February 5, 2025 • 38 mins
With the background of the Vietnam war, rising prices and stagnant wages, workers in the US began to ignore calls to support the war effort and keep working, and instead launch a wave of wildcat strikes in key industries, while women homeworkers fought for lower prices. We tell the story of these struggles in this double podcast episode.
Our podcast is brought to you by our patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory
This is an improved, re-edited version of our original episode 8. In conversation with Jeremy Brecher, author of the excellent book, Strike!, we learn about the support for the war from union officials, the responses from the rank-and-file, and lessons we can learn from them today.
In part 2, we look at strikes by postal workers, Teamsters, hospital workers and auto workers, and protests by women homeworkers
More information, sources, and eventually a transcript on the webpage for this episode: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e99-vietnam-war-strike-wave/
Acknowledgements
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/working-class-history--5711490/support.
Our podcast is brought to you by our patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory
This is an improved, re-edited version of our original episode 8. In conversation with Jeremy Brecher, author of the excellent book, Strike!, we learn about the support for the war from union officials, the responses from the rank-and-file, and lessons we can learn from them today.
In part 2, we look at strikes by postal workers, Teamsters, hospital workers and auto workers, and protests by women homeworkers
More information, sources, and eventually a transcript on the webpage for this episode: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e99-vietnam-war-strike-wave/
Acknowledgements
- Thanks to our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Jamison D. Saltsman, Fernando López Ojeda, Jeremy Cusimano, Nick Williams and Old Norm.
- Edited by Jesse French, with original editing by Emma Courtland.
- Episode graphic: Postal workers on wildcat strike, 1970. Courtesy APWUcommunications/Wikimedia Commons CC SA 3.0
- Our theme tune is Bella Ciao, thanks for permission to use it from Dischi del Sole. You can purchase it here or stream it here.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/working-class-history--5711490/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, and welcome back to part two of our double
episode about the strike wave in the US during the
Vietnam War. If you haven't listened to part one yet,
I'd go back and listen to that.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
First Alamatina Happenalta or the larger, very largile there Larchild
child chi Alamatina.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Before we get onto the main episodes. We thought it
was worth making a bit of an announcement because this
is our one hundredth episode, which seems like quite a milestone,
and one that is only possible because of support from you,
our listeners on Patreon. We don't have wealthy backers or
get funding from any political party or government or corporation
(00:52):
or anything like that. All of our work is funded
by you. In return, patrons get exclusive early access to
podcast episodes without ads, bonus episodes every month free, and
discount in merchandise and other content. As we're recording this,
we've got just under nine hundred patrons. If we could
get up to twelve hundred patrons, this would really help
(01:13):
us cover our costs, make our projects sustainable for the
long term, and help us fund production of more regular episodes.
So if you can, please consider joining our community and
keeping people's history alive in these trying times. Learn more
and sign up at patreon dot com slash working class
history link. In the show notes, we left off last
(01:36):
time about to talk about the mass strike of US
postal workers in the US posts work for the United
States Postal Service USPS and are employees of the federal government,
and so they were and still are banned from striking.
Despite a Congressional commission recommending postal workers be given the
right to collective bargaining in nineteen sixty eight, Congress itself rejected.
(01:59):
Its workers got no pay increase at all from nineteen
sixty seven to nineteen sixty nine, while their union did
nothing about it. This meant that, counting inflation, they had
real pay cuts of nineteen point five percent over this
time period. In early nineteen seventy, they were eventually offered
an increase of just five point four percent. Union members
(02:22):
called for a ballot for strike action, which officials succeeded
in delaying but ultimately couldn't prevent. A majority of workers
voted to strike, and workers in New York City, without
waiting for authorization from union officials, set up picket lines
around post offices in the city.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
It was a wildcast strike, never supported by the unions.
It was the largest strike of postal workers and in
fact the largest strike of public employees that there had
ever been. It started in New York Wish a few
locals that decided to go on strike, and then spread
(03:02):
and became extremely widespread in New York, and then within
days people from all over the country began calling in
and said we're going out too, We're going out too,
and it became a strike that involved hundreds of thousands
of people around the country. It grew out of near
poverty conditions or actual poverty conditions that postal workers were facing,
(03:25):
with many postal workers on welfare in order to get
by and just thought a not read what was regarded
as something that was acceptable if you were working. So
the union completely opposed it ordered people to go back
to work. They did not go back to work. Does
(03:47):
National Guard was sent in. Ultimately, the United States Army
was sent in. Twenty five thousand troops occupied the post
office in New York. There used to be an old saying,
when they send the military end to force the miners
back to work. You can't dig coal with bayonets, and
so the postal workers adopted the slogan you can't sort
(04:09):
mail with bayonets. And from what we were told, the
army went into the post office and started slarting mail,
but it's not clear that the mail was better sorted
after they went to work than it was before they
went to work. There was not a successful military operation
from the point of view of just getting the mail out.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
This unsuccessful military operation in breaking the postal strike was
mirroring the unsuccessful nature of US military intervention in Vietnam itself.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
It might have been successful and that they got to
troops into the post office, but it was not successful
from the point of view getting the mail out of
the post office. And there was essentially a fake settlement
that was worked out between the union officials and the
Postal service, and then the workers were told to go
back to work and they didn't.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
By this point, the striant could spread to over two
hundred cities and towns across the country.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
There became a complicated situation, and I don't want to
go into all the details, but essentially there was a
taskit arrangement that negotiations would not begin and tell the
workers had gone back to work, but as soon as
they went back to work, not only the Postal Service,
but the President and both houses of the Congress agreed
that they would make a major raise for postal workers
(05:31):
and meet many of the other demands. And that's essentially
what happened. The postal workers went back to work, but
they created an independent organization and told the union leadership,
if you don't have this settled in a week or so,
we're just going to go back out, and we have
the organization to do it. So they went back into
(05:51):
the post offices, and the Congress passed the legislation necessary
to give them a raise put him on a decent
footing for the future.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Congress awarded an immediate six percent pay increase to all
government workers, with postal workers to receive an additional eight
percent with a reorganization plan later.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
It was not everything that they wanted, but it made
a huge difference in the power of the postal workers.
