Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties, as US bombs rained down on Vietnam, Cambodia,
Speaker 1: and Laos, an anti war movement developed at home and
Speaker 1: amongst the troops, while workers began to ignore the calls
Speaker 1: for patriotism and war production and instead fought for better
Speaker 1: pay and conditions. Wildcat strikes broke out in key industries
Speaker 1: like coal mining, truck driving, public transport, sanitation, and postal services,
Speaker 1: while women struggled against the rising cost of living in
Speaker 1: possibly the biggest protest movement to date in the United States.
Speaker 1: This is working class.
Speaker 2: History Alamatina Apenalsaa or the larger, their larger, their largil
Speaker 2: child chow Alamatina.
Speaker 1: Before we get started today, long term listeners may recall
Speaker 1: hearing an episode about the Vietnam War era strike wave
Speaker 1: before four, and they would be right. Our podcast episode
Speaker 1: eight was about this. However, like all of our earliest episodes,
Speaker 1: it was basically just raw audio from our interview, so
Speaker 1: the sound quality wasn't that great and there wasn't additional
Speaker 1: narrative to fill in gaps, explain context, and pull the
Speaker 1: story together into a cohesive whole. In addition to working
Speaker 1: on new episodes, we're also going back over all of
Speaker 1: our earliest episodes to re edit them and release them
Speaker 1: in this new, improved format we use for our later episodes.
Speaker 1: So we hope you enjoy this improved and expanded double episode.
Speaker 1: Just a quick reminder that our podcast is brought to
Speaker 1: you by our Patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work
Speaker 1: and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes
Speaker 1: with our ads bonus episodes every month free in discounted
Speaker 1: merchandise and other content. For example, our patrons can listen
Speaker 1: to both parts of this double episode now as we
Speaker 1: record this, we've got a bit under nine hundred patrons
Speaker 1: at the moment. If we could get to twelve hundred patrons,
Speaker 1: this would really help us cover our costs, make our
Speaker 1: projects sustainable for the long term, and help us fun
Speaker 1: production of additional episodes in the future. So if you can,
Speaker 1: if you appreciate this podcast, please do join our community
Speaker 1: and help keep our collective history of struggle alive. Learn
Speaker 1: more and sign up at patreon dot com slash Working
Speaker 1: Class History link in the show notes. This episode is
Speaker 1: part of a series we've produced about the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: In our episode fourteen with Noam Chomsky, we talk about
Speaker 1: the geopolitics of the conflict and its human cost. In
Speaker 1: episodes ten to eleven, we talk about the gi resistance
Speaker 1: to the war, and in episodes forty three to forty
Speaker 1: six we look at the anti war movement in the
Speaker 1: US itself. This episode is a little bit different because
Speaker 1: we're looking at how US workers responded to the war
Speaker 1: at their jobs.
Speaker 2: The American labor movement, overwhelmed supported the Vietnam War in
Speaker 2: the early stages the resolutions on the war, the statements
Speaker 2: by the afl CIO were unanimous or close to the
Speaker 2: unanimous in support of the war.
Speaker 1: This is Jeremy Brecker, author of the Book's Strike, A
Speaker 1: History of mass strikes in the US, and really one
Speaker 1: of the best texts we've ever read on working class
Speaker 1: history in the US. We herghly recommend getting hold of
Speaker 1: the book, and it's available in our online store link
Speaker 1: in the show notes. The afl CIO he mentioned here
Speaker 1: is the main trade union compederation in the United States.
Speaker 2: There was a Democratic president who was regarded as fundamentally
Speaker 2: pro labor, despite some quibbles, and they wanted to support
Speaker 2: President Kennedy. But more than that, they shared the worldview
Speaker 2: that the Vietnam War came out of.
Speaker 3: People can argue about.
Speaker 2: The details, what the broad perception was that the struggle
Speaker 2: against communism, with a struggle for freedom than any place
Speaker 2: that communism was advancing, it was essential for the United
Speaker 2: States to fight against it. Had no nuances about well,
Speaker 2: isn't there a nationalist to mention to the Vietnamese fighting
Speaker 2: from a liberation from colonialism. This was not part of
Speaker 2: a picture that people in labor official THEOM as in
Speaker 2: other important positions in American society wanted to hear. Or
Speaker 2: they might say, yes, they're fighting French colonialism and we're
Speaker 2: supporting them in their struggle against it. So this is
Speaker 2: the general perception that the specific interests that war production
Speaker 2: was very much perceived as good for jobs.
