In Memory of the Wheatland Hop Field Riot - August 3, 1913

Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Wheatland Hop Field Riot. 

The uprising stemmed from the brutal working conditions imposed upon itinerant farm workers harvesting hops at the Durst Ranch in Wheatland, California.  An influx of job seekers, whose numbers far exceeded the number of positions available, drove down the already slender going wage.  The workers who were taken on, many of them women and young children, performed heavy physical labor for 12 hour days in triple digit heat.  Despite the temperature, Durst did not provide water to the workers but instead sold them an acidic beverage to slake their thirst.  Shade and adequate toilet facilities were also lacking.

Facing a strike over low pay and poor treatment, Ralph Durst called in the Yuba County district attorney and sheriff’s deputies to quell the unrest.  The inevitable confrontation led to the sheriff’s contingent firing into the crowd after it resisted their attempt to arrest Industrial Workers of the World organizer Richard “Blackie” Ford, who was addressing the strikers.  At least one worker in the crowd fired back.  When the smoke cleared, four people lay dead: the DA, a sheriff’s deputy, and two workers.  Scores of other people were injured.

As so often happened during the labor struggles of the era, California Governor Hiram Johnson called in the National Guard to restore order for the bosses.  Ultimately, Ford, fellow organizer Herman Suhr, and a number of the other laborers present were apprehended and questioned.  Many of them were beaten or otherwise abused during the interrogations.  One suspect killed himself in his jail cell.

In the end, Ford, Suhr, and two others were bound over for trial on second-degree murder charges in the death of the district attorney.  Ford and Suhr were ultimately convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.   When Ford was paroled in 1924, he was promptly indicted for the death of the sheriff’s deputy only to be acquitted at trial.  Soon thereafter, Suhr was pardoned and set free.  

Let us not forget the workers killed and wounded that day, nor should we forget the IWW organizers Herman Suhr and Blackie Ford who were unjustly imprisoned for their efforts on behalf of labor rights.  An injury to one is an injury to all, then and now.

Solidarity forever.

© 2013 The Unassuming Scholar

Payday!

An interesting morsel from today’s newsfeed…

The federal bankruptcy judge overseeing the liquidation of junk food purveyor Hostess has approved bonus payments for the company’s top execs.  This is after they ran the company into the ground for the second time in ten years.

It isn’t hard to see what’s next.  Over a hundred companies have made bids for the rights to Hostess’ brands and for the company’s production facilities.  It probably won’t be long before new owners are turning out Twinkies, Ding Dongs, and Ho-Hos to sate the American sweet tooth.  And they’ll do it with many of the same executives and without a unionized workforce.

The decision to pay the bonuses defies reason.  In the wake of the 2004 bankruptcy, Hostess’ union workers made wage and benefit concessions to save their jobs.  In 2012, management demanded further give-backs.  When the employees refused, management exercised the nuclear option and effectively killed the company.  Now they have been given leave to pick over the choice remains while the workforce is left out in the cold.

The Hostess case is the latest in a very long string of corporate failures where the executives are handsomely rewarded for poor performance.  The outrage, unfortunately, will inevitably be misdirected at the real victims—the workers.  No matter how egregious the evidence of corporate wrongdoing, Americans stubbornly cling to the just world hypothesis despite its faulty logic.  The workers are unemployed; clearly they suffer from deficient character.  The senior managers receive bonuses; this is proof of their superior virtue.      

The chains of ideology are stronger than any made of steel.  Perhaps the day will come when we can say capitalism died of a theory.  But looking at the political landscape in the aftermath of capitalism’s latest crisis and the American public’s everlasting willingness to believe the lie that the system benefits them, that day is too far off to inspire any glimmer of hope.

On the Clock

Not too long ago, I was sitting in a restaurant when I overhead the conversation at an adjoining table.  The topic was work.  More precisely, the topic was employee management and one of the diners holding forth on it was some HR type who was taking a hard line.

“An employee came up to me and said he was stressed over management’s expectations,” she said.  “I told him he should be stressed.”

The HR type sat back with the smug satisfaction that she had put the guy in his place.  Nearby, I was quietly seething.