There was a point at which the head of the
Federal Employees Union AFGE said he was being overwhelmed by
telegrams and calls from local unions all over the country
(06:38):
who represented other government employees, saying, if the postal workers
can do it, why can't we and demand that he
called strikes for them, and that was part of the
reason that management decided that the government decided it had
to settle fast with the postal workers because damn thing
was really threatening to get out of control. One of
(06:59):
the most vociferous locals, he said, for demanding a strike,
was one that organized the logistics for the American war
in Vietnam. Now that doesn't mean that workers were striking
against the war, but it meant that the demands that
they be patriotic and support the war had lost the
(07:20):
power and credibility to direct their action.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
In wartime, governments and national media typically denounce any kind
of strike as an attack on the nation and say
it's putting the troops, the war effort, and the country
at risk. So any wartime strike is significant because it
is seen and reported as an attack on the troops
and the nation.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
It's certainly true in the context of the Vietnam War
is that the strikes were portrayed as unpatriotic, as undermining
the war effort, partially directly if they know we were
producing things that were needed. Also, because inflation and the
(08:04):
economic conditions, high demand for labor meant that if people
struck effectively on a large scale, they actually were able
to win substantial wage increases, and that was something that
then the government blamed inflation on those ways increases. This
in fact happened with the teams strikes that we'll probably
(08:26):
get to here. It wasn't just not producing what was
needed for war, but also adding to inflation, and inflation
was of course actually caused by the war, but something
that was portrayed as itself interfering with a successful prosecution
of the war, and the United States actually established wage
(08:46):
and price controls in the latter stages of the Vietnam
War as a way of trying to prevent eWays increases
above inflation.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
The next major dispute involved truck drivers in the Teamsters Union.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
One of the most powerful of American unions was called
the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and they were usually known
as the Teamsters Union. It went back to the era
of people who hauled freight using horses, a team of horses,
and so they were known as Teamsters, and they were
a very powerful union throughout the country, a very essentialized union.
(09:24):
So the local groups had a lot of control and
were both very important in terms of their numbers, but
also very very important in the labor movement because their
ability to tie up traffic to make the delivery of
goods to factories difficult if they wanted to. Many many
(09:48):
strikes were won by industrial workers, auto workers of other
kinds of industrial workers because Teamsters refused to deliver across
their picket lines. So they had a very important role
in the labor movement and in labor solidarity. The Teamsters
union was another case where the trade union leadership had
(10:10):
been in cooperation with management to very extreme extent. The
head of the Teamsters said that the Teamsers will never
tie up American Free with a nationwide strike for example.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
This leadership then negotiated a new pay deal with management.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
The union leadership negotiated a contract for the essentially the
central part of the country that was where all afraid
for the entire country was in there and going across there.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
The agreement broke it between management and the union in
nineteen seventy gave pay increases of one dollar ten an
hour over thirty nine months.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
The workers rejected it and began going out on strike
and doing truckers blockades.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Drivers in sixteen cities, including to lead you know Columbus,
Kansas City, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Saint Louis, Atlanta, Chicago, and others
walked out on wildcat strike and set up mobile picket
lines to intercept drivers at key locations, for example, at
crossings of the Mississippi River.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Essentially, somebody would be come bringing a truckle on and
they would pull the truck in front of them and say,
essentially like roadblocks in a wartime situation. And then the
workers who were driving the trucks through might say, yeah,
I agree, this is great and enjoying them, or if
(11:38):
they weren't crazy enough to do that, they might go
back to their boss and said, oh, I can't go
through there. They're threatening my life. You know, I'll never
see my wife and choulder and again if you make
me go through that trucker's blockade. It was not clear
exactly what the balance of intimidation and support was, but
it was predominantly support as we could tell.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Still, that definitely was some violence. The New York Times
reported that some trucks had rocks thrown at them, windows
had been smashed, tires slashed, and air hose is severed.
The mayor of Cleveland claimed that strike related violence had
affected two thirds of all counties in Ohio.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
The West Coast companies said we can't get our trucks through,
and the entire travel between the West Coast and throughout
the country was largely cut off. This is an old
tactic in American labor. It used to be called a
flying squadron. It came in with the coming in of
cars in the nineteen twenties and thirties. So you'd have
(12:38):
a highly mobile team of workers and somebody heard that
somebody was trying to break a strike. They would go
to the location and put up a picket line, or
you go and go and talk to people and say,
you know, we're on strike, suaded them to join. And
this was essentially a revival of rolling picket line strategy,
and it was incredibly effective.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
The United Press estimated that overall half a million people
were off work because of the strike. The national head
of the union told members to get back to work,
as did the Federal Mediation Service. Trucking companies then started
getting injunctions against the strike. Workers in Saint Louis ignored
an injunction for a month. In California, strikers instead called
(13:22):
in saying that they were sick. Ten thousand strikers were fired,
but workers responded demanding a full amnesty as well as
ten days sick pay.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
The ultimate response was that the National Guard was called
up in dozens of counties in Ohio and elsewhere in
the Middle West to try to break the strike.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Soldiers with helmets, trucks and m one rifles guarded roads,
escorted trucks, and protected truck terminals. In some cases, strikers
throwing rocks managed to repel police and National Guard troops.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
It was very unsuccessful. The just were not able to
get people to start driving again or to let the
trucks go through, and it ended up with the union
going back and negotiating a new contract with a several
times as large a wage increase as had been negotiated previously,
(14:19):
and then the truck drivers went back to work.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
The strike ended up lasting twelve weeks and management had
to accept a pay increase two thirds high than the
one originally agreed to.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
It was very much in violation of the federal wage guidelines,
and the impact of it was that other workers immediately
began making demands for a similar kind of wage increase,
and you had within a year major increases in the
average wages for the entire country basically because of workers
(14:55):
who were involded by the Keemsers wildcats. So it's a
very interesting dynamic. Each of these is in some ways
a unique situation, as most strike situations are, but certainly
something that you could look at and learn some lessons
from for the future.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
In contrast to the unofficial wildcat strikes, in nineteen seventy,
workers at General Motors took part in an official strike
called by the United Auto Workers' Union.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
The nineteen sixties is distinctive in that almost all the
major strikes and labor struggles took place as wildcats and
in opposition to union officialdom.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
And there's one big exception which we haven't mentioned, which
was the General Motors strike, and that was the situation
in which it was just about universally recognized that the
purpose of the strike was for the union and the
company to not this out of the workers, get them
(16:02):
to be less feisty by making them be on the
street for a month or two. And it was essentially
a strike by unions and management against the workers. If
this seems bizarre to you, you're right, but it's thoroughly
documented in articles in the Wall Street Journal and a
book called The Company in the Union at the Time
(16:22):
that leaves no doubt that this is what was going
on now.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
The GM strike is an unusual one, but it served
an important purpose both for General Motors Management and the UAW.