Speaker 3: And good for labor.
Speaker 2: And then I think you can say that the American
Speaker 2: working class was very patriotic.
Speaker 3: When World War two.
Speaker 2: They had supported American democracy against fascism, and they felt
Speaker 2: that what the United States was doing in the world.
Speaker 2: Probably there was some small opposition from traditionally left wing
Speaker 2: unions like the West Coastline shoreman, the New York hospital
Speaker 2: workers in a few other places, but very very little
Speaker 2: and very isolated and not reaching beyond groups that had
Speaker 2: long term critique of Americans role in the world.
Speaker 1: Well, that was the situation for the official organizations tasked
Speaker 1: with representing the working class. Different things were going on
Speaker 1: for workers at a grassroots level.
Speaker 4: The nineteen sixties are often remembered and thought of as
Speaker 4: a period of revolt, but when nineteen sixties were started,
Speaker 4: we didn't know that we were going into the nineteen
Speaker 4: sixties and the early nineteen sixties both and there was
Speaker 4: the labor picture, and.
Speaker 2: More broadly seemed very much like a continuation of the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties, with the continuation of macr theism, of pressures
Speaker 2: for cultural conformity, and a working class that had a
Speaker 2: higher standard of living than it had ever had before,
Speaker 2: especially those who were in the mainstream central industries.
Speaker 1: McCarthyism, named after US Senator Joseph McCarthy, refers to the
Speaker 1: wave of anti communist hysteria in the US in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, when large numbers of left wingers were brought
Speaker 1: in front of Senate hearings and essentially purged from public life.
Speaker 1: This situation of conformity and improving living standards had some
Speaker 1: notable exceptions.
Speaker 2: Obviously, many of these generalizations applied less to black workers,
Speaker 2: to women workers, to workers in marginalized industries in rural areas.
Speaker 2: But the general pattern, even for black workers who had
Speaker 2: made it into the central industries, was that these were
Speaker 2: good times, and that you could buy a house, which
Speaker 2: you'd never been able to do. Maybe your kid wouldn't
Speaker 2: have to work in the shop. Maybe your kid was
Speaker 2: going to be able to go to college and.
Speaker 3: Have a nice white.
Speaker 2: Collar job and could definitely take a vacation.
Speaker 3: Maybe you could even buy a vacation cottage.
Speaker 2: So well, though the discontents on the shop floor in
Speaker 2: the workplace remained strong, the overall ambience was shaped by
Speaker 2: the economic prosperity of the era and the continuation of
Speaker 2: a generally construtive cultural trend. In that context, you began
Speaker 2: getting what became to the student revolt or youth revolt.
Speaker 2: It started with college students largely around a variety of issues,
Speaker 2: and gradually spread to become not so college centered, but
Speaker 2: really a generational polarization symbolized by many, many different things,
Speaker 2: the hippie values, hair styles, drug use, and above all
Speaker 2: a questioning of solid conservative cultural values that pre much
Speaker 2: pervaded American society, and that gradually spread on a generational basis.
Speaker 2: Of that, the slogan don't trust anyone over thirty really
Speaker 2: encapsulated the attitude, and there was a converse attitude, also
Speaker 2: very widespread, of essentially don't trust anyone under thirty. That
Speaker 2: led to a generational polarization. There was a very important
Speaker 2: feature right through to the end of the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: The general conservatism and conformism of the nineteen fifties was
Speaker 2: marked by a general absence of social movements of all kinds.
Speaker 2: But you have the beginning of the Black freedom movement,
Speaker 2: the civil rights movement in the Southern statesy of the
Speaker 2: United States. You have what was known as Jim Crow
Speaker 2: which was practically a form of serfdom. Jim Crow laws
Speaker 2: segregated school and public buses, and all the other institutions
Speaker 2: of the South. They shouldn't be considered that the black
Speaker 2: resistance to oppression spran from nowhere in nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 2: In nineteen fifty five, but what you have is a
Speaker 2: sharp development of new forms, first through the Brown Versus
Speaker 2: Board of Education decision, which declared that separate but equal
Speaker 2: schools were inherently unequal and required that southern schools be integrated,
Speaker 2: and then the Montgomery bus boycott, in which the entire
Speaker 2: black population of Montgomery boycotted the public buses were over
Speaker 2: a year, demanding an end to the segregation of the buses.
Speaker 2: And so after a year you had a new sense
Speaker 2: of ability to stand up.
