Dec. 19, 2003 - 18:02 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Whither Bound ?

U.S. News magazine of September 22, 2003 is an issue that I shall keep to refer to from time to time. One article in particular strikes a tender nerve here.

9 to 5 The Laborer's Lot

By Angie C. Marek

Some of what her article talks about I know already but much of the rest of it has been referred to in many, many things I have read, which all agree. But I think folks nowadays should read it and remember those who do not profit from their mistakes are due to repeat them.

"By the turn of the 20th century, the American workforce was verging on disaster. The 1900 census showed that about 2 million children some as young as 8, were toiling long hours next to their adult counterparts. The public was growing ever more outraged as it learned of grim worlds behind factory doors. Upton Sinclair's best seller The Jungle, published in 1906, highlighted the violent and filthy conditions in Chicago's meat packing plants. And New York's Triangle Shirtwaist Co. became synonymous with workplace danger when a fire in 1911 killed nearly 150 workers, mostly young women, hopelessly locked inside."

Further on in the article Angie C. Marek has this, "It was small wonder that workers were driven to desperation -- although fueled an economy that grew by an astounding 43 percent in the 1920's, their wages during the same period stayed virtually flat."

"Yet, efforts to organize yielded disappointing -- sometimes even violent results. Local politicians and industrial bosses routinely called in Pinkerton detectives and the National Guard to forcibly break up strikes. There were non-violent defeats, as well: In 1918, the Supreme Court struck down the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act, a protective law that had seemed unbeatable thanks to widely distributed muck raking photographs of Dickensian working conditions," Angie C.Marek wrote.

Then comes this, "When reform-minded Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president in 1933, many workers believed the government had finally gained a place on the factory floor. It had, for Roosevelt agreed with academics who argued that capitalism was self-defeating without some government control. In 1933, the president signed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which called on industries to adopt "codes of fair competition" that laid a floor under wages and prices and put a ceiling over hours and effort. But two years later, with the act under fire from all sides, the Supreme Court threw it out, ruling that it improperly delegated legislative powers to the executive branch. Roosevelt, however, had no intention of abandoning the workingman. In 1935, he delivered a powerful pro-worker punch with the National Labor Relations Act, a groundbreaking measure that gave workers the right to collectively bargain, select their own unions, strike, boycott and picket. The act also targeted a host of unfair management practices, including the hiring of industrial spies, maintaining company-dominated unions, and threatening or firing employees seeking to join unions. When the high court hinted that it would attack the plan, Roosevelt responded by threatening to pack the court with more activist members. His strategy worked: The law stood, and to this day, the five-member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) serves as a sort of grand referee, ajudicating tens of thousands of management-worker disputes each year," Angie C. Marek continued.

Then things begin to get grim, Angie C. Marek continues, "But in the years following the New Deal, cultural fears and political opposition began to gradually dismantle much of labor's progress. Southern Dixiecrats split from New Deal Democrats when they realized blacks were profiting from the reforms as much as whites. And in 1947, the government passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which severely eroded the protections in the National Labor Relations Act. By the 1980's, the NLRB had suffered a defining blow when President Ronald Regan boldly broke a two-day-long strike of the nation's air-traffic controllers by firing them and replacing them with scabs."

In her last paragraph she mentions, "Today, labor-union membership is at a modern low: Only 13.2 percent of workers carry a union card, compared with 33 percent in 1960. But labor is still making waves. In recent years, the movement's leaders pushed 109 city councils to adopt living-wage ordinances, guaranteeing workers enough money to support a family of four at the poverty level." She quotes, "Labor will never vanish from the American stage," says Sean Wilentz, a professor at Princeton University." "This is a changed America, and we're just waiting for unions to catch up."

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I remember reading about Pullman's little empire at the edge of Chicago who had workers who were more or less captive, company store, company homes and all. Both my Mother and my Dad worked hard to keep our small family going in a small two room house. Fearful of every little move one of their bosses might make. I remember how low women's wages were too. Then the Great Depression came upon us making things worse than anyone could imagine. At the end of the depression Mom and Dad were making only what her wages were at the beginning of the Depression. Even when I was very young some folks had to work impossible hours, the telephone operaters, for instance, working split shifts, not having enough time to go home between them.

Looks to me that it might be possible for the money men to offshore work of all kinds until they can rehire the jobless here at peon's wages. Could that be ? National Guards and strikebreakers with Wackenhut at the helm ? Makes me wonder, Whither Bound ? . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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