Protest at a non-union construction site, New York City, 2000
Protest at a non-union construction
site, New York City, 2000
The United States emerged from a colonial regime based on conquest and bondage.
Does this legacy continue
to affect American life? Does it have any particular meanings for the labor
movement?
Compare and contrast the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
In what ways do they differ, in
particulars and/or in spirit? In what ways are the similar?
If you were to write a new Bill of Rights, what would you add to the original?
Are there also things you would
subtract? What do your additions and/or subtractions suggest about differences
between 1790 and our own
times?
Though quite a few white workers supported the abolition of slavery, larger
numbers were indifferent or hostile
toward the antislavery movement. How do you explain that?
In chapter 10 of his autobiography, Frederick Douglass writes of his fight
with Edward Covey: "This battle...was
the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers
of freedom, and revived within me
a sense of my own manhood." Would Douglass have felt the same if
he'd lost the fight?
What's your position on the movement for reparations for the enslavement
of African Americans? Should the
labor movement support this cause? For information on reparations, see Martha
Biondi's article in the
recommended readings for January 10. You can also find good food for thought
on the websites of N'COBRA
<http://www.ncobra.com/> and TransAfrica
Forum <http://www.transafricaforum.org/reports/reparations_print.shtml>.
Many American historians refer to the Civil War and Reconstruction as the
"Second American Revolution."
What's the basis for that comparison?
In the Gilded Age, Americans repeatedly debated what they called "the
social question": is capitalism compatible
with democracy? Is this still a relevant question? If so, why is it not a subject
of public debate?
At the time of its founding in 1886, the American Federation of Labor was
much smaller and less influential than
the Knights of Labor. Fifteen years later, the Knights were little more than
a memory while the AFL was thriving.
What explains this reversal of fortunes?
The Gilded Age saw the start of a great wave of military interventions into
labor disputes-always on the side of
the employer. As David Adams notes, such interventions subsided after World
War II, though they did not
disappear. Could the pendulum swing back the other way? What are the most effective
means of preventing this
development?
The historical documents for this session present various positions on electoral
politics. Speaking for AFL
headquarters, Samuel Gompers argues that unions should work within the two-party
system to advance their
political agenda. The Socialists Eugene Debs and Mrs. Robert Patterson call
for political action under the banners
of the Socialist Party, which Debs regards as a necessary adjunct to unions
and Patterson sees as the best vehicle
for achieving racial equality. According to the IWW, on the other hand, political
action is merely a distraction from
the essential work of organizing on the job. A similar division emerges in the
documents on woman suffrage: while
some suggest that the ballot can liberate working-class women, Mother Jones
insists that direct action is vastly
more effective than casting votes. What can today's labor movement learn from
these old debates about politics?
In the early twentieth century, U.S. labor organizers often complained that
it was especially hard to mobilize women
workers. What does Theresa Malkiel's Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker suggest
on that score? Do the gender issues
that she explores persist today?
Why did Samuel Gompers decide to support U.S. entry into World War I and
how did this decision affect the U.S.
labor movement?
Racial-ethnic divisions in U.S. society sharpened as the labor movement
declined in the 1920s, and they
diminished (though endured) as the labor movement grew during late 1930s and
the war years. What
accounts for this pattern?
The young CIO organized workers who were unorganizable according to most
AFL leaders. What was the secret
of the CIO's success?
Philip Murray was by no means a radical, yet his report to the CIO's 1946
convention was downright revolutionary
by today's standards. What prompted this fundamentally conservative man to call
for measures such as federal
legislation to control prices (pp. 38-42) and outlaw racial-ethnic discrimination
on the job (pp. 84-86), steeper taxes
on "excess profits" reaped by defense contractors (pp. 91-93), a massive
federal effort to provide "[g]ood shelter
for every family...regardless of race, creed, color, national origin or economic
status" (pp. 95-101), and for American
labor's affiliation with the socialist-oriented World Federation of Trade Unions
(pp. 103-105)?
Today it may be useful to engage some counterfactual analysis. Imagine a
world in which Congress didn't pass the
Taft Hartley Act, the CIO didn't expel the left-wing unions, and those unions
spearheaded the Sixties movements
for racial justice, women's liberation, world peace, and other causes associated
with the Sixties. What difference
would that have made?
Consider the ways in which Sixties movements penetrated workplaces and unions.
Did this have a lasting impact
on your wing of the labor movement?
When the AFL and CIO merged in 1955, their statement of common purpose declared
the labor movement's
support for the Cold War: "We are happy that in our way, we have been able
to bring about the unity of the labor
movement at a time when the unity of all American people is most urgently needed
in the face of the Communist
threat to world peace and civilization." During the Vietnam era, all but
a handful of unions either supported the
U.S. war or adopted an antiwar position only after a large portion of the U.S.
House and Senate had done so. In
spring 2003, the AFL-CIO executive board publicly criticized the Bush administration's
rush to war in Iraq but
then held its tongue once the fighting started. At the SEIU's convention in
June 2004, however, 4,000 delegates
unanimously approved a resolution that calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops
from Iraq; and the AFL-CIO
convention of summer 2005 called on the government to bring U.S. troops home
from Iraq. Why have U.S. unions
generally followed the government's lead in matters of foreign policy? Are recent
developments to the contrary
a fluke, or a sign of a sea change in unions' international policy? If it's
the latter, what is prompting the change?
The final chapters of From the Folks describe a long decline for organized
labor from 1980 through 1995 and
efforts to jump-start the movement over the past eight or nine years. What was
the main reason for the period of
decline? What must U.S. Unions do to regain momentum?
Rocío Sáenz's testimony points to immigrant workers as the
force that can revitalize the U.S. labor movement.
What does history tell us about that issue?
The reading for today offers various perspectives on where the labor movement
must go from here. In light of
all you know about U.S. Labor history, what's your opinion on that issue--not
just where we must go, but also how to
get there?
No reading assignment. We'll devote
our final meeting to an evaluation of the course and to students' reports
on their research plans.