Speaker 3: To segregation in Jim Crow.
Speaker 2: Following that, you have sit ins and then the freedom rides,
Speaker 2: and then getting into the sixties, you have the great
Speaker 2: civil disobedience campaigns, and so all of that became an
Speaker 2: inspiration for all the social movements that are so often
Speaker 2: referred to as the sixties.
Speaker 1: This generalized feeling of rebellion, largely from the burgeoning civil
Speaker 1: rights movement, started to spread to workers on the shop floor.
Speaker 2: As part of the pattern of growing discontent that's illustrated
Speaker 2: by the student movement and youth polarization the black movement.
Speaker 2: It's not widely recognized, but there is very much a
Speaker 2: parallel development among workers, especially among young workers, and it's
Speaker 2: manifested in a lot of different ways. Initially ones they
Speaker 2: were not so obvious. So, for example, you started having
Speaker 2: a lot of trade union leaderships being voted out of
Speaker 2: office by opposition caucuses. You started finding an increase in
Speaker 2: wildcat strikes over what were sometimes called local issues or
Speaker 2: a grievances that trading in leadership was not interested in
Speaker 2: trying to address.
Speaker 1: Wildcat strikes are strikes which are organized and undertaken directly
Speaker 1: by workers themselves, without the authorization of their unions.
Speaker 2: And you can see quite amazing statistics about some of this.
Speaker 2: In the later sixties, some statistics got out from the
Speaker 2: General Motors that showed that there was something like five
Speaker 2: times as many hours lost to local issues and wildcat
Speaker 2: strikes as to national strikes. The various forms of just
Speaker 2: resistance to authority on the job, against specifically by young workers,
Speaker 2: became more and more pervasive and began to be recognized. So,
Speaker 2: for example, General Motors built a planet at Lords Sound
Speaker 2: that was the modern state of the art plant, and
Speaker 2: they had a young workforce, and workers would walk out
Speaker 2: and they would retrieve order. Just became big news in
Speaker 2: the New York Times and widely recognized as a phenomenon,
Speaker 2: and it became increasingly the.
Speaker 1: Case through the nineteen sixties across the US, as in Europe,
Speaker 1: young workers had become increasingly unruly. In many cases, people
Speaker 1: would just bunk off work regularly at general motors, their
Speaker 1: absentee rate, meaning the percentage of workers not at their
Speaker 1: posts each day, was two percent in nineteen sixty. By
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy it had more than doubled. Five percent of
Speaker 1: workers were absent with no explanation most days, with ten
Speaker 1: percent absent every Monday and Friday at Lordstown, which we
Speaker 1: referenced in our episode eighty three talking about general labor
Speaker 1: in discipline, absentee hasn't reached twenty percent in summertime.
Speaker 2: Friend of mine and I took a tour around the
Speaker 2: United States interviewing young workers and wrote a book about it,
Speaker 2: and in the stories we were told indicated a very
Speaker 2: high level of resistance, of people organizing themselves to get
Speaker 2: time off on the job, and quite an extensive use
Speaker 2: of sabotage, not blowing things up type sabotage, but for example,
Speaker 2: in one case, workers from fifty different parts of a plant,
Speaker 2: an auto plant, drew lots about who would stop production
Speaker 2: when your number came up, You did something in your
Speaker 2: part that would stop work going forward where you were
Speaker 2: and hopefully also stop it for the rest of the plant.
Speaker 2: So this kind of formal resistance, which had of course
Speaker 2: always been there in factory settings became much more pervasive.
Speaker 1: A typical reason for such sabotage would be as a
Speaker 1: protest against bosses trying to speed up the production line.
Speaker 1: So at Lordstown, for example, when management tried to speed
Speaker 1: up the production line, workers just decided to slow it
Speaker 1: down by ignoring one car in ten or twenty when
Speaker 1: it came past their station. Management complained to the press
Speaker 1: about this, with one stating quote, We've had cases of
Speaker 1: engine blocks passing forty men without them doing their work
Speaker 1: end quote. All this was having an impact on the
Speaker 1: corporation's bottom lines. At GM, for example, their labor costs
Speaker 1: went up from being twenty nine percent of total sales
Speaker 1: income in nineteen sixty two to thirty three percent a
Speaker 1: decade later. With the pressures of war, corporations were also
Speaker 1: putting up prices. This is commonly referred to by governments
Speaker 1: and the media as inflation.
