Labor's Choice: Sharpen Knives Or Sharpen Minds?

September 4, 1989|By Bailey Thomson of The Sentinel Staff

In 1931, coal operators in Harlan County, Ky., blew up striking miners' soup kitchens, killed organizers and kidnapped activists.

Congress inquired why the Pittsburgh Coal Co. trained machine guns on workers in its pits. The chairman replied, ''You cannot run the mines without them.''

Nor apparently some mills and factories.

Strikers at Republic Steel proclaimed in 1937 they had a right to picket. Men, women and children marched toward the company's South Chicago plant. Policemen responded, ''You red bastards, you got no rights,'' and mercilessly attacked the crowd. Nine of the marchers died.

It's important to remember why government intervened in what traditionally had been a private matter between labor and business. The terrible 1930s moved public opinion to the unions' side. Congress responded by granting workers the right to bargain collectively.

The success of this experiment is evident in the vast expansion of the middle class. From being shot at, beaten and locked out in the 1930s, workers went on to buy a chunk of the American dream. They bought homes in the suburbs, sent their children to college and sported bumper stickers proclaiming patriotic values.

Unions provided workers with a voice. That helped America avoid sharp class distinctions like those that continue to divide Great Britain. On this Labor Day, we can all be thankful for that.

Lately, however, labor seems unduly pessimistic. Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO, complained to The New York Times the other day that the nation's labor laws no longer serve working people.

He is particularly vexed at the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees talks between unions and business. Kirkland charged that the board in the Reagan era tilted against unions. He would prefer the law of the jungle to what exists now.

If that means going back to having machine guns pointed at them, some of his members surely would demur. Labor learned through bloody experience that government is an indispensable referee.

Actually, Kirkland's complaint suggests a much deeper frustration: labor's inability to reverse a declining position within the workforce. In 1955 unions could claim more than 33 percent of wage and salaried workers. Today that figure is less than 17 percent.

Technology has eliminated many high-paying union jobs, while the white-collar sector resists organizing. More obstinate is the challenge of foreign competition. Domestic corporations no longer easily pass on wage increases as they did when the world lined up to buy American.

Rather than sharpen their knives for jungle warfare, unions have some hard thinking to do. How can they advance labor's cause and that of America in a global marketplace?

It is condescending to tell labor that it must resign itself to an indefinite future of givebacks and lowered expectations. But it is not unrealistic to suggest that strikes and plant closings will help the Japanese or the Europeans sell more of their popular goods.

Struggle tempered the labor movement and gave it moral authority. Government reacted with necessary laws. Other victories await labor, provided its collective voice can speak with similar clarity to far more complex times.

Orlando Sentinel Articles