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It’s YOUR Strike Upsurge!

October 24, 2023
civil rights, democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy, unions
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UAW Local 276 at General Motors in Arlington, Texas, went out on strike this morning. They are the most lucrative GM plant, and they join the strikers at the most lucrative Ford and Stellantis plants who were called out over the last 2 weeks.

Texas AFL-CIO President Rick Levy and Secretary-Treasurer Leonard Aguilar issued the following statement on the expansion of the United Auto Workers strike to the General Motors plant in Arlington:

  “UAW workers at the ‘Big 3’ made tremendous sacrifices to keep the American auto industry afloat when it was in financial trouble. Now, with Texas sized profits as far as the eye can see, it is past time for that sacrifice to be fully recognized.”

  “Strikes like this are hard. They involve risk. They involve sacrifice. But when UAW workers in Arlington, Carrollton and Roanoke walked off the job, they did so to benefit every worker in this country. They did so to make sure the jobs of the future can sustain our families and benefit our communities.”

  “When employers get greedy and refuse to come to a fair agreement, strikes are the way workers get a say in writing the rules of the workplace, how we share the wealth we help to create. Without our brains and muscles, not a single wheel can turn.”

  “That is why the 240,000 members of the Texas AFL-CIO stand in complete solidarity with striking UAW workers. As they stand up for themselves, their families, and their communities, we will always stand with them.” 

    “One day longer, one day stronger.” –texas aflcio

UAW 276 joins smaller Auto Workers locals, Mack Trucks, the actors in SAG-AFTRA, and dozens of smaller union locals on strike in the current upsurge. The outcomes of these strikes will affect wages, health care, pensions, and other job benefits for all Americans for now and in the future. In other words, they affect YOU!

The Question Is

What are you doing about it? How can you help make sure that our side wins? In this form of struggle, the strikers bear the brunt of the battle. They’re the ones in the foxholes, and it’s them and their families who will suffer the most. That doesn’t mean that there’s no role for the rest of us.

Here in North Texas, we have been and continue to be the center of strike activity in the Lone Star State. Dallas has a big SAG-AFTRA local. Two smaller UAW Locals nearby have been on strike since September 22. Many individuals and several organizations are pitching in, including: Dallas AFL-CIO, Tarrant AFL-CIO (Ft Worth), State AFL-CIO, Young Active Labor Leaders, Democratic Socialists of America, and Texas Alliance for Retired Americans. Other unions that have made major contributions include the Bakers and Confectioners (BCTGM) and Local 540 of the United Food and Commercial Workers. The main thing we do is join the picket lines to see how we can help.

Lately, we’ve been finding ways to make sure the strikers’ families can get groceries. Tarrant County AFL-CIO raises money on their web site tcclc.org/uawsupport. They intend to help individual strikers with significant financial problems. The Texas retirees’ group has begun contributing cold weather gear, especially red scarfs. The scarfs make good symbols of strike solidarity.

Probably the biggest contribution from strike supporters has been keeping the issues before the public. Approval of unions, and approval of strikers, is at an all-time high. The indications are that all Americans are drawing together against the ultra-rich corporations that offer us nothing but misery. When we keep talking about the strike issues, especially on social media platforms, we keep building public support.

When I Ask For Help

When I ask individuals or organizations to do something, they do it. I haven’t received a “no” answer yet!

On the Saturday just past, Dallas AFL-CIO held a cookout to honor strikers. Two Democratic State Representatives, Julie Johnson and Johnny Bryant, bought the food and beer. Lou Luckhardt, principal officer, did all the work. The Postal Employees sent a bouncy house and sno-cone machine for the kiddies. The Young Active Labor Leaders brought a karoke machine. We posted videos and a bunch of pictures on the social media platforms we have. We sent out thousands of e-mails and will send thousands more. We got lucky, for a change, with the corporate media. Fox4 and NBC5 both gave us extensive favorable coverage. i’m waiting to see if my letter-to-editor gets published.

