Jackie Dana

The Working Stiff Journal
Vol. 2 #5, July 1999
by Jackie Dana

Texas governor and presidential candidate George W. Bush recently said “There ought to be limits to freedom.”

This serves as a stark reminder that the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution—the right to free speech—hasn’t always applied to all Americans. Eighty years ago, in a dark period for labor and social activists, exercising free speech often led to imprisonment and deportation.

When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, the government faced twin threats in the war against Germany and the Russian Revolution. To President Wilson, labor unions were harmful to the war effort while anarchism and socialism were “anti-American.” The Espionage Act (1917) and the Sedition Act (1918) outlawed efforts to obstruct military recruiting, write or publish disloyal information, express contempt for the government’s actions or in any way disrupt or speak publicly against the war. Under the 1918 Alien Act, the government could deport immigrants solely on political whim, if such people dared to question the rise of big business, encouraged the use of strikes, or spoke out against the war.

Under the auspices of the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Investigation (later the FBI) undertook selective enforcement of these new laws. With the premise that communism was “eating its way into the homes of the American workman,” U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer directed his men to go after unions as well as communist and socialist organizations.

One of the primary targets of these new laws was the increasingly active and radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Because the union organized immigrant and unskilled workers regardless of race, religion or gender, Palmer blamed the IWW for spreading dangerous ideas. In 1917 federal agents raided 48 IWW halls, arresting 165 leaders. Those arrested included Bill Haywood, the executive board and editors of the union’s newspapers and publications. Members were charged with conspiracy to hinder the draft, encouraging desertion and intimidation of others in labor disputes. In April 1918, 101 members went on trial. Almost all were convicted and sentenced to prison terms of up to 20 years. Persecution of the IWW continued in the following years, with over 2,000 total arrests.

The Socialist Party, which at the time had close to 100,000 members, also fell victim to these new laws. In May 1917 the party’s office in Indianapolis was raided. By September the federal government had rounded up most of the leaders and brought them to trial in February 1918. Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs was also arrested and after his trial was sentenced to ten years in jail. The following year, the Supreme Court ruled that the speech Debs gave supporting socialism and opposing military recruitment was not protected by the First Amendment.

Recent immigrants bore the brunt of the government’s attacks. Although nearly a third of Americans were first- or second-generation immigrants, many were from Eastern and Central Europe and considered untrustworthy. In 1919 President Wilson authorized Attorney General Palmer to arrest and deport thousands of foreign-born radicals. On one notorious night that December, 249 resident aliens, including anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, were arrested and ultimately deported to the Soviet Union.

Palmer explained that he and his agents had undertaken to “tear out the radical seeds that have entangled American ideas in their poisonous theories.” He also claimed that “like a prairie fire, the blaze of revolution was sweeping over every American institution of law and order….” A 1919 anarchist bombing campaign gave him further excuse to take action (despite later evidence that Palmer himself orchestrated the bombings to discredit the anarchists). Agents targeted organizations and individuals, and arrested people based on associations, often without evidence or warrants. In January 1920, over 10,000 people were arrested, although more than half were released when the U.S. Secretary of Labor noted it was legal to join the Communist Party. In the end only about 550 people of this group could be deported.

In case after case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld convictions under these laws. In Schenck v. U.S. (1919), the court noted that “when a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its efforts that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight.” Such collusion between the executive and judiciary allowed the injustices to continue as long as public opinion supported the actions.

Fortunately, the government’s heavy-handed policies did not go unopposed. Some members of the American Union Against Militarism, led by Crystal Eastman and IWW member Roger Baldwin, established the National Civil Liberties Bureau to defend conscientious objectors and the right of free speech. By 1920 the Bureau was renamed the American Civil Liberties Union, and pledged itself to protect constitutional rights. Founding members included Helen Keller and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn of the IWW, as well as other labor leaders, attorneys, authors and radical activists. Immediately the ACLU opposed deportations of radical activists and the government’s attacks on unions’ rights to organize workers. The organization also fought the persecution of all of the people arrested and imprisoned for expressing anti-war opinions.