Ever since the recession began (yes, I know, the economists tell us it ended a while back, but it still feels as if we’re deep within it), workers have been understandably feeling under the gun.  The prospect of losing everything you’ve earned in life to unemployment is a powerful goad to hold on to your job no matter what.  The consequence is that working conditions, particularly in the service and manufacturing sectors, have deteriorated.

The capitalist ideal has always been to simplify tasks and treat workers as barely sentient livestock.  Frederick Winslow Taylor is the patron saint of this movement. 

Taylor was an engineer who developed a theory of scientific management in the late nineteenth century.  His basic idea was rooted in the premise that employers should maximize their workers’ labor potential.  Managers could achieve greater efficiency by reducing wasted motion.  This goal was particularly achievable with the simplest menial jobs. 

Taylor tested his idea on an immigrant worker in a steel mill.  He had learned that the worker, despite hefting pig iron all day, nevertheless had sufficient energy at the day’s end to build a house for himself on his off time.  Taylor decided that if this was the case, the worker had to be slacking on the job.      

Taylor told the worker that he could earn more if he consented to Taylor directing and timing his every move.  As a result of what was probably the first time and motion study in American business, Taylor was able to streamline tasks so that the worker was able to do more work faster.  It is unrecorded whether the worker had enough stamina left over to finish his house.

In theory, scientific management techniques benefit management and labor alike by increasing productivity and profits.  The reality is that treating employees as labor units rather than as human beings and suppressing initiative by directing every aspect of work inculcates intangible social costs.  By imposing autocratic control over individuals, management stifles their ability to organize.  Each worker ends up living in isolated alienation, absorbed in the sundry distractions of daily life.

With the slow death of the New Deal consensus on the cross of Reaganism, working conditions are reverting to a postmodern version of the early industrial age.  Our culture reflects a rising anxiety manifested in an eagerness to please, and not only in the service economy.  Literally or figuratively we’re all hanging around hoping for a tip, counting on the capricious generosity of the affluent.   White collar work still affords a certain degree of autonomy, but many of even those jobs are subject to some form of micromanagement.  Still, it’s at the bottom rung of unskilled work that we see the worst abuses.

Mac McClelland’s Mother Jones exposé of warehouse work at an e-commerce fulfillment center is depressingly illustrative of how Taylorism pervades the 21^st century workplace.  McClelland, of course, wasn’t reliant on this position for her livelihood.  But what about those of us with no other alternative?  Walking a tightrope without a safety net, lacking retirement and healthcare coverage, unable to take sick days or even bathroom breaks without fear of losing our job?  This is the reality for millions of American workers, and it doesn’t look as if it will get better.

One reason is that the overall employment situation remains precarious, and many workers simply can’t pick and choose the kind of work they do.  Outsourcing and offshoring of jobs remains the norm in many industries.  Strangely, one trend that had been undermining manufacturing in the U.S. has begun to reverse itself.  The “race to the bottom” that sent factory jobs to China and India is slowing.  In fact, manufacturing jobs are returning.  Why?  Because wages have fallen and benefits cut or eliminated, it’s actually becoming cheaper to make stuff here in the good ol’ U.S. of A than it is overseas.  In other words, we're competing with developing countries by making our workforce resemble theirs as much as possible.  Even then, manufacturing jobs as a percentage of the overall workforce have fallen to 8.5% in 2012 compared to 18.3% in 1980.[1] 

It’s fashionable among conservatives these days to accuse progressives of waging “class warfare.”  Really?  It’s the owners and their minions who initiated the class war, one of soft violence against labor.  Instead of using police, National Guard troops, and hired thugs to enforce labor discipline as in the past, today’s employers use the law, the public policy process, and pleas of economic necessity to accomplish their objective.  Right-to-work laws hobble organizing efforts.  At-will employment preserves the pretense of an arms-length contractual agreement while favoring the employer by virtue of the scarcity of jobs.  Corporations move to red states for their lower taxes, reduced tax rates ironically subsidized by federal transfer payments funded by blue state taxpayers.  In this climate it's inevitable that workers are treated as interchangeable, disposable units.  If they suffer, it’s for the greater good, it's the wisdom of the free market, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, etc., etc.             

This “let them eat cake” attitude has to go.  Why shouldn’t the HR woman in the restaurant worry a little for once?  Why shouldn’t she lose sleep?  The day when that happens is a long way off.  Change does not come from above.  Until workers regain class consciousness, organize, and fight back, the malignant ghost of Frederick Winslow Taylor will continue to haunt the American workplace and the dehumanization of workers will go on and our society is all the poorer for it.