Speaker 2: So at the same time you have a period where
Speaker 2: you have rising wages, but infletion rising at a much
Speaker 2: faster level than wages, so you have a very hard
Speaker 2: time of people keeping up with their bills, and that
Speaker 2: again adds to the pressure cooker, and that is also
Speaker 2: a result of very much as a Vietnam war. You know,
Speaker 2: there was a period when it was being blamed on
Speaker 2: the movement of the Anchovy and the Anchovs moved and
Speaker 2: therefore the fish didn't have anything to eat, so the
Speaker 2: price of fish went up. And that was the cause
Speaker 2: of America's inflation.
Speaker 3: I'm not kidding.
Speaker 2: I saw it on television, but it gradually became clear
Speaker 2: that it was the result of the war, and especially
Speaker 2: because Lindon Johnson had decided that there was would not
Speaker 2: have any kind of tax increase or welfare state cuts
Speaker 2: while they were increasing war spending. And so the inflation
Speaker 2: got higher and higher and reached a crescendo by the
Speaker 2: end of the decade, and that put in normous economic
Speaker 2: pressures on workers.
Speaker 1: For the leaderships of the trade unions, these unruly young workers,
Speaker 1: their wildcat strikes and their sabotage was a problem.
Speaker 2: The official leadership of the labor movement was already quite seen.
Speaker 2: There was very little effort to bring younger workers into
Speaker 2: the structure of the labor movement, and there was growing
Speaker 2: hostility by the established labor leadership to these young troublemakers.
Speaker 3: And they were making trouble for them. For one thing,
Speaker 3: they were undermining their fairly.
Speaker 2: Cozy relationship with the employers, and this was all aggravated
Speaker 2: by the generational conflict that pervaded the society. So they
Speaker 2: were often regarded as just the youngsters with too much
Speaker 2: prison vinegar and no desire to work.
Speaker 3: And this became compounded.
Speaker 2: By more directly political issues as workers, especially younger workers,
Speaker 2: began turning against the Vietnam War, and as especially African
Speaker 2: American workers became a larger part of the workforce.
Speaker 3: I remember interviewing young workers.
Speaker 2: In Detroit and they said, well, we all work on
Speaker 2: the night shift because they form and go home and
Speaker 2: they'll bother us. I think that the idea was that
Speaker 2: this was a poor workforce. They didn't have any pride
Speaker 2: in their work, and they didn't have any pride in
Speaker 2: their union. And the only saying problem was there wasn't
Speaker 2: a lot you could do about it, because they needed
Speaker 2: the workers. There was a labor shortage that was part
Speaker 2: of the consequences and causes of the inflation, so they
Speaker 2: needed the warm bodies.
Speaker 1: We hear from a number of these workers in Detroit
Speaker 1: in our podcast episode sixty one to sixty two about
Speaker 1: the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. As the war progressed,
Speaker 1: attitudes of many workers towards the war itself started to
Speaker 1: change significantly, as especially early on, the strikes taking place
Speaker 1: were not political strikes against the war as such.
Speaker 2: Well initially they are definitely not anti war strikes, and
Speaker 2: the working class support for the war nineteen sixty three
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five is actually very widespread, and sometimes there
Speaker 2: was militant.
Speaker 3: Support for the war.
Speaker 2: There were union led demonstrations occasional instances of violence against
Speaker 2: anti war protesters by so called hard hats, a term
Speaker 2: usually used for construction workers. This is not large scale
Speaker 2: mass violence, but there definitely were physical attacks on anti
Speaker 2: war demonstrators.
Speaker 1: The most famous incidents of this was the so called
Speaker 1: hard Hat Riot of nineteen seventy. Here, a violent attack
Speaker 1: on anti war protesters was organized by the leader of
Speaker 1: the Building and Construction Trades Council of New York, Peter J. Brennan,
Speaker 1: a Democrat, in collaboration with the then Republican administration of
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon. He coordinated an assault by two hundred construction
Speaker 1: workers armed with clubs and steel toe capped boots on
Speaker 1: young people in New York City. The workers chanted USA
Speaker 1: Love It or Leave It, and raided pace universities, smashing windows,
Speaker 1: beating up students, tearing down red cross and church flags.
Speaker 1: They injured seventy people, most of whom were hospitalized while
Speaker 1: police sat by and watched. Brennan was later rewarded by
Speaker 1: Nixon by being made Secretary of Labor.
Speaker 2: As the war went on, and as we get into
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixty six and nineteen sixty seven nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: there is a de change in public attitudes about the
Speaker 2: war and significant turning against the war, and a huge
Speaker 2: increase in the scale of the anti war movement, so
Speaker 2: that by nineteen seventy you're having demonstrations with so many
Speaker 2: millions of people they couldn't even count them. Were so
Speaker 2: called moratoriums, which were incidently originally conceived as general strikes,
Speaker 2: although that was toned down a bit, but a lot
Speaker 2: of what was called confrontation politics, with demonstrations that screwed
Speaker 2: the edge of violence and a steady turning of population
Speaker 2: again the war. This started first of all with students
Speaker 2: and then very rapidly with black mildern organizations like Student
Speaker 2: Non Violent Coordinating Committee, which were one of the first
Speaker 2: to take a position against the war, and then that
Speaker 2: spread very much through the rest of the Black community,
Speaker 2: and the attitudes about the war were very much shaped
Speaker 2: by the military manpower policies that were used by the
Speaker 2: government and by the military, which were essentially in previous wars.
Speaker 3: There was a strong sense.
Speaker 2: Of pride that America's elite sent their sons to the war,
Speaker 2: and that the working class went to war, but also
Speaker 2: the elite went to war and shared the risks and
Speaker 2: the burdens. Vietnam was a very very different story, and
Speaker 2: primarily because of the student deferment policy of the draft.
Speaker 3: Students who were at.
Speaker 2: That time overwhelmingly people of middle class background and were
Speaker 2: deferred they didn't have to go, whereas working class people
Speaker 2: and especially poor and African American young people were drafted
Speaker 2: in huge numbers, and this had multiple effects. Originally fed
Speaker 2: into the patriotism traditions. Well, my sons in Vietnam and
Speaker 2: I support the war, but over time this changed, first
Speaker 2: and very much in the black community, and then with
Speaker 2: other parts of the black leadership like Martin Luther King
Speaker 2: coming out against the war and taking a leading role
Speaker 2: and opposing it, and then general disillusionment by everybody, including
Speaker 2: the white working class, especially after the Tet Offensive.
Speaker 1: The Tet Offensive was a major offensive operation by Vietnamese
Speaker 1: anti colonial forces in the Lunar New Year of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight. Tactically, the offensive was a failure and the
Speaker 1: Vietnamese suffered huge losses, but politically it ended up being
Speaker 1: a significant victory. US military propaganda had been claiming that
Speaker 1: the war was nearly over and that the Vietnamese had
Speaker 1: almost been defeated. This offensive showed that this was a lie,
Speaker 1: and it helped significantly turn public opinion against the war itself,
Speaker 1: including amongst US service personnel. Service members who knew what
Speaker 1: was really going on. Returning home also had an impact.
Speaker 2: As all these working class kids who had gone to
Speaker 2: Vietnam began coming back. They had concluded that it was
Speaker 2: a shuck, and the veterans against the war, veterans who
Speaker 2: opposed the war, who were overwhelmingly working class, began telling
Speaker 2: their families and their communities, this is not what you heard.
Speaker 2: This is not about protecting them. This is about all
Speaker 2: kinds of horrible things that were doing to these people,
Speaker 2: and that had a powerful effect on working class communities.
Speaker 2: And so by the time you get to the early
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies, you have overwhelming oppositions of the war among
Speaker 2: the majority is a population, and at certain points the
Speaker 2: opposition among working class people was actually greater than all
Speaker 2: groups except ethnic minorities. Now, the officialdom of the labor
Speaker 2: supported the war from the beginning and gradually began peeling off,
Speaker 2: especially after nineteen sixty seven. Some means joined the anti
Speaker 2: war movement and formed the Labor Against the War, fairly
Speaker 2: broad alliance, but the official leadership continued to support the war,
Speaker 2: opposed Democratic candidates who opposed the war even though they
Speaker 2: had a traditional alliance with Democrats, and George me head
Speaker 2: of the AFLCIO, was still lobbying for financial support of
Speaker 2: the war after the last American troop had been withdrawed.
Speaker 1: With this background, some really large and significant local and
Speaker 1: national industrial disputes began to break out.
Speaker 2: Well, as you go from ninety sixty five to nineteen seventy,
Speaker 2: you're getting more and more economic pressures. Workers are falling
Speaker 2: farther and farther behind, and at the same time, the
Speaker 2: general the spirit of revolt that we associate with the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties was coming into its own. So what started
Speaker 2: out as small localized actions began to express themselves on
Speaker 2: a much larger scale, and because of the divisions between
Speaker 2: rank and file workers and unions and union officials, which
Speaker 2: were always there, they were greater or lesser extent, but
Speaker 2: became very, very pronounced by the time we get to
Speaker 2: the end of the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3: Because of that.
