Labor Movement History

-- Labor Movement History--20th Century: Great Depression and World War II

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Children during 'March of the Mill Children' in 1903 led by labor activist Mary Harris 'Mother' Jones which began in Philadelphia, crossed New Jersey and ended in unsuccessful attempt to meet President Theodore Roosevelt at his home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, and seek his support for laws restricting work hours and improving workplace safety. Image: BlueJersey.com

-- Mother Jones and the March of the Mill Children

On this day in history – July 7, 1903 – labor organizer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones led the March of the Mill Children, starting in Philadelphia and walking more than 100 miles. Destination: President Teddy Roosevelt’s Long Island summer home in Oyster Bay. The reason, to draw attention to the injuries happening to child laborers, who worked long hours under deplorable conditions. It was a three-week journey, and most of it was through New Jersey. At the time, more than 15% of children under 16 were employed – that’s an official census count; likely an undercount. It was poor families who had to send their children to work in coal mines and mills to help keep the family fed. But there were few regulations, and workers – particularly children – were treated as though expendable. They worked long hours in deplorable conditions with factory equipment that risked their lives and health; stunted growth, maiming injuries.They were fed and housed along the way by union people, by local farmers and socialists who knew their route. They came through Trenton, Princeton, and New Brunswick, then to manufacturing centers where they rallied sometimes with thousands of people in Elizabeth, Newark, Paterson, Passaic and Jersey City.
When they reached New York City, sixty remaining marchers walked up Second Avenue by torchlight. Jones, a tactician who knew how to attract a crowd, put the children in animal cages to dramatize the bosses’ attitudes toward their little workers. J

Silent movie produced to build public support for workers during 1926 Passaic Textile Strike

Great Depression
The October 1929 stock market crash signaled the beginning of the Great Depression which would continue until World War II. At its depth, the jobless in New Jersey ranged between a quarter to a third of its workforce, with African American unemployed estimated at over half of workers. New Jersey per capita income fell from $839 in 1929 to $433 in 1933 and some 140 banks closed between 1928 and 1933. New Jersey's state government issued begging licenses to the poor because the New Jersey government funds were being exhausted. Under the Works Progress Administration, part of the Second New Deal by FDR, many new jobs were provided in order to support the poor and unemployed. These projects included the expansion of Fort Dix, Roosevelt Park in Edison, and Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway.

The primary New Jersey contact for dispensing New Deal projects and funds was Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague. Although he had supported New York City Mayor Al Smith against Roosevelt for the presidential nomination at the 1932 Democratic National Convention, Hague had quckly repaired his relationship with FDR, hosting him in New Jersey at a swing through the state which was capped by a rally in Spring Lake In Jersey City political boss Frank Hague secured the construction the Medical Center, the Armory, and Roosevelt Stadium. Strikes also grew common during the Great Depression; in 1937 a group of gravediggers from New Jersey went on strike.

John L. Lewis. Image: voicesoflabor.com

Founding of Congress of Industrial Organizations

In October 1935, the American Federation of Labor met for its annual convention at the Chelsea Hotel in Atlantic City. John L. Lewis and others proposed motions in favor of industrial unionism, which were voted down or ruled out of order. When "Big Bill" Hutcheson of the Carpenters Union also challenged a leader allied with Lewis who rose to speak by raising another point of order, Lewis shouted at Hutcheson, with their exchange escalating to the point that Lewis threw a punch which sent Hutcheson sprawling.

A month later, the industrial unionists, led by Lewis, founded the Committee on Industrial Organization as a coalItion within the AFL, but soon established it as an independent federation renamed the Congress of Industrial Organizations after the AFL expelled the leading CIO unions. In the 1930s and 1940s, the CIO led successful drives to organize the auto, steel, rubber, oil, chemical, trucking, and electrical industries. In some labor sector, such as the fast-growing service industries, the tow competed directly against each other; in 1937, for example, the CIO founded the State, County and Municipal Workers of American to oppose the AFL's American Federal State, County, and Municipal Employees.
* Today in Labor History, VoicesofLabor.com

In 1940, New Jersey's child labor laws were tightened. The new laws mandated that children remain in school until age 16 and required all under 18 to obtain working papers from school supervisors or teachers, ending the prior practice which allowed those 14 and over who had completed eighth grade or those 15 and over who had finished sixth grade to work full-time.

Workers at the Switlik Parachute Co. in Trenton. Image: Switlik Parachute Co.

-- World War II

After the United States entered World War II following the Japanese attack on Pearl harbor on December 7, 1941, New Jersey industries quickly shifted to military production.

