(41:39):
we've returned. It is pretty obvious that union slash anti
union conflicts were way more blatantly violent back in the day.
We're talking about Robert Barrens. You know, we're talking about
decade aristocrats, uh nepotistic ne'er do wells, murderous bosses, crooked cops,
(42:02):
you name it. They're all there, all the hits, all
the good ones. And out of all of these rapscallions,
the most fascinating are probably the Pinkerton's, the Peakerton National
Detective Agency. Let's talk a little bit more about that.
So the Pinkerton's, they were founded as a private police
(42:25):
force in Chicago in eighteen fifty by a Scottish immigrant.
And this guy's story is is pretty interesting. The founder
was actually a Scottish immigrant who started off as a
barrel maker, but he was so good at catching local
ne'er do wells that eventually he stopped making and repairing
(42:48):
barrels and started, uh started making a difference in Chicago's
crime scene. Yeah, barrels can wait, we got crooks to catch.
That's kind of cool to kind of respect to that,
Like I feel like that's cool. It's just it's it
becomes a weapon, right, Any any police force, any law
(43:10):
enforcement agency, is a weapon against the whatever the thing
is that it's aimed at. And in this case, the Pinkerton's,
in my opinion, got aimed at the wrong thing. Agreed me,
Because there's one thing that you don't often here described
in a lot of media, but it's true. One of
(43:30):
the powers of the state really is just the monopoly
on violence, the monopoly on legal violence. And the Pinkerton's
were became something that blurred that line between private militia
and state power when they became the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
When they went official, they first were focused on catching
(43:53):
street level crime, you know, thieves, burglars, but they got
a reputation for results, and powerful people started paying attention,
and so the Pinkerton's branched out. They diversified and they
became the bane of the labor movement. They were enthusiastic, ruthless,
(44:13):
vicious strike breakers, and they could break the law because
the people who made the laws were hiring them. It
feels like we experienced some of the same things, at
least in our lifetime. I think, Ben, it's it's really frustrating,
and you know, there's um it's depicted in fiction a
lot the Pinkerton's or or Pinkertons like organizations companies that
(44:37):
do this, the police force that's hired specifically to break strikes,
and the severity that you're I just don't want it
to be lost on people, the severity of the beatings
and the violence that was enacted by these guys. Yeah,
it bears further scrutiny because the story is often swept
under the rug, as is a lot of the story
(44:59):
of the La Aber movement in the United States. Whether
you love it or hate it, whatever your personal ideology is,
knowledge is power, and so we should all be very
aware of the moments when someone doesn't want you to
know about a thing. I mean, I I just accidentally
talked about the point of our show anyway. Yeah, how
(45:21):
ruthless are the Pinkerton's. Uh you could classify their actions
against strikers or the working class under something like by
any means necessary. Remember those anarchists we mentioned earlier in
the show, the ones who were arrested after the Haymarket
riot with zero proof. By the way, it was a
kangaroo court. The Pinkerton's sent those folks down the river,
(45:45):
and they even had a Pinkerton's operative perjur themselves go
to the sham trial and just make stuff up to
send these folks to their deaths to the gallows. And
that's only one example. There are multiple examples, so more
recent than you might think. Another example of Pinkerton's approach
to unions can be found in something called the eighteen
(46:08):
two Homestead Strike. It features our old pal Andrew Carnegie,
steel tycoon, but a person like anybody else. He has
good days, he has bad days. When this story takes place,
Andy is having just a bad week. It's having a
bad week, Matt. You know, he's worried about rich guy
(46:30):
problems because the employees at his steel mill over in Homestead,
Pennsylvania are also having a bad week. They've been having
a series of bad years they're fed up. You know,
there were labor discussions occurring at his steel mill between
I guess Carnegie and his representatives and the workers, and
he drapped it up a new contract that actually lowered
(46:54):
the workers wages UM and that didn't go well. Uh,
probably not a great idea. But again, as we've been
talking throughout these episodes, I don't know the real pressures
that Carnegie was under, or of that the steel mill
itself was under, or whatever. Those pressures were economic pressures
(47:15):
that made him believe the right move was to lower
wages to lower the production costs UM. But those are
human beings with families, and it was probably just not
the smartest move, but somebody had to test it out
throughout history. What if we lower the employees wages. Let's
just give it a go, you know what I mean,
(47:35):
Like like those people who are pick up artists and
just say the same terrible line to a hundred folks,
thinking it's not thee that are too smart to fall
for this, it's the one that this will work on.
