On the Backs of Labor
This reprint article came from The Socialist and originally a sermon I gave at First Unitarian Church of Chicago
In 1999, my friends and I took a trip to New Mexico to backpack for two weeks in the southern Rockies. On this particular backpacking trip, we could visit various sites along the trail, and one of the sites was a coal mine where tours were offered. When we met the tour guide, he provided us coal miner helmets, and we all walked into the dark abyss of the mine. As we walked the mine’s football field length, we came across various equipment that stood unchanged through time. We listened to the stories of the conditions miners faced, such as fires, falling rocks, and methane leaks, so that they could earn a paycheck for the amount of coal they hauled out. At the end of the tour, our guide told us to turn off our helmet lights and walk back out of the mine so that we could fully appreciate what these men did when their helmet lights went out.
That experience was a small piece of the overall history regarding our nation built by workers who broke their backs and poured sweat and blood to provide the basic needs for their families so that we can live comfortably. I want to put this into a historical context.
On June 25, 1867, in California, Chinese workers left their work project when laying tracks for the Trans-Continental Railroad, demanding $40 a month instead of the $35 a month they were receiving, plus a reduction in hours. We are also reminded of the painful memory of slavery when men, women, and children were tortured, given poor working and living conditions, and no pay for their work in the fields or around the plantations.
To bring this history closer to home, I am reminded of May 5, 1886, when 14,000 Milwaukee Ironworkers demanded an eight-hour workday. They organized in the city and then struck. At the time, Gov. Rusk ordered the national guard to shoot to kill any of the workers who came onto the factory premises. Seven, including a 13-year-old, died that day. In her book Trapped, Karen Tintori described the chilly Saturday on November 13, 1909, where 500 men and boys, young as 11, worked in the Cherry Mine in Cherry, IL. They were paid based on the amount of coal they could send to cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis. That afternoon the mine shaft caught on fire and collapsed on the workers. Only a few survived. This disaster was not only the biggest labor tragedy of its time but also the inspiration for enacting compensation and child labor laws in this country.
Chicago has been a city that has been out front and center on labor issues since the Haymarket Uprising. Events in our town also led to enacting federal legislation and forming agencies to monitor organizational behavior.
Throughout history, people have come together to fight for better policies within their workplace, formed coalitions with other organizations, and even taken their fight to Washington DC to demand changes in federal policies. These efforts have led to an 8-hour workday, increased wages, better benefits, better working conditions, and much more.
So with those victories, we ought to be satisfied. No. History is an evolving story, and it continues today. We still have issues that we are facing in our nation. In Immokalee, Florida, a coalition of tomato workers made up of Haitian, Latinx, and Mayan Indian workers receive low-wages just so fast food businesses, food services, and supermarkets are provided a product. Faculty, and graduate students, are fighting to be recognized as equal employees in academia for their work. The nurses who work tirelessly around the clock are still not getting the respect from their health care facilities.
In 2009, a well-known organizer spoke at a round table event at Chicago State University. The words he offered inspired me, and I would like to paraphrase his remarks. During the early days of the Progressive era, the cry was jobs and justice. During the 1963 march on Washington, the cry was jobs and justice. In the 1990s, when workers in Indonesia, China, and Vietnam struggled in the NIKE sweatshops controversy, the cry was jobs and justice. It is now 2014, and what is the cry? WELL WAIT MINUTE. HOW LONG? ARE WE GOING TO BE STILL STANDING OUTSIDE OF GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS, PRIVATE BANKS, AND ELECTED OFFICIALS OFFICES BEGGING THEM WHEN WE HAVE THE POWER TO DO THINGS FOR OURSELVES!!!
We are conditioned to believe that we cannot do things for ourselves to speak out to the injustices that go on in our workplace. There have been many examples in human history that show when we come together, we can create alternative institutions for ourselves. We see this in the Black Panther Party survival programs during the 70s, and we see this in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where residents started participatory budgeting in order to have a municipal budget that works for the people, in the cooperative movement that has transformed the conventional way of developing a business to become more community-oriented. In 2008, the workers from then Republic Windows and Doors conducted a sit-in when the administration closed the factory unexpectedly and did not pay the employees. Once those employees heard, the factory opened up for business again. After having enough from the powers to be, the workers took matters into their own hands. So they bought the factory to form a worker’s cooperatives, which is now called New Era Windows.
Our land built on the backs of labor by men, women, and children of all demographics from their blood, sweat, and tears just so that we can transport goods across the country, be provided with food at our tables, have facilities to work in, and so much more. The institutions that are causing these problems are doing more harm than good for their people. Working-class families are figuring out how they will stay in their homes or if they are going to have food for that week.
Where is the quality of life for the workers? Where is the sense of responsibility to take care of those that are doing the work? Where is the sense of accountability of those businesses that are over-working and underpaying their employees?
All of us here can make a difference. How? By promoting personal responsibility on those who are not providing the best for their workers, fighting for economic justice, and voice to those in power to be future-focused so that workers can sustain themselves, plus their families. If not, we need to learn from history who had enough who were beaten down physically, emotionally, and financially when denied a living wage, humane working conditions, and their benefits. That lesson? That when we are being oppressed. We need to fight for every ounce that we have. Even Thomas Jefferson said, “The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them, and all partial distinctions, exclusions, and incapacitations are removed.”
I want to end with another quote by Cesar Chavez “The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people”.