Whenever one of the striking unions holds a public event, we do all we can to publicize it. We do all we can to attend every one. It doesn’t mean that we have stopped fighting on the political front. Texas is facing a major challenge to keeping public education and voting rights. We have an important election November 7, and unionists are already gearing up for 2024. To a newcomer, these activities may not sound related, but they are.

We’re standing up for working families, and we welcome you into the movement!

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org’s “Workers Beat” radio talk show every Saturday at 9AM Central time. They post my podcasts on KNON.org and Soundcloud.com on Wednesdays. If you are curious about what I really think, you could look at my old personal web site

When Our Troubles Began

September 21, 2023
democracy, economy, elections, history, politics, strategy, unions
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Salon has very good news story covering developments 1982-present and the significance of today’s upsurge. Lone Star Project caught it for their daily news summary. I posted it on my FB page. It’s excellent.

https://www.salon.com/2023/09/21/uaws-high-stakes-gambit-this-strike-is-a-potential-paradigm-shift_partner/

My only problem with the article is that, like nearly all liberal analysis of today, it implies that labor’s problems began with Reagan in 1982. All of them, including the most erudite economists, start in 1982 with evil Republicans and recommend, as a solution, voting for liberal Democrats. They say that 1945-1982 was “normal” and that we could “get back” to that era by voting Democrat.

Nobody, except me and a handful of radical economists, especially Pikety, start with 1947, when America’s real troubles began. When the unions, some of them reluctantly, accepted the Taft Hartley law, solidarity ended.

Not only did the CIO separate from 14 of their best unions after Taft Hartley, the remaining unions raided them. What inevitably followed was decades of union isolation from one another and, even worse, from the public at large. The so-called “Treaty of Detroit” in the 1950s was a tragic error, not a wonderful accomplishment by Walter Reuther of the Autoworkers. When the UAW accepted employer-provided pensions and health care, they turned their backs on everybody else. We’re all paying for it now.

The great tragedy marked by Reagan’s firing and blacklisting of PATCO air traffic controllers was only made possible by the failure of the rest of the labor movement, and its public supporters, to respond. PATCO union leaders made several bad mistakes, including among them their having supported Reagan for election, but the historic lesson from the PATCO firing was that nobody helped them.

Once we understand that it was the lack of labor solidarity, not just Reagan, that was the root of our problems, we can see an actual solution — and it’s not just voting for liberal Democrats. It’s building up the movement for working families!

The current labor upsurge, especially the UAW strike, is attempting to rectify a catastrophe decades in the making. It will take all of us to win!

–Gene Lantz

I”m on knon.org “Workers Beat” radio talk show every Saturday at 9AM Central Time. They also post my “Workers Beat Extra” podcasts there and on Soundcloud. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site

3 More Ways the UAW Could Win

September 11, 2023
civil rights, democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy, unions
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There are at least three ways that the UAW could win against their 3 large corporate opponents without a massive strike:

  1. A rolling strike: The UAW could strike only in the plants where they are strongest, and the strikes could be limited to relatively short periods. The auto industry is interconnected and uses just-in-time inventory; consequently, one facility might shut down several others for lack of components.
  2. A slowdown: My own local, 848 in Grand Prairie, Texas, ran a successful campaign in 1984-5 and defeated a rich and powerful corporation by “running the plant backwards” for 15 months. During that time, only 65 of us were fired and required strike pay. The first 10 months or so were very difficult and not successful, but we learned how to carry out the fight and, eventually, went on strike for only 11 hours before we reached victory. All 65 of us marched back in the plant with back pay in our pockets! I wrote an account that is available on-line.
  3. A Hit-And-Run: Around 1960, my union local invented an entirely novel tactic. Instead of going on strike, they looked through the membership to see which departments were strongest for the union. Those departments alternated one day work stoppages. A lot of the members were entirely unaffected. Some of them did not even know that a battle was going on, but the stronger units were slowing down production.

Because of just-in-time inventory and assembly-line production, the UAW does not need an expensive full-fledged strike to win. Just a few workers can shut down an assembly line; just a small component shortage can shut down a factory.

I’m not a labor lawyer, so I do not know what tactics might run closer or further from the law. Also, I do not know if any of these suggested tactics might result in as much public support as a full fledged strike against all 3 big auto corporations would surely engender. I don’t know which tactics might result in more political support as the 2024 elections loom large. Ultimately, I believe that the key to victory is the support of the American people, and I believe that working families have that support, and will win more of it as time goes by.

I’m just pointing out that there’s more than one way to defeat a greedy corporation.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on knon.org’s “Workers Beat” talk show at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. My “Workers Beat Extra” podcasts are on knon.org and Soundcloud. Lately, my personal web site, http;//lilleskole.us, has picked up some malware, so be careful.

Labor Party: Shall We Just Forget It?

June 16, 2023
elections, history, politics, strategy, unions
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As long as I have been around the progressive movement, well over 50 years, we have expected to see some kind of American Worker’s Party break the two-party stranglehold over politics. Working families, then, would have a real alternative at the polls, we imagined. But it didn’t happen and isn’t closer to happening today. Maybe it’s time to give up on it!

Take a quick look at the history of 3rd parties. The last successful one was the Republican Party around 1859. What a thrill it must have been for the progressives of those days, most of them abolitionists, to have a new political party that offered real hope of ending the very worst of all ingrained American practices, slavery!

Then, let’s see, there were the Populists, mostly farmers, of the 1890s. They died when they endorsed the Democratic Party candidate for president. Gene Debs and the Socialists were able to get 1 million votes while their candidate was in prison, and it was sensational but not threatening to the system. President Theodore Roosevelt tried to get his career restarted with the Bull Moose Party before WWI, but didn’t get far. In 1947, former Vice President Henry Wallace tried to save the Franklin Roosevelt “New Deal” program. I recently read that he received a paltry 2.8% of the popular vote. Billionaire Ross Perot was effective enough in getting Republican voters to make sure that Democrat Bill Clinton won the presidency. The Greens have made some small inroads on Democrat voters, but were embarrassed when people learned that they were taking money from the Republicans.

In 2016 and 2020, lots and lots of American young people thought Bernie Sanders would either take over the Democratic Party from inside or create a powerful new progressive party, but Bernie has already endorsed Biden/Harris and I don’t know what those young revolutionaries may be thinking. Today, the Democrats are worrying that the “No Label” Party, financed by mysterious dark money, will take some of their votes and throw the 2024 election to Trump. But nobody is worried that we’ll end up with three viable parties nor that one of the two “main” parties will get replaced.

Side note: There is a party in existence called the “Working Families” party. They are interesting in states where they are allowed to endorse Democrats or Republicans, but not so much when they have to run on their own.

When I first heard of it, a Workers Party made sense. The unions still had over 20% of the workforce organized and were much stronger in politics than they are today. There were labor (or labour) parties here and there in other countries that were in and out of power from time to time. It just seemed like a natural intermediate step. But there are several reasons, today, to consider giving up the idea.

For one thing, we were just wrong about labor parties. We didn’t analyze the “winner-take-all” aspect of American politics. Other nations generally have parliamentary systems that allow proportional representation in governing bodies based on their percentage of the popular vote. They might win a few seats one year, add a few the next year, and eventually rise to power.

Not us. With America, nobody cares anything about proportions. It’s winner take all! If a party wins 49.9% of every vote in America, they still get nothing. The party with 50.1% gets everything.

For another thing, the organized unions that we were expecting to move up to the next stage of political power have diminished. We had about 35% of the workforce organized in the early 1950s, and we have about 10.1% now. Even if they wanted to launch a workers party, they might not have the strength.