The state already was a major aircraft producer through the plants of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation in Paterson, Woodridge and Caldwell, and during the war it became the largest supplier of engines for military planes. The complex in Woodridge alone had at its peak over 27,000 workers and operated 24 hours a day, with its importance to the war effort demonstrated by its buildings being guarded by anti-aircraft guns, encased in three-foot thick concrete walls and its site disguised with fake buildings and campuflage.

       Less than a week after the Pearl Harbor attack, the General Motors plant in Ewing, which had been making car components such as trim moldings and door locks, started its conversion, opening a month later as a joint facility operated by a new GM unit named Eastern Aircraft and Gruman Aviation making the new Avenger torpedo bomber to support the upcoming US counter-offensive in the Pacific. By the end of the war in August 1945, some 7,800 Avengers made in Ewing had been produced, including the one flown by future President George H.W. Bush when he was shot down over the Pacific in 1944.

        The parachute which George Bush used to bail out of his Avenger also was made in New Jersey, indeed only a few miles from the Ewing plane plant at the Switlik Parachute & Equipment Co. in Trenton. Founded in 1920 by Polish immigrant Stanley Switlik, the company had made parachutes for such air pioneers as Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhardt; by the beginning of the war, it was providing some 70% of the parachutes used by the military. Its wartime production ramped up to turn out 2,500 parachutes a week with a workforce of 1,200, almost all of them women seamstresses. The Switlik parachute was believed to have saved the lives of more than 5,000 airmen.

All the city's big plants converted from civilian to military production: John A. Roebling's Sons; Thermoid Rubber; Crescent Wire; Philco; American Steel and Wire, Switlik Parachute. New companies sprang up, too: the naval turbine contractor, Delaval; several extensions of General Electric's Philadelphia plant, and dozens of chemical-makers. Then came Pearl Harbor.

The parachute which George Bush used to bail out of his Avenger also was made in New Jersey, indeed near to the Ewing plane plant at the Switlik Parachute & Equipment Co. in Trenton. Founded in 1920 by Polish immigrant Stanley Switlik, the company had made parachutes for such air pioneers as Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhardt and Richard Byrd and by the beginning of the war was providing some 70% of the parachutes used by the military. Its wartime production ramped up to turn out 2,500 parachutes a week with a workforce of 1,200, almost all of them women seamstresses. The Switlik parachute was believed to have saved the lives of more than 5,000 pilots

* 1925: The chute that saved 5,000 lives by Jon Blackwell, CapitalCentury.com, Trentonian
In the 1930′s, with a new name, Switlik Parachute & Equipment Company became the largest manufacturer of parachutes in the country. was producing 70 percent of the military's parachutes. Switlik also organized the "Caterpillar Club," named after the critters that produce parachute silk, for all fliers who bailed out safely in an emergency.

At its peak, Switlik turned out 2,500 parachutes a week ? now made from, nylon instead of Japanese silk ? and employed 1,200, almost all of them women seamstresses
    Suddenly, Bodine's labor was in demand — and now he was earning, not $12 a week, but $12 a day.

    He was assigned to a "crabbing crew," a group of troubleshooters who re-engineered deficient parts on finished aircraft. In November 1942, he was there as the first Avenger rolled off the assembly line.



Women made up more than half the 8,000-strong work force at Roebling, Trenton's biggest industry. They prepared paperwork, cleaned floors, hauled steel and operated the machines that churned out steel airplane directional wires, assembly rods, radio antennae and anti-sub netting. All the while, they tried to scrounge up enough money to feed a family where the man of the house had left to fight a war.

* Curtiss-Wright Facility in Woodridge, LostinJersey.com

Workers with rolls of finished silk in Paterson silk factory in 1914. Image: Library of Congress

During the 1940s, it was the world's largest private shipbuilding facility; a thriving city within a city that employed more than 35,000 people.

Originally established in 1899, New York ShipThe company was started by industrial magnate Henry G. Morse, backed by financial barons Andrew Mellon and Henry Frick. Morse pioneered the concept of a shipbuilding yard organized around the same mass production techniques -- on a gigantic scale -- used by earlier industrial visionaries to manufacture mechanical items like watches, rifles, and railroad locomotives.

By the late 1930s, as war exploded across Europe and tensions increased between the U.S. and Japan, New York Ship had become one of the pre-eminent centers for the construction of battleships, aircraft carriers, seaplane tenders, battle cruisers, patrol boats, destroyers and specialized military landing craft. During the global conflict, the ships of Camden played crucial roles in naval battles ranging from the invasions of northern Africa and Normandy to the liberation of Philippines and conquest Iwo Jima.

