Today In Labor History March 27, 1912: Start of the 8-month Northern railway strike in Canada by the IWW. Over 8,000 construction workers, led by the IWW, walked off the job at Northern Railway workcamps Wobblies picketed employment offices in Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Tacoma and Minneapolis in order to block the hiring of scabs.
Fellow workers pay attention to what I'm going to mention,
For it is the fixed intention of the Workers of the World.
And I hope you'll all be ready, true-hearted, brave and steady,
To gather 'round our standard when the red flag is unfurled.
CHORUS:
Where the Fraser River flows, each fellow worker knows,
They have bullied and oppressed us, but still our union grows.
And we're going to find a way, boys, for shorter hours and better pay, boys
And we're going to win the day, boys, where the river Fraser flows.
For these gunny-sack contractors have all been dirty actors,
And they're not our benefactors, each fellow worker knows.
So we've got to stick together in fine or dirty weather,
And we will show no white feather, where the Fraser river flows.
Now the boss the law is stretching, bulls and pimps he's fetching,
And they are a fine collection, as Jesus only knows.
But why their mothers reared them, and why the devil spared them,
Are questions we can't answer, where the Fraser River flows.
(Lyrics by Joe Hill, 1912, to the tune of “Where the River Shannon Flows.”)
Today in Labor History February 7, 1913: A county sheriff and his deputies on the “Bull Moose Special” (an armored train fitted with machine guns), attacked a miners’ tent colony at Holly Grove, in West Virginia. This was during the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike (4/18/1912 through July 1913). Mother Jones was one of the main organizers. Over 50 people died during the violent confrontations with scabs, goons and private detectives. Countless more died from starvation and malnutrition. In terms of casualties, it was one of the worst strikes in U.S. history. It was a prelude to the bigger and even more violent Battle of Matewan, and the Battle of Blair Mountain (Aug-Sep, 1921). The latter was the largest labor uprising in U.S. history, and the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War. 10,000 minors battled 3,000 lawmen and scabs, and only ended with the U.S. army intervened. Up to 100 people died. And during the battle, bombs were dropped on the striking miners by airplane, the 2nd time in U.S. history that had been done. (The first was just months earlier, during the Tulsa Race Massacre).
Today in Labor History January 14, 1895: The Knights of Labor (KOL) initiated the Brooklyn trolley strike over wages and safety (lasting until Feb. 28). It was the largest strike Brooklyn had ever seen. The bosses brought in scabs from Boston, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The drivers cut the wires, surrounded trains and assaulted the scab drivers. 2 people died. On January 19, the mayor called out the National Guard and declared martial law. Militiamen, with fixed bayonets, battled workers in the streets. Sympathetic locals threw rocks and bottles at the militiamen. When a supporter tried to disarm a soldier and was subsequently stabbed, the crowds of supporters swelled into the thousands. One New York paper called it another Paris Commune. However, the KOL had been weakened by years of poor leadership, and by the witch hunt that followed the Haymarket Bombing, and its membership had dwindled to under 100,000. They hadn’t waged a successful strike in years. In the end, the militia effectively quashed the strike and things returned to business as usual without the workers winning any of their demands.
Today in Labor History December 24, 1913: Seventy-three people in Calumet, Michigan died in the "Calumet Massacre," including 59 kids. The Western Federation of Miners was having a Christmas party for striking copper miners. About 500 miners and their family members were at the party. Someone yelled "Fire!" and dozens were trampled in the panic. Goons and scabs barred the doors, trapping people inside, exacerbating the injuries. The person who yelled “fire” was never identified, but many strikers believed it was a company guard.
Today in Labor History October 12, 1898: A gun battle at the Chicago-Virden Coal Company, in Virden, Illinois, killed 8 coal miners and 5 private detectives, during the Virden Massacre. The Company hired the private cops to protect African-American strikebreakers they were bringing in by train to operate their mine during the strike. 30 members of the UMWA were injured, as were several of the strikebreakers. The UMWA told the black miners they would be cared for if they came to the union hall. But the next day, the UMWA told them that their protection would end at 6 pm that evening. After that, Virden became a sundown town and most black miners were expelled. The mayor of Springfield sent the African American workers to East Saint Louis by train and abandoned them there without money, food or warm clothes. The governor then mustered the National Guard to prevent any more black strikebreakers from entering the state, telling his soldiers that if another train tried to enter the state, they should “shoot it to pieces with Gatling guns.” The next month, the mine owners recognized the union and agreed to keep the workers segregated. Virden remained a sundown town for decades after that.
