In the past century and a half, the American people have undergone tremendous changes, both in disposition and social advancement. With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, and the development of the major modern city, workers have been required to adapt in order to survive. With the world becoming smaller, people of all races and economic classes have had to work together and find ways to coexist, particularly in the workforce. In the experience of labor movements in the United States from the late nineteenth century to today, certain themes have emerged over and over again as central to the development of these labor organizations and movements. These themes include: the interplay of race, gender and class in the rights of labor workers; the relationship of skilled workers to unskilled or semiskilled workers; and the role of the state in determining worker's rights. In this essay, these themes will be explored during various periods in American history, stemming from the 1870s until the 1950s.
In the 1870s and 1880s, white domination of the workforce was readily apparent - mills were employing all white workers, as were factories and all other types of industry throughout America1. The nineteenth century saw rampant discrimination on the part of whites toward blacks in particular. The state had recently freed slaves as a result of the Civil War, but did not do a great deal to protect newly freed blacks, or give them opportunities for work. Blacks were instead viewed as incompetent; either southern whites hated them for no longer having direct control over them, or northern whites felt threatened by the strain on the jobs market that they represented. What's more, the US government seized more than half of Mexico's land during this time, creating a giant influx of Mexican workers into the workforce2. With this new exposure to poor minorities, whites and the upper class did not know what to do with them, and therefore shunned them from polite society and the workforce. This created a systemic rejection of poor minorities in the country, encouraging disenfranchisement that the state did nothing to remedy.
Women of all races were subject to discrimination and societal rejection from the workforce; even among minorities who experienced the same discrimination themselves, men felt that women had no place in the workforce, instead leaving them home to take care of families and tend to the household. In the late nineteenth century, minorities and women were firmly entrenched in deep seated social and gender roles; the country in general was still suffering through Reconstruction, making any kind of real change on that end a distant dream.
The 1920s and 1930s saw a tremendous amount of political and economic upheaval and revolution. The creation of the New Deal saw many changes happen to the world of business, involving the government in a very real and tangible way; this made a lot of people angry, as they wanted the government out of their business. However, this did not mean that people were easily going to look the other way at a radical movement: "Excellent studies examine how America's workers responded to these changes but often dismiss as less viable their most radical choices"3. Nonetheless, people despised the increasing influence of the state in the economic affairs of business, even the workers; this led to unique and varied worker and labor movements throughout America.
One particular movement of note was the American Communist Movement, which gained substantial momentum during this time. This movement was "one of an organization that celebrated Soviet leaders, co-opted Soviet symbols, and embraced revolutionary Marxist-Leninist ideology, and the other a somewhat popular American social movement comprised of a wide array of otherwise ordinary people?"4. This movement demonstrated a tremendous amount of radicalism and leftism on display among the working class of American, particularly in Chicago.
Race, gender and class are all interrelated subjects in the realm of the labor movement; all of these divisions create second-class citizens that are not given favorable treatment. However, despite race or gender differences, the one true unifying force in the labor movement was class. Many people, black or white, man or woman, would come together as lower-class citizens to fight on behalf of their fellow workers, often against the upper-class. The American Communist movement stemmed from overall class dissatisfaction, with poverty and disenfranchisement at record highs. With these things in place, it was clear that the state was not working in their best interests; this is why movements like the American Communist movement gained so much momentum.
The year 1919 saw the fall of unions right after World War I; this led to an economic repression that saw workers go on strike immediately. Of course, the racial-specific organization of neighborhoods in cities like Chicago at the time made assembling protests and unions difficult. "Isolated in local neighborhoods and fragmented by ethnicity and race, workers proved incapable of mounting the unified action necessary for success"5. The state, and the businesses that ran under it, meant to deepen these racial tensions by bringing minorities in to break strikes, making them seem villainous and encouraging hatred by the strikers upon these minorities.
Luckily, labor workers of all stripes managed to find ways to communicate. Forced to work together and shop together through mass culture and the invention of mass transit, blacks, whites and other races started to comingle and learn how to reconcile their differences. This blending of cultures led to solidarity among the workers of Chicago, and they and the rest of America's workforce successfully assembled national-level industrial unions by the mid 1930s6. The goals of these labor movements were all very similar; these labor unions helped to create "an activist welfare state concerned with equalizing wealth and privilege"7.
