Labor’s heroes deserve admiration
Down through the years, the American labor movement has produced its share of heroes and villains. The latter includes the likes of Jimmy Hoffa, the mob-compromised, mid-20th century leader of the Teamsters, and Tony Boyle, the president of the United Mine Workers who plotted the 1969 murder of union rival Joseph “Jock” Yablonski of Clarksville, Greene County
These miscreants dishonored organized labor’s noble goal of the dignity of the individual through better pay and working conditions.
But for every Jimmy Hoffa there was a Walter Reuther, who led the United Auto Workers to new heights beginning in the 1930s. For every Tony Boyle there was an A. Phillip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters who spearheaded the March on Washington in 1963, the integration of the armed services in 1948, and equal employment opportunities in the defense industry during World War II.
By any measure, Reuther and Randolph are heroic figures of surpassing importance. Their standing in the history of the American labor movement can hardly be overstated on
Labor Day 2024.
The same can be said for John L. Lewis, the president of the mine workers’ union for better than 40 years, from 1919 until his retirement in 1960.
Lewis battled presidents of the United States on behalf of coal miners, including the rugged and courageous miners of western Pennsylvania. In the mid-1930s, Lewis broke ranks with the top echelon of organized labor to forge the Congress of Industrial Organizations, which triggered labor’s eventual triumph in organizing steel and auto workers.
By his actions, Lewis became the determined, snarling, blustering face of American unionism for better than four decades.
By his advocacy of collective bargaining, Lewis championed a system of labor relations which put management and labor on equal footing. Each side, Lewis insisted, had a role to play in the operation of the modern American economy. One could not exist without the other.
John L. Lewis believed in a living wage, which to him meant more than having the bare necessities of life, such as food on the table, a few clothes in the closet, and a roof overhead. Lewis believed wages should be high enough to afford workers and their families security against life’s stresses along with some of the better things in life, things beyond mere subsistence.
Not just individual welfare was at stake, but the national interest. “The pivot point” of the national economy was “the purchasing power of the American masses,” a statement as true now as it was when Lewis penned it in 1925.
When critics pointed to inflated prices, a result of high-wage labor contracts, Lewis noted that Frenchmen and Englishmen were not nearly as well off as the average American. “Cheap labor is not cheap,” he summarized.
Workers must not be penniless or left alone to face the consequences of predatory capitalism, Lewis argued. At stake was the “birthright” of every American to a decent chance in life.
Lewis was not without his faults. He skirted trade-union democracy far too frequently for comfort. And what accounted for his failure, despite many invitations and much prompting, to visit Fayette County, the very heart of the bituminous coal industry early in the last century and the epicenter of one coal crisis after another?
At the same time, Lewis was a man of his word. When he promised to step aside from the leadership of the CIO over the 1940 presidential election, he did so. He was also loyal. When the two most prominent local UMW leaders – Billy Hynes of District 4 in Uniontown and Pat Fagan of District 5 in Pittsburgh – broke with him over that election, Lewis maintained an unhindered working relationship with them.
Hynes and Fagan were labor good guys, as well. Hynes, who hailed from Charleroi, led District 4 through some turbulent times, especially the deadly mine strike of 1933. A close ally of still another notable labor leader, Phil Murray, one-time UMW vice president, Lewis’s successor as CIO chief, and the steel workers’ chief organizer, Fagan displayed a social consciousness shaped by his religious faith, besides which, he was two-fisted. Attacked at home by a would-be assassin, he killed the man. A long-time member of Pittsburgh city council, Fagan was devoted, conscientious, and brave.
Reuther, Randolph, Lewis, Murray, Hynes, Fagan – labor heroes all.
Richard Robbins is the author of volume one of “Troubled Times: The Struggle for Wages, Recognition, and Power in the Age of Coal and Coke.” He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.