Speaker 2: Many of the large strikes took the form of wildcat strikes,
Speaker 2: and the first really big one with tremendous impact was
Speaker 2: by postal workers.
Speaker 1: Before we get to the Postal Workers strinth, numerous local
Speaker 1: strikes by mostly black workers. For example, in Memphis, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: in February nineteen sixty eight, mostly black sanitation workers walked out.
Speaker 2: The Memphis strike is of course most famous because it
Speaker 2: was supported very visibly by doctor Martin Luther King and
Speaker 2: it was in the course of supporting it that he
Speaker 2: was assassinated after doing one of his great speeches, and
Speaker 2: it's remembered American history as part of the story of
Speaker 2: doctor king In. But it is a very fascinating confluence
Speaker 2: of organized labor and the black movement that illustrates a lot.
Speaker 3: Of the themes of the time.
Speaker 2: The Memphis sanitation workers had tried repeatedly to get a union.
Speaker 2: They had support from the state, county and municipal workers
Speaker 2: union asks me it's called, and were never, however, able
Speaker 2: to get a union due to the opposition of the
Speaker 2: government that employed them, and they had notoriously terrible conditions.
Speaker 2: They were almost all black. The conditions were, as you
Speaker 2: can imagine, unsanitary but also very unsafe, and the wages
Speaker 2: meant that workers were living in poverty, even for jobs
Speaker 2: with last time overtime. And they hadn't been trying to
Speaker 2: organize the union. The government had refused repeatedly, and then
Speaker 2: two workers were killed in an accident in the course
Speaker 2: of doing their jobs, and that brought things to a head,
Speaker 2: and the workers decided they've had a meeting and decided
Speaker 2: that they would strike, and about fifteen hundred, almost entirely
Speaker 2: black workers struck. Garbage strikes are kind of special because
Speaker 2: a lot of times who perform public services when they
Speaker 2: strike doesn't really have that big an impact. People will
Speaker 2: go on to about their business. With a garbage strike,
Speaker 2: it doesn't take very long before the fact that the
Speaker 2: society is dependent on its workers becomes very olfactorily apparent,
Speaker 2: and big piles of garbage were piling up on the
Speaker 2: streets of Memphis. The mayor of the city, however, refused
Speaker 2: to come to any kind of settlement, and it became
Speaker 2: the workers decided that they would have a sit in,
Speaker 2: and they had a sit in, and many of them
Speaker 2: were arrested. And in the course of this, Martin Luther
Speaker 2: King was invited to come in and give a speech
Speaker 2: in support of them, which he did. And at that
Speaker 2: time he was in the course of organizing a poor
Speaker 2: People's campaign, which was an attempt to create an interracial
Speaker 2: movement of the poor that would build an encampment in Washington,
Speaker 2: DC and then would use that as a basis for
Speaker 2: challenging a wide range of the economic problems of all
Speaker 2: poor people. And he decided that he should take part
Speaker 2: in the Memphis strike in a regular way as a
Speaker 2: basis for showing the idea that he was trying to
Speaker 2: promulgate of a interracial coalition that would challenge the economic problems.
Speaker 3: Of poor people and poor workers. And when he first.
Speaker 2: Came into town, actually he looked around and saw the
Speaker 2: situation and he said, well, what we're going to do
Speaker 2: is we're all going to go on strike. He didn't
Speaker 2: used the term general strike, but he had the concept
Speaker 2: of a general strike, all working people are going to
Speaker 2: support this and go out on strike, and that kind
Speaker 2: of died out, but the strike became a kind of
Speaker 2: national cause, celebra and wider and wider group. For example,
Speaker 2: the clergy had originally stood very aloof from it, but
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty local ministers came together and foreigned
Speaker 2: the ministry support operation for it, and similarly with other sectors,
Speaker 2: and then dig mass meetings with tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: people and seemingly to be an irresistible movement.
Speaker 1: In addition to a pay increase, the other main demand
Speaker 1: of the strikers was the recognition of their union after
Speaker 1: me and as such the union supported the strike. One
Speaker 1: sixteen year old black boy, Larry Payne was shot and
Speaker 1: killed by police and four thousand National Guard troops were
Speaker 1: brought into the city, but the strikers held on.
