Latest / The Fine Print of Democracy / Labor Unions and the Things we Take for Granted
Transcript
- Jake: Welcome to the Fine Print of Democracy, a civics podcast that explores the overlooked rules, processes, and institutions that shape American government. I'm Jake, a civics teacher breaking down the ideas behind our system of government and the conversations that help us better understand it. Every Monday I publish an essay exploring a big idea in civics, politics, government, or history. In these episodes, I'll read that week's essay, then continue with margin notes, or look at the ideas, stories, and reflections that didn't quite make it into the final draft. Today Labor unions and the things we take for granted. Labor unions and the things we take for granted. How collective action changed the American workplace. A single worker asking an employer for a shorter work day doesn't have much leverage. Thousands of workers asking for the same thing? That's a different story. That's essentially the idea behind a labor union. Individually, workers have very limited bargaining power, but collectively they can negotiate for things they might not be able to achieve alone. And that seemingly simple idea has had an enormous impact on American life. The interesting thing is that many of the things workers organized to achieve are now so ordinary that we barely think of them as achievements at all. We end up taking things for granted that previous generations had fought hard for. Labor Day grew out of the labor movement's efforts to recognize American workers. It emerged during a period when industrialization had transformed American work. Workers were organizing and demanding better conditions and increasingly becoming a force that employers and government simply couldn't ignore. The Central Labor Union planned the first Labor Day celebration in september eighteen eighty two. An estimated ten thousand to twenty five thousand workers took the day off work and marched in a massive parade through the streets of Manhattan, followed by large picnics and free concerts. Oregon recognized Labor Day as a state holiday in eighteen eighty seven, giving workers an annual day off, and in eighteen ninety four, President Grover Cleveland signed it into law, making Labor Day a federal holiday. Today, Labor Day mostly means a day off, and that's fitting because the history behind the holiday is, in part, a history of workers fighting for more time away from work. But if you want to truly understand why Labor Day matters, you have to first understand what American work used to look like. Until relatively recently, what we think of as a normal workday was drastically different. Workdays were much longer, sometimes twelve hours or more, and the work week could be six days. There weren't really standardized workplace safety rules either. Workplaces could be dangerous and work-related injuries were common. Children worked in factories, sometimes younger than 10 years old. And if you were an employee, you didn't have many protections. You had very little bargaining power and not much ability to push back against your employer. If your boss set the hours, the pay, or the working conditions, there wasn't much you could do about it. You could accept the job as it was, or you could find another job. That was the reality for a lot of American workers, and eventually workers began to realize that they had a lot more power if they acted together than if they acted on their own. Workers began to discover the power of organization. Individual workers realized they weren't the only ones with workplace issues. Their co-workers were experiencing similar things, and coming together to bargain with their employer gave them more leverage to get what they wanted. That could mean asking for shorter hours, better pay, safer working conditions, or simply having a say in how the workplace was run. Instead of one worker going to their boss and asking for a change, a group of workers could make that same request together. That is really the basic idea behind a labor union. Workers organize themselves so they can negotiate with their employer as a group rather than as individuals. And that collective bargaining gave workers something they had really had before, a real voice in the workplace. Of course, getting to that point wasn't always easy. Employees didn't always want their workers organizing, and workers who tried to organize could face serious consequences. But the idea continued to spread. Workers in different industries began organizing, negotiating, and pushing for changes to the way they worked. And over time, some of those changes became so common that we stopped thinking about where they came from. Most people don't think twice about where the eight hour workday came from. It's just what a workday is. Workers spent generations pushing back against 10, 11, and 12 hour days and demanding shorter hours. The idea of eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will became an important slogan and rally and cry for labor unions. Over time, the eight hour workday became the standard we know today. It wasn't just the workday. Hours in a day that were negotiated, it was the number of workdays in a week. A six day work week was common for generations, with just Sunday being a regular day off work. Labor organizations played an important role in pushing for shorter work weeks. Over time, having two days off became more common, and eventually the five day work week became the standard we know today. Think about how different that is from what we consider normal now. Most of us don't think twice about having Saturday and Sunday off. We don't see the weekend as something that had to be fought for, it's just the weekend. But it wasn't always that way. And if for some reason you were asked to work beyond your normal hours, there is an expectation that additional work should be compensated differently. It wasn't always that way. There was no general requirement that employers pay workers more for working beyond their contract hours. Yet now overtime work is something we generally expect to be compensated for. Work more than your normal hours and you should get paid more for that additional time. Again, that probably seems pretty normal to us now, but