The Bright Side

The positive way of looking at American electoral politics is to consider that progressives may not need any kind of political party to win power. Stages may not matter. With modern technology, especially mobile phones, smart people with a good program and a winning organizational model could organize almost anything in a matter of days. That’s what happened in the “Arab Spring” countries. They had no need for an interim political stage, but went straight from powerless to empowered!

Did the Labor Party Idea Just Wear Away?

Not so many years ago, I can remember top labor leaders saying that they, too, wanted a workers party. They said that building our political strength year by year within the two-party system would eventually give us the power to move off on our own. Now, I wonder if they were serious. I also wonder if the hope for a labor party is still alive among the top union leaders. I tried to find out this morning (June 16, 2023) when they were getting ready to vote, by a big margin, to endorse the Democratic ticket earlier than ever before in history. I was watching them on a webinar, so I asked innocently in the chat box, “Does this mean we’re giving up on the workers party idea?”

I didn’t get an answer. I was kicked out of the meeting and couldn’t get back in. It might have been an error. People make errors in webinars.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” radio talk show every Saturday at 9 AM Central Time. They post my podcasts on Soundcloud.com, usually on Wednesdays. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my old personal web site.

What Has to Happen in the UAW

April 10, 2023
strategy, unions
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I am a long-time member of UAW 848 and currently serve as President of the retirees. I wrote this in hopes it might get seen by UAW members.

Our bosses know that the turnout in our national UAW election was less than 15%, with the tiniest sliver of a majority on the winning side for Shawn Fain. Fain starts his presidency with the sure backing of less than 7.5% of the members!

The whole world now knows what observant members have known for years — that UAW members are not following the union’s leadership. I don’t think that “apathy” is the correct word to describe this problem. The words we probably need are “neglect” and “distrust.” Leadership has neglected the UAW membership for decades; consequently, the members distrust them.

Corporations are sure to try to break the back of our union in the current round of negotiations. Every concerned member needs to

1) recognize the dangerous situation and

2) begin to re-organize.

Solidarity among members

I was on a call with national AFL-CIO leaders on April 10. They were proud of Michigan leadership because they got rid of “right to scab” and won a bunch of other union and civil rights victories in their legislature.

Most of those AFL-CIO guys just talk about how many phone calls they generated or how many doors they knocked on, but the Michigan guy, the most successful one of them, Ron Bieber, talked about mobilizing the membership.

Communications need improving. For decades now, workers have moved further away from their workplaces and union halls; consequently, on-line communication is a necessity.

Over the last few decades, our union has shifted from print media to digital. However, we have not fully utilized the digital capabilities. In our local 848, Region 8 has provided a very nice web site, but nobody in the local has been given a password. The web site lists officers from past times. In fact, the listed president passed away years ago. The only digital presence we have is our Facebook page. Some UAW locals don’t even have that.

Even when the pandemic was at its worst, our local, and many others, did not utilize on-line meeting programs like ZOOM. So far, attendance has not recovered.

Suggestions for improving our on-line work

1. Train officers and staff on digital platforms

2. Encourage members to get on-line

3. Utilize ZOOM or Google Meets on “hybrid” meetings with in-person and on-line attendance encouraged

Unions need more activities. Our business meetings should include updates of interest to union members. It isn’t hard to organize parties, dinners, talent shows, classes, special speakers, receptions, and discussions. They can be on-line as well as in-person.

We could do more to encourage our members to wear red on a certain day. Currently, the UAW International has chosen Wednesdays, but they might want to review that decision and look to see what day other unions chose. In my area, the Dallas AFL-CIO adopted Thursdays as the day to wear red because the CWA and AFT were doing it successfully.

Solidarity among retirees

There are significantly more retired than active UAW members. Currently, they may have less money and less commitment to their unions, but they have more time. Also, they are pound-for-pound more important in politics because they vote at much higher levels than active members. The UAW set up an excellent network for retirees in the 1960s. It has been allowed to fray in the last few years, but it is still among the best retiree networks in the nation.