The 1950s saw the intervention of the state in a large way toward crushing these kinds of revolutionary movements and labor fights. When Senator Joseph McCarthy began what came to be known as "The Red Scare," any leftist movement perceived as anti-capitalism or anti-business (namely, labor unions) were placed under scrutiny. The aforementioned American Communist movement came to its downfall in the 1950s. With the beginning of the McCarthy era, spy scandals and Communist ties were rampant throughout the country; leftist movements all around America were targeted, and it became much less glamorous to be a part of them. As a result, the movement failed, and much of it has also been removed from the collective consciousness of Chicagoans. However, it did allow the poor and African-Americans the freedom and the support to be suspicious of white politicians, given that many black neighborhoods were the recipient of these white Communist movements.
In the 1950s, one strike in particular demonstrated the willingness of the Latin-American community to band together and create something that expressed their frustrations about their working conditions, while at the same time blurring the lines as to what men and women could do for the cause of the labor movement. During the Hanover, New Mexico miner's strike in 1951, the wives of the workers and other women in the community advocated to strike and picket alongside the men; this was a controversial cultural idea, particularly considering the deeply gender-segregated roles present in many Latino populations. Striking for more than a year, the small band of strikers "depended on a wider community, especially their wives, for support"8. Women held an interesting position in this time; they wanted to fight for their right to work, and their husband's right to work, but those same husbands forbade them from working. It presented an odd conflict of interest that had to be combated in order to make any real progress.
In conclusion, the labor movements present in United States history had many common themes between them, all of which helped to define these unique adventures in democracy and equality. First, the complex intertwining of racial, gender and class lines and distinctions helped to identify who was for what cause; rich white businessmen refused to grant laborers the rights they deserved, and helped to stratify and segregate gender and racial lines to keep them appeased. It was only when working-class men and women of all genders began working together that true change started to happen. Secondly, the differences, whether real or perceived, between skilled and unskilled workers played a large part in creating these same separations that kept labor movements down. Minorities were viewed as incompetent workers since the nineteenth century, a cultural attitude that has helped to diminish trust in their abilities. At the same time, the relative skill and experience of union workers is exactly why they advocate for their employment in construction projects and the like during the early twentieth century.
Finally, the state played a pivotal role in the outcome of many of these labor movements, often putting a stop to them for the most arbitrary, jingoistic reasons. The biggest, most prominent example of this comes from the McCarthy-era committees that cropped up in the 1950s, which were meant to weed out Communism. As a consequence, they crushed many leftist and revolutionary movements, carrying the public support to do so. The American Communist movement was dissolved as a direct result of these committees, and any semblance of dissent present from labor movements was swiftly crushed by the state's crackdown on radicals.
The labor union struggle continues today, with advocates for social justice appearing everywhere and working hard to get people to represent them and the people they fight for. However, there are often strict divisions between these movements that prevent people from unifying - namely, the perception of what constitutes a good worker. There are different unions that favor different workers, from leftist to traditionalist to pragmatist9. Along with the race and gender differences, this is a substantial point of contention between many unions; they simply cannot agree on what kind of workforce they want to be. This leads to many different ideologies acting separately, and thus being weaker on the whole.
All of these factors contribute to the difficult path that labor movements have taken in the United States. In their quest for freedom, fair wages, and appropriate compensation for their work, they have come across many obstacles. These obstacles have come from within (racial/gender stereotyping and segregation) and without (McCarthyism, strict refusal of union demands by businesses). However, the sheer effort displayed by many individuals to spread the word about their cause, and the work they put into to get things done, resulted in a unifying of people of all genders and races, a cultural detente stemming from the unified desire to have their interests represented. This, more than anything else, is the embodiment of the American Dream.
Works Cited
Baker, Ellen R.. On strike and on film: Mexican American families and blacklisted filmmakers in Cold War America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
Cohen, Lizabeth. Making a new deal: industrial workers in Chicago, 1919-1939. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Fletcher, Bill, and Fernando Gapasin. Solidarity divided: the crisis in organized labor and a new
path toward social justice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
MacLean, Nancy. Freedom Is Not Enough. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Storch, Randi. Red Chicago: American communism at its grassroots, 1928-35. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