For the workers, they wanted more money and better conditions,
and especially given the other disputes which were taking place,
felt that they could win them. The UAW wanted to
assert their control over the workers. More than ten percent
(16:48):
of all agreements being made by UAW officials at the
time were being rejected by rank and file members, and
the recent death of the popular UAW leader Walter Royt
had also resulted in increasing division within the union. For
the company, they wanted to reassert control on the shop floor,
and so they were happy for workers to blow off
(17:10):
a bit of steam in a controlled fashion in order
for workers to be able to get back to work
and follow orders from management thereafter. So the intention was
to have a prolonged all out strike. As one UAW
official admitted to the Wall Street Journal quote, the guys
go out on strike expecting the moon. But after a
(17:32):
few weeks of mounting bills and the wife raising hell
about his hanging around the house all day watching TV
while she works, the average worker tends to soften his
demands end quote. A strike would also unite different factions
within the union behind their leadership against the common enemy management,
(17:52):
So in September nineteen seventy, an all outstrike began of
four hundred thousand GM workers across one hundred and fifty
five different local bargaining units around the US. The union
and management agreed that all local issues had to be
resolved by the strike as well as the national ones
in order to try to draw a line under all
of the turmoil nationwide. But while UAW officials thought they
(18:16):
could reach a national agreement with management in around ten days,
rank and file GM workers were refusing to settle their
local agreements. The strike started dragging on, and so General
Motors even loaned the UAW ten million dollars to help
cover the costs of the ongoing dispute. After two months,
it started to look like perhaps the union management plan
(18:38):
was backfiring, as the workers were so determined that even
a long running strike wasn't demobilizing or demoralizing them. In
the end, UAW leaders and GM management held secret meetings
in which they agreed to just settle the national dispute,
leaving many local issues unresolved, and so after sixty seven days,
(18:59):
the strike inn did and workers won a thirteen percent
pay increase. Like the car industry, most of the other
major disputes that happened at that time were also in
predominantly male industries like mining and trucking, but women were
deeply involved as well in these working class struggles.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
The backstory here is that women flooded into the industry
during World War two and then were largely pushed out
again afterward, and there was an effort to return to
the traditional male breadwinner concept of society and how the
economy worked, But in fact it didn't happen. After they
pushed back, they came back in larger numbers than By
(19:42):
the mid nineteen fifties, there was a higher proportion of
women in the workforce than there had been at the
end of World War Two. However, they were concentrated in
a very small number of occupations that were overwhelmingly women's work.
The largest number who came in went to world and
clerical occupations in sales occupations, stores and all salers, and
(20:09):
the traditional women's industries like the garment textel industries were
in the clawing in terms of numbers, and there was
huge discrimination against women in the heavy industry jobs that
they had briefly filled but then been pushed out of.
So you had a growing number of women in the workforce,
(20:29):
but concentrated in low wage jobs, but also in white
collar jobs that didn't have traditions of labor organizing and
resistance and didn't have in most cases the economic power
that steel worker or garbage worker was believed to have.
So you have also a labor movement that is almost
(20:52):
entirely male in its leadership and not interested in most
cases and organizing women workers. There are death and exceptions.
For example, hospital workers in New York, social workers and
above all teachers both male and female, engaged in very
militant strikes, lots of arrest, city ins, and so on,
(21:13):
but on a local basis, because the industries were generally
organized on a local basis.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
For example, in July nineteen seventy, following a one day strike,
fifteen thousand hospital workers in New York one pay increases
of thirty dollars a week or twenty five percent, whichever
was greater, and in November nineteen seventy three, around thirty thousand,
mostly black and put a Rican hospital workers in New
York walked out on strike, demanding the seven point five
(21:40):
percent pay increase they were contractually owed. Nixon's Cost of
Living Council was trying to cap pay rises at five
point five percent, and so they blocked the increase, even
though the hospitals were happy to pay it. Strikers defied
a federal injunction and hundreds of thousands of dollars in
fines until after eight days the government shifted and agreed
(22:01):
for them to receive a six percent increase. Both struggles
were important in the development of unions which persist today,
like the Service Employees International Union SDIU.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
The forerunner to the large organizations of public employees. Service
employees and teachers that we know today are back essentially
the largest unions the largest numbers of workers in the
labor movement, but it didn't manifest itself by and large
in large strikes. However, the largest protests in American history
(22:37):
was conducted by women, where we were at that time
generally referred to as housewives, in the nineteen seventy three
consumer meat boycott. I've talked about the inflation of that era,
and the biggest piece of inflation was in food, or
one of the biggest, and that was largely concentrated in very,
(23:00):
very large increases in the quest of meat.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
The Nixon government had implemented price and wage controls, but
he'd loosened them by this point, and Nixon had specifically
stated that he didn't want price controls on food. Initially,
the government advised people unhappy with the high cost of
meat to instead eat fish, cheese, or just eat less.
This predictably caused outrage.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
The idea of boycotting meat sprang up in a thousand places.
For example, one woman who got outraged about it just
started calling random numbers in the phone book and asking
people what they thought about the price of meat. And
then when many as the women she talked to said
(23:44):
it's terrible and my family won't talk to me because
I can't feed the meat anymore, or whatever, it was, swell.
He held a meeting in a local bowling alley. This
was in Staten Island, but the same thing was happening
all over the country. No national organization, no call, no
pre existing network beyond the very local level, and yet
(24:05):
it became coordinated on a colossal national scale.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Thousands of women protested in the streets, picket lines were
set up outside supermarkets, and The New York Times reported
that quote in some stores, militant women snatched cuts of
meat out of their neighbors shopping carts and restored them
to the freezer bins end quote. But at the same time,
the paper pointed out that quote, in general, no external
(24:31):
pressure was used or needed to enforce the don't buy
movement end quote. Retailers reported that meat sales fell by
fifty to sixty seven percent, and up to two hundred
thousand meat workers were temporarily laid off.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
There was a gallup pol that was done immediately afterwards
that asked did you participate in the meatboycutt and twenty
five percent of family said yes, which is about fifty
million people at that time. So this is really not
anything that I'm aware of in American history that compares
to it. Richard Nixon, a free market Republican, actually declared
(25:10):
a freeze on the price of meat, and that was
supposed to stop the boycott.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
On the eighth of April nineteen seventy three, Nixon was
forced to reverse course and appear on TV to announce
new price ceilings on beef, pork, and lamb to prevent
them rising any further. The boycott was hailed by Time
magazine as a quote triumph and the most successful boycott
by women since Lysistrata, referring to the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata,
(25:41):
in which women try to stop a war by boycotting sex.
While the boycott didn't reduce the price of meat as such,
it had been going up by over five percent per month,
and analysts predicted it would have just kept rising until
at least July. So although The New York Times attempted
to claim that the boycott had little impact, it does
(26:02):
seem clear that it was successful in preventing prices rising further.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Boycott actually ended because it had made its point. It
didn't have a vehicle to go forward and have some
kind of continuing impact, and probably exhausted what could have
been achieved with that tactic. But it put the economic
problems of American families and put what women's responsibilities at
(26:28):
that time largely were front and center in the national dialogue.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
From all of these different disputes over the period of
the Vietnam War. Jeremy thinks there are a lot of
lessons we can take from them which are equally valid today.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Let's learn from it that the relations between rank and
file workers and unions can become truly antagonistic. Clearly there
are situations at the opposite pole, and even in the
nineteen sixties, the campaigns by teachers and social workers and
(27:01):
hospital workers involved much more synergistic and positive relation. There
are always going to be tensions in any organization between
leadership and rank and file, but that shouldn't be confused
with a situation where interests and practices have become completely opposed.