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

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[1] Extrapolated from Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The Flint Sit-Down Strike – Its Legacy 75 Years On

An important milestone in American labor history took place 75 years ago this month.  The Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1937 occurred under socioeconomic circumstances not unlike those we are experiencing today.  Although largely forgotten, its influence lives on in the form of the nonviolent sit-in and we can even consider the tactics of the Flint strike an antecedent of today’s Occupy movement.

Workers at the General Motors die-making plant in Flint, Michigan occupied their factory in late December 1936.  Previous United Auto Workers’ efforts to organize GM employees in Flint had faced considerable opposition from the company and local authorities.  Seeing an opportunity in a strike at the GM Fisher Body plant in Cleveland, one of only two that made body parts for GM cars, the UAW leadership decided to strike the second Fisher facility in Flint.  Rather than picketing outside and permitting management to keep control of the plant, the workers occupied the inside of the factory to halt production.  Workers at a Chevrolet plant across town soon followed suit.

The Flint sit-down action was a model of worker self-management.  The strikers in the factories adopted consensus-based governance.  Union support committees made sure the strikers received food and other needed supplies while representatives chosen by their fellow workers at each plant participated in negotiations with GM management and Flint officials.   

The strike lasted six weeks before General Motors agreed to negotiate with the UAW.  The sit-down strike became a popular union tactic against employer abuses until the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ruled them illegal in 1939.  By this time, however, the Wagner Act guaranteed workers the right to bargain collectively with their employers and American labor unions grew in numbers and political power over the ensuing decades. 

By contrast the state of organized labor after thirty years of conservative policies is depressing.  Labor had been steadily losing ground well before the watershed 1981 PATCO strike and President Reagan’s mass firing of striking air traffic controllers.  The downward spiral only accelerated afterwards.  Today, unions represent just over 10% of the U.S. workforce compared to one third of workers in the 1950s.  So-called “right to work” laws, business opposition to the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, and Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union policies in Wisconsin are just a few manifestations of the increasingly hostile environment in which unions work.  A concomitant problem is worker apathy. 

Of course, there are a number of reasons why today’s workers don’t seem interested in organizing.  The most significant is that our working class doesn’t even consider itself working class.  Ask almost any American, and they’ll proudly tell you they’re “middle class.”  What they don’t realize is that if workers in this country enjoy a decent standard of living it is due to a century and a half of struggle by organized labor.  These gains have become so deeply established we take them for granted.  The eight-hour day, child labor laws, the minimum wage, and workplace safety regulations are all fruits of labor activism. 

Another reason for the decline of unionization is lack of awareness.  When I ask my community college students if they know what a union is, maybe half the class will raise their hands.  Many of those students are quick to tell me they’re opposed to the idea of organized labor.  They’ll tell me they think unions are a bad idea because they’ve heard their dues would go to line the pockets of union officials or, more insidiously, that benefits such as pensions and health insurance cut into employers’ profit margins. 

This last claim underlines the sad truth of why many workers are hostile to unions: They identify too strongly with their employers.  In an era where downsizing and offshoring have become alarmingly commonplace, Americans’ faith in the capitalist system remains unshaken.   No one believes they will feel the effects of neoliberal policies that seek to minimize labor costs.  If corporations can’t maximize profit by cutting wages or benefits in the U.S. they will send jobs to places where they can.  Notwithstanding, the Horatio Alger story of the self-made individual remains an indelible part of our social myth.   We tell ourselves, “If I just work harder, my neighbors’ bad times won’t happen to me,” ignoring the inexorable truth that public issues lead to private troubles. 

There are signs of life, however, and perhaps even a strong chance for revival.  The Service Employees International Union has made headway among some of our economy’s most vulnerable workers.  The Change to Win Federation, of which SEIU is part, offers a dynamic field organizing model superior to the ossified bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO.  And it may well be possible that we can see the first glimmers of hope on an otherwise bleak landscape.  The Flint Sit-Down serves as only one reminder of the toil and sacrifices of generations of American workers to achieve justice.  The crucible of the Great Depression produced the modern labor movement.  Let us hope that the present economic crisis leads to its resurgence.  

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar