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'You can only push people down just so far and before they react' [1]
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Date: 2022-09-03
Click here to sign a petition in support of the Louisville Courier-Journal union drive.
By BERRY CRAIG
The meaning of a holiday sometimes gets lost in its celebration.
To a lot of people, Labor Day is just summer's last hurrah--a final fling at fun in the sun (tempered again this year by COVID-19).
Most importantly, Labor Day honors our labor movement, which I’m proud to be part of.
It's hardly a secret that union workers enjoy better pay and benefits than non-union workers. Americans are catching on.
A Gallup Poll published last month showed 71 percent public approval of unions. That’s the highest approval rating unions have had since 1965.
The Louisville, Ky.-area has become a center of union activity with workers at Starbucks stores joining Starbucks employees nationwide in unionizing. At the same time, workers at Heine Brothers coffee stores, Sunergos Coffee shop and Half Price books are seeking union representation. On the day Gallup released its poll, approximately 35 Louisville Courier-Journal newsroom staffers announced that they want a union.
"You can only push people down just so far and before they react," warned Bill Londrigan, Kentucky State AFL-CIO president, who said that the country is in the midst of its "widest spread of income inequality in history."
Added Londrigan: "Millions are in poverty and making way less than a livable wage while some CEOs and others have become mega-billionaires. When those conditions prevail, more and more workers realize that their individual voices are not enough to achieve a standard of living and working conditions that are adequate for them. Throughout history, the only real response that has a tangible result is organization, unionization and collective bargaining."
Indeed.
History, the subject I taught for two dozen years, also instructs that unions built the middle class.
Before unions, 72-hour workweeks were common in industry. Workers were paid about $400 to $500 a year while factory owners made millions. There were no paid vacations, no paid holidays, and no overtime pay.
Before unions, wage inequality was rampant. Whites got more pay than persons of color. Women got less than men, kids less than women.
Child labor was common. Boys and girls as young as 10 were forced to work to help their families try to make ends meet. The ends almost never met.
Before unions, you worked until you were too old, too enfeebled, too sick or too disabled to work. Then you fended for yourself. There were no pensions, no Social Security, no welfare, no Medicare and no Medicaid.
Before unions, you risked life and limb every day at work in mining, manufacturing and transportation. Preventable accidents killed or maimed thousands of workers every year. Thousands more succumbed to toxic chemicals. Black lung disease shortened the lives of coal miners.
Safety and health laws didn't exist or were ineffective and largely unenforced. There was no workers' compensation and no health insurance.
Before unions, employers fired or laid off workers at will. There was no unemployment insurance.
Anyway, an old black-and-white print of a smiling Hubert H. Humphrey hangs in the office at the Western Kentucky AFL-CIO Area Council hall in Paducah.
Dubbed "The Happy Warrior," Humphrey was a senator and vice president. The Minnesota Democrat was one of the best friends unions ever had in Washington. I cast my first presidential vote for HHH in 1968.
I treasure my paperback copy of his book, The Cause is Mankind: A Liberal Program for Modern America. Printed in 1965, its pages are yellowed a bit. But the passage of 57 years has not dimmed its shining words:
"Union organizations have provided for millions of formerly inarticulate citizens the forum in which to hammer out policies affecting the world in which they live and which their children will inherit. And not only have they hammered out policies, but they have developed techniques and resources for implementing those policies."
-- Berry Craig of Arlington, Ky., is a member of the American Federation of Teachers, serves on the Kentucky State AFL-CIO Executive Board and is the federation’s webmaster-editor.
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