There is a set of structural endemic problems with organized labor.
(27:25):
I can only speak about the United States with any
serious knowledge, and other places maybe different and similar in
various ways. But in the United States, the principal orientation
of unions, starting from the beginning of the twentieth century,
has been to establish collective bargaining with their employers and
(27:48):
to establish a stable bargaining relationship, and that has been
reinforced by the rise of labor law starting in the
nineteen thirties, which will use designed to allow workers to
organize and bargain collectively, but also designed to create a
(28:09):
structure that limited the scent to which workers were able
to act on their own pursue what they perceived of
their interest as opposed to operating within a tightly defined
legal and institutional structure. And the reason that you get
wildcat strikes and where you have workers opposing their union
leaders is primarily because the unions, either because of their
(28:33):
own structure and leadership, or because of governmental laws, regulations, institutions, policies,
but for a variety of reasons, the unions are functioning
in ways that workers don't perceive as following their interests,
and they don't have an institutional handle electing new officials.
(28:55):
Things like that don't prove not to be effective as
a means of dealing with that situation. And when you
get that kind of conflict of interest between workers and
their concerns and the union leadership, official and institutional structure,
then you get a situation where workers they either have
(29:17):
to suck it up and accept the status quo or
they find they have to organize themselves outside the union
or quasi outside operate at one level of the union
in order to oppose another level, make connections with workers
elsewhere that are distinct from the ones that are mediated
(29:37):
through the union officials, and find ways that they can
utilize what they still have, which is a degree of
power over production, and use those things to meet the
needs that are not being met or are even being
opposed by the union.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
So, in order to truly be able to assert our
own interests, workers have to have our own forms of
organization outside and beyond just the structures of union officialdom.
This is still the case today, as for example, during
the teacher strikes in West Virginia in twenty eighteen, union
leaders agreed to a terrible deal without consulting members, but
(30:15):
rank and file teachers had set up their own communication
and organization networks on Facebook in this case, and so
were able to collectively decide to continue the strike until
they got an offer they were actually happy with. Some
left groups often argue that these sorts of issues are
just issues of leadership, and so by electing union leaders
from their group or from other left groups, you can
(30:37):
ensure members are adequately represented. But historically this is not
what happened, as unions over this time period, such as
the Auto Workers' Union, did have predominantly left leaderships, and
the fundamental problems were the same.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
That's what's frequently a problem in is by and large
you didn't have pattern. You had a number of caucuses
might be called rank and file caucuses or the Caucus
for Democratic Union, that kind of thing that attempted to
address the situation by running candidates against union leadership. And
(31:13):
they certainly in cases at least for a time, were
able to have leaderships there were more effective on behalf
of workers, but they were not able buy and large
to break out of the fundamental limitations that the institutional
and legal structure imposed.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
So even with left leaderships, unions still had a situation
where they had contracts with employers with no strike clauses.
So wildcat strikes by workers breached these contracts, putting the
union in financial and legal jeopardy and potentially jeopardizing relations
between union officials and the corporations in discussions elsewhere about
gaining union recognition in additional plants. In the US, most
(31:54):
unionized workplaces are union shops, known as closed shops. In
the UK, union closed shops have been illegal for decades
under European human rights laws, namely the right to freedom
of association, now it's worth exploring the origins of the
union shop in the US. They emerged during World War II,
when employers and the US government wanted to ensure no
(32:16):
strikes would take place. The unions, on the other hand,
wanted stable dues paying memberships, and they didn't have this
at the time. Typically, many workers would join a union
during a big dispute and pay their dues to local
union reps, but over time they would lapse so as
an example, in nineteen thirty seven, after a successful wave
(32:37):
of sit down strikes in the auto industry, over eight
thousand workers joined the UAW in Lansing. By the following year,
though only one thousand were still paying dues. Some unions
would have representatives set up picket lines to try to
collect dues from members, and often workers would even skip
work on dues collection days to try to avoid paying.
(33:00):
In the steel industry, absenteeism went up to twenty five
percent on dues paying days. Also, initially, the Congress of
Industrial Organizations the CIO Union Confederation agreed to a no
strike pledge to support the war effort. After the German
invasion of Russia in nineteen forty one, the Communist Party
(33:20):
and their affiliated union officials also became strong supporters of
the no strike pledge. But then workers had no incentive
to be union members because the unions had promised not
to fight. Unions as organizations therefore had a big incentive
to support union shops with compulsory union membership. And as
(33:40):
World War Two continued to try to ensure industrial peace
and stop wildcat strikes, the National War Labour Board determined
that only union shops quote would give labour officials the
self confidence and firmness to deal with their members and
enforce their contracts end quote, so they started being implemented
on a wide scale through the introduction of so called
(34:03):
union security clauses in contracts with employers. While the union
shop structure does strengthen workers in some obvious ways, like
ensuring that no non union workers are available to scab
on potential strikes, it does also give unions a sometimes
problematic role in managing the workplace along with the employer.
(34:25):
For example, it means that when workers breach union rules
and take wildcat or unofficial industrial action, unions can and
do discipline them, and in a union shop, expulsion from
the union means losing your job. This weapon was used
many times against militant workers over this period. For example,
in the US, in nineteen forty four, tire builders in Akron,
(34:48):
Ohio walked out on strike in protest at a reduction
in peace rates. The United Rubber Workers Union expelled seventy
strikers and got them fired from their jobs. Then when
other US union activists complain, they were expelled and fired
as well. So this is just one example of a
way in which legal and contractual frameworks bind unions as
(35:10):
organizations to management, and how it can result in negative
consequences for workers. From our current vantage point, at a
time when levels of workplace struggles are at a generally
very low level, it can be easy to forget that
the interests of unions and their members may not be
the same because often it's only in times of these
(35:33):
really widespread, mass and intense struggles, like at the end
of World War II and during the Vietnam War, that
these internal divisions really become apparent. So it's important to
look back at times like this to learn lessons on
how we can really begin to fight for our own interests.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
One of the lessons we can learn from the Vietnam
era is if we're going to starry a new labor movement,
let's do it in a way that freeze us from
some of those constrains, because we're going to have to
act in ways that go outside institutional and leal constraints anyway,
as the teachers' strikes have shown us. If we're going
(36:10):
to have anything but individual, isolated workers dominated by powerful employers,
if we're going to have any kind of collective response
and ability for workers collectively to affect their conditions, we're
going to have to go outside through constraints of American
labor law and the established institutional patterns of trade unions.