Although Palmer said he “gloried” in the arrests, some government officials started to question them. Louis F. Post, the man who had signed Emma Goldman’s deportation order, later admitted that “cases in which there was substantial proof of any unlawful act with sinister intent or guilty knowledge were exceptions — very rare exceptions.” The Supreme Court also felt the pressure. Although the US Supreme Court had not upheld any free speech claims under the First Amendment prior to the founding of the ACLU, suddenly it sang a different tune. In dissenting opinions, Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis stated that speech could not be punished unless it presented a “clear and present danger.” In Gitlow v. New York (1925), the Supreme Court finally decided that freedom of speech and the press were protected by the First Amendment from federal encroachment.

Even though the Palmer Raids and America’s first “Red Scare” lost steam after 1920, the damage was done. Neither Palmer nor Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s could prove the existence of subversive conspiracies against the government. Despite being discredited, these men’s legacies continue to shape Americans’ views of organized labor and radical political ideologies. With this in mind, it’s important to notice when a presidential candidate favors restricting free speech rights. Perhaps 1919 was not really that long ago.

The Working Stiff Journal was a free community newspaper produced in Austin, Texas and distributed across town. All of the articles were available online on the UT Watch site for many years, but they are no longer available, so I am republishing my own work here (in 2014). You can still read back issues thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

The Working Stiff Journal
Vol. 2 #3, April 1999
by Jackie Dana

In every country in the world, men earn more than women. This situation has existed since before the rise of factories and cubicles. According to Paris tax records from 1313, women’s taxable wealth was 65.6% of men’s, and women held the lowest-paying jobs within the city.

Women have come a long way since then—or have we? Thirty years ago women earned just over half the pay of their male counterparts. This was supposed to be resolved with the passage of the federal Equal Pay Act of 1963. Under this act, employers must pay women the same as men for work that is “substantially equal.” Additionally, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which covers employers with 15 or more workers, prohibits pay differences based on gender and bars discrimination against women in hiring, promotion, training, discipline and other job aspects.

Despite the existence of such laws, women are entering the 21st century still being paid substantially less than men. In 1997, women were paid 74.1 cents for every dollar men received. When broken down by ethnicity, African American women earn only 67 cents for every dollar that men earn, and Latinas only 58 cents. According to AFL-CIO statistics, the average 25-year-old working woman will lose $523,000 to unequal pay during her working life.

To illustrate the problem, it’s worth examining salaries for a variety of positions and note how much more men receive, on average, in these jobs. These figures are provided by the AFL-CIO. For computer programmer positions, the median pay is $869 per week for men; for women it is only $742, a difference of $127. Female restaurant staff average $60 less per week than males. Female special education teachers are paid $86 less. Clerical workers feel the pinch as well—women make $378 per week; men make $72 more. Even male lawyers, whose median salary is $1,267, make over $300 more than their female colleagues.

Each year women mark this difference in men’s and women’s salaries on “Equal Pay Day.” That is the day when women as a whole have finally earned as much as their male counterparts did by December 31st of the previous year. The date is calculated each year from U.S. Census Bureau data on men’s and women’s earnings.

Equal Pay Day 1999 will be observed on April 8, five days later than in 1998; apparently we made in comparison with men even less money this past year!

On the AFL-CIO website women can calculate how much income they will lose over their lifetime, based on current salary, education level and age. Needless to say, it was distressing to learn that as a union member I can expect to lose $520,107. At least it’s better than the calculation of $696,262 if I weren’t a member of a union! (Mourn your own lost income athttp://www.aflcio.org/women/equalpay.htm.)

One reason for the difference in wages comes from a long-cherished image of women as the family homemaker and care giver for children. Traditionally, the breadwinner role has belonged to the father, while the mother, if she worked, did so either to supplement the man’s salary or to ease the boredom of housework (which, of course, is unpaid work). Although the Equal Pay Act was supposed to remove the concept of relative “need” from salary determinations, female wages still apparently come with the assumption that women are second wage earners. Male wages, on the other hand, continue to be seen as a means to promote personal achievement.

