Unions
Title
Unions
Identifier
UNIONS
Creator
Jacob Schlitt
Description
"Are we beginning to see signs of a reawakening?"
Date
2015-02-23
Format
application/pdf
Type
text
Language
en
Text
UNIONS
Are we beginning to see signs of a reawakening? Not that the American labor movement was ever a sleeping giant. At best, it was a scrappy outfit fighting forces much more powerful than itself. From time to time, it won victories, but that was when it had help from a supportive uncle, or when its opponent was small or weak.
The Golden Age was the period from the 1930s to the 1960s. Unions had been around since the turn of the century and before, but they had few members, and they were mostly craft unions. They may have negotiated a few contracts and won a few concessions, but they never were a force to be reckoned with. When conditions got so bad that the workers felt they could take it no longer, and struck, the employers were able to call upon private, as well as public law enforcement, to break the strikes. In most cases, there were hundreds, if not thousands of replacements, strikebreakers, eager to take the jobs of the strikers.
In the 1930s, the unions, and nice people, concerned about America’s exploited workers, pressed for pro-labor legislation. With the help of FDR, the Wagner Act, was passed. Unions undertook major organizing drives; workers were told that they could not be fired for joining a union; unions grew; wages and working conditions improved. By the 1940s and 1950s, one third of America’s workers were union members.
However, in 1947, with a Republican Congress, anti-union forces pushed through the Taft-Hartley Act, and in 1959, the Landrum-Griffin Act. . Management was handed two laws aimed at weakening unions. And through the next decades, unions became weaker and weaker. Unions were stigmatized; they were labeled either communist or corrupt. This was followed by the movement of jobs from the industrial north to the rural south, and then overseas. Union membership, as well as manufacturing jobs, disappeared.
With the loss of membership, the unions lost its political power.
Are we beginning to see signs of a reawakening? Not that the American labor movement was ever a sleeping giant. At best, it was a scrappy outfit fighting forces much more powerful than itself. From time to time, it won victories, but that was when it had help from a supportive uncle, or when its opponent was small or weak.
The Golden Age was the period from the 1930s to the 1960s. Unions had been around since the turn of the century and before, but they had few members, and they were mostly craft unions. They may have negotiated a few contracts and won a few concessions, but they never were a force to be reckoned with. When conditions got so bad that the workers felt they could take it no longer, and struck, the employers were able to call upon private, as well as public law enforcement, to break the strikes. In most cases, there were hundreds, if not thousands of replacements, strikebreakers, eager to take the jobs of the strikers.
In the 1930s, the unions, and nice people, concerned about America’s exploited workers, pressed for pro-labor legislation. With the help of FDR, the Wagner Act, was passed. Unions undertook major organizing drives; workers were told that they could not be fired for joining a union; unions grew; wages and working conditions improved. By the 1940s and 1950s, one third of America’s workers were union members.
However, in 1947, with a Republican Congress, anti-union forces pushed through the Taft-Hartley Act, and in 1959, the Landrum-Griffin Act. . Management was handed two laws aimed at weakening unions. And through the next decades, unions became weaker and weaker. Unions were stigmatized; they were labeled either communist or corrupt. This was followed by the movement of jobs from the industrial north to the rural south, and then overseas. Union membership, as well as manufacturing jobs, disappeared.
With the loss of membership, the unions lost its political power.
Original Format
application/msword
Collection
Citation
Jacob Schlitt, “Unions,” Autobiographical stories & other writing by Jacob Schlitt, accessed April 23, 2025, https://tsirlson.omeka.net/items/show/365.