(36:35):
By luck out, by luck out, and luck out out.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Well, that's it for this double episode. As always, we've
got links to sources further reading, and eventually a transcript
in the web page for this episode. We've also got
a link where you can get hold of Jeremy's book
Strike links in the show notes. We would highly recommend
you get hold of this book because it's one of
the best books ever written on the US workers movement
(37:07):
in our opinion. It's available in our online store and
you can get ten percent off it and anything else
using the discount code wh podcast. It's only support from you,
our listeners, which allows us to make these podcasts. So
if you appreciate our work, please do think about joining
us at Patreon dot com slash working class History link
(37:28):
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to our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special
(37:52):
thanks to Jamison D. Saltzman, Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopez Ojeda,
Jeremy Kusimano, and Nick Williams. Our theme tune is Bella Chaw.
Thanks for permission to use it from Disky del Sole.
You can buy it or stream it on the links
in the show notes. This improved episode was edited by
Jesse French with original editing by Emma Cortland. Thanks for listening,
(38:16):
Catch you next time.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Lini monto belie
Hi, and welcome back to part two of our double
episode about the strike wave in the US during the
Vietnam War. If you haven't listened to part one yet,
I'd go back and listen to that.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
First Alamatina Happenalta or the larger, very largile there Larchild
child chi Alamatina.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Before we get onto the main episodes. We thought it
was worth making a bit of an announcement because this
is our one hundredth episode, which seems like quite a milestone,
and one that is only possible because of support from you,
our listeners on Patreon. We don't have wealthy backers or
get funding from any political party or government or corporation
(00:52):
or anything like that. All of our work is funded
by you. In return, patrons get exclusive early access to
podcast episodes without ads, bonus episodes every month free, and
discount in merchandise and other content. As we're recording this,
we've got just under nine hundred patrons. If we could
get up to twelve hundred patrons, this would really help
(01:13):
us cover our costs, make our projects sustainable for the
long term, and help us fund production of more regular episodes.
So if you can, please consider joining our community and
keeping people's history alive in these trying times. Learn more
and sign up at patreon dot com slash working class
history link. In the show notes, we left off last
(01:36):
time about to talk about the mass strike of US
postal workers in the US posts work for the United
States Postal Service USPS and are employees of the federal government,
and so they were and still are banned from striking.
Despite a Congressional commission recommending postal workers be given the
right to collective bargaining in nineteen sixty eight, Congress itself rejected.
(01:59):
Its workers got no pay increase at all from nineteen
sixty seven to nineteen sixty nine, while their union did
nothing about it. This meant that, counting inflation, they had
real pay cuts of nineteen point five percent over this
time period. In early nineteen seventy, they were eventually offered
an increase of just five point four percent. Union members
(02:22):
called for a ballot for strike action, which officials succeeded
in delaying but ultimately couldn't prevent. A majority of workers
voted to strike, and workers in New York City, without
waiting for authorization from union officials, set up picket lines
around post offices in the city.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
It was a wildcast strike, never supported by the unions.
It was the largest strike of postal workers and in
fact the largest strike of public employees that there had
ever been. It started in New York Wish a few
locals that decided to go on strike, and then spread
(03:02):
and became extremely widespread in New York, and then within
days people from all over the country began calling in
and said we're going out too, We're going out too,
and it became a strike that involved hundreds of thousands
of people around the country. It grew out of near
poverty conditions or actual poverty conditions that postal workers were facing,
(03:25):
with many postal workers on welfare in order to get
by and just thought a not read what was regarded
as something that was acceptable if you were working. So
the union completely opposed it ordered people to go back
to work. They did not go back to work. Does
(03:47):
National Guard was sent in. Ultimately, the United States Army
was sent in. Twenty five thousand troops occupied the post
office in New York. There used to be an old saying,
when they send the military end to force the miners
back to work. You can't dig coal with bayonets, and
so the postal workers adopted the slogan you can't sort
(04:09):
mail with bayonets. And from what we were told, the
army went into the post office and started slarting mail,
but it's not clear that the mail was better sorted
after they went to work than it was before they
went to work. There was not a successful military operation
from the point of view of just getting the mail out.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
This unsuccessful military operation in breaking the postal strike was
mirroring the unsuccessful nature of US military intervention in Vietnam itself.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
It might have been successful and that they got to
troops into the post office, but it was not successful
from the point of view getting the mail out of
the post office. And there was essentially a fake settlement
that was worked out between the union officials and the
Postal service, and then the workers were told to go
back to work and they didn't.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
By this point, the striant could spread to over two
hundred cities and towns across the country.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
There became a complicated situation, and I don't want to
go into all the details, but essentially there was a
taskit arrangement that negotiations would not begin and tell the
workers had gone back to work, but as soon as
they went back to work, not only the Postal Service,
but the President and both houses of the Congress agreed
that they would make a major raise for postal workers
(05:31):
and meet many of the other demands. And that's essentially
what happened. The postal workers went back to work, but
they created an independent organization and told the union leadership,
if you don't have this settled in a week or so,
we're just going to go back out, and we have
the organization to do it. So they went back into
(05:51):
the post offices, and the Congress passed the legislation necessary
to give them a raise put him on a decent
footing for the future.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Congress awarded an immediate six percent pay increase to all
government workers, with postal workers to receive an additional eight
percent with a reorganization plan later.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
It was not everything that they wanted, but it made
a huge difference in the power of the postal workers.
There was a point at which the head of the
Federal Employees Union AFGE said he was being overwhelmed by
telegrams and calls from local unions all over the country
(06:38):
who represented other government employees, saying, if the postal workers
can do it, why can't we and demand that he
called strikes for them, and that was part of the
reason that management decided that the government decided it had
to settle fast with the postal workers because damn thing
was really threatening to get out of control. One of
(06:59):
the most vociferous locals, he said, for demanding a strike,
was one that organized the logistics for the American war
in Vietnam. Now that doesn't mean that workers were striking
against the war, but it meant that the demands that
they be patriotic and support the war had lost the
(07:20):
power and credibility to direct their action.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
In wartime, governments and national media typically denounce any kind
of strike as an attack on the nation and say
it's putting the troops, the war effort, and the country
at risk. So any wartime strike is significant because it
is seen and reported as an attack on the troops
and the nation.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
It's certainly true in the context of the Vietnam War
is that the strikes were portrayed as unpatriotic, as undermining
the war effort, partially directly if they know we were
producing things that were needed. Also, because inflation and the
(08:04):
economic conditions, high demand for labor meant that if people
struck effectively on a large scale, they actually were able
to win substantial wage increases, and that was something that
then the government blamed inflation on those ways increases. This
in fact happened with the teams strikes that we'll probably
(08:26):
get to here. It wasn't just not producing what was
needed for war, but also adding to inflation, and inflation
was of course actually caused by the war, but something
that was portrayed as itself interfering with a successful prosecution
of the war, and the United States actually established wage
(08:46):
and price controls in the latter stages of the Vietnam
War as a way of trying to prevent eWays increases
above inflation.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
The next major dispute involved truck drivers in the Teamsters Union.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
One of the most powerful of American unions was called
the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and they were usually known
as the Teamsters Union. It went back to the era
of people who hauled freight using horses, a team of horses,
and so they were known as Teamsters, and they were
a very powerful union throughout the country, a very essentialized union.