The Big Three and Other Employers Shouldn’t Be Able to Use Scab Labor
The Big Three automakers have been deploying scabs against the UAW strike. In the US, we often take the practice for granted — but in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and British Columbia, replacement labor is banned. We should make scabs illegal here too.
United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain has vigorously condemned violence on the picket lines
Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. 40 years of declining worker power shattered the American Dream (TM), producing multiple generations whose children fared worse than their parents, cratering faith in institutions and hope for a better future.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
What changed was the vibe. The #HotLaborSummer was a rager, and it's not showing any signs of slowing. Obviously that's true in California, where nurses and hotel workers are also striking, and where strikebreaking companies like #Instawork ("Uber for #scabs") attract swift regulatory sanction, rather than demoralized capitulation:
Today in Labor History September 6, 1912: Duluth streetcar drivers went on strike. On September 9, riots erupted, with workers stoning scab drivers and battling police in the streets. They overturned street cars and blockaded the streets. A 16-year-old clubbed a cop in the face. 14 were arrested. The workers were mostly Scandinavian immigrants. They were fighting for the right to form a union, and to cut their workday down to 9 hours. During a strike in 1899, Duluth drivers dynamited several streetcars off their tracks.
When we talk about the abuses of #GigWork, there's some obvious targets, like #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination, where two workers are paid different rates for the same job, in order to trick occasional gig-workers to give up their other sources of income and become dependent on the app:
But the employer didn't walk out over wages, benefits or support for a housing subsidy. They walked out when workers demanded that the #scabs that the company was trying to hire to break the strike be given full time, union jobs.
Today in Labor History July 11, 1892: Frisco Mine was dynamited by striking Coeur D’Alene miners after they discovered they had been infiltrated by Pinkertons and after one of their members had been shot. The striking miners belonged to the Western Federation of Miners. Prior to this, the mine owners had increased work hours, decreased pay and brought in a bunch of scabs to replace striking workers. Ultimately, over 600 striking miners were imprisoned without charge by the military in order to crush the strike.
Today in Labor History July 2, 1892: Carnegie Steel locked out workers at its Homestead, PA, plant. The lockout culminated in a major battle between strikers and Pinkerton security agents on July 6. Determined to keep the plant closed and inoperable by scabs, the strikers formed military units that patrolled the grounds around the plant, and the Monongahela River in boats, to prevent access by strikebreakers and their Pinkerton guards. On the night of July 5, Pinkertons, armed with Winchester rifles, attempted to cross the river. Reports conflict as to which side fired first, but a gun battle ensued. Both sides suffered numerous deaths and injuries. Women also participated in the action. In the end, the Pinkertons gave up and surrendered. However, the governor called in the state militia, which quickly displaced the picketers and allowed the scabs in, thus ending the strike. In the wake of the bloody strike, Alexander Berkman, an anarchist, tried to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, Carnegie’s agent at Homestead.
K. Friedman wrote about the strike in “By Bread Alone” (1901). Friedman was a Chicago socialist, settlement-house worker and journalist. His novel was an early example of the transformation in socialist fiction from "utopian" to "scientific" socialism. More recently, Trilby Busch wrote about the strike in her novel, “Darkness Visible” (2012).
Today in Labor History May 25, 1805: The authorities arrested striking shoemakers (cordwainers) in Philadelphia. They were charged with criminal conspiracy for violating an English common law that barred schemes aimed at forcing wage increases. In 1794, the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers organized around protecting wages and blocking scabs from taking their jobs at lower wages. They struck several times over the next decade, sometimes winning wage increases. However, in November, 1805, the master shoemakers took the issue to court. As a result, a grand jury indicted 8 journeymen of “conspiracy to increase wages,” thus ending the strike. Prosecutors argued that the journeymen societies (precursors to modern unions) threatened the entire economy of the city. (Of course, it might, if other workers joined in and it became a General Strike). They further argued that if allowed to organize, such worker combinations could lead to civil war. The judge was a Federalist. He denounced the workers and told the jurors that organizing was illegal. Consequently, they found all eight workers guilty. The judge fined them eight dollars each. This trial upheld the Federalist ideal of the sanctity of private property and industrial growth, unhindered by workers’ organizations.