Labor History Timeline--WWII and the Post-War Wave of Strikes and Federal Suppression

1941    No Strike Pledges by AFL and CIO: The major unions sold out their members in the name of fighting fascism. (Sources:UHWO)

1943    Smith-Connally Act: The law restricted labor bargaining and organizing, required cooling off periods, imposed criminal penalties for encouraging strikes and allowed the president to seize control of struck plants. (Sources: UHWO)

1944    Port Chicago Mutiny, San Francisco Bay Area: Munitions exploded while mostly black sailors were loading ships, killing 320 and injuring 390. Unsafe working conditions continued after the disaster, prompting hundreds of the sailors to stop working and refuse to load anymore munitions. 50 of them were convicted of mutiny and sentenced to long prison terms, though the majority were released after a year and a half. (Sources:Wikipedia)

1945-1946       400,000 Miners & 750,000 Steelers Went on Strike—Part of the largest strike wave in U.S. history. At one point there were 1.6 million workers simultaneously on strike. By the end of the year, more than 4.5 million workers had deliberately stopped working. During World War II, most major unions signed no-strike pledges. As a result, there were numerous grievances and conflicts that had been building up during the war that came to a head in 1945-1946. The number of union members in the U.S. also doubled from 7 million in 1940, to 14.5 million by the war’s end. During the strike wave, over 400,000 coal miners struck, along with 750,000 steelworkers, 70,000 teamsters, 300,000 meatpackers, 175,000 electrical workers and nearly 50,000 petroleum workers and machinists. (Sources: Daily Kos, New York Times, Marxists.org, Counter Punch)

1945    Navy Seizes Oil Refineries: In October, Truman used the navy to seize half of the nation’s refining capacity to break a post-war strike in 20 states. (Sources: Lutins.org, Jeremy Brecker)

1946    Government Seizes Railways: In May, rail workers decided to join the miners and steelers. Such a strike threatened to bring the economy to a standstill as it would have significantly reduced the transport of goods. President Truman seized the railroads to break the strike, threatening to use the army to run the lines until the workers settled. (Sources: UHWO, Bits of News)

1946    Rochester General strike: The Rochester City Council fired nearly 500 city workers on May 15, 1946 for forming a union and then started to mass arrest picketers and organizers on May 21-23, provoking a General Strike later that month. (sources:Rochester Labor, Daily Kos)

1946    Oakland General Strike: The last General Strike in the U.S. occurred in 1946 in Oakland, California. The strike came in response to the anti-labor policies of Hastings and Kahn’s department stores in downtown Oakland. Hundreds of store clerks (mostly women) went on strike in late October. The store enlisted the police to clear away strikers and protect strike-breaking scabs. On December 3, 100,000 workers throughout Oakland joined the strike. The AFL eventually voted to walkout in solidarity with the clerks. However, Harry Bridges, who was then head of the California CIO, refused to become involved, while the AFL quickly brokered a sellout deal on December 5, when the city manager agreed not to use police to bring in scabs deal—a deal that angered of many store clerks and teamsters who continued to picket (Modern School, Counterpunch, Libcom).

1946    More General Strikes: Less well-known General Strikes also occurred in 1946 in Stamford, CT, and Lancaster, PA. (Sources:Jeremy Brecker)

1947    Taft-Hartley Act: This anti-labor law, which was passed in 1947, banned the General Strike, solidarity or sympathy strikes, and secondary boycotts. It prohibited closed union shops and opened the door to “right-to-work” legislation. President Truman, whose veto was overridden, called it an “intrusion on free speech.” The law also permits the president to obtain a strike-breaking injunction by claiming that national security is threatened by the strike. Many believe Taft-Hartley was a direct response by capital to the upheavals of the recent Oakland General Strike and the coal and steel strikes. (Wikipedia,Modern School)

1950    Army Seizes Railroads: Truman once again seized the railroads—this time to block a General Strike from occurring. The army occupied the railroads for two years before handing them back to their owners. (Sources: AFGE)

1952    Army Seizes Steel Mills: Truman also used the army to avert a major strike in the steel mills. The Supreme Court later ruled the move unconstitutional.  (Sources: AFGE)

1955    AFL and CIO merge: Two large pro-business unions merge into one mega-pro-business union hell bent on avoiding strikes and keeping production flowing.

