Employers in the 1930s Were Nastier,
But Millions of Workers Joined Unions

It's become standard practice for labor leaders to blame "aggressive" anti-union employers for the AFL-CIO's failure to organize the 40 to 50 million workers who say they'd like to join a union.

They sidestep criticism of their poor organizing performance by quoting the horrifying statistics of employer intimidation compiled by Cornell researcher Kate Bronfenbrenner, who says:

25% of employers fire at least one worker for union activity during organizing campaigns.

75% of employers hire union-busting "consultants" to help them defeat organizing drives.

78% of employers force workers to attend one-on-one meetings with their supervisors to pressure them against unions.

92 of employers compel their work force to attend mandatory "captive audience" meetings to listen to anti-union propaganda.

52% of employers threaten to call the Immigration and Naturalization Service, to intimidate their undocumented workers during an organizing campaign.

51% of employers threaten to close their plants and relocate elsewhere if the union wins an NLRB election.

AFL-CIO's Voice@Work assiduously promotes this evidence of employer hostility. How would you expect unorganized workers to react to this union publicity about their employer's power?

AFL-CIO's Organizing Director Steward Acuff says: "As long as it takes an extraordinary act of courage for workers to join a union, we'll not be able to realize the dream of progressives." If it seems that hopeless, why spend time and money trying to organize?

Waiting for Bosses to Be Nice to Unions?

Were employers kinder and gentler in the 1930s when millions of workers from virtually every trade and occupation responded to the call to join a union? Here's a bit of labor history you may not be aware of.

There were more than 100 strikebreaking agencies in the country; on call for any employer faced with "labor trouble." They specialized in breaking up picket lines with lead pipes, baseball bats and the butts of rifles. As a labor reporter, I witnessed a group of these goons bloody a picket line of middle-aged waiters during a strike at a famous New York restaurant.

Pearl L. Bergoff, regarded as the "King of the Strikebreakers," wrote a popular book, "I Break Strikes." He organized some 300 violent union busting attacks on strikers that resulted in 54 deaths, over a long career that began at the turn of the 20th century. One prominent strikebreaker remarked: "There's more money in industry than in crime." Bergoff, who raked in millions for his services in major strikes over the years, boasted he was on good terms with many major industrialists.

In 1936-37. the LaFollette Civil Liberties Committee reported the shocking news that major respected corporations had accumulated "industrial munitions," such as submachine guns, tear gas, sickening gas, grenades and rifle ammunition, that could be used in industrial disputes.

These weapons were used during the Little Steel strike of 1937, when Youngstown Steel and Tube and Republic Steel employed a uniformed police force of 400 men, equipped with revolvers, rifles and shotguns to shoot at strikers if they did not disperse.

On May 30, 1937, the Chicago police opened fire on picnicking steel strikers and their families near the Republic Steel plant, killing 10 unarmed workers and injuring more than one hundred.

The LaFollette committee also disclosed that some 2,500 corporations had long followed the practice of hiring labor spies from agencies like Pinkerton and Burns that specialized in industrial espionage. In that four-year period, industry hired 3,781 such agents who infiltrated 93 unions, with some actually becoming union officials. They spent a total of $9.4 million for spies, strikebreakers and munitions, with General Motors alone accounting for $830,000.

CIO leaders weren't cowed by the blatant use of corporate power. They went ahead to welcome countless thousands of unorganized workers into their ranks.

We don't think that today's workers are less courageous than those who defied their employers 70 years ago and joined unions in huge numbers. So why hasn't the AFL-CIO developed a strategy to organize at least a few million of the unorganized workers who say they would like to join a union? The fact is — we really haven't reached out to them and asked them to join. We don't even know where they are.

But one thing we're sure of: telling workers how powerful their employers are is not going to win them to our side.

Our weekly "LaborTalk" and "Labor and the War" columns can be viewed at our Web site www.laboreducator.org. Union members who wish information about the AFL-CIO's rank-and-file reform movement should visit www.rankandfileaflcio.org.