According to the 1997 Report on the National Survey from the Working Women’s Department of the AFL-CIO, 64% of working women provide about half or more of their household income. At the same time, 41% of working women head their own households, and 28% of these women have dependent children. Although our society expects women to arrange for child care (if they don’t provide it themselves), only 11% of working women with children younger than 12 have jobs that provide child care.

In general, women’s work is devalued. The more women in a given occupation, the less both men and women in that occupation will earn. For example, in the United States, where most dentists are male, the salaries are very high, while in Europe, where most dentists are female, dentists’ incomes are more modest and closer to the average (Reskin and Padavic, Women and Men at Work , 1994). Furthermore, disparities in income by job classification are common, owing to severe gender segregation within the workplace. Reskin and Padavic report that fewer than 10% of workers in the United States have a coworker of the other sex that “does the same job, for the same employer, in the same location, and on the same shift.”

At the University of Texas, there is great disparity in income, responsibilities and job titles based on gender. According to official University figures published by the Office of Institutional Studies, as of fall 1998 there were 1,548 tenured and tenure track faculty at UT. These are the positions with both job security and the highest salaries. Of these faculty positions, only 345—fewer than a quarter—are held by women. Meanwhile, 659 people fill the lower-paying non-tenure track positions; of these, 332, more than half, are women.

The situation is the same for UT’s nonteaching staff. Only 221 of the 552 people with “Executive/Administrative and Management” titles are women. Technical positions are filled more than twice as often with men. Yet the lower-paid administrative support and clerical titles are overwhelmingly female. Of 5,081 such jobs, an amazing 3,114 are women.

As we approach the next millennium, the U.S. society must face this challenge. It is time that we finally reverse the discrimination and stereotypes of at least the last thousand years, and strive to make the concept of ” pay for equal work a reality for all women.

The Working Stiff Journal was a free community newspaper produced in Austin, Texas and distributed across town. All of the articles were available online on the UT Watch site for many years, but they are no longer available, so I am republishing my own work here (in 2014). You can still read back issues thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

The Working Stiff Journal
Vol. 2 #2, March 1999
by Jackie Dana

For some in the labor movement, collective bargaining is the pinnacle of union organizing; for others, it is little more than a layer of bureaucracy that takes power away from unions and the workers as a whole.

Collective bargaining is the process by which a union gains a contract with an employer. Under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, workers gained the legal right to join unions and engage in collective bargaining. Under the provisions of the law, once workers organize and approve a union through an election, the employer is required to meet with union representatives “at reasonable times and confer in good faith with respect to wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment,” with the result being the “execution of a written contract incorporating any agreement reached….” Contracts spell out wages and benefits, working conditions, and the security of the union as well as management’s.

The road to negotiating a detailed contract can be very bumpy indeed. Depending on the expected items for negotiation and the state of management-union relations, employers may try to stall proceedings or undermine unions; unions on the other hand, will do everything they can to put pressure on management , with workers wearing union insignia, engaging in demonstrations and pickets, or any other actions that promote and display union solidarity. Leaks to the media may add pressure or encourage public support for one side or the other.

If the terms of a contract cannot be mutually decided upon, an impasse may be declared. At this point employers may test union strength by imposing an old contract’s terms or by continuing operations without a contract. Unions, on the other hand, can file unfair labor practice complaints with the National Labor Review Board, which if successful will force employers back into negotiations. Unions may also call strikes with the intention of forcing management back to the table. (Future ‘Labor 101’ columns will address strikes in more detail.)

Contracts, once agreed upon, are legally binding for both employers and workers. If terms of a contract are subsequently broken by employers, under grievance procedures set up through a contract workers may take their complaints to shop stewards—union representatives to management. Shop stewards often are allowed to use work time to handle grievances and meet with management to address them. If there is no resolution, a grievance can be brought to an arbitration hearing. Independent arbitrators weigh the information and decide if the terms of the contract have indeed been broken. The decision of these hearings is binding for both the union and the management.