At its peak during World War II, NYSB was the largest and most productive shipyard in the world. Its best-known vessels include the destroyer USS Reuben James (DD-245), the cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35), the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63), the nuclear-powered cargo ship NS Savannah, and a quartet of cargo-passenger liners nicknamed the Four Aces.and 98 LCTs (Landing Craft, Tank), many of which took part in the D-Day landings at Normandy.

New Jersey shipyards were responsible for the construction of many naval ships, including battleships, aircraft carriers, heavy cruisers and destroyers. New Jersey received 9% of all allied war-related contracts throughout the World War II era. During the war, Naval Weapons Station Earle in Monmouth County was opened for naval production, which provided ships with a safe port to take on ammunition. A German U-boat (U-869) was sunk off the coast of New Jersey in 1945.

Camp Kilmer was a staging area near New Brunswick serving the port of New York. Buildings were painted such that they had a camouflage effect. Camp Kilmer helped to serve troops by offering medical care and providing them with supplies. Camp Kilmer became inactive in 1949 but was reactivated for the Korean War. It again became inactive in 1955, but was reactivated for the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Fort Dix was opened again for the training of soldiers for the war effort. Nearly 500,000 soldiers enlisted for the war, leading many women to take jobs in their husbands’ absences.

In spite of labor successes in organizing New Jersey workers, its ability to sustain higher wages was undercut as large employers sought cheaper labor elsewhere. For example, when the RCA plant in Camden organized, RCA opened a new production center in the non-union town of Bloomington, Indiana. And when the Bloomington plant unionized, RCA opened a new factory in the open-shop town of Memphis, Tennessee. For much of the 20th century, New Jersey labor faced the real or veiled negotiating threat of plants relocating to other states or countries.

As industry developed on a massive scale in the US, the AFL continued to organize along craft lines, leading Wobblies to dub it the “American Separation of Labor.” As early as the 1890s, union militants were demanding a fundamental change in the organizing practices and organizational structure of the AFL. As US capitalism continued to develop and concentrate into enormous corporations and monopolies, it only made sense for the labor movement to organize itself accordingly in order to be able to effectively organize the new mass industries.

In 1939, New Jersey’s second labor federation, the Industrial Union Council, was formed. And it was on September 25, 1961 when more than 3,000 union members packed into a Newark armory to watch as the two organizations formally came together to create the New Jersey State AFL-CIO.
On July 8, 1905, after eleven full days of stormy debate and urgent discussion, the Industrial Workers of the World was formed. With most of the unions mentioned above affiliating as well as those connected to the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance (ST&LA) and other small local bodies, the membership in the first few months of the IWW totaled around 5,000 members.5 The Western Federation of Miners would affiliate in 1906, bringing another 22,000 members. A small but new union federation had been created, based on the politics of class struggle and the idea that “the working class and the employing class have nothing in common.”6 IndeedIt was a battle that started after John L. Lewis, the fiery United Mine Workers leader, threw a punch that floored William “Big Bill” Hutcheson, of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, during the 55th national AFL convention in the old Atlantic City Convention Center. Lewis then led his miners and textile workers in a walkout — and launched the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and an era of sit-down strikes and massive organizing drives.

Delegates to 1946 CIO Convention in Atlantic City on boardwalk front of Convention Hall. Image: University of Massachusetts

Post-war labor unrest

After the end of World War II, labor unrest escalated as issues surfaced that were deferred during the conflict for the sake of the war effort. The security of existing jobs also came under threat from cutbacks in military production and competition from returning veterans.

A few months after Japan surrendered, one of the longest strikes in 1946 began on January 14 at the Phelps Dodge copper wire plant in Elizabeth. The strike was called by Local 41 of the Electrical, Radio and Machinist Workers Union over wages and working conditions, and the walkout saw the company bring in strikebreakers by boat from Brooklyn, with violence leading to the fatal shooting of one striker on a picket line, and several others were injured. In a related tragedy, while folksinger Woody Guthrie sang to an Elizabeth rally at the end of the strike, a fire in his Brooklyn apartment killed his four-year-old daughter

On January 14, 1946 Local 41 of the Electrical, Radio and machinist Workers Union (UE) went on strike over wages and working conditions against the Phelps Dodge Co. copper plant in Elizabeth. The strike closed the plant for 270 days, one of the largest work stoppages of the year, larger even than other substantive coal and steel strikes which usually lasted no more than three months.. The length of the strike, as a function of the ethnic solidarity of the work forces in the city’s neighborhood.