(09:24):
So the local groups had a lot of control and
were both very important in terms of their numbers, but
also very very important in the labor movement because their
ability to tie up traffic to make the delivery of
goods to factories difficult if they wanted to. Many many
(09:48):
strikes were won by industrial workers, auto workers of other
kinds of industrial workers because Teamsters refused to deliver across
their picket lines. So they had a very important role
in the labor movement and in labor solidarity. The Teamsters
union was another case where the trade union leadership had
(10:10):
been in cooperation with management to very extreme extent. The
head of the Teamsters said that the Teamsers will never
tie up American Free with a nationwide strike for example.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
This leadership then negotiated a new pay deal with management.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
The union leadership negotiated a contract for the essentially the
central part of the country that was where all afraid
for the entire country was in there and going across there.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
The agreement broke it between management and the union in
nineteen seventy gave pay increases of one dollar ten an
hour over thirty nine months.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
The workers rejected it and began going out on strike
and doing truckers blockades.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Drivers in sixteen cities, including to lead you know Columbus,
Kansas City, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Saint Louis, Atlanta, Chicago, and others
walked out on wildcat strike and set up mobile picket
lines to intercept drivers at key locations, for example, at
crossings of the Mississippi River.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Essentially, somebody would be come bringing a truckle on and
they would pull the truck in front of them and say,
essentially like roadblocks in a wartime situation. And then the
workers who were driving the trucks through might say, yeah,
I agree, this is great and enjoying them, or if
(11:38):
they weren't crazy enough to do that, they might go
back to their boss and said, oh, I can't go
through there. They're threatening my life. You know, I'll never
see my wife and choulder and again if you make
me go through that trucker's blockade. It was not clear
exactly what the balance of intimidation and support was, but
it was predominantly support as we could tell.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Still, that definitely was some violence. The New York Times
reported that some trucks had rocks thrown at them, windows
had been smashed, tires slashed, and air hose is severed.
The mayor of Cleveland claimed that strike related violence had
affected two thirds of all counties in Ohio.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
The West Coast companies said we can't get our trucks through,
and the entire travel between the West Coast and throughout
the country was largely cut off. This is an old
tactic in American labor. It used to be called a
flying squadron. It came in with the coming in of
cars in the nineteen twenties and thirties. So you'd have
(12:38):
a highly mobile team of workers and somebody heard that
somebody was trying to break a strike. They would go
to the location and put up a picket line, or
you go and go and talk to people and say,
you know, we're on strike, suaded them to join. And
this was essentially a revival of rolling picket line strategy,
and it was incredibly effective.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
The United Press estimated that overall half a million people
were off work because of the strike. The national head
of the union told members to get back to work,
as did the Federal Mediation Service. Trucking companies then started
getting injunctions against the strike. Workers in Saint Louis ignored
an injunction for a month. In California, strikers instead called
(13:22):
in saying that they were sick. Ten thousand strikers were fired,
but workers responded demanding a full amnesty as well as
ten days sick pay.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
The ultimate response was that the National Guard was called
up in dozens of counties in Ohio and elsewhere in
the Middle West to try to break the strike.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Soldiers with helmets, trucks and m one rifles guarded roads,
escorted trucks, and protected truck terminals. In some cases, strikers
throwing rocks managed to repel police and National Guard troops.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
It was very unsuccessful. The just were not able to
get people to start driving again or to let the
trucks go through, and it ended up with the union
going back and negotiating a new contract with a several
times as large a wage increase as had been negotiated previously,
(14:19):
and then the truck drivers went back to work.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
The strike ended up lasting twelve weeks and management had
to accept a pay increase two thirds high than the
one originally agreed to.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
It was very much in violation of the federal wage guidelines,
and the impact of it was that other workers immediately
began making demands for a similar kind of wage increase,
and you had within a year major increases in the
average wages for the entire country basically because of workers
(14:55):
who were involded by the Keemsers wildcats. So it's a
very interesting dynamic. Each of these is in some ways
a unique situation, as most strike situations are, but certainly
something that you could look at and learn some lessons
from for the future.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
In contrast to the unofficial wildcat strikes, in nineteen seventy,
workers at General Motors took part in an official strike
called by the United Auto Workers' Union.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
The nineteen sixties is distinctive in that almost all the
major strikes and labor struggles took place as wildcats and
in opposition to union officialdom.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
And there's one big exception which we haven't mentioned, which
was the General Motors strike, and that was the situation
in which it was just about universally recognized that the
purpose of the strike was for the union and the
company to not this out of the workers, get them
(16:02):
to be less feisty by making them be on the
street for a month or two. And it was essentially
a strike by unions and management against the workers. If
this seems bizarre to you, you're right, but it's thoroughly
documented in articles in the Wall Street Journal and a
book called The Company in the Union at the Time
(16:22):
that leaves no doubt that this is what was going
on now.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
The GM strike is an unusual one, but it served
an important purpose both for General Motors Management and the UAW.
For the workers, they wanted more money and better conditions,
and especially given the other disputes which were taking place,
felt that they could win them. The UAW wanted to
assert their control over the workers. More than ten percent
(16:48):
of all agreements being made by UAW officials at the
time were being rejected by rank and file members, and
the recent death of the popular UAW leader Walter Royt
had also resulted in increasing division within the union. For
the company, they wanted to reassert control on the shop floor,
and so they were happy for workers to blow off
(17:10):
a bit of steam in a controlled fashion in order
for workers to be able to get back to work
and follow orders from management thereafter. So the intention was
to have a prolonged all out strike. As one UAW
official admitted to the Wall Street Journal quote, the guys
go out on strike expecting the moon. But after a
(17:32):
few weeks of mounting bills and the wife raising hell
about his hanging around the house all day watching TV
while she works, the average worker tends to soften his
demands end quote. A strike would also unite different factions
within the union behind their leadership against the common enemy management,
(17:52):
So in September nineteen seventy, an all outstrike began of
four hundred thousand GM workers across one hundred and fifty
five different local bargaining units around the US. The union
and management agreed that all local issues had to be
resolved by the strike as well as the national ones
in order to try to draw a line under all
of the turmoil nationwide. But while UAW officials thought they
(18:16):
could reach a national agreement with management in around ten days,
rank and file GM workers were refusing to settle their
local agreements. The strike started dragging on, and so General
Motors even loaned the UAW ten million dollars to help
cover the costs of the ongoing dispute. After two months,
it started to look like perhaps the union management plan
(18:38):
was backfiring, as the workers were so determined that even
a long running strike wasn't demobilizing or demoralizing them. In
the end, UAW leaders and GM management held secret meetings
in which they agreed to just settle the national dispute,
leaving many local issues unresolved, and so after sixty seven days,
(18:59):
the strike inn did and workers won a thirteen percent
pay increase. Like the car industry, most of the other
major disputes that happened at that time were also in
predominantly male industries like mining and trucking, but women were
deeply involved as well in these working class struggles.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
The backstory here is that women flooded into the industry
during World War two and then were largely pushed out
again afterward, and there was an effort to return to
the traditional male breadwinner concept of society and how the
economy worked, But in fact it didn't happen. After they
pushed back, they came back in larger numbers than By
(19:42):
the mid nineteen fifties, there was a higher proportion of
women in the workforce than there had been at the
end of World War Two. However, they were concentrated in
a very small number of occupations that were overwhelmingly women's work.
