The year was 1936. America had come a long way back from the worst depths of the Great Depression, but there was a long way to go. Congress had passed and President Roosevelt had signed the Wagner Act, which some describe as the most radical piece of legislation to ever make it into law in the U. S. Also known as the National Labor Relations Act, the Wagner Act (named after the great progressive Robert F. Wagner) laid down the rules for management-labor relations, including provisions that governed the process of "organizing" or signing up workers for union membership. Advocates for unions and collective bargaining hoped that they would now be able to organize plants and even whole industries without the company-sponsored violence that had met their efforts in the past.
Walter Reuther was one of those union organizers. A member of the Socialist Party who had spent two years with his brother Victor as a worker in a Soviet auto plant in Gorky, Walter Reuther was no Democrat. He was a radical, perhaps a "card carrying Communist" who, at the very least, happily worked with Communist Party members to organize autoworkers in Detroit for the new United Auto Workers.
Things were not going so well for Reuther and his fellow unionists in 1936. Jobs were still scarce, and people were afraid to join a union because most companies still had the policy to fire workers for joining unions even though that was illegal under the new Wagner Act. As Reuther biographer, UVa prof Nelson Lichtenstein recounts in his book, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit:
There was a complete lack of co-operation with the workers inside the shop.
Then something changed.
Reuther was supporting Norman Thomas in yet another Socialist run for the Presidency, but he had to admit that this Roosevelt was sounding like a socialist.
Never before in all our history have these forces (the plutocrats) been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unaminous in the hate for me--and I welcome their hatred.
More specifically, Roosevelt said:
If I were a factory worker, I would join a union.
Reuther and the other UAW organizers put Roosevelt's statement on every leaflet that they handed out at factory gates where they were recruiting workers. Suddenly, the atmosphere was transformed.
When Roosevelt toured the Midwest, workers shut down their lines and went into the streets to cheer the President: 100,000 in Flint; 500,000 from Hamtramck to Detroit.
The electoral result was stunning. The turnout in Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit) increased by 33% over 1932 and Roosevelt took 65% of the vote. Many of the new voters were immigrants. FDR took over 90% of the Polish vote.
Since Roosevelt had used his rhetoric to cast the election in terms of class struggle, workers were emboldened to stand up for themselves. As Lichtenstein puts it:
For a brief historical instant, businessmen seemed stunned, the police hesitant, the usual structures of deference and authority unsteady. A sea change in the social climate gave to a corps of dedicated activists the opportunity to build a new set of institutions that could capture the unfettered energies so briefly liberated during a plastic moment in history.
There were still strikes and beatings and spilled blood ahead, but Presidential leadership had helped spur a new and struggling movement forward, and the ultimate result was a blue collar prosperity that had never been seen before.
I remember back to January, 2009 when a newly elected but not yet inaugurated President was confronted with questions about a sit down strike at Republic Windows in his hometown of Chicago. For a moment, it was like 1936 again. CEOs were used to closing union plants with impunity, and these workers' bold action in taking possession of the plant shocked Wall Street and the Corporatocracy. Would the President-to-be stand up for "law and order" and chastise these workers?
He would not.
When it comes to the situation here in Chicago with the workers who are asking for their benefits and payments they have earned, I think they are absolutely right," Obama said Sunday at a news conference.
No waffling. No triangulating. The workers are right. Our hearts soared.
A few weeks later, veteran labor writers were still ecstatic.
Robert Kuttner in the HuffPost:
And On Friday, President Obama, a onetime organizer, had more words to say about unions, and they were the kind of explicit endorsement that we literally haven't heard from a president since FDR's day...Wow!
Obama offered deeds to match. This stunning declaration of support came at the White House announcement of a Task Force on Middle Class Working Families headed by Vice President Biden, with Jared Bernstein as its executive director. The idea was proposed last summer by Change to Win unions, who endorsed candidate Obama early in the primary season. He embraced the concept, and it was a commitment he kept. His remarks and actions were a dazzling example of the transformative power of a president to shift public opinion and the political center of gravity.
And Nathan Newman at TPN Cafe:
Obama: "cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor union"
That was Obama statement repealing a number of Bush-era anti-union executive orders and creating a White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families, chaired by VP Joe Biden and no doubt staffed by former-TPMCafer Jared Bernstein.
I'll skip the substance of the exec order actions and emphasize that Obama statement as far more significant. We have not had a President that so forthrightly identified the health of the nation with the health of the labor movement in many decades. I'm sure Clinton and Carter never did and I'd be curious if anyone has quotes from LBJ or JFK said so strongly.
Things have gone downhill considerably since those days. No one in labor is comparing Obama favorably to FDR now.
In the words of Randy Newman, Mr. President have pity on working (and unemployed) people. While it would be nice to have EFCA to correct the damage done to the Wagner Act by Taft-Hartley and years of Republican dominated courts and NLRBs, it would help if you could just use that bully pulpit on our behalf. There was hardly anything more hurtful to hear from your lips than that the poster boys for corporate greed and ruthlessness, Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein, were "savvy businessmen." They don't need your defending them. They can spend tens of millions to do that. Rather than defending them, we need for you to be welcoming their hatred.
And we need for you to speak up strongly now and then for us. We can do a lot on our own in our communities, in our workplaces (if we have work), in our places of worship and in our families. We can endure hardship just like those brave people who organized and joined unions back in the 30s. But a few words, the right words, could lift our spirits and fill our hearts. We know you can do it.
Tell us that you'd join a union if you were a worker in America today.