Phelps Dodge first purchased its South Front St property in Elizabeth in 1932 and was a major producer of nonferrous (esp copper) metal goods. It soon expanded its holdings to the entire Bayway Terminal, once used for storing cotton from India and China. Plant officers or employees – over a third were Polish, largely skilled or semiskilled - played little role in civic affairs but invested substantively in industrial sport leagues. Phelps Dodge president resisted negotiation and hired armed Brooklynites, which the union accused of being gangsters led by Mafia figure Anthony Anastasia. One violent confrontation resulted in the gunshot death of worker Mario Russo. The eventual settlement favored the labor union.

Cf. Robert Bruno, "The 1946 Union of Electrical, Radio and machinist Workers’ Strike Against Phelps Dodge Copper Company of Elizabeth New Jersey," Labor History

1948-49 Workers’ strike (5 months) of Elizabeth’s Singer plant, one of the most notable strikes in NJ history, receives support of celebrated folklore singer, Woody Guthrie First built in 1873, the plant at its peak was Elizabeth's largest employer with some 10,000 workers, but had begun a long process of relocating operations to lower-cost sites outside New Jersey, a decline which led to final closing of the plant in 1982.

-1950s

James P Mitchell, (1900-1964) An Elizabeth native, become US Secretary of Labor in 1953 and in the Eisenhower Cabinet He began his political career in 1932 as the Union County supervisor for the New Jersey Relief Administration. Six years later he was appointed to the New York City division of the Works Progress Administration.
When Brehon B. Somerwell went to Washington, D.C. to lead the Army Construction Program, he made Mitchell head of the labor relations division of the Army Construction Program. In 1942 Mitchell became director of industrial personnel for the War Department, in charge of one million men. After World War II he returned to the private sector; in 1947 he was director for labor relations and operations at Bloomingdale Brothers.

Mitchell was a potential running mate for the 1960 Republican presidential candidate, Vice President Richard M. Nixon. However, Nixon chose Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. After an unsuccessful run for Governor of New Jersey in 1961, he retired from politics.In 1953 Mitchell was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Army in charge of manpower and reserve forces affairs. Several months later he was nominated by President Eisenhower to replace Secretary Martin P. Durkin, who had resigned in protest in September 1953.[1]
On October 9, 1953, Mitchell became the Eighth Secretary of Labor and served in that capacity for the remainder of the Eisenhower Administration. He was an advocate of labor--he fought against employment discrimination, opposed right-to-work laws, and was concerned about the plight of migrant workers

The Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor was created in 1953 because of the pervasive corruption on the waterfront in the Port of New York-New Jersey. This corruption was documented in the early 1950's during public hearings held by the New York State Crime Commission with the assistance of the New Jersey Law Enforcement Council. As a result, in August 1953, the States of New York and New Jersey, with the approval of the Congress and the President of the United States, enacted a compact creating the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor.
WHY THE COMMISSION WAS CREATED IN 1953
In the early 1950's, an aging freighter, its belly loaded with crates, cartons, barrels and drums, is docked alongside one of the many ancient finger piers jutting into the waters of the Port of New York-New Jersey. At the sound of a whistle blown by a hiring foreman, a semi-circle of apprehensive longshoremen gathers in the hope that they will be selected to unload the vessel.
The foreman, often an ex-felon with a long criminal record, chooses laborers who are willing to "kickback" a portion of their wages for the opportunity to unload the ship, piece by piece. Each hapless dock worker must subject himself to this notorious daily "shape-up" to attain even the possibility of employment. The union, dominated by racketeers and criminals, does little to ease the burden of the rank-and-file worker.
Elsewhere on the pier lurk the loansharks, all too willing to "assist" the underpaid longshoreman in feeding his family or in supporting his vices. The inability to repay these usurious loans results in violent consequences for the longshoreman-borrower. Bookmaking on the pier increases business for the loansharks.
Cargo theft and pilferage are rampant. Pier guards are unwilling or unable to contain thievery.
At the foot of the pier, a parasitic "public loader" coerces truckers to employ him to unload and load trucks, even though the "services" of these loaders are not needed or wanted.

International Workers of the World
n the 1910s and early 1920s, the IWW achieved many of their short-term goals, particularly in the American West, and cut across traditional guild and union lines to organize workers in a variety of trades and industries.

