“There Is Power In A Union”
There’s a moment in every chapter of Philip Dray’s “epic story of labor in America” that should be taught in our classes. I can’t help but wonder whether our textbooks fail to cover the (bloody) history of American labor because of the movement’s waning influence today, or whether that failure—be it deliberate omission or carelessness—sealed labor’s fate. Perhaps I’ll find out in a few chapters; I sped through the 19th century and took a break at the start of the 20th to recommend this book to you today (Labor Day).
Compounding my disbelief is that so many of these stories are pre-baked for Hollywood. Where’s the Netflix series on the Molly Maguires, a group of coal miners that so terrorized the mountains of Pennsylvania with “deeds of desperation and blood,” that coal companies hired Pinkertons to infiltrate the insurgency as double-agents? What about the Homestead Strike, where those striking against the Carnegie Steel Company repelled an amphibious assault before finally succumbing to the state militia? Or the Pullman Strike, which so infected the country’s railways that at one point the U.S. Army had to stop a hijacked train barreling through Montana on its way to D.C.?
Anyhow, with just two-thirds of its pages, the book has reinforced a couple of truths. First, as with our nation’s original sin of slavery, our textbooks offer too sanitized of an account: apparently, people suffered, so they banded together, and—yadda yadda yadda—now we have child labor laws, eight (not twelve!)-hour workdays, and the weekend. Second, corporate interests didn’t counterbalance other corporate interests to raise wages or institute workplace safety regulations. No, labor organizing on behalf of men crushed in mines or women burned alive in sweatshops fought for those victories, one step at a time.
COVID-19 may very well revitalize organized labor, with unions negotiating “additional pay, health and safety measures, paid sick leave, and job preservation.” After all, if you can’t take a brunch order without being dressed like you’re ready to fight your way through a mob of zombies, you may start to wonder if there’s power in a union. If for fear of being fired, you have to stand firm in the spittle of those who violently refuse to wear masks at a market, you may start to wonder if there’s power in a union. Even Amazon (which posted runaway profits during the pandemic) looks skittish, recently trying to hire people to spy on its workforce’s union activity. And so, while “[o]rganized labor today may have been reduced to a whisper of its former greatness, and no one can divine or guarantee its future,” you should read Dray’s book not just to learn about a history seldom taught, but to see for yourself that there was always power in a union.