Solidarity among political figures

Bosses listen to political leaders. Many political leaders listen to union members. Keeping those channels open is critical. The Labor Steering Committee that Congressman Veasey held at UAW 848/129 hall on April 5, 2023, was an excellent example of what to do.

Solidarity among potential allies

The size of the UAW has been diminishing, as has the entire American labor movement, for decades. The good news, though, is that unions have recently become more and more popular with the general public. We currently enjoy an approval rating over 70% while no other organization nor political figure can top 50%. Congress can’t get to 30%!

In my area during the last General Motors strike, there were unsolicited supporters on the picket lines every day. If our supporters had been prepared in advance and invited, we’d have had a lot more. Another way to get a lot more support is to let people know the issues and how they might be affected. We can build up contacts through social media and participation in other people’s events.

The first place to look for potential support is other unions. Our auto contracts will be expiring this summer in the same time frame as the Teamsters’ UPS contract with 340,000 members.

We need to be active with our AFL-CIO organizations and constituency groups. Special days like May 1 and Labor Day are good times to get together with other unions and union supporters. The leadership group that marched in the 2023 Dallas MLK parade set a good example.

Solidarity with organizing efforts

Every time a union tries to organize, labor moves forward. Our members should be looking for organizing opportunities and opportunities to help anybody, from any union, organize.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org “Workers Beat” radio talk show every Saturday at 9 AM Central Time. My weekly podcast is on the web site or “Workers Beat Extra” on Soundcloud.com. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my old personal web site

Circling the Drain

February 10, 2023
democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy, unions
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An editorial in the Washington Post says that labor’s share of GDP is 56%, an all-time low. “The key [to understanding our oddball economic situation] is what happens to wages. For all the talk of workers having so much power, union membership reached an all-time low in 2022, and wages for most workers have not been keeping up with inflation. Companies made hefty profits because they raised prices faster than their labor and other costs.” –Heather Long in WAPO

Heather Long’s opinion is quite a bit different from what we in labor normally publish about labor’s situation. Recently, for example, we pointed out the large number of new union members nationwide, but we failed to point out that our organized percentage of the overall working class is still falling, just as it has since the 1950s. To start winning, we have to do something different from what we have been doing.

I’m in the Auto Workers Union. One side of the current national election says that we must do something dramatically different no matter how scary that may sound. The other side says they’re the ones with experience who know how to run things because they have been running them absolutely since 1947. In their literature, neither side takes note of the incredibly low turnout in the national election: 11% in the first round. There are some projections that it may rise to 16% in the runoff, but I doubt it. No matter which side wins, their main problem is going to be regaining the kind of membership participation that they had before 1947.

I would like to suggest that the “something different” for the UAW and all of American labor is to take advantage of our unprecedented popularity with all workers, unionized or not unionized. Over 70% of the American people approve of labor unions while not a single Democrat or Republican person or organization can get over 45%! I think we could win a nationwide boycott or a united nationwide organizing drive or even a nationwide general strike. Should labor give change a try or should we keep on slowly circling the drain? –genelantz

I’m still on KNON.org’s “Workers Beat” talk show at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site at http://lilleskole.us.

The Shame of America

January 17, 2023
civil rights, democracy, history, politics, strategy, unions
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Book Review:

Hochschild, Adam, “American Midnight. The Great War, a Violent Peace, and America’s Great Crisis.” Mariner Books, 2022

I found a free Kindle copy through the Dallas public library’s “Libby” service. Now I wish I had a hard copy because of the facts in this history of America from 1917 to around 1924. You could call it the Red Scare. You could call it the most shameful period after the Civil War. Or you could call it a warning about today and tomorrow.

This book changed my view of the period. Previously, I thought that government had simply allowed vigilantes to run amok — arresting, assaulting, and lynching just about anybody they chose. That was bad enough. Having reach Hochschild, I now realize that government was not just standing aside, they were actually fomenting, cooperating, and leading the nastiest gangs of racists they could find. Nearly all the spying was done by government hires. The worst of the mass acts of repression came directly from government agencies.

