- "Moooiders?!" Archived Message
Posted by Gerard
on December 14, 2019, 11:42 am, in reply to "I'll say one thing for the British left .."
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Oh much longer than that #FrankCrowe "Frank Anderson, a professional organizer for the radical labor union, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), had been dispatched to Las Vegas to recruit members and stir up demands for better working conditions and higher pay. Workers regarded Anderson and the IWW with suspicion and contempt. They knew any affiliation with a labor group could result in their having no job to complain about. Meanwhile, Six Companies, along with officials in Las Vegas and elements within the Reclamation Service, made concerted efforts to discredit and drive out the IWW. Frank Anderson was jailed on trumped up vagrancy charges"... ..."Workers reached a breakpoint during the summer of 1931, however. On August 7, Six Companies reassigned a number of diversion tunnel workers to lower paying jobs. Within hours, the entire work force went out on strike. Six Companies contended that only 30 muckers, unskilled laborers who loaded broken rocks into trucks, would be affected by the pay reduction. Workers decided that the time was ripe, not just to protest the pay cut, but to list their grievances and issue demands. Among them: that clean water and flush toilets be provided, that ice water be readily available to workers, and that Six Companies obey all mining laws issued by the States of Nevada and Arizona. Significantly, the striking mine workers also voted to disassociate themselves from the IWW.Upon reviewing the workers’ demands, job supervisor Frank Crowe echoed the feelings of his bosses in rejecting every one of them. The strikers made a last-ditch appeal to the U.S. Secretary of Labor, William Doak, to intervene on their behalf. He refused. Knowing they were beaten, and worried they might not get their jobs back, the strikers voted to return to the dam site. Six Companies stood by its pay cut, but pledged it would be the last." https://www.michael-leitgeb.at/srdp_lfs/aufgaben/314/1671_ENG_MCQ_LE_AU.pdf ..and there was other "murders".. "In targeting black sugar workers, the gunmen were also targeting their union. It was a pivotal time for labor in the United States. Workers did not have a right to unionize, and strikers often risked not just their jobs but their lives. Hostile employers, though, were not the only obstacle. As the events of Nov. 23, 1887, showed, racism undermined class solidarity and the potential of the American labor movement. The explosive issues in Thibodaux are still stirring politics today. Union strength depends on worker unity, but workers are divided by race. In 2016, white union households supported Donald Trump at rates not seen for a Republican since Ronald Reagan’s reelection in 1984. Trump exploited labor weakness by promising to be on the side of white workers, while Democrats captured nearly all the black union vote last year. Race, not economics, fueled these partisan rifts. Such racial divides today are helping to resurrect ideas from the Jim Crow South that have long undermined worker unity and infringed upon the ability of organized labor to stem falling worker wages and benefits." https://www.michael-leitgeb.at/srdp_lfs/aufgaben/314/1671_ENG_MCQ_LE_AU.pdf |