1959    Longest Steel Strike in U.S. History: 90% of U.S. steel production was halted for 116 days. Eisenhower used Taft-Hartley to force the steelworkers back to work. (Sources:UHWO, Wikipedia)

Democracy is No Place for the People

Americans love democracy so much that some will kill or attempt to harm those who they think oppose it.

(Image from Flickr, by dahnielson)

Yet what is it that they love so much?

If it is the notion that “The People” get make the social and political decisions that most impact their own lives, they are in love with a fantasy that has never existed. Democracy is about voting for others who get to make these decisions and almost always in the interests of the wealthiest subset of “The People.”

Yet even the part of democracy that does include “the people,” (e.g., voting or speaking at public hearings), includes them only so long as they glorify the system and do not challenge it. Consider the case of Oakland, California, which aborted a meeting of their city council last week rather than endure public criticism and protests of yet another murder of an unarmed black man by the police.

The most recent police shooting involved the death of teenager Alan Blueford, who was killed by police in April, just prior to his high school graduation. Police say he had been brandishing a gun. His family and witnesses deny the charges and are demanding a full investigation, accusing the police of lying. Blueford’s mother said she wanted changes in how the police department is run so that police were more accountable to and had deeper understanding of the communities in which they work. She also accused council members of turning their heads when she spoke of her grief and expressed outrage and frustration that they would shut off the microphone when she spoke. (Blueford’s comments were broadcast on KPFA’s “Letters and Politics,” on October 3, 2012.

Meanwhile, a recent court-ordered report blasted the Oakland police department for failing to make adequate improvements in how it addresses deadly force by police, and in another lawsuit, lawyers are expected to ask for federal oversight of the Oakland police department for failing to make court-ordered reforms.

The city council met again yesterday in closed session to decide how to prevent such disruptions of its meetings in the future. When the closed door session ended and the “public” portion of the meeting began, attendees found the balcony closed and the doors barricaded, with seating reduced by 50% and more than 100 people barred from getting inside.

One might argue that the city council has important business to attend to and that it cannot be hampered by protests or filibustering by unelected members of the public. The public be damned if they cannot understand this simple fact. After all, they elected the council members and should be satisfied with what the council members do and how they do it.

Yet it seems as though some Oakland residents have a different understanding of democracy, one in which they get to directly influence the agenda and decisions made by their representatives. If the city council cannot be bothered to prioritize and resolve the problem of police violence, then perhaps they need more forceful persuasion by having to face so many angry, frustrated and grieving constituents that they must stay extra late just to hear them all, let alone have time for their other business.

The Oakland city council’s new policies are designed to have the opposite effect. It will become harder for residents to use the democratic process to air their grievances or to use their voices and bodies to disrupt or commandeer council meetings. However, this won’t be a substantive change from the status quo. The elected officials will continue to be the ones who make the decisions, listening or not to the concerns of their constituents. But when they choose to ignore “the people,” they will now do so with less blowback. Their decisions will still heavily favor the interests of the city’s wealthiest business leaders, but now with less public oversight and scrutiny. And “the people” will not have any less say in the policy matters that affect them; it will simply be more difficult for them to irritate their elected leaders when things don’t go their way.

Mayor Calls OWS Terrorists, Congress Calls On Military To Arrest U.S. Citizens

Terrorist or CEO? (Image by puuikibeach)

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan called OWS protestors economic terrorists for shutting down the Oakland Port on Monday. Such bombast would be laughable if we weren’t currently slaughtering thousands of people throughout the world, assassinating, torturing and incarcerating suspects in secret prisons without trial, all in the name of fighting terrorism.

Her comment is even more threatening in light of recent Congressional legislation that would allow the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens anywhere in the world without charge or trial, including on U.S. soil (in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act), for suspicion of being a terrorist. The new rules are part of a new $662 billion military spending bill that has been criticized by several Obama administration officials, human rights groups and even some Tea Party members, according to Democracy Now.

