A Century of Struggle

A Century of Struggle To mark the 100th anniversary of the formation of the American Federation of Labor, the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution invited a group of scholars and practitioners "to examine the work, technology, and culture of industrial America . " The conference was produced in cooperation with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations . The excerpts on the following pages are drawn from papers and comments at that conference, in the Museum's Carmichael Auditorium, November IS and 16, 1986. Mary Kay Rieg, Olivia G. Amiss, and Marsha Domzalski of the Monthly Labor Review provided editorial assistance. Trade unions mirror society in conflict between collectivism and individualism A duality common to many institutions runs through the American labor movement and has marked its shifting fortunes from the post-Civil War period to the present ALICE KESSLER-HARRIS ideology of American trade unions as they developed in Two competing ideas run through the labor movement, as and post-Civil War period. It also tells us something of their they have run through the American past. The first is the the The conglomeration of unions that formed the Na- notion of community-the sense that liberty is nurtured in impact . Union and the 15,000 assemblies of the an informal political environment where the voluntary and tional Labor of Labor responded to the onslaught of industrial- collective enterprise of people with common interests con- Knights the Civil War by searching for ways to reestablish tributes to the solution of problems . Best characterized by ism after of interest that was threatened by a new and the town meeting, collective solutions are echoed in the the community organization of work. In the view of the temperance, abolition, suffrage, and educational reform so- rapidly spreading Knights, the successful operation of a democratic republic cieties of the 19th century and have become a cliche of participation of all of its citizens required 20th-century political and social life. The collective impulse based on the full of the "dignity," "autonomy," or "independ- lends itself to egalitarian values in that all citizens are a recognition ence" of the working person. That meant fighting for work- deemed equal in their capacity to participate in democratic that respected the capacities of all toilers decision-making processes. The second idea is that of place conditions moral and intellectual development.' At individualism-a belief in the hard work and ingenuity and permitted their the Knights believed that only the elimination of the characteristic of our Puritan forebears and of legendary fron- bottom, system could guarantee such respect and ensure that tiersmen and women; and faith in the capacity of people to wage was equated with citizenship and some possibility rise by their own wills to the highest vistas of the American manhood exercising it . In practice, protecting the dignity of the dream . Embodied in the notion of "free labor," the ideal for required what has come to be known as social assured the dignity of honest toil and posited that its result individual collective activity in the community, the work- would be economic success . Because in this conception, the unionism: above all in the political arena. Individual dignity rewards of earthly existence are earned by those who place, and product; it was the means for assuring social demonstrate initiative, thrift, and tenacity in the pursuit of was not the end a goal, its thrust is towards eliminating the constraints en- harmony . by the collective impulse . gendered AFL redefined relationship The evident tension in these two sets of ideas, character- with the visionary quality of the Knights' en- istic of many American institutions, informs the structure Impatient deavors, the skilled craft workers who founded the Ameri- can Federation of Labor redefined the relationship between Kessler-Harris is a professor of history and co-director of the Center Alice collective and individual interests. For them, the restoration for the Study of Work and Leisure at Hofstra University . 32 of social harmony would come when workers aggregated through collective bargaining; nurtured the formation of the sufficient power to hold dominant industrialism in check. Congress of Industrial Organizations; and provided the ra- That could only be achieved by a tightly knit organization . tionale for the shift into legislative strategies. To pursue its So the American Federation of Labor adopted a class-based institutional purposes, the labor movement has consistently definition of community and set itself to secure "more, more maintained a collective stance and an egalitarian vision . now" in the cacaphonous phrase of the day . Within this form Whatever its obvious flaws, the pursuit of some sense of of unionism, sometimes called market unionism, dignity collectivity has enabled the labor movement to serve as an was defined not as participation in the polity, but as the important piece of the Nation's social conscience, and as an reward of work. Progress was measured by the "economic effective weapon in the arsenal of economic democracy. It betterment" of individual members. In the short term, at is worth looking at how this is manifested . least, collective well-being was transformed from a vision Providing a of a better world to the immediate object of mutually self- social function interested societies. For the Knights, dignity for the individ- First, economic democracy has been sustained by the ual worker resided in a conception of work that harbored the struggle of unionists for workplace control. Following a possibility of participation in a democratic society ; long tradition, unionists sought to create and retain work it derived legitimacy from arguments for equality . For rules that not only affirmed the dignity of workers but pro- the AFB, dignity resided in a better life for the worker vided input into the pace of work, the rate of its accomplish- and derived legitimacy from arguments for individual ment, and its organization . Adhering to what historian possibility. David Montgomery calls a code of "honorable behaviour," But the argument for equality had not been abandoned . If union members protected each other from arbitrary abuse by the craft-oriented AFL rejected the "sentimental" solutions creating and following their own standards of work. Some of the generated by the Knights of Labor and later by the Industrial most skilled managed to regulate the entry of new workers Workers of the World and by socialists and anarchists who into their trades, training apprentices and disciplin- ing the "rats" who violated tried to influence its course, if AFL leaders steered away traditional customs. The strength of workplace egalitarianism from labor parties and from government intervention in the can to some extent be measured by the ferocity of managements' things that the power of labor could achieve, still they made installation of scientific management and efficiency techniques, one compromise . The pursuit of individualism for workers as well as by the variety of techniques with which corporations required collective action which, in turn, required an appeal attempted to shift loyalty from union to employer . Faced with the to the egalitarian roots of America's past . To make this as- saults, unions confronted management at every stage, resist- appeal, the AFL found common cause with the progressive ing encroachments on movement . traditional prerogatives and creating alternatives such as workers' education programs to enhance In the progressive equation, the restoration of democratic their members' understanding of the struggle at hand. possibility involved reconciling the interests of competing Though invocations of human relations and corporate groups, a conviction that weighting the scales on behalf of welfare shifted the terrain of struggle in the 1920's, and ordinary workers would restore social balance-right the weakened the union movement, informal work groups per- inequalities that had been introduced by a misplaced con- sisted and passed on the tradition of resistance . Emblematic ception of individualism . The focus legitimized the collec- of the collective roots of unionism, by the 1930's "industrial tive body of labor, imbuing it with the capacity to bargain democracy," "workers councils," and "codeterminatiod" with employers in the service of an egalitarian ethic. Thus, had entered the unionism's vocabulary, only to disappear labor's attack on the open shop was construed as a negation when the Wagner Act made collective bargaining re- of the strident individualism of "freedom of contract" and spectable . If, as David Brody suggests, unions too readily placed the trade union movement in the ideological camp of traded off input into the managerial decision-making proc- progressivism. ess for the more immediate gains of seniority and promotion In this relatively narrow, but very important, sense, the ladders, of clear job descriptions, and of mediated trade union movement committed itself to a collective strug- grievances, still unions must be credited with continuing to gle on behalf of all workers . If its immediate gains were to curb managerial discretion and power by means of objective accrue only to those it represented, the existence of market rules. unionism-the very possibility of organizing-was rooted Second, in the area of economic security, unions have in a rejection of rugged individualism and a concomitant functioned in the public sphere as well as in their own work defense of the egalitarian ethic . Social unionism became not areas. Beginning with the 1930's, when the AFL abandoned merely a necessary balance to market unionism, but the its celebrated policy of "rewarding friends and punishing node from which market unionism sprang . It provided the enemies" and the cio added a tinge of urgency to the class rationale for immediate gains and the inspiration from which struggle, the labor movement has provided the political im- unions have consistently struggled. In tension with prevail- petus behind much of our social legislation.

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