Today in Labor History September 22, 1919: 400,000 steelworkers, in 50 cities, went on strike to protest intolerable working conditions. Union leaders believed that if they could organize the steel workers, it would lead to a massive wave of unionization across the country. Thus began the Great Steel Strike of 1919. The bosses, however, were able to turn public opinion against the workers by calling them Communists and immigrants. They attacked strike organizer William Z. Foster as a revolutionary syndicalist and Wobbly (IWW). They hired Pinkertons, who kicked out any workers who came from out of town to support the strike. And they got local governments to shut down meeting halls on the grounds of health and safety violations. Ultimately, they called upon federal troops, which helped crush the strike after 3½ months, killing several workers, and imprisoning hundreds. However, the leadership of the American Federation of Labor also doomed the strike. Their racist, nativist, and disdainful views toward the increasingly immigrant workforce, and their autocratic strategies, alienated many of the workers. And U.S. Steel’s labor spies within the workforce were quick to exploit and deepen the riffs these attitudes and tactics produced among the workers.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #union #steel #strike #IWW #anarchism #communism #immigration #policebrutality #police #racism