While it is unlikely that any OWS protestors will be sent to Gitmo, the rhetoric is clearly intended to discredit them and turn public sentiment against their cause. It also belies a commonly believed misconception that “Excessive” profits by the wealthy are bad, but the wealthy themselves are good because they create jobs and keep the economy running. Therefore, anything that hinders their ability to run their businesses and make a profit is seen as an attack on the 99% and their ability to go to work and earn an income.

According to this line of reasoning, workers who go on strike are terrorists. Consumers who boycott a business or product are terrorists. Shoplifters are terrorists. Little old ladies who refuse to engage with phone solicitors are terrorists. But employers who maintain unsafe working conditions, illegally dump toxic waste, pollute the air and water, pay starvation wages, or implement dangerous speedups are simply doing business.

Even if we ignore the absurdity of the “terrorist” epithet, the theoretical basis for it is still absurd. How can it be bad for a person to make an “obscene” profit, but okay for him to make a “not-so-obscene” profit when all profits arise by paying workers far less than the value of their labor? Aren’t the workers being exploited in either case? And how can one distinguish between obscene and not-so-obscene profits when all profits contribute to inequities in wealth and social power.

There are other absurdities, too. Workers and activists who try to halt profits for a day are terrorists, but Congressional leaders who want to slash unemployment benefits and require recipients to have a GED or college degree and submit to drug testing are simply encouraging lazy shirkers to stop horsing around and get jobs quicker (never mind that there aren’t anywhere near enough jobs available). Congressional leaders should not be seen as engaging in any sort of economic violence, blackmail or threats when they tie tax cut extensions for the middle class to the fast tracking of a Tar Sands pipeline running from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico and deregulation of mercury emissions from coal power plants, because they are only trying to preserve jobs and we should certainly appreciate that, even if the riders on the bill will kill us through pollution.

Thankfully I have a job as a teacher and therefore protection against the military’s witch hunt for terrorists, except I’m also a member of the NEA, which was declared a terrorist organization back in 2004, by George Bush’s Education Secretary Rod Paige.

Oakland Teachers Participate in General Strike

As of this morning, 268 teachers had called in for subs at Oakland Unified School District, according to Katy Murphy, of the Contra Costa Times? Last Wednesday, only 24 called in for subs. While this is nothing close to what is needed for a successful General Strike, it is a significant increase in absenteeism that is no doubt due to teachers’ participation in the strike.

In related news, thousands have participated in today’s day of actions, marching on banks, as well as the Port of Oakland. Students have skipped class to join the protests. Unions have provided food. Because so few long shore workers actually showed up for work today, the port was effectively shut down. And, as of 4 pm, the police have been relatively quiet, despite the fact that some protestors smashed bank windows.

It has been speculated that the police are engaging in their own strike against Mayor Jean Quan, who called on police to violently suppress Occupy Oakland last week, and then placed all the blame on the police. However, it would be a mistake to assume that they will continue to stay quiet, especially if the protests persist or escalate in intensity.

As protestors head to the Port of Oakland to shut it down this evening, there is still plenty of opportunity for violent police repression, like in 2003, when they attacked protestors at the port by firing wooden dowels and bean bag bullets at them.

While it could be argued that today’s Day of Action was a success, as thousands participated and effectively slowed business at many banks and businesses, it should be emphasized that it was no General Strike. Capitalism and profit-making were not significantly halted. A relatively small percentage of workers actually refused to labor today. Most of the mainstream unions did everything in their power to ensure that their members showed up for work and upheld their compact with the bosses.

Teen Curfews: More Snake Oil For Affluent White Folks

In an attempt to curb teen violence, Oakland City Council is considering a new ordinance that would set night time and school hour curfews for teenagers, the Bay Citizen reported today. The ordinance, known as the “Juvenile Protection Curfew,” is being pushed by council president Larry Reid and council member Ignacio De La Fuente. It would prohibit minors from being outside anywhere in Oakland between 10 pm and 5 am Sunday through Thursday, and 11:30 pm to 5 am on Friday and Saturday. It also includes a school day curfew from 8:30 am to 1:30 pm.

