Archive