So yes, Carnegie, Carnegie said, just shoots his shot, as
you would say in the parlance of our day, and surprise, surprise,
(47:57):
the employees refused to sign it because it is in
fact a much worse steal than what they had in
the beginning. You could almost say, and I'm sure many
members of the union thought this. Uh, you could almost
say that it was an offer made in retaliation for
the inconvenience of of asking for some basic considerations. So
(48:20):
Carnegie gets his boy, Henry Frick to come in come
into play. Henry Frick is the technical term here, a
real pill. He is a piece of work as a person,
and given his personality and his bedside manner, Uh, he
is what hr would call an area of opportunity, and
(48:44):
not as a compliment, but because in general is an
area of an opera of opportunity. As as a person,
he has the opportunity to be better. Uh. Here's how
he responds. He looks at the employees of this steel
mill and they're about three thousand, eight hundred of them,
and he says, okay, you're all fired. All of you
(49:07):
were fired. And furthermore, I'm bringing in the Pinkerton's. So
he gets the Pinkerton Agency, He gets three hundred of
their operatives who are armed by the way to occupy
the property. The former employees don't like this. Tensions are high.
This leads to a twelve hour gun battle. You thought
(49:27):
the Amazon stuff was acrimonious, folks, No, these people are
bringing heat and they're not doing it a posture. They
are firing live rounds at each other. Eventually, three Pinkerton's
go down. At least seven employees are murdered. The Pinkerton's
get the word to stand down, but the damage is done.
(49:52):
The strike ends up collapsing. And this guy, by by
the way, also Frick was taken at home. Dude. He
he was threatening to evict workers from their houses, not
just fire them. Yeah, think about what it would take
for you to show up to your job site wherever
(50:12):
it is that you work with, maybe with a gun,
maybe with a pipe, maybe with just yourself, but with
a willingness to go to battle to keep your job.
What would it take. Not only is that a lot
of fortitude, that's you can you can tell that people
needed that job. The individual of the three thousand, eight
(50:32):
hundred employees needed that job. And uh wow, I can't
believe it was a gun battle at their job site
to keep their job. That's just that blows my mind. Yeah,
and now we have to well, you know, I want
to say, in this case, it's clear that the Pinkerton's
(50:54):
and Carnegie and Frick, they were doing evil things right
there is all. You know, the old adage is true
when you talk about conflict, if you are in conflict
and active conflict, then you have already messed up because
you should be able to In most conflicts you should
(51:15):
be able to de escalate into some sort of negotiation.
But this, yeah, this is just again a couple of
cases of Pinkerton's doing some very villainous things. You can, however,
learn more about Pinkerton's. We're We're excited. I think they're
an episode all their own, if you you can go.
(51:38):
They're still around obviously, I think we established this before.
They're going by Pinkerton Comprehensive Risk Management. Uh. You can
hop on their website pinkerton dot com right now and
you'll see some very interesting things about the Pinkerton's stuff
that we may not get to in part two of
(52:00):
this episode, but we will definitely get to in a
third episode. Um, we're going to be examining the current
state of unions or collective bargaining as well as the
future of union busting. Conspiracies. Oh my gosh. I don't
want to spoil it, Matt, but it's it's really tough.