There are numerous exemptions written into the ordinance, ostensibly to protect children’s rights and liberties. Some of the exemptions include being involved in an emergency, being accompanied by parents, going to or from work or exercising free-speech rights (such as participating in a protest). This latter exemption, of course, leaves open the possibility that adolescents could stay out all night with picket signs protesting the curfew itself, or hang out on a street corner claiming the neighborhood as an act of neighborhood pride.

In reality, any curfew could be a seen as an infringement on speech and assembly rights, while the “free speech” exemption could be interpreted however the authorities please in order to justify arrests and harassment of youth. For example, what happens when youth are peacefully exercising their free speech at a demonstration and the police decide to create a riot by attacking protestors and mass arresting them, as often happens during peaceful protests? Will they be charged with curfew violations in addition to the usual disturbing the peace and failure to disperse?

Of course teen violence and deaths are a serious matter and reducing them ought to be a social priority. However, curfews do nothing to address the causes of teen violence and there is little evidence they reduce violence. In fact, a study by Mike Males, in 1999, showed no reduction in youth crime resulting from California curfews.

Yet why should evidence be considered a relevant factor in social policy?

The Oakland policy is modeled after the Long Beach curfew, which has been in place since 1983. When pressed for data on the program’s effectiveness, Long Beach’s Police Information Officer (PIO), Nancy Pratt, said that there’s no way to measure how many crimes have been prevented as a result of the curfew. “How do you quantify that?” she said. “We don’t know how many youth have been protected from becoming a victim, or prevented from committing crimes.”

This is not a very compelling case for stripping away civil liberties from an entire class of people. It is also a load of malarkey. One can look at crime statistics and see that, in fact, youth crime had been dropping in Long Beach, but at roughly the same rate as other Los Angeles and Orange County cities that did not have curfews (see Los Angeles and Orange County Cities' Crime by Status Arrests, 1990-96).

The fact is that youth crime has been declining throughout the country, including violent crime.

One might argue that curfews help keep some kids out of trouble, but this would also be a terrible argument. In order to enforce curfews, police must patrol areas where youth frequent, interrogate and arrest them, book them, fill out paper work, contact parents and social services, taking them away from more urgent and potentially lethal situations like traffic accidents and actual homicides and assaults.

If the goal is to protect youth, then it would be wise to consider when crimes against youth occur and where. According to the Bay Citizen, most crimes against youth – such as burglary or assault– occur after school between 3pm and 6pm, which would make a curfew pointless. A cheaper and more constructive solution would be an investment in sports and after-school programs.

More appallingly, thousands of youth are killed and hundreds of thousands are injured in their own homes each year by adult family members. For some kids, being out on the streets at night may actually be safer than being in their homes.

None of this should matter much to policy makers, whose primary constituents are the affluent residents of Oakland. They could do nothing, and the affluent residents would be no worse off. Teen violence is essentially a problem affecting poor teens and remains safely cloistered in poor neighborhoods away from middle class youth. A curfew will do little to change this, but it will allow the horrified middle class do-gooders in the hills to feel like they have helped their poor neighbors in the flatlands. And they can win these Brownie points without making any significant social investment in those poor communities, without sacrificing any of their wealth or privilege, without addressing the high unemployment rate among black youth (41% nationally).

Lowered Expectations: Oakland Unified Hires Drunk Racist Cop, Then Places Him on Leave

Oakland Unified School District hired Peter Sarna as their district’s police chief in 2009, despite the fact that he had been cited in a drunken driving crash which led to his resignation as deputy director of the Division of Law Enforcement for the California Department of Justice in 2007.

What they didn’t know at the time was that he was also a raving homicidal racist, too.

According to the Bay Citizen, Sarna told a black colleague, another school cop, that he had no right to live in upscale Orinda because he was a “n-----r and should be hung in the town square.” He apparently then threatened the black officer and an Asian officer who was in the car with them with death.

Sarna was placed on leave by OUSD after the black officer filed a complaint against Sarna.