The largest number who came in went to world and
clerical occupations in sales occupations, stores and all salers, and
(20:09):
the traditional women's industries like the garment textel industries were
in the clawing in terms of numbers, and there was
huge discrimination against women in the heavy industry jobs that
they had briefly filled but then been pushed out of.
So you had a growing number of women in the workforce,
(20:29):
but concentrated in low wage jobs, but also in white
collar jobs that didn't have traditions of labor organizing and
resistance and didn't have in most cases the economic power
that steel worker or garbage worker was believed to have.
So you have also a labor movement that is almost
(20:52):
entirely male in its leadership and not interested in most
cases and organizing women workers. There are death and exceptions.
For example, hospital workers in New York, social workers and
above all teachers both male and female, engaged in very
militant strikes, lots of arrest, city ins, and so on,
(21:13):
but on a local basis, because the industries were generally
organized on a local basis.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
For example, in July nineteen seventy, following a one day strike,
fifteen thousand hospital workers in New York one pay increases
of thirty dollars a week or twenty five percent, whichever
was greater, and in November nineteen seventy three, around thirty thousand,
mostly black and put a Rican hospital workers in New
York walked out on strike, demanding the seven point five
(21:40):
percent pay increase they were contractually owed. Nixon's Cost of
Living Council was trying to cap pay rises at five
point five percent, and so they blocked the increase, even
though the hospitals were happy to pay it. Strikers defied
a federal injunction and hundreds of thousands of dollars in
fines until after eight days the government shifted and agreed
(22:01):
for them to receive a six percent increase. Both struggles
were important in the development of unions which persist today,
like the Service Employees International Union SDIU.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
The forerunner to the large organizations of public employees. Service
employees and teachers that we know today are back essentially
the largest unions the largest numbers of workers in the
labor movement, but it didn't manifest itself by and large
in large strikes. However, the largest protests in American history
(22:37):
was conducted by women, where we were at that time
generally referred to as housewives, in the nineteen seventy three
consumer meat boycott. I've talked about the inflation of that era,
and the biggest piece of inflation was in food, or
one of the biggest, and that was largely concentrated in very,
(23:00):
very large increases in the quest of meat.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
The Nixon government had implemented price and wage controls, but
he'd loosened them by this point, and Nixon had specifically
stated that he didn't want price controls on food. Initially,
the government advised people unhappy with the high cost of
meat to instead eat fish, cheese, or just eat less.
This predictably caused outrage.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
The idea of boycotting meat sprang up in a thousand places.
For example, one woman who got outraged about it just
started calling random numbers in the phone book and asking
people what they thought about the price of meat. And
then when many as the women she talked to said
(23:44):
it's terrible and my family won't talk to me because
I can't feed the meat anymore, or whatever, it was, swell.
He held a meeting in a local bowling alley. This
was in Staten Island, but the same thing was happening
all over the country. No national organization, no call, no
pre existing network beyond the very local level, and yet
(24:05):
it became coordinated on a colossal national scale.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Thousands of women protested in the streets, picket lines were
set up outside supermarkets, and The New York Times reported
that quote in some stores, militant women snatched cuts of
meat out of their neighbors shopping carts and restored them
to the freezer bins end quote. But at the same time,
the paper pointed out that quote, in general, no external
(24:31):
pressure was used or needed to enforce the don't buy
movement end quote. Retailers reported that meat sales fell by
fifty to sixty seven percent, and up to two hundred
thousand meat workers were temporarily laid off.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
There was a gallup pol that was done immediately afterwards
that asked did you participate in the meatboycutt and twenty
five percent of family said yes, which is about fifty
million people at that time. So this is really not
anything that I'm aware of in American history that compares
to it. Richard Nixon, a free market Republican, actually declared
(25:10):
a freeze on the price of meat, and that was
supposed to stop the boycott.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
On the eighth of April nineteen seventy three, Nixon was
forced to reverse course and appear on TV to announce
new price ceilings on beef, pork, and lamb to prevent
them rising any further. The boycott was hailed by Time
magazine as a quote triumph and the most successful boycott
by women since Lysistrata, referring to the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata,
(25:41):
in which women try to stop a war by boycotting sex.
While the boycott didn't reduce the price of meat as such,
it had been going up by over five percent per month,
and analysts predicted it would have just kept rising until
at least July. So although The New York Times attempted
to claim that the boycott had little impact, it does
(26:02):
seem clear that it was successful in preventing prices rising further.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Boycott actually ended because it had made its point. It
didn't have a vehicle to go forward and have some
kind of continuing impact, and probably exhausted what could have
been achieved with that tactic. But it put the economic
problems of American families and put what women's responsibilities at
(26:28):
that time largely were front and center in the national dialogue.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
From all of these different disputes over the period of
the Vietnam War. Jeremy thinks there are a lot of
lessons we can take from them which are equally valid today.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Let's learn from it that the relations between rank and
file workers and unions can become truly antagonistic. Clearly there
are situations at the opposite pole, and even in the
nineteen sixties, the campaigns by teachers and social workers and
(27:01):
hospital workers involved much more synergistic and positive relation. There
are always going to be tensions in any organization between
leadership and rank and file, but that shouldn't be confused
with a situation where interests and practices have become completely opposed.
There is a set of structural endemic problems with organized labor.
(27:25):
I can only speak about the United States with any
serious knowledge, and other places maybe different and similar in
various ways. But in the United States, the principal orientation
of unions, starting from the beginning of the twentieth century,
has been to establish collective bargaining with their employers and
(27:48):
to establish a stable bargaining relationship, and that has been
reinforced by the rise of labor law starting in the
nineteen thirties, which will use designed to allow workers to
organize and bargain collectively, but also designed to create a
(28:09):
structure that limited the scent to which workers were able
to act on their own pursue what they perceived of
their interest as opposed to operating within a tightly defined
legal and institutional structure. And the reason that you get
wildcat strikes and where you have workers opposing their union
leaders is primarily because the unions, either because of their
(28:33):
own structure and leadership, or because of governmental laws, regulations, institutions, policies,
but for a variety of reasons, the unions are functioning
in ways that workers don't perceive as following their interests,
and they don't have an institutional handle electing new officials.