One might think that the Justice Department would have stood for justice, but they were probably the worst perpetrators. A lot of the worst assaults were called the Palmer raids, after Attorney General Palmer. After them came, probably, the armed forces; but many government offices were in on it, including the post office! J. Edgar Hoover, notorious race baiter, union hater, and all around sociopath, made his chops in the period. We were stuck with him for another 50 years!

Near the end of the book, Hochschild tries to tote up the numbers of people killed, horsewhipped, imprisoned, deported or otherwise deprived of life and liberty, but it’s a hopeless task. Besides, he’s basically talking only of federal cases. All the nasty things that happened at state and local levels would probably have doubled or tripled the size of the book. Then there’s the non-government participation of anti-union bosses and ideologically-driven racists and nativists to consider!

The rationale for the horrors began when Woodrow “He Kept Us Out of War” Wilson was re-elected in 1916. A lot of Americans, including the growing Socialist Party and some of the members of the Industrial Workers of the World, strongly opposed the war. The repression was originally released against anybody who did not want to join the bloodfest. But why, anyone might ask, did it continue after the end of the war and well into the 1920s? The excuse used most was Bolshevism, but the targets were American working people.

There are a couple of things I would have liked to have found in this account. The Greencorn Rebellion in Southeastern Oklahoma was an early expression of anti-war feelings among sharecroppers, including whites, Blacks, and Natives. I would also have appreciated an attempt to go beyond tallying assaults, deportations, imprisonments, and murders just to find out how many workers lost their jobs during this awful period. Of all the terrible things that government and employers do to workers, the most widely applied, and thus the most effective, is to deprive us of the ability to earn a living.

Hochschild clearly condemns certain government officials. He leaves the final judgement of President Wilson open to debate. He gives some credit to “good guys” such as Emma Goldman, Kate Richards O’Hare and of course Eugene Victor Debs. He mentions Frank Little, one of the first anti-war spokespersons lynched. William Z. Foster, who worked through the whole period to try to bring the labor movement together and develop its fighting potential, remains hidden in our histories.

I have always found it interesting to speculate what might have happened in America if different leaders had headed the Socialist Party, the IWW, or the AFofL. Worldwide, the many socialists capitulated early and supported their governments in World War I. There were only two that didn’t. The other one was Russia.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org’s “Workers Beat” radio talk show every Saturday at 9AM Central Time. I have about 150 podcasts under the name “Workers Beat Extra” there, too. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site

Dubious Battle Tactics

December 21, 2022
art, history, strategy, unions
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Film Review: “In Dubious Battle,” Directed by James Franco, 1917

Movie Review

“In Dubious Battle,” directed by James Franco, 1917

Prime video still has “In Dubious Battle” for a few more days. It’s an interesting and progressive film with a strong pro-worker attitude.

Jim and Mac are farm worker organizers of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1933. Even though the fighting Wobblies were largely crushed in most industries by the red scare during and after World War I, their Agricultural Department outlasted all their other fine efforts. Pulitzer winner John Steinbeck wrote the book around 1937 based on strikes and labor battles in California. It isn’t as well known as his “Of Mice and Men,” nor “Grapes of Wrath,” but it’s about the same people: itinerant farm workers of the Great Depression.

Mac is the old hand. He’s rather cynical as he teaches the neophyte Jim how to focus on agitating a battle to the exclusion of any other considerations. They take jobs as apple pickers in order to encourage the downtrodden workers to rise up and fight their exploiting bosses. In that regard, the film is quite inspirational and really sounds close to what really happened.

Actually, I kind of hope it isn’t what really happened, because the bosses and their hired terrorists seem to get and keep the upper hand. I watched the film with a genuine union organizer with real experience, and she had severe criticisms of the way the strike was begun and handled.

