Historian: Labor Movement in Tradition of Abolitionists
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Like the abolitionists, “The labor movement has to talk more about ways to
radically change and improve the current system. Labor should be both
inside and outside,” said Columbia University professor Eric Foner (right)
during a Jan. 9 talk at the AFL-CIO about his new book, The Fiery Trial:
Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. Foner, son of prominent union
leaders and activists and a scholar of the Civil War, its causes and its impact,
said that the labor movement of the mid-20th century – starting in the Gilded
Age and running through the end of World War II – was in the tradition of the
abolitionists, an energetic minority that worked in conjunction with an
occasional progressive politician but mostly outside the political system. Labor
ought to return to that outside-inside combo, Foner argued. His talk –
introduced by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka -- commemorated the 150th
anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, plus Dr. Martin Luther King’s
birthday and the second inauguration of President Obama; the latter events occur
on Jan. 21.
Foner said that like the abolitionists, whose views were
eventually embraced by the majority of U.S. residents, at least in the North,
labor saw its stands eventually embraced by the government and adopted into
law. He cited other parallels between the
abolitionist movement and labor in earlier years. One was that outside
agitation by both for the most-radical solutions to social problems gave space
to more “moderate” and adaptable politicians to advocate for and win the
eventual critical social changes.
Abolitionists’ demands for absolute
equality for African-Americans gave Lincoln the room to push through – with
their help and agreement – the 13th 14th and 15th Amendments to
the U.S. Constitution. The amendments freed the slaves, extended the Bill
of Rights to the states and made anyone born in the U.S. automatically a
citizen. The amendments offered political equality, which took a century
to achieve, he added.
In labor’s case, Foner said, unions’ demands
for union recognition and workers’ rights – taken to the streets in outside
political agitation during the Great Depression -- gave FDR the room to enact
his “Second New Deal” in the late 1930s. That included the National
Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, establishing the minimum wage
and overtime pay, and Social Security.
Yet another parallel was that
labor, like the abolitionists, used the threat of mass public protests to get
its issues onto the national agenda, and sympathetic politicians welcomed
that. In labor’s case, the protests were the great sit-down strikes of
the 1930s, Foner said.
Another instance came several years later from A.
Phillip Randolph, legendary civil rights and union leader and president of the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The Brotherhood was the nation’s
leading African-American union in what was then still largely a segregated labor
movement. Randolph, Foner said, used the threat of a March on Washington
in the mid-1940s to force FDR to integrate defense industries.
“Make me
do it,” FDR told Randolph at a White House meeting before the planned
march. When Randolph went ahead, FDR issued the executive order for
integration and the march was called off. Civil rights, womens’ rights
and other activists since then have followed the same abolitionist-labor-civil
rights pattern, Foner added.
But the labor movement, Foner said, turned
away from that outside-inside strategy after achieving its goals of union
recognition and labor law, Foner said. And while he said that as an
historian -- not a political scientist – he studies the past, Foner was pushed
into saying whether the union movement should return to that
strategy.
His answer was yes. But Foner said labor lacks the
strategy, an unifying theme and a sympathetic powerful politician ready to be
pushed in the right direction, as FDR was. Democratic President Barack
Obama is not the man, yet, Foner stated.
“The jury is still out” on
whether Obama will become such a politician now that he’s been re-elected,
with strong union support, Foner said. But labor shouldn’t wait. “Ever
since the New Deal, labor has had a troubled relationship with the Democratic
Party: It got gains, but it’s been taken for granted, so you don’t get
much.”
- Mark Gruenberg, PAI Staff Writer; photo by Chris
Garlock