Although the process allows for improvements in conditions and protection against unjust actions by employers, at the same time collective bargaining is not a universal panacea for labor. It entrenches the wage system and the huge gaps that exist between labor and management, in terms of both salaries and rights within the workplace. Collective bargaining is bureaucratic in nature and serves to prevent workers from engaging in more radical efforts to promote their interests. Labor leaders and business owners essentially work in collaboration to devise agreements that maintain a compliant work force. Organized direct action by union members, feared by employers, is the strongest power a union has; contracts usually strip unions of this power. For this reason many contracts contain no-strike clauses, making it illegal to participate in this basic form of direct rank-and-file action while a contract is in effect.

Today we hear much about the need for democracy within the labor movement. Because of the nature of negotiations (and the size of many unions), workers rarely have direct input into contract negotiations. Because of this, union members should elect only those leaders who are demonstrably responsive to their needs and issues; otherwise members may find it difficult to have their voices heard. This introduces an added layer to negotiations. Not only do union leaders have to exert pressure on the employers, but it is vital that union members pressure their leaders not to accept a conservative or incomplete contract.

The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 excluded all U.S. public employees from the right to collective bargaining. Texas, unlike many other states, has not passed legislation overturned this prohibition, and therefore city, county and state workers—including health care workers in state agencies, public school teachers and university employees—cannot legally engage in this basic right of union membership. Although it is unclear where Texas legislators stand on this issue, some unions err on the side of caution and choose not to fight for collective bargaining rights, lest such efforts alienate conservative members of the Texas House and Senate. Instead of fighting constant battles for wage increases from the legislature, unions should campaign for the right to bargain directly with their employers.

Depending on one’s political perspective, collective bargaining is a viable but not always the ultimate answer to labor’s needs; in the absence of more radical solutions, however, it is a form of power for workers, and is the best chance for them to earn living wages and gain legal protections against unfair labor practices.

The Working Stiff Journal was a free community newspaper produced in Austin, Texas and distributed across town. All of the articles were available online on the UT Watch site for many years, but they are no longer available, so I am republishing my own work here (in 2014). You can still read back issues thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

The Working Stiff Journal
Labor 101
by Jackie Dana
Vol. 2 #1, February 1999

Last time, “Labor 101” explained what unions are and how they function. In this issue we will explore the broader labor union movement and what workers can do to strengthen and promote the cause of labor.

By their very nature unions denote the coming together of workers despite political and cultural identities. At the most basic level, employees realize that they share concerns with each other about working conditions, pay, benefits disciplinary matters and other issues.

Unions are the best vehicle for improving our work conditions. Unfortunately, Texas doesn’t have the same tradition of strong unions as the Northeast and Midwest, and many workers in our state approach unions with distrust, fear or disdain, believing that joining a union will accomplish nothing but brand them as troublemakers and get them fired. Making matters more difficult for labor organizers, Texas is a “right to work” state, which means that workers do not have to join a union even after a majority of workers agree to labor representation. Many corporations choose to locate their offices and factories in Texas and other southern states with right to work laws precisely because they believe they will have less labor problems here than they would in other parts of the country.

Employers hope for a docile and disorganized labor force; we as workers are not obligated to give them one. For Texas workers, therefore, it is not enough to vote to unionize a workplace; it is also not enough to join a union and believe that the payment of dues alone is sufficient. One must also constantly organize, build membership, and educate members about the importance of having an active and visible union.

Membership is vital. In a scenario where the membership numbers are low, the union’s claim to represent the workers will be called into question by both the employer and local or state government bodies. Worker education about labor law and history is also something that is vital to a strong movement. Many of us feel like each time we take a step, we have to re-invent the wheel. With all the work we face in building our unions, we tend to forget about everything but the immediate issues. There is strength in putting one’s own struggle into context, to be able to understand one’s rights as well as what others sacrificed in order to win those rights. Union organizing cannot happen in a vacuum; therefore we must always strive to learn everything we can and share that knowledge with all our fellow workers.