the idea that working extra hours should mean getting extra pay had to become a standard in the workplace. It was another change that came from workers pushing for better conditions and better treatment. There are countless horror stories of what work used to be like before safety standards took effect. Workers routinely suffered devastating injuries due to poorly maintained work equipment, cramped spaces, inadequate ventilation or fire suppression, and many other factors that employers didn't bother with. Worker activism and reform movements helped develop safety standards, and slowly but surely more and more employers began adopting better work safety policies. Unions continued to push, however, until state and federal governments implemented standardized workplace safety laws. Basic safety protections are now expected when we show up to work every day, regardless of the industry we work in. It's also hard for us to imagine a time when children were expected to work alongside adults. Unless you own a small family business, child labor laws prevent you from employing children. For generations, children across America, sometimes under ten years old, were sent to work in fields, factories, mines, and many other industries. Just the idea of a nine-year-old working all day in a dirty, dangerous factory is shocking to us now. Organized labor was part of the movement pushing back against child labor and the conditions that came with it. Alongside reformers and others who wanted to change these practices, they helped push the country toward the idea that children shouldn't be working long hours in dangerous conditions just because their labor was needed. The expectations surrounding a job have also changed, thanks in part to labor unions. Employer paid health insurance, retirements, and pensions were not always standard. Unions pushed for years for better worker benefits, and over time, laws, regulations, and workplace standards helped make many of those benefits much more common. None of these things happened overnight, and unions didn't accomplish all of them by themselves, but organized labor played an important role in pushing the idea that workers should have a say in the conditions in which they work. And that might be the most important thing unions gave workers. Work takes up a huge part of people's lives, so the conditions of that work matter. How long you work, how safe you are, how you're treated, and whether you have any say all matter. One worker asking for something has limited leverage. A group of workers asking for the same thing has more. This is where the term collective bargaining comes in. A few members of the workforce can negotiate with the employer on behalf of the entire workforce. This gives the workforce a voice in the negotiating process. Unions will typically hold elections among themselves to select representatives to represent the entire workforce. Those elected representatives will meet with employees, discuss their wants, their needs, and their complaints. They then take that information to the employer and negotiate on behalf of the workers. That doesn't mean every employee gets exactly what they want. The employer still has a say in the process, and negotiations can take time. But the important thing is that workers have a way to make their voices heard. A union gives workers a way to have that conversation collectively. Instead of one employee asking their boss for better pay, safer working conditions, or a change to their schedule, the workforce can come together and negotiate those things as a group. That's the real power of collective bargaining. The workers have a seat at the table. The argument for unions isn't that workers should always get their way, it's that workers should have a meaningful opportunity to participate and negotiate. That brings us back to the things we take for granted. We don't really think about where a lot of the basic expectations we have about work came from. We expect to work a reasonable number of hours, we expect to have days off, we expect to be paid for working overtime, we expect our workplaces to have basic safety standards, we expect children to be in school instead of working full time jobs. None of those expectations seem particularly controversial to us now. They just seem like the way work is supposed to be. But they weren't always. Those standards had to be fought for. Workers organized, unions negotiated, reformers pushed for change, and eventually governments passed laws that established many of the protections we now consider normal. And once those changes became part of everyday life, we stopped thinking about the struggle that came before them. That's probably the easiest thing to forget about progress. Once something becomes normal, we stop asking why it is normal in the first place. Most of us aren't going to spend our Saturday thinking about the history of the five day work week. We aren't going to look at our overtime pay and think about the workers who pushed for the idea that extra work should mean extra competition. We just enjoy the weekend, cash the paycheck, and go to work expecting the workplace to be reasonably safe. And that's okay. These things are supposed to feel normal. But that's exactly why they are worth remembering. And that's exactly why we celebrate Labor Day every September. Labor Day represents everything workers deserve and have spent generations fighting for time away from work, fair treatment. reasonable working conditions and a voice at the table. So we celebrate labor by not working. And there's something fitting about that. The best way to celebrate labor is by taking a day off from it. For most people, Labor Day isn't really about unions or the history of the labor movement. It's become the unofficial end of summer. It's a three-day weekend. Maybe you have a barbecue, spend some time with family, or just enjoy having an extra day away from work. And that's fine. But underneath all of that is a pretty important idea. Workers should have time away from work. The idea seems obvious to us now, but as we've seen, it wasn't always obvious. The number of hours people worked, the number of days they worked, how much they were paid, how safe their workplaces were, and even whether children should be