For several decades, it has been fashionable and politically correct to bash labor unions. Whereas they comprise such a small part of the population and spend so much less than business on political campaigns, most people have a very unbalanced view. When I worked on the assembly lines of Chevrolet, and later Chrysler, I was a member of the United Auto Workers, yet had very little understanding of union contributions to American life.
To a large extent before the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidency (1933 to 1945), our national government was strongly anti-union. The Pullman strike of 1894 illustrates this.
George Pullman was a railcar manufacturer who owned the Pullman Palace Car Company. The 12,000 people who worked for this company were required to live in Pullman, a company town near Chicago, even though there were cheaper rentals nearby. All the houses, stores and even churches were company-owned. A part of an employee's paycheck was vouchers, which were only redeemable at very overpriced company stores.
Residents of Pullman were charged four or five times as much for utilities as those living outside the city. One worker described the situation: "We are born in a Pullman house, fed from a Pullman shop, catechized in the Pullman church, and when we die we shall be buried in the Pullman cemetery and go to the Pullman Hell." The city illustrated the totalitarian control that corporate feudalism entails. Those born in the town were as dependent on Pullman as the European serfs of a thousand years ago were on their manor lords. In the 1890s this was not a free country for untold numbers of workers.
On June 11, 1894, Pullman cut wages by 30 percent without cutting the cost of living in Pullman. That was the fifth major pay cut that year. When Pullman refused to negotiate with the American Railway Union, it went on strike. Pullman, as a rich capitalist, wanted help from the federal government and he got it. He ordered his train cars be added to federal mail trains. Obstructing the federal mail was a federal offense. Pullman contacted the U.S. Attorney General, who also owned a railroad, and got an injunction citing ARU leadership on various charges. Pullman received his greatest help from President Grover Cleveland, who ordered federal troops to Chicago.
The involvement of federal troops was strongly opposed by the Chicago mayor, John Hopkins, and the Illinois governor, John Altgeld. Cleveland's willingness to involve the federal government and help Pullman stands in sharp contrast to his attitude toward poor farmers. Only several years earlier, the same President Cleveland had vetoed a bill appropriating $100,000 to give relief to Texas farmers to help them buy seed grain during a drought. Cleveland said federal aid "encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character."
The excellent economist Dean Baker has observed that the essence of conservatism is to support government polices that cause income to flow upward; the essence of liberalism is to support polices that increase equality. At different times, both conservatives and liberals have sought to expand government and both have sought to shrink it. The important consideration is whose class interest is being served. From this nation's inception, since its politicians have tried to acquire power by serving those with power, government was usually quite conservative.
As long as policies were conservative there was no broad-based middle class in this country. The middle class was, to a large extent, created after the liberal Roosevelt and the New Deal gave greater power to unions. The greater equality invigorated the economy: we had much faster economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s than we have had since.
Since the 1980s, in the U.S., conservative anti-union forces have been winning and some consequences are:
* CEO salaries have reached absurd levels. (This has not happened in Europe and Japan where unions are stronger.)
* Inequality has greatly increased. (Again, Europe and Japan have not experienced this problem nearly as much.)
* The U.S. median income has been falling for a decade.
* Our economic growth has been slower as demand for goods and services has slowed.
Of course unions cannot solve all economic problems for all people, but they helped to create our middle class and that has benefited our society immensely.
Jones lives in West Haven.
Comments