In this same vein, it is important not only to support our own unions, but to support other labor struggles locally as well as internationally. Solidarity for our fellow workers reinforces their struggles but it also strengthens our own.

Two recent international solidarity efforts illustrate this point.

In 1995 the Mersey Docks and Harbor Company in Liverpool, England fired 500 workers when they refused to cross a picket line set up by fellow workers, and replaced these workers with scab labor. The workers alerted longshore unions around the world about their plight. When the Neptune Jade, a container ship loaded with cargo by these scab workers, came into Oakland, CA in September 1997 and tried to discharge its cargo, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) honored their British comrades’ picket line. The ILWU refused to unload the ship’s cargo, while political organizations and students held several protests in support of the workers and against the Neptune Jade.The ship moved up the west coast, getting a frosty welcome in Vancouver as well, and then it crossed the Pacific, only to discover that the All-Japan Dockworkers’ Union also refused to unload the ship. In the end the Neptune Jade was sold in Taiwan and its cargo disappeared. Meanwhile the stalwart Oakland workers were accused of breaking the law by refusing to unload the ship, and they and others faced a lawsuit for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages from their employers, a suit that was finally dropped this past December.

In another act of solidarity, in November, as a response to changes in health-care benefits, 2,600 members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET-CWA), called a surprise one-day strike against the ABC television network. ABC management responded by locking out the workers and using scab labor. Since that time many entertainers and politicians such as Al Gore, Howard Stern, Adam Sandler and George Foreman have canceled appearances on the network. The ABC management attempted to have certain shows produced by scab labor in England, but this effort was met by protests outside the studios by members of the Broadcasting, Entertainment and Cinematography and Theatre Union of Great Britain, the Communication Workers Union and the National Journalists Union. As of this writing, the dispute has not been settled.

In this age of multinationals, corporations are determined to extend their power across international boundaries, and discard one set of workers in favor of others who will work for less and will not cause trouble in the workplace. In what are bald-faced attempts to undermine the rights gained over a century and a half of struggle, relocation is a tangible and believable threat. We can defend against such actions, but only if unions both build themselves internally into strong, cohesive forces as well as cooperate with other unions, showing solidarity with fellow workers in England, Mexico, Japan and everywhere else. As CWU member Chris Proctor wrote in the Dec./Jan. issue of CWA News, “If companies like ABC…have difficulties with employees, they can simply shift the work to another continent. If our trade unions can’t match that, we are going nowhere except downhill.”

As corporations grow in influence workers are facing lower wages in real dollars, longer hours, less job security and declining benefits. We must encourage our colleagues that unions are our best recourse, our best defense against the “McDonaldization” of America and the world.

The Working Stiff Journal was a free community newspaper produced in Austin, Texas and distributed across town. All of the articles were available online on the UT Watch site for many years, but they are no longer available, so I am republishing my own work here (in 2014). You can still read back issues thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

The Working Stiff Journal
Spotlight on Labor
Vol. 2 #1, February 1999
by Jackie Dana

Despite the historic use of the police against labor unions and the politically conservative nature of law enforcement, CLEAT, the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas has challenged such contradictions to become the state’s largest union of police officers and a political powerhouse in less than twenty-five years.

CLEAT was formed in 1976 by former members of the Texas Municipal Police Association. Arguing that the TMPA was reluctant to consider itself a union, CLEAT founders Ronald G. DeLord and John Burpo wanted an organization that was less conservative when it came to labor matters. From the start, CLEAT pushed for full legal representation, collective bargaining, and a more confrontational style of organization. In its first year it signed up 600 members, and two years later it could boast 3,000. In 1992 CLEAT became affiliated with the AFL-CIO as Local 6911 of the Communication Workers of America (CWA).