working were all things that changed over time. Labor Day gives us the reason to remember that history. Not because every change was caused by unions, or because the labor movement was always right, or because every workplace problem has been solved. It wasn't, and they haven't. But workers organizing together changed the way we think about work in America. They helped establish the idea that workers aren't simply people who show up, do a job, and collect a paycheck. They are people who deserve a say in the conditions under which they work. That's the part of Labor Day that gets lost when you think of it only as a three day weekend. The day off is important. But so is remembering why having that day off feels so normal in the first place. A single worker asking for shorter workday doesn't have much leverage. Thousands of workers asking for the same thing, that's a different story. And that collective power is behind so many of the things we now take for granted. And maybe that's what Labor Day is really asking us to remember. Not simply that work matters, but that workers matter, and that many of the protections we now consider ordinary were once anything but Writing always means making choices. Every essay leaves a few thoughts in the margins, ideas that didn't quite fit, stories that deserved a little more room, or questions worth exploring a little further. So let's spend a few minutes there. Welcome to Margin Notes, where we go beyond the finished essay and take a closer look at the ideas behind it. Okay, so we've established that Labor Day is about workers, labor unions, and all those things we now take for granted, but there's a part of the story we haven't really gotten into yet. How did workers actually get organized in the first place? Because it's one thing to say that workers discovered they had more power together, it's another thing to look at what that actually meant in practice. And honestly, the history is a lot messier than the nice clean version we usually tell. Labor unions didn't suddenly appear because somebody had the brilliant idea to invent them. They grew out of a pretty basic problem. Individual workers had very little leverage. During the Industrial Revolution, more Americans were working in the factories, mines, mills, railroads, and other large industries. Employees could set the wages, hours, and working conditions, and if one worker didn't like those terms, then there was usually somebody else willing to take the job, so workers began organizing. One early attempt was the National Labor Union, founded in 1866. It didn't last particularly long, but it helped establish the idea that workers could organize nationally to push for changes in working conditions. And then in eighteen sixty nine, the Knights of Labor was founded, and by the eighteen eighties the labor movement was becoming much more significant. The Knights eventually claimed hundreds of thousands of members, and one of their major goals was the eight-hour workday. That brings us to one of the most important things to understand about early labor history. Workers didn't just ask for the eight hour day, they organized and struck for it. In 1886, labor organizations were pushing for a nationwide eight hour workday. May 1st became a major day of action, with workers across the country participating in strikes and demonstrations. In Chicago, the situation became particularly tense. On May 3rd, the police and striking workers clashed outside the McCormick Reborworks. The next night, workers and labor activists gathered at Haymarket Square. If you're familiar with history, you might know where this is going. The meeting itself was initially peaceful, but then someone threw a bomb at police. Gunfire followed, and several people ended up killed. The event became known as the Haymarket Affair. What happened afterward had a huge impact on the labor Eight men associated with the radical labor movement were convicted. Four were executed in 1887, while others were imprisoned. In 1893, Illinois governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned three of the surviving defendants, arguing that their trial had been fundamentally unfair. And and here's why Haymarket matters beyond the immediate trag tragedy. It convinced many Americans that organized labor was associated with radicalism and violence. That wasn't necessarily a fair characterization of the entire labor movement. Most workers organizing for shorter hours weren't trying to overthrow the government. They were peaceful. But but that's one of the recurring themes in labor history. Strikes and protests could draw attention to workers' demands, but they could also create enormous backlash. And the labor movement had to figure out how to operate in that environment. Enter Samuel Gompers. In December 1886, the American Federation of Labor, or AFL, was founded. One of its major figures was Samuel Gompers, who would go on to lead the organization for decades. The AFL took a somewhat different approach from the Knights of Labor. Rather than trying to organize essentially everyone into one giant movement, it focused heavily on craft unions and practical workplace goals like wages, hours, and working conditions. And this is worth pointing out because we sometimes talk about the labor movement as if it were one organization with one simple plan. It wasn't. There were different unions, different leaders, and different strategies. Some favored strikes, some were more cautious, some wanted major changes to American society, while others were more focused on negotiating better conditions for their members. So when we say labor unions fought for workers, that's true, but there was never one giant labor union making all the decisions. And if Haymarket shows how explosive labor conflict could become, the Pullman strike of 1894 shows just how Directly, the federal government could get involved. The Pullman Company manufactured railroad cars and operated the company town near Chicago. During the economic depression of the 1890s, Pullman cut workers' wages but didn't reduce the rent workers paid for company housing. Workers went on strike in May 1894. The American Railway Union, led by Eugene V. Debs, supported them and called for boycott of all Pullman cars. The dispute spread across