Light On Dark Water

Labor Day: Why Unions Exist

Whittaker Chambers, in Witness, describing the time he spent working on a streetcar line in Washington (D.C.), ca. 1920:

There was one job that every man dreaded. The two third rails hung, just below the surface of the street, in a shallow tunnel. It could not have been more than four feet deep. The concrete in the tunnel had to be chipped out by hand with a cold chisel. I saw men refuse to go down into the shallow tunnel and work with the live rails just above them. One day the boss ordered me down. I went. I thought: "I wonder if I will be killed." I had to lie prone on a heap of rubble. The third rails, with the full power of the Capitol Transit System flowing through them, were about two inches above my sweat-soaked shoulders. In that cramping position, I had to break concrete. A sudden turn of my head, a slip of the hammer or chisel would have brought me in contact with the rail. It was an invaluable experience.

7 responses to “Labor Day: Why Unions Exist”

  1. Grumphy

    There were very good reasons why Leo XIII mentioned the right to join a labour union in Rerum Novarum. Employers will exploit workers to the extent that they are defenceless.
    It reminds me of Clio (is she still out there), saying that the Orphanages abused children because the children were vulnerable, and not for any other reason.

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  2. Marianne

    How strange that Labor Day has become a huge sales day for retailers, which means retail workers (among the lowest paid?) have to work that day.

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  3. Mac

    Yeah, I thought about that earlier today when my wife went to the grocery store. And two guys came to mow the lawn of our mostly absentee next-door neighbors.

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  4. Mac

    Very good reasons, Grumphy. There are those who argue that conditions would have improved without unions, but I doubt it. It’s sort of like arguing that slavery would have eventually ended on its own. Can’t prove it wouldn’t have happened, but it’s certainly not something we can assume.
    Clio reappeared a while back, and then disappeared again. Well, no, here’s an update: http://aliasclio.wordpress.com/

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  5. Paul

    An argument can be made (there were always some factory owners who saw it as enlightened self-interest to improve living and working conditions and provide opportunities for education and recreation), but any improvements would neither have been so fast nor so general, and would have been even more precariously maintained than those we have now.
    And there were always philanthropists willing to take in orphan apprentices and work them to death. http://www.flickr.com/photos/26316273@N04/7935874568/in/photostream

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  6. Janet

    Well, there were also companies like Mars and Johnson & Johnson and Prudential that, as far as I can see, really took care of their employees.
    AMDG

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  7. Mac

    Henry Ford was something of a pioneer in that respect.
    That’s chilling, Paul.

    Reply

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