CLEAT membership is open to any licensed Texas peace officer, and today CLEAT can count as members more than 16,000 police officers, deputies and detention officers from across Texas, and more than more than ninety affiliated police and deputy associations. It has offices in nine major Texas cities, with its main administrative office located in Austin. It is funded entirely by membership dues, and its executive board is composed of rank and file members from across the state.

As a union, CLEAT provides extensive legal assistance to its members, and acts as an advocate when members’ rights may be violated by their employers. If a law enforcement officer faces disciplinary action or termination, or is involved in a criminal proceeding arising from actions performed in the line of duty, an attorney is provided automatically and without limitations. Furthermore, CLEAT also pays the employee’s share of arbitration fees.

A basic principle for CLEAT is that every law enforcement officer in Texas should be covered by a collective bargaining agreement. In the Texas Legislature CLEAT won an expansion of collective bargaining rights for its own members, its success offering a model for other public sector labor unions in Texas. CLEAT won the right for local police associations to take the issue of collective bargaining to their municipalities, where it can be decided by referendum. Its efforts are paying off: a third of CLEAT locals have won local option elections allowing them to engage in collective bargaining, though collective bargaining still encounters strong opposition from many municipal officials across the state.

CLEAT is also a political action force. Many CLEAT locals have successfully helped local and state candidates win their election campaigns. It also endorses candidates for governor, attorney general, Texas House and Senate seats, and local and district judges.

Devoting a fair share of energy to the Texas Legislature, CLEAT has won many benefits for Texas law enforcement, including health care for retirees and increases in line-of-duty death benefits for families of slain officers. CLEAT was instrumental in the legislation creating a police memorial on the Capitol grounds and it won a tuition exemption law which provides free college tuition for disabled officers wounded in the line of duty. CLEAT’s support of capital punishment was reinforced in 1997 when it successfully pushed through a bill closing a loophole in the state capital murder statute, making it more difficult for those accused of killing police officers to avoid the death penalty.

CLEAT’s 1999 Lobby Day will be on February 9th. According to DeLord, in the upcoming Legislative Session, CLEAT intends to push forward with legislation to remove a 1947 prohibition on collective bargaining for all public employees. Like the police, other unions could then mobilize to induce their local governments or employers into accepting collective bargaining rights. DeLord is encouraged by some preliminary discussions with conservative politicians and city officials and believes this legislation has a chance to succeed based on the current popularity of decentralized government with more emphasis on local decision-making.

Never shying away from controversy, CLEAT has tackled both ends of the political spectrum. It drew fire from conservatives in 1982 when it launched a successful “Cops Against Clements” campaign opposing Republican governor Bill Clements and in 1988 when it endorsed Michael Dukakis for President. In 1992, CLEAT took a conservative stand when it led the call for a national boycott of Time-Warner after the company released Ice-T and Body Count’s song “Cop Killer.” The album was eventually pulled from shelves and re-released without the offending song. This action sparked accusations of censorship by free-speech advocates, but CLEAT claimed victory.

This past summer the Texas Supreme Court upheld a state law giving enforcement officers the right to independent arbitration on employment matters. In Lubbock, the city had refused three police officers the right to appeal a disciplinary matter to an independent hearing examiner rather than to a civilian panel appointed by the City of Lubbock, the officers’ employer. Other cities had also tried to refer disciplinary cases to its own panels. In the suit, it was upheld that police officers must have a choice concerning where such hearings are held. Although a victory for the union, others have expressed concern that police have a special responsibility to the public and that this policy makes it more difficult to adequately monitor incidents of police misconduct as hearings are taken out of the public eye.

DeLord noted in October’s The Texas Police Star that police associations exist to improve the living and working conditions of their members, and that they should not shy away from opportunities to succeed in their goal, even if the road to success is sometimes controversial. As he put it, “the meek may inherit the earth, but the teamsters will get a better contract.

