TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century

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<text> <title> (1930s) Rights For Workers </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1930s Highlights </history> <link 05178> <link 00039><link 00051><article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> Rights for Workers </hdr> <body> [Labor had needed all the help it could get. At the beginning of the decade, where men were working at all, they often earned miserably low wages that were the result of a high-handed, take-it-or-leave-it attitude by employers. Unions were discouraged with guns and goons, and strikes were broken with squads of club-wielding "scabs." But the Norris-La Guardia Act of 1932 made a start on giving the working man some clout by limiting the rights of employers to obtain court injunctions against strikers, and the NRA's all-important Section 7a, later incorporated in the Wagner Act, guaranteed labor the right to organize and bargain collectively for better wages and working conditions. The most famous labor union leader of the 1930s, and perhaps in U.S. history, was stocky, beetling-browed John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers. Along with many others, he moved to take swift advantage of the NRA provisions to solidify his union's position.] (April 14, 1933) Fifty thousand soft coal miners were on strike on Pennsylvania, the Federal Government's whole recovery program was on the verge of being engulfed in a tidal wave of labor disputes. Almost overnight the Pennsylvania coal strike had flared up from a local ruckus in Fayette County to a national menace. Trouble started with H.C. Frick Coke Co., a subsidiary of U.S. Steel Corp. A few thousand Frick workers joined the United Mine Workers of America and struck in protest against the formation of company unions. The issue was whether the non-union Frick company would recognize the national union. It would not--on orders from the non-union U.S. Steel Corp. The strike spread so rapidly that many a miner was left down the shaft when his fellows abruptly walked out above ground. Because steel production had been booming for weeks, necessitating coal mine operation at full capacity, strikers had plenty of cash in their pockets. They walked out as if on a summer spree, full of noise and good cheer and enthusiasm. Governor Pinchot ordered guardsmen to Fayette County to help keep the peace. By last week the strike had closed every Frick mine in the county. Other companies were beginning to feel its pinch. Some mines of great Pittsburgh Coal Co. had to shut down. SO did others belonging to Bethlehem Steel. Operators were in a panic. As most of them are Republicans, they felt politically stranded without a friend at Democratic court. They knew their old hard-fisted methods of fighting a strike with armed guards would not put their men back to work this time. Therefore the mine guards slouched at their posts while strike pickets romped all over company property, bearing U.S. flags, singing, jeering the guards. One picket was shot dead by irate deputy sheriffs, three others were severely wounded, two dozen others slightly injured. Scores of boisterous strikers were arrested for disorders. And still the strike spread. (October 2, 1933) Room 800B was pack-jammed with hard-boiled operators who for years had balked unionization of their properties, and with tough-fisted veterans who had fought and bled for their union. Together they bated their breath as Mine Leader Lewis pulled the contract to him, squiggled his name. A moment later Operator Morrow signed. Signatures of other operators and U.M.W. officials completed the deal which unionized 95% of the soft coal industry, gave NRA its first detailed wage agreement based on a code. Messrs. Lewis and Morrow jointly declared: "Unquestionably this agreement is the greatest in magnitude and importance that has ever been negotiated in the history of collective bargaining in the United States...It marks the beginning of a new era...All interests represented in the agreement are hopeful of its complete success." [Two years later, Lewis had risen from head of one, albeit large and powerful, union to head of many via his presidency of the new Committee of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.), a 1,300,000-member federation of the U.M.W. and six other groups working to launch industry-wide unions, largely of unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Such unions had much broader power than the small, cliquish craft unions of which the American Federation of Labor had been largely composed. In 1937, Lewis was ready to take on the remaining unorganized industrial titans, Steel and Automobiles. Strikers were beginning to employ a new tactic, the sit-down strike: instead of walking out, they simply stayed where they worked, inside the factory, not only not working but also preventing anyone else from working either. Employers were predictably furious, claiming violation of property rights. The first widespread use of sit-down strike came in Detroit.] (January 18, 1937) As the week began, 14 G.M. plants had been closed or crippled by U.A.W. "sit-down" strikes, throwing 40,600 employes out of work. When the week ended, 28 plants and 93,000 out of total 135,000 production employes were idle. Laymen got some idea of the magnitude and complexity of G.M.'s production mechanism when it was calculated that closing the Flint plant which makes Chevrolet motors had struck or not, of Chevrolet assembly and parts plants in Detroit. Saginaw and Bay City, Mich.; Toledo and Norwood, Ohio; St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo.; Janesville, Wis.; Oakland, Calif.; Buffalo and Tarrytown, N.Y.; Atlanta, Ga.