The shooting began at once. If those deputies say they ﬁred in the air and that the strikers ﬁred at them first, they lie. The strikers did not ﬁre. They had nothing with which to ﬁre. They simply were butchered. It's impossible to describe how those unarmed defenseless men were shot down. Some ran and escaped injury. Those who were unable to get to high ground made for the swamps, and it was those men that were shot, beaten, and then shot again.
* The Literary Digest, January 30, 1915
* We Never Forget: The Roosevelt Massacre of January 19, 1915, Daily Kos, 1/26/2015

The Depression

had wiped out jobs, factories and faith in the political system. Trenton's city government was helpless: For the hard winter of 1931-32, Mayor Frederick Donnelly set up a public works program to give jobs to the desperate. It found work for only 500 out of 7,000 unemployed, at $3 a day. Then it ran out of money.

On April 21, 1936, for the first time since the Revolutionary War, a force calling itself hostile and insurrectionary occupied the state Capitol in Trenton.

Unlike the heavily armed redcoats and Hessians of 1776, however, these invaders were peaceful. They were unemployed men, not professional soldiers, and their only uniform seemed to consist of beat-up suspenders and patched pants.

They sought not to overthrow the government, but to publicize how desperate their condition had become during the Great Depression years and to pressure the Legislature into restoring relief payments to the jobless.

The protesters called themselves the "Army of Unoccupation" and promised not to harm or damage anything -- just sit there. "We'll do just as much as the real Legislature," one of them told the State Gazette. "Nothing."

Merger of New Jersey's AFL and CIO
The New Jersey merger took place five years after the national AFL and CIO federations came together — a decision made after a Republican Congress overrode Democratic President Harry Truman’s veto and passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which sharply restricted the rights of workers to strike, boycott and picket, and allowed the creation of “right to work” states. With Murphy nodding his approval, Jacobson would tell members attending the 1961 convention it was his sincere hope that “New Jersey’s united labor movement will make possible the greatest degree of progress for the cause of the workers of this industrial state.” On September 26, 1961, George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, symbolically “tied the knot” linking the hands of AFL leader Vincent Murphy and CIO chief Joel Jacobson.
http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/In-The-States/New-Jersey-State-AFL-CIO-50-Years-of-Making-a-Difference
* New Jersey State AFL-CIO: 50 Years of Making a Difference, Charles Wowkanech and Laurel Brennan, 9/26/2011, AFL-CIO Today
* The Importance of Unions, NJ AFL-CIO TODAY

9) 1970 U.S. Postal Strike
> No. of strikers: 210,000
> Period: March, 1970
> Affected area: began in New York City, spread nationwide
During the Nixon administration, U.S. postal workers were not allowed to engage in collective bargaining. Increased dissatisfaction with wages, working conditions, benefits and management led the postal workers in New York City to strike. Encouraged by New Yorks example, postal workers nationwide followed suit. With mail and parcel delivery at a standstill, Nixon ordered the National Guard to replace the striking workers a measure that proved ineffective. The strike was so effective that within two weeks negotiations took place. The unions demands for higher wages and improved conditions were largely met, and they were granted the right to negotiate.
10) UPS workers strike
> No. of strikers: 185,000
> Period: August 1997
> Affected area: nationwide
The largest strike of the 1990s was lead by 185,000 UPS Teamsters. They were looking for the creation of full-time jobs rather than part-time, increased wages and the retention of their multiemployer pension plan. These workers gained major support from the public and eventually had all of their demands met. UPS, however, lost more than $600 million in business as a result of the ordeal.

Post-war suburban growth

In 1958, William Levitt, who had previously built projects on Long Island and Pennsylvania, built his third Levittown, an 11,000-house project in Willingboro. It was the third Levitt-created city, and the last in the United States—yet every suburban development built since then has borne the imprint of Bill Levitt's dream.
The development was divided into four sections (called Quads I-IV), two on each side of the highway. By the time it was finished in 1975, Twin Rivers consisted of 2,700 housing units, 1,700 of them townhouses.

- Teamsters and organized crime
The 8,000-member Local 560 has been under trusteeship since June 1986, when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with U.S. District Judge Harold A. Ackerman that such action was necessary to free the union from mob control.

In appointing a trustee, Ackerman said Local 560 was ''an orgy of criminal activity'' and that members were intimidated to ensure silence. Federal prosecutors had sued under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, charging Local 560 was controlled by organized crime figure Anthony ''Tony Pro'' Provenzano.

Provenzano is serving a 20-year prison term for a racketeering conviction. He has been linked to the unsolved disappearance of national Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa in 1975.

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