Employees were given the right to strike and form unions and forced employers to recognize these unions with the Wagner Act of 1935. This act, however, gave employees the right to send representatives to their employers but did not require the employers to adhere to these unions or strikes. The Supreme Court was against this law.
Section 7(a) gave laborers the right to collective bargaining. This gave laborers the right to congregate as a union and bargain with their employers over certain work related issues. It gave hope to the laborer and was used both for and against the laborer by the government.
The CAW (Cannery and Agricultural Workers Union) Strike in Imperial Valley California was largely unsuccessful. The workers were almost all Mexican and Filipino and the work conditions rivaled slavery. The workers were centralized into a union and led to strike, but the strike was led by Communist ideals (?). Because of the communist aspect of the strike, the growers sent in armed “toughs” (?) to break up the strike and ended up killing 3 people. The government tried intervening in this affair but was unsuccessful. CAW eventually died out, but it left the Associated Farmers of America Inc. Showed that the government doesn’t know how to handle disputes between strikers and employers. Rights of strikers were being met cruelly by employers.
The San Francisco Riot/Protest 1934 was caused because of longshoremen hatred of “shape ups”. After their strike led to a riot, two died and the city of San Francisco was devastated. Harry Bridges, leader of the International Longshoremen Association (ILA) led a protest because of the deaths, which ended up in a 4 day strike throughout the whole city of San Francisco. Over 130,000 workers were involved and it showed how the public was starting to side with strikers, and that government meets strikes with brutality.
Minneapolis Trucker War in 1934 was led by the communist Dunne Brothers. The Dunne brothers wanted every trucking firm to hire people within their union. This would make it so that the unions controlled who worked, not the employers. The Citizen’s Alliance (government) refused, and the Citizen’s Army went to war with Dunne’s union. After a month, the trucking firms accepted the Dunne brothers’ terms and the fighting was over. This shows us that the government cannot cleanly deal with strikes, and that strikers are starting to get what they want, albeit at the expense of many lives. This also shows a trend between strike leaders and communists, where most strikes are led by communists.
The Textile Strike of 1934 was caused by workers who wanted the textile owners to honor the Cotton Textile Code, which would give workers higher wages, work sharing, and collective bargaining. The strike spanned 20 states and was badly organized. Many of the strikes ended up in rioting because the strikers were poorly disciplined. Many people were killed because of this strike, and it was inevitably ended because the union was unwilling to risk the lives of the protesters against the machine guns of the government.
General Trends
Employers dislike the idea of organized labor. It brings too much power into the working man’s hands and it creates a sense of fear for the employer. They're afraid of what the unions will ask for and afraid of what they’ll do when they don’t get what they want.
Almost all strikes have been led by communists. This shows us that the working man’s ideals line up closely with the beliefs of communists. The fact that most strikes are led by communists could also be a factor of their general unsuccessfulness. Most Americans in the 1930’s are afraid of and hate communism. Because of this, strikes seem like something communist, therefore the average American would not support them.
The government does not properly know how to deal with union and employer relations when it comes to strikes. Often times, the government sends mixed signals, sometimes favoring laborers sometimes favoring employers. However, the Supreme Court is largely against unions, most likely because the Supreme Court is being led by the Four Horsemen.
I'm not so sure that the strikes were almost all led by communist. My understanding of it was that saying it was a sign of communism/socialism is just what employers and anti-unionist said to hurt the unionist movement. This tactic worked for the most part and was the main cause behind the Red Scare of 1919-1921.
ReplyDeleteWow, very nice post Louis, very informative. It begs the question that even thought the Supreme Court decided in favor of labor unions, how there continued to be such a struggle for them to form. It isn't surprising that strikes occurred during this time period, but it is interesting to learn how many of them were truly effective.
ReplyDeleteVery informative post, and I especially like the analysis at the end. However, as Perla stated earlier, I'm not too sure about your assertion that most of the strikes were "communist", and so the average American would not support them. In my understanding, the average American is a laborer or worker who would like to form a Union and have the right to strike, and so, it either follows that the average American supported communism, something that is obviously untrue, or that although some of the strikes may have shared ideas with communism, they were not truly associated with communism by the American public.
ReplyDeleteA whole bunch of great information here Louis. I like your analysis in the end, but I would like to add that the government did indeed learn from their mistakes. After the Flint Strike, police would be called in to keep order and would stay neutral. The government new if they interfered that they would have to deal the with consequences from the people and the unions as well.
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