(28:55):
Things like that don't prove not to be effective as
a means of dealing with that situation. And when you
get that kind of conflict of interest between workers and
their concerns and the union leadership, official and institutional structure,
then you get a situation where workers they either have
(29:17):
to suck it up and accept the status quo or
they find they have to organize themselves outside the union
or quasi outside operate at one level of the union
in order to oppose another level, make connections with workers
elsewhere that are distinct from the ones that are mediated
(29:37):
through the union officials, and find ways that they can
utilize what they still have, which is a degree of
power over production, and use those things to meet the
needs that are not being met or are even being
opposed by the union.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
So, in order to truly be able to assert our
own interests, workers have to have our own forms of
organization outside and beyond just the structures of union officialdom.
This is still the case today, as for example, during
the teacher strikes in West Virginia in twenty eighteen, union
leaders agreed to a terrible deal without consulting members, but
(30:15):
rank and file teachers had set up their own communication
and organization networks on Facebook in this case, and so
were able to collectively decide to continue the strike until
they got an offer they were actually happy with. Some
left groups often argue that these sorts of issues are
just issues of leadership, and so by electing union leaders
from their group or from other left groups, you can
(30:37):
ensure members are adequately represented. But historically this is not
what happened, as unions over this time period, such as
the Auto Workers' Union, did have predominantly left leaderships, and
the fundamental problems were the same.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
That's what's frequently a problem in is by and large
you didn't have pattern. You had a number of caucuses
might be called rank and file caucuses or the Caucus
for Democratic Union, that kind of thing that attempted to
address the situation by running candidates against union leadership. And
(31:13):
they certainly in cases at least for a time, were
able to have leaderships there were more effective on behalf
of workers, but they were not able buy and large
to break out of the fundamental limitations that the institutional
and legal structure imposed.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
So even with left leaderships, unions still had a situation
where they had contracts with employers with no strike clauses.
So wildcat strikes by workers breached these contracts, putting the
union in financial and legal jeopardy and potentially jeopardizing relations
between union officials and the corporations in discussions elsewhere about
gaining union recognition in additional plants. In the US, most
(31:54):
unionized workplaces are union shops, known as closed shops. In
the UK, union closed shops have been illegal for decades
under European human rights laws, namely the right to freedom
of association, now it's worth exploring the origins of the
union shop in the US. They emerged during World War II,
when employers and the US government wanted to ensure no
(32:16):
strikes would take place. The unions, on the other hand,
wanted stable dues paying memberships, and they didn't have this
at the time. Typically, many workers would join a union
during a big dispute and pay their dues to local
union reps, but over time they would lapse so as
an example, in nineteen thirty seven, after a successful wave
(32:37):
of sit down strikes in the auto industry, over eight
thousand workers joined the UAW in Lansing. By the following year,
though only one thousand were still paying dues. Some unions
would have representatives set up picket lines to try to
collect dues from members, and often workers would even skip
work on dues collection days to try to avoid paying.
(33:00):
In the steel industry, absenteeism went up to twenty five
percent on dues paying days. Also, initially, the Congress of
Industrial Organizations the CIO Union Confederation agreed to a no
strike pledge to support the war effort. After the German
invasion of Russia in nineteen forty one, the Communist Party
(33:20):
and their affiliated union officials also became strong supporters of
the no strike pledge. But then workers had no incentive
to be union members because the unions had promised not
to fight. Unions as organizations therefore had a big incentive
to support union shops with compulsory union membership. And as
(33:40):
World War Two continued to try to ensure industrial peace
and stop wildcat strikes, the National War Labour Board determined
that only union shops quote would give labour officials the
self confidence and firmness to deal with their members and
enforce their contracts end quote, so they started being implemented
on a wide scale through the introduction of so called
(34:03):
union security clauses in contracts with employers. While the union
shop structure does strengthen workers in some obvious ways, like
ensuring that no non union workers are available to scab
on potential strikes, it does also give unions a sometimes
problematic role in managing the workplace along with the employer.
(34:25):
For example, it means that when workers breach union rules
and take wildcat or unofficial industrial action, unions can and
do discipline them, and in a union shop, expulsion from
the union means losing your job. This weapon was used
many times against militant workers over this period. For example,
in the US, in nineteen forty four, tire builders in Akron,
(34:48):
Ohio walked out on strike in protest at a reduction
in peace rates. The United Rubber Workers Union expelled seventy
strikers and got them fired from their jobs. Then when
other US union activists complain, they were expelled and fired
as well. So this is just one example of a
way in which legal and contractual frameworks bind unions as
(35:10):
organizations to management, and how it can result in negative
consequences for workers. From our current vantage point, at a
time when levels of workplace struggles are at a generally
very low level, it can be easy to forget that
the interests of unions and their members may not be
the same because often it's only in times of these
(35:33):
really widespread, mass and intense struggles, like at the end
of World War II and during the Vietnam War, that
these internal divisions really become apparent. So it's important to
look back at times like this to learn lessons on
how we can really begin to fight for our own interests.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
One of the lessons we can learn from the Vietnam
era is if we're going to starry a new labor movement,
let's do it in a way that freeze us from
some of those constrains, because we're going to have to
act in ways that go outside institutional and leal constraints anyway,
as the teachers' strikes have shown us. If we're going
(36:10):
to have anything but individual, isolated workers dominated by powerful employers,
if we're going to have any kind of collective response
and ability for workers collectively to affect their conditions, we're
going to have to go outside through constraints of American
labor law and the established institutional patterns of trade unions.
(36:35):
By luck out, by luck out, and luck out out.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Well, that's it for this double episode. As always, we've
got links to sources further reading, and eventually a transcript
in the web page for this episode. We've also got
a link where you can get hold of Jeremy's book
Strike links in the show notes. We would highly recommend
you get hold of this book because it's one of
the best books ever written on the US workers movement
(37:07):
in our opinion. It's available in our online store and
you can get ten percent off it and anything else
using the discount code wh podcast. It's only support from you,
our listeners, which allows us to make these podcasts. So
if you appreciate our work, please do think about joining
us at Patreon dot com slash working class History link
(37:28):
in the show notes. In return for your support, you
get early access to content, as well as add three episodes,
exclusive bonus content, discounted merch and more. If you can't
spare the cash, don't worry about it at all, but
do tell your friends about this podcast and give us
a five star review on your favorite podcast app. Thanks
to our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special
(37:52):
thanks to Jamison D. Saltzman, Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopez Ojeda,
Jeremy Kusimano, and Nick Williams. Our theme tune is Bella Chaw.
Thanks for permission to use it from Disky del Sole.
You can buy it or stream it on the links
in the show notes. This improved episode was edited by
Jesse French with original editing by Emma Cortland. Thanks for listening,
(38:16):
Catch you next time.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Lini monto belie
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