the railroad system. The federal government intervened, a federal junction was issued against the strike, federal troops were sent in, and the strike eventually collapsed, with Eugene Debs being arrested and imprisoned. Think about how different that is from the way we sometimes imagine labor negotiations going. This wasn't just employees sitting across the management in a big conference room, it it had become a national political crisis involving unions, railroad companies, courts, the president, and the federal government. Which brings us to President Grover Cleveland. Because Cleveland's name is actually connected to Labor Day in a pretty interesting way. The first Labor Day celebration took place in New York City on September 5th, 1882. The Central Labor Union organized a parade through Manhattan, followed by a festival for workers and their families. The basic idea was to celebrate workers and demonstrate the strength of organized labor. And there's even a little historical disagreement over who deserves credit for coming up with the idea. Peter J. Maguire, a prominent labor leader and future co founder of the AFL, has traditionally been credited, but more recent research points toward Matthew Maguire, a machinist and labor leader. Who was serving as Secretary of the Central Labor Union in 1882. Even the origin story of Labor Day isn't completely settled. What we do know, though, is that the idea caught on. Oregon became the first state to officially recognize Labor Day as a holiday in 1887, and other states followed. And by 1894, 23 additional states had adopted the holiday. And then on June 28, 1894, Congress made Labor Day a federal holiday, with President Grover Cleveland signing the bill. Which is interesting timing considering the Pullman strike was happening at Basically the exact same time. Now, Cleveland didn't invent Labor Day as some kind of response to the Pullman Strike. The holiday had existed for more than a decade and was already being adopted by states, but the the timing is still worth remembering. In the summer of 1894, the country was dealing with one of the largest labor conflicts ever. The federal government had intervened against striking workers, and during that same year, the federal government formally established a holiday honoring American workers. A pretty remarkable contrast there. And that's The part I think we sometimes miss. When we talk about Labor Day now, we usually talk about the three day weekend. But the original Labor Day celebrations were much more explicitly connected to organized labor. There were parades, there were speeches, there were demonstrations of solidarity. Workers were showing the public that they were a collective force. And that makes the holiday's evolution pretty interesting. It started as a celebration organized by labor organizations. It eventually became a state holiday, then it became a federal holiday. And eventually it became the unofficial end of summer. The meaning changed, but the history didn't disappear. There's one important asterisk to the main point of the essay, however. We should be careful about saying that unions simply created every workplace protection we have today. History doesn't work that cleanly, it never does. Unions mattered enormously, there's no denying that, but so did reformers, individual workers, state governments, Congress, courts, and employers who changed their practices. And unions themselves weren't perfect. Some excluded black workers, women, immigrants, or other groups. Some labor organizations fought for their own members while leaving other workers behind. So the history isn't unions were always right and employees were always wrong, it's much more complicated, just like all history always is. The more interesting argument is that organized workers change the balance of power. That's really what collective bargaining is about. A single employee can ask, a group of employees can negotiate. And when that group is organized, the employer has to respond to them as a group. They might not get everything they want, they might have to compromise, they might lose, sometimes they might strike, sometimes the employer might refuse to budge altogether, but the relationship is different because the workers aren't approaching the employer individually anymore. They have a seat at the table, they being the collective workers. That's why I think the irony of Labor Day is actually kind of perfect. The holiday exists to recognize workers, so don't work. The original celebrations were organized by labor organizations. Today we might celebrate with a barbecue. The first Labor Day parade was meant to demonstrate the strength of organized workers. Today a lot of people just see it as the last three day weekend of summer. And that's okay. But underneath the cookout, sales, football, and unofficial end of summer is a much longer story. Workers organized, workers marched, workers struck, employers fought back. Governments intervened, unions changed, laws changed, and slowly the expectations surrounding work changed too. The really interesting part is that once those changes became normal, we stopped noticing them. That's probably the strangest thing about progress. The things people once had to fight for eventually become the things nobody thinks about. We don't celebrate Saturday as a labor reform, we just call it Saturday. We don't celebrate the eight hour workday every morning, we just get up and go to work. And that's exactly how it should be. But once a year, Labor Day gives us a reason to stop and remember that none of this was inevitable. Somebody had to fight for it. And more often than not, it wasn't just one somebody. It was thousands of workers deciding that they had more power together than they did alone. And that's how something worth fighting for eventually becomes something we simply take for granted. Every idea has more than one side. Every decision has more than one perspective, and every conversation leaves us with more to consider. Understanding democracy means being willing to keep asking questions. Remember, civics is something you keep learning, not something you finish. There's always another rule, institution, or piece of history to understand. Thanks for listening to the Fine Print of Democracy.