Historian: Labor Movement in Tradition of Abolitionists

(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