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Bloomfield, N.J. "There will be no violence," promised Governor Murphy when he entered the strike as mediator last week. "The day of violence in labor disputes has passed in the United States." Same day in Cleveland, pickets tried to keep a Fisher Body manger out of his plant. When police tried to clear a path, an officer was knocked down, two picketers were hurt and bruised. Three days later violence flared up in Governor Murphy's State. In Flint's Chevrolet assembly plant, non-union workmen faced the loss of their jobs because of the strike listened resentfully to the voice of a U.A.W. organizer blaring from a loudspeaker at union headquarters across the street. As shifts were changing someone smashed the amplifier, caused a general scuffle. Heads were bashed, and two U.A.W. men landed in jail. That night 200 unionists demonstrated in front of the lockup, were routed by tear gas. Again in Flint rival groups clashed in front of a Fisher Body plant. City police, called after strikers had locked up three private company policemen in the plant, used fire hose and tear gas to scatter a crowd inside. In the all-night battle which followed, 19 persons were injured. (February 15, 1937) On penalty of $15,000,000 for its violation, Circuit Judge Paul Victor Gadola's injunction not only ordered sit-downers to evacuate Flint's two Fisher body plants, but also commanded strikers, leaders and sympathizers to cease all picketing and demonstration around G.M. plants throughout Michigan. With a roar the embattled unionists flung the judge's order back in his round, bespectacled face. Sheriff Thomas Wolcott read it to the sit-downers and contemptuous silence, departed with a grin. The grim, bearded sit-downers telegraphed to Governor Frank Murphy their determination to die before obeying it. Thousands of outside sympathizers poured into Flint, joined the strikers' militant, red-bereted Women's Emergency Brigade in marching and picketing with brandished clubs. Spoiling for a fight, 1,000 bitter anti-unionists volunteered when a call went out for special deputy policemen. Virtually the entire remaining force of Michigan's 4,000 National Guardsmen marched in to join the troops already encamped in the tense city. Under their strategically-placed machine guns and one-pounders there was no more rioting. But Flint looked and felt like War. Early in the week President Roosevelt called Governor Murphy on the telephone, authorized him to summon the war's opposing generals to council table in the name of the President of the U.S. Under that pressure, General Motors abandoned its stubborn refusal to negotiate with the strike leaders until they had yielded up its captive plants. Twice had President Sloan rejected similar summonses by Secretary of Labor Perkins, but Executive Vice President Knudsen now wrote to Governor Murphy: "The wish of the President of the United States leaves no alternative except compliance." Morning, afternoon & night for four days the tired men met and talked, firmly snagged on the one vital point at issue--John Lewis' demand that G.M. recognize United Automobile Workers as sole representative of all its employes. After the second day the opposing groups rarely saw each other, the Labor leaders remaining in Judge Murphy's office while the G.M. officials huddled around a telephone in the jury room. When they emerged to stretch their legs in the courtroom at the same time, Capital and Labor remained in opposite corners. [G.M. settled with Lewis & Co. in mid-February, after losing a almost $50 million. Lewis did not get all he had demanded, but to have made any headway at all against the knee-jerk anti-unionism of the auto-makers was a considerable achievement. The other companies, except for the most rabid anti-unionist of them all, Henry Ford, fell into line. Even tougher, however, was the steel industry. Many of Labor's martyrs had been created in clashed like those at Carnegie's Homestead plant in 1892, and there were to be more. But first came a surprise from the biggest steelmaker of all.] (March 15, 1937) From the moment John Lewis revealed his plan, the nation braced itself for what promised to be the greatest industrial war in its history. Steel, one of the biggest and easily the toughest U.S. industry, which had ruthlessly resisted Labor's every attempt to organize its ranks, roared its defiance in full-page newspaper advertisements. The American Iron & Steel Institute, speaking for 19 out of 20 of the nation's steelmasters announced in conventional union-fighting terms: "The steel industry will oppose any attempt to compel its employes to join a union or to pay tribute for the right to work." Then, with breathtaking suddenness last week, U.S. Steel's Benjamin Fairless and C.I.O.'s Philip Murray made peace before the firing of a single gun. A well-kept secret, their first meeting was revealed to an incredulous world at 3 p.m. when the New York Stock Exchange closed, in an announcement to company union leaders in Carnegie-Illinois' 27 plants. As other independents joined the procession in conventional Steel fashion. Big Steel capped the rest when at his second conference with Mr. Murray, Mr. Fairless signed an agreement which not only granted the same wage & hour concessions but recognized Amalgamated as bargaining agent for all its members among Carnegie-Illinois' 120,000 employes. Once the nation had grasped the fact that Lewis and the Lion were actually lying down in peace, it began asking how the thing had happened. Patently, this historic conciliation was no impulse of the moment. Exultant John L. Lewis furnished a partial explanation: "It has been made possible by the far-seeing vision and industrial statesmanship of (U.S. Steel's Board Chairman) Myron C. Taylor. From time to time over a period of several months in New York and Washington, Mr. Taylor and I have engaged in conversations and negotiations. We were each conscious of the great weight of responsibility and the far-reaching consequences attached to our decision. Labor, industry and the nation