We're We're also going to, by the way, talk a
(52:20):
little bit about the imperfections of unions, because unions, being
organizations created by humans, have all the foibles of any
other human created organization, you know, like unions did work
actively to suppress some demographics in the past, you know,
(52:41):
and they have been um leveraged by organized crime, etcetera, etcetera.
But it goes so much deeper than the conspiracies of history.
There are active anti union conspiracies today. That's what I
would say. What do you think, Yeah, I mean, for sure,
there are active conspiracies against those who want to organize, uh,
(53:03):
for the purposes of more fair labor practices and you know,
payment and everything. Um. Sorry, Ben, I got stuck on
the Pinkerton website. Here I went on, I went under
our approach and then checked out our story and under
our under our story, Ben, the last thing it says
(53:24):
in that section is being a Pinkerton agent means we
are your trusted partner, because at Pinkerton we never sleep.
I know. I love it. Uh, It's it's true. It is.
It is true. I wouldn't say it's strong, brave, tender,
and true, but it is true that they don't sleep.
(53:46):
If you want to understand that reference, check out the
part of the website Matt's talking about. There's a neat
little video that is kind of propaganda that's fun to watch.
And and this is just a quick disclaimer here. We
have no idea what the Pinkerton Agency is actually like
right now to work there or to be whatever it
is that an agent is now. Uh, we're describing the
(54:08):
Pinkerton's back in the day in this episode. Yes, yes,
we're describing them back in the day. But we will
talk a little bit more about the modern day in
the future. In the meantime, we can't wait to hear
your opinions, fellow conspiracy realists, because you know, Matt and
Mission Control and I are well aware that unions have
(54:31):
become a highly divisive, highly politicized concept here in the US.
We are pretty sure that we know the reasons why,
some of which verge into the realm of propaganda conspiracy.
But but again, we want to provide a balanced look
(54:52):
at this. So now you know a little bit of
the history of labor movements from their roots in Europe
all the way up and now. And you know some
of the problems. But what about the future. That's the
question we're going to ask, So stay tuned and in
the meantime, we can't wait to hear from you. What
(55:12):
do you think? Do you think unions are divisive? Do
you have your own personal war stories or anecdotes or
experiences with labor organizations? And if so, uh, what do
you wish your fellow conspiracy realists knew about them? For
the good or for the ill? Uh? We can't wait
(55:33):
to share those stories. We try to be easy to
find online. Yes, just search for conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy
Stuff Show and whichever app you use on Twitter, Facebook,
and YouTube. We are conspiracy Stuff on Instagram Conspiracy Stuff Show.
We would love to hear from you, so please reach
out in those ways if you'd like. If not, you
(55:53):
can use your mouth and your phone to give us
a call and leave a voicemail. That's correct one Pinkerton
No I'm kidding. It is a free number to call.
That is one eight three three st d w y
t K. You will hear a familiar voice letting you
know you're in the right place you left three minutes.
(56:14):
Those three minutes are yours. Go nuts, go ham on it,
get weird, give yourself a cool nickname or moniker. Let
us know whether we can use your name and or
voice on the air. Tell us what's on your mind.
Tell your fellow listens what's on your mind. And most importantly,
don't feel like you have to edit yourself. That goes
(56:37):
against the mission of this show. It's antithetical to us.
It's anathema and just taking out the A words here
matt uh. Instead, if you have some links you want
to provide, if you have some photographs you want to send,
if you want to usher us further into the rabbit hole,
let's keep the thunder here. If if it's if you
(56:58):
can hear it, it is becoming a dark, stormy night
here in our fair metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia, which means
it's time for us to sign off. It's time for
you to sign on. Do check out our book coming
out in October. And if you want to help us
find the new rabbit holes and to help us figure
out more stuff they don't want you to know, then
(57:22):
all you have to do is shoot us a good
old fashioned email. We'd love to hear from you. We
are conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they
(57:49):
Don't want you to know is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
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Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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