As art, though, the film is pretty good. I don’t know how the producers were able to do it, but they assembled quite an assortment of headliners in the main speaking parts. We spotted Selena Gomez, Vincent D’Onofrio, Robert Duvall, Sam Shepard, Ed Harris and Bryan Cranston. James Franco directed himself in the main role.

The result is a film that is fine for inspiration, but not for learning organizing tactics. If there were real people like Mac and Jim, they should have learned this: it is not sufficient to fight. It is also necessary to win!

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org’s “Workers Beat” radio talk show every Saturday at 9 Central Time. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site

Employers’ Terrorists

November 7, 2022
civil rights, democracy, history, politics, strategy, unions
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Book Review:

Pearson, Chad E., “Capital’s Terrorists. Klansmen, Lawmen and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century.” University of North Carolina Press, 2022

Pearson brings us a new understanding of America’s terrorists. From April 9, 1865 to January 6, 2022, our terrorists were not primarily motivated by race hatred or stupidity, as we are usually told. Instead, they were instruments organized, and often physically led, by America’s employer class. Big capital used the most shameful events in all of American history to one end: keeping working families down.

Pearson starts with the Ku Klux Klan. They weren’t just random racists. They were deliberately organized and carefully led to force former slaves to work for little or nothing. They still are. Later organizations may have been called “Law and Order Leagues,” or “Citizens’ Alliances,” but they continued to use vigilantes when it suited them. Their purpose was exactly the same: making sure that working families could not successfully organize.

Even though employers could usually county on judges, local police, national guards and even the U.S. Army to side with them, they also found it expedient to organize illegal terrorist activities. That’s what the book is about.

Pearson organizes his explanation with biographical information on the main ideologues for employer terrorism. One of the worst was a newspaper owner; another was a best-selling author of fiction. Both were expert propagandists justifying all legal and extralegal means available to keep workers down.

For us in Dallas, there are some local angles to the story. Martin Irons was a great union man who was ruined and martyred by the terrorists. He called the 1885 Southwest Railroad Strike during a convention in nearby Sherman. His grave is in Bruceville, halfway to Austin, where he died in poverty.

Except for some very good analysis of the January 6 attack on the nation’s capitol, the book limits itself to the 19th century. If it were brought a few years closer to today, it might have talked about Henry Ford’s “Service Department” of goons and criminals that maimed and murdered union supporters on behalf of the company.  

There are several accounts of Harry Bennett and Henry Ford’s “Service Department” of goons, criminals and murderers. https://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/henry_fords_reign_of_terror_greed_and_murder_in_depression_era_detroit/

Another account mentions a ex-wrestler named Fats Perry in the late 1930s. https://books.google.com/books?id=MJJOl7SMWIoC&pg=PA172&lpg=PA172&dq=Fats+Perry&source=bl&ots=7WajZJonOm&sig=ACfU3U3_OvtR3dgVWul8wuROQxLia1vfBQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiK7bjN5Zz7AhV2lGoFHUs6CZQQ6AF6BAhTEAM#v=onepage&q=Fats%20Perry&f=false.

Perry and a handful of other gangsters were fired from Ford’s East Dallas assembly plant on suspicion of theft. They complained to the newly-formed National Labor Relations Board, where a young attorney named Nat Wells wrote down their testimony. They told Wells about kidnapping, tar and feathering, and whipping suspected union organizers on behalf of Ford. They indicated that they had plenty of help from local police and the Dallas Morning News. Wells wrote it all down and it became part of the United Auto Workers’ legal action against Ford Motor Company – and that played a big role in the UAW’s successful organizing drive in 1941, four years after their triumph at General Motors. Thanks to Joe Wells and Dr George Green for keeping this story in our histories.

Dr Chad Pearson teaches history at University of North Texas in Denton. I intend to interview him for my podcast as soon as I can get his contact information.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.ORG’s “Workers Beat” talk show at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. If you are curious about what I really think, you might look at my personal web site