The Working Stiff Journal was a free community newspaper produced in Austin, Texas and distributed across town. All of the articles were available online on the UT Watch site for many years, but they are no longer available, so I am republishing my own work here (in 2014). You can still read back issues thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

The Working Stiff Journal
Vol. 1 #4, Winter 1998
Column: Labor 101
by Jackie Dana

Unions exist in many industrialized countries in the world as collections of workers who have something in common: they work within one industry, possess similar job duties or skills, or share a common employer. In simplest terms a labor union, as the dictionary defines it, is “an organization of workers formed for the purpose of advancing its members’ interests in respect to wages and working conditions.”

Before the 1800s, unions were unknown in the United States. Instead, skilled craftsmen and artisans formed guilds, associations of all workers within a specific trade. Guild members protected and promoted their own crafts, including overseeing apprentices, and the guilds themselves had competitive requirements to join. Workers outside of guilds, particularly manual laborers and those in cottage industries, had few legal protections and lacked the support of a collective that the guild provided.

At the opening of the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution in the United States changed the nature of work and manufacturing. With the growth of factories and unskilled labor, guilds became insufficient to address most workers’ needs. The first trade unions formed in response to unsuitable working conditions for huge numbers of unskilled laborers. Such workers manufactured products for long hours under unsafe and unhealthy conditions. Industrial and territorial expansion increased the number of factories as well as jobs in mines and on the railroads. Despite very low pay and the risk of injury or death, these new jobs were often the only means of survival for the majority of non-agricultural workers, particularly recent immigrants, women and children.

Despite horrific conditions, individual workers were powerless to challenge the factory owners. They had no skills or influence and a single employee could be easily replaced. Workers began to organize themselves, uniting to put pressure on their bosses to improve conditions and increase wages. Early confrontations were often marked by the violence inflicted on union members. In the end, large numbers of determined workers refused to be frightened or intimidated and their efforts forced employers to meet with them to discuss working conditions.

Today, labor unions negotiate contracts with employers through the process of collective bargaining. This system is based on a simple premise: management provides employment, and workers provide labor. Neither can exist without the other. Under collective bargaining, representatives of these two groups meet to determine contracts which define the rules for hiring, firing and promotions practices; establish safety procedures; provide for overtime and sick time; and promise health insurance and retirement benefits. If a contract is broken by an employer, or when a union and management cannot agree on the terms within a contract, in most sectors workers may withhold their labor and call a legal strike until an agreement can be reached.

In non-unionized workplaces contracts rarely exist between workers and their employers. Such workers tend to be paid 33% less than their union counterparts, and have few protections against unjust hiring, promotions and firing practices. As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “If I went to work in a factory, the first thing I’d do would be to join a union.”

Union organizing efforts over the years have led to the creation of federal and state laws protecting workers’ rights. Because of unions, Americans have eight-hour work days, 40-hour work weeks, anti-child labor laws, workers’ compensation benefits and safety regulations, insurance and retirement benefits, higher pay standards, and even a holiday – Labor Day.

To actually form a union, workers collect petitions and vote to form a union “local” or branch. Such efforts demonstrate to the employer that a majority of workers support the union. Once established, employees do the work of organizing and hold elected positions within the local union. In most states, once a union has been formed, all employees are required to join the union. However, in Texas, a “right to work” state, employees are not required to join the union which represents them. Although this law gives the illusion of fairness in that it theoretically protects workers from being “coerced” into joining a union, non-union employees actually reap the same rewards as those employees who are union members and who worked for the benefits. Such “right to work” laws have the overall effect of weakening unions by providing disincentives to join unions.

Ultimately, unions provide a voice for workers, and by encouraging safe and comfortable work environments, they should be seen to be in the best interest of employers. As Senator Orrin Hatch (R. Utah) said in 1994, “We need unions to make sure that working people have a legitimate and consistent voice”.

The Working Stiff Journal was a free community newspaper produced in Austin, Texas and distributed across town. All of the articles were available online on the UT Watch site for many years, but they are no longer available, so I am republishing my own work here (in 2014). You can still read back issues thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.