Legend has it that Henry Ford Jr was touring a car production plant with union official Walter Reuther. Ford pointed to his automated robots and smiled at Reuther. “How are you going to get the robots to pay union dues, Walter?” Ford quipped.
“How are you going to get the robots to buy your cars, Henry?” Reuther replied.
This exchange says it all about automation and the battle within capitalism. Companies want to lower costs so as to maximize profit, but they still need a strong middle class able to afford those products. Companies must be free from excessive regulation but also value safety.
New interest in unions
This is why unions were created, but unions drive up the costs of production and make America less competitive in the world. The United Auto Workers union demands $100/hour in wages and benefits while a similar worker in Japan does the same work for half of that.
After a long decline, unions seem to be of interest today even to some white collar professionals.
In an age where employees feel that management has all the power, unions seem newly appealing. Columbia University workers are now joining the United Auto Workers. Long Island University has just locked out its professors from their classrooms because of labor dispute, without even a strike as provocation. This is a first for higher education, experts say.
Dying isn’t much of a living
The American history textbook I taught out of for 11 years reports the following on page 450: “In 1882, an average of 675 workers were killed in work-related accidents each week.”
That’s 35, 500 workers killed in just one year of the Gilded Age. And the Gilded Age lasted decades. American lost 60,000 people in the Vietnam War, in 15 years. And lack of labor protections got more than half that number killed in just one year. America could return to this labor horror. Everyone has to make a living, but dying isn’t much of a living.
The Lowell Girls, textile workers in New England in the 1830’s, struck against oppressive factory conditions and upended notions of female inferiority and dependence. The Lowell factories provided jobs and opportunity previously unknown; conversely, it locked workers up like a jail.
Today, a Nike plant in Indonesia creates more and better jobs than the people there have ever known. Another truth is that they work long hours, for poor pay and often without bathroom breaks. Where is the line between exploitation and smart business practices?
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What to know about labor history
- Haymarket Bombing and Trial. In May in 1886 in Chicago, a bomb was thrown at a labor rally protesting police brutality. A street melee ensued. The bomber was never found. Four labor leaders who had made radical speeches were hanged for conspiracy, despite no evidence connecting them with the bombing. The violence discredited the labor movement.
- The Homestead Strike, 1892. The union in Pittsburgh’s steel plants demanded to determine who was hired and promoted within the plant. Carnegie refused and the workers struck, seizing and occupying the Homestead plant. After a violent battle between the company’s hired guns and strikers, the Pinkerton agents surrendered. But the plant was retaken by state militia, and the union movement in the steel industry died for another generation.
- The Pullman Strike of 1894. Eugene Debs’ Railway Union boycotted the loading and unloading of all Pullman cars. Because Chicago was a vital train hub, rail traffic backed up all over the nation and stopped the mail. President Grover Cleveland dispatched federal troops to stop the strike and restore order and the flow of rail traffic. The union was defeated and Debs was jailed for leading an illegal strike. Debs ran for president when he got out.
- Triangle Fire, 1911. Imagine a blouse factory 11 stories up on the lower east side of Manhattan with hundreds of workers. Inadequate water pressure for the fire department. No safety drills and one fire escape that collapsed. Locked doors. All of these things added up to the worst industrial disaster that America had known up until that time. 147 people, almost all women, perished, showing America what a sweatshop was. Some good came out of it: Fire codes, regulations, labor laws. Those workers went on strike in 1909, just two years before the deadly fire. They got a pay raise but no changes that would have saved their lives.
Preventing the worst abuses of laissez-faire capitalism
The verdict on unions is a mixed one. They provide an important countervailing force to corporate power but can be so cumbersome that they diminish results.Like any other complex and nuanced proposition, a balance must be struck. Freedom for companies and their officials, blended with sensible protections for workers.
We must be able to prevent the worst abuses of a laissez-faire capitalism, while also preserving business freedom and creativity. It’s a tall order, but then again, it always was.