Speaker 2: And it was in that context the doctor King was assassinated.
Speaker 2: The strike continued, but the city was afraid that it
Speaker 2: was going to have massive riots and violent response and upheaval,
Speaker 2: and so were a lot of other people, including President
Speaker 2: Lindon Johnson, who set a top sub cabinet officer to
Speaker 2: hasten a lawn and the negotiationations, and quite rapidly the
Speaker 2: city decided that it would negotiate. It recognized the union,
Speaker 2: it gave a substantial wage increase, and laid the basis
Speaker 2: for at least beginning to turn the sanitation worker job
Speaker 2: into something with a degree of dignity, respect and renumeration. However,
Speaker 2: once they reached the agreement, it then began dragging its feet,
Speaker 2: and the workers had to threaten to go out and
Speaker 2: strike again a few weeks later in order.
Speaker 3: To force the city to keep its word.
Speaker 2: But in fact, in the end it didn't make a
Speaker 2: huge change in the condition of the Memphis sanitation workers,
Speaker 2: and it had a huge impact to show both the
Speaker 2: black and to white workers that we really have something
Speaker 2: in common here. There's something that is not just a
Speaker 2: raci issue. It's also a worker's issue with labor rights
Speaker 2: issue and at the same time, the special discrimin nation
Speaker 2: against African Americans that it's such a deep part of
Speaker 2: American life, is a fundamental aspect of where people can
Speaker 2: use the labor movement and use worker organization and worker
Speaker 2: stress and struggles to try to confront.
Speaker 1: So that was an example of a dispute for union recognition.
Speaker 1: In these disputes, unions have a very concrete interest in
Speaker 1: supporting the workers because if the workers are successful in
Speaker 1: winning their demands, then they get a union contract and
Speaker 1: the union gets a pool of stable dues paying members.
Speaker 1: But where unions have recognition contracts, their interests aren't necessarily
Speaker 1: the same. There, the economic interest is to maintain a
Speaker 1: stable relationship with the employer to continue getting paid their dues,
Speaker 1: which are pretty much always paid by the employer. As such,
Speaker 1: where recognition exists already, unions often had a different attitude
Speaker 1: to their members. For example, in Chicago, eighty percent of
Speaker 1: bus drivers were black, but the leadership of the Amalgamated
Speaker 1: Transit Workers Union was entirely white and didn't heed the
Speaker 1: concerns of black workers. Eventually, in August nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: during the Democratic National Convention, black drivers went on a
Speaker 1: wildcat strike demanding fair representation in the union, but white
Speaker 1: scab drivers kept services running in the north side of
Speaker 1: the city, and after five days the strike faulted. Another
Speaker 1: unionized industry whether the union ignored the demands of the
Speaker 1: membership was coal mining.
Speaker 2: In the coal industry, you had one of the most
Speaker 2: extreme cases of division and opposition between mineworkers and the
Speaker 2: union leadership.
Speaker 3: Tony Boyle and the top leadership.
Speaker 2: Of the coal Miners Union had effectively become agents of
Speaker 2: the coal operators and essentially forbade all strikes with no
Speaker 2: authorized strikes, even where there was a complete justification for it.
Speaker 1: As an example of the attitude of the leadership of
Speaker 1: the United Mineworkers of America. His how how Tony Boyle,
Speaker 1: the union president, described union policy quote the UMWA will
Speaker 1: not abridge the rights of mine operators in running the mines.
Speaker 1: We follow the judgment of the coal operators right or
Speaker 1: wrong end quote. In nineteen sixty eight, seventy eight workers
Speaker 1: were killed in the Farmington mind disaster in West Virginia.
Speaker 1: Boyle called it a quote unfortunate accident end quote, and
Speaker 1: rather than criticized the company, he claimed they had a
Speaker 1: good safety record, and he refused to meet with the
Speaker 1: families of the victims.
Speaker 2: The coal miners become desperately alienated from it, and so
Speaker 2: you developed a very large wildcat strike way if where
Speaker 2: the miners would come out of the mine and spill
Speaker 2: their water, which was necessary for survival under mining type conditions,
Speaker 2: and that was the signal for a strike, and when
Speaker 2: they did that, all other miners would honor pickup lines.
Speaker 2: That was the kind of solidarity you had in my
Speaker 2: work in that industry. The miners' greatest grievance was the
Speaker 2: growth of black lung disease, which was a terrible industrial
Speaker 2: illness that essentially made it impossible for its fixis to breeze.