will be the beneficiaries." [When Myron Charles Taylor of U.S. Steel and John Llewellyn Lewis of C.I.O. sealed their historic bargain last March, most observers sighed with relief, assumed that the threat of a great steel strike which had been hanging over the nation for months was ended. They reckoned, however, without Steel's major "independents"--Bethlehem, Republic, Youngstown Sheet & Tube, National, Jones & Laughlin, Crucible, Inland, American Rolling Mill--to whom Big Steels' concession was a shocking betrayal of the industry's traditional united front against unionism. As most of the smaller independents fell in line and signed up with C.I.O.'s Steel Workers Organizing Committee, the larger companies, employing more than 200,000 men and producing about one-fourth of the nation's steel, continued stubborn hold-outs. When the Supreme Court certified the Wagner Act, their resistance took a subtle turn. They were entirely willing to bargain with S.W.O.C. and perhaps to enter into agreements with it--but they would have nothing put down in writing. Standing thus, they were strictly within their legal rights: the Wagner Act requires only bargaining, not written contracts. But S.W.O.C.'s Chairman Philip Murray, determined to win all he could while Recovery and Rearmament were booming steel production to all-time highs, cried last fortnight: "I tell you a strike will inevitably trail in the wake of this maddening policy." One night last week at grim Aliquippa, Pa., 25 miles down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh, flames leaping up from great Jones & Laughlin blast furnaces flickered over the tense, expectant face of thousands of men, women and children massed outside the five-mile-long plant's gates. Sharp at 11 p.m. came the deadline which Jones & Laughlin's C.I.O. unionists had set when they voted to strike unless the corporation signed a union contract. Marching out of J. & L. plants both in Aliquippa and Pittsburgh, the unionists shut down the nation's fourth largest steel producer, threw 27,000 men out of work, started the biggest U.S. steel strike since 1919. Next day, 6,000 employes of Pittsburgh Steel Co. struck, too.] (June 7, 1937) Men with queazy stomachs had no place one afternoon last week on the overpass--across the street to street car tracks--at the No. 4 gate of Henry Ford's great River Rouge plant. The union had opened its Ford campaign by hiring two vacant bank buildings near the plant, as headquarters. Next step was to print handbills calling for "Unionism not Fordism," demanding a basic $8 six-hour day for workers, better not only than Ford's present $6 eight-hour day, but better than the terms obtained from any other motor company. Third step was to distribute the handbills to the 9,000 River Rouge workmen. By announcing the event to the press an ample attendance of news-hawks and cameramen as well as a batch of clergymen and investigators of Senator La Follette's civil liberties committee was insured. At the appointed time, Organizer Richard Truman Frankensteen, head of the U.A.W., Ford drive, accompanied by his lieutenant Walter Reuther and Organizers Robert Kanter and J.J. Kennedy, appeared. Leader Frankensteen, a husky 30 and a onetime football player (University of Daytona) led his friends up a long flight of stairs to the overpass to supervise the handbills' issuance. He was smiling for photographers as a group of Ford men approached. Someone shouted, "You're on Ford property. Get the hell off here!" Frankensteen started to obey, was struck from behind, turned around to fight. Four or five men closed in on him. He was knocked down and his coat pulled over his head. He got to his feet and grabbed one of his attackers by the ear. Others slugged him fore & aft. The few Dearborn police in the neighborhood did not interfere. When newshawks picked him up a few minutes later, Frankensteen was a bloody pulp. The men with him got off little easier. Other organizers who had appeared at other gates were driven off; and women organizers who tried to get off street cars were promptly bundled back aboard, some of them claiming to have been kicked. S.W.O.C. issued a strike call in the plants of three other big independents: Republic, Youngstown Sheet & Tube, and Inland. Promptly 27 steel plants, most of them in Ohio and Illinois, were shut down, some 75,000 men quit work, and 15% of the Steel industry shut up shop in the midst of its busiest season in years, an ideal strike season from Labor's viewpoint. Cause of the strike was the refusal of the three companies to make written agreements with S.W.O.C. Six Republic Steel plants remained in partial operation. Greatest bitterness was reserved for the struggle at Republic's plant in South Chicago. There on two days crowds of strikers marched on the plant to seize and close it. Police with nightsticks formed a barrier, drove them back with broken heads on both sides. On the third day a crowd of some 1,500 strikers tried again, were stopped by 150 police. First it was clubs and tear-gas versus clubs and numbers. The mob began hurling rocks and steel bolts, using slingshots with severe accuracy. The police faltered, then drew their guns and charged, firing first into the air, then at human targets. When the smoke and gas cleared they were in possession of the field on which lay five strikers dead or dying. No less than 100 others, including 23 policemen, were hospitalized for bullet wounds or broken bones. [The C.I.O. ultimately lost the two-month strike against "middle steel." But it was only a battle, not the war; by summer 1937, Lewis's steel drive had netted contracts with 258 companies employing 440,000 workers, and by the following year, when the C.I.O. split off entirely from the A.F. of L. and began calling itself the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 7.7 million workers in every kind of company had won union contracts.] </body> </article> </text>