Speaker 2: And there was a group started largely by doctors called
Speaker 2: the Black Lung Association, and it started doing studies of
Speaker 2: miners with backglong and found out that it was incredibly
Speaker 2: more prevalent than people had thought, and began setting up
Speaker 2: procedures for treating it and for identifying cases at an
Speaker 2: earlier stage.
Speaker 3: And the union did.
Speaker 2: Nothing to support this, nothing to try to get workers
Speaker 2: protection against it, and eventually they had a wildcat strike
Speaker 2: they shut down the entire mining industry for West Virginia.
Speaker 1: In February nineteen sixty nine, a single miner in Riley
Speaker 1: County spilled his water out on the ground in what
Speaker 1: was a traditional appeal to begin a strike. His coworkers
Speaker 1: all walked out with him, and within five days, forty
Speaker 1: two thousand of the state's forty four thousand coal miners
Speaker 1: were on strike and.
Speaker 2: They were demanding legislation to provide protections and treatment for
Speaker 2: miners with black line or incipient black line.
Speaker 1: They remained out for over three weeks until the state
Speaker 1: legislature passed a bill to compensate black lung victims.
Speaker 2: And ultimately they won and laws put a fee on
Speaker 2: every kind of call that was mined and used that
Speaker 2: to put in technology to reduce the thread of black
Speaker 2: line and to allow miners who were developing it to
Speaker 2: get out of the mines and those who already had
Speaker 2: it to have some kind of decent retirement. This was
Speaker 2: extremely unusual in the United States. Many countries have some
Speaker 2: traditions of general strikes and political United States strikes have
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly been around industry workplace waigs an hour type issues,
Speaker 2: but this shows that under certain conditions, American workers can
Speaker 2: strike around issues that are broader than that, and where
Speaker 2: the target is not just the immediate employer, but in
Speaker 2: this case, the state legislature and state government.
Speaker 1: As an illustration of the depth of corruption in the UNWA,
Speaker 1: which was far worse than that of unions in most
Speaker 1: other countries. Not long after this wildcat strike, Boyle had
Speaker 1: another union official who ran against him in an election,
Speaker 1: Jock Yablonski, assassinated along with his wife and daughter, But
Speaker 1: rankompar action by MINUS themselves continued in the coming months
Speaker 1: and years. For example, in early nineteen seventy, a small
Speaker 1: number of retired and disabled members of the UMW, some
Speaker 1: of them in wheelchairs, set up picket lines at coal
Speaker 1: mines in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. They pulled out
Speaker 1: nearly twenty thousand miners, demanding the reverse sort of proposed
Speaker 1: government cuts to federal research facilities, which we're trying to
Speaker 1: improve health and safety for miners. The next big strike
Speaker 1: was by postal workers.
Speaker 2: The luck out, They luck out, They luck out out,
Speaker 2: Adijn guineas.
Speaker 1: And that's all the time we've got for this episode.
Speaker 1: Join us in part two, where we talk about strikes
Speaker 1: by postal workers, carfactory workers, health workers, teamsters, and working
Speaker 1: class women's protests. Part two is available now for early
Speaker 1: listening for our supporters on Patreon. For everyone else, it'll
Speaker 1: be out next week. It's only support from you, our listeners,
Speaker 1: which allows us to make these podcasts. So if you
Speaker 1: appreciate our work, please do think about joining us at
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash Working Class History link in the
Speaker 1: show notes. In return for your support, you get early
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Speaker 1: To learn more about the US labor movement and mass
Speaker 1: strikes in US history, check out Jeremy's brilliant book Strike.
Speaker 1: It's available in our online store and you can get
Speaker 1: ten percent off it and anything else using the discount
Speaker 1: code wh podcast links in the show notes. See the
Speaker 1: web page for this episode for more information, sources, further reading,
Speaker 1: and eventually a transcript. Thanks to our Patreon supporters for
Speaker 1: making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jamison D. Saltzman,
Speaker 1: Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopez Ojeda, Jeremy Kusumano, and Nick Williams.
Speaker 1: Our theme tune is Bella Chow. Thanks for permission to
Speaker 1: use it from Disky del Solier. You can buy it
Speaker 1: or stream it on the links in the show notes.
Speaker 1: This improved episode was edited by Jesse French, with original
Speaker 1: editing by Emma Cortland. Thanks for listening and catch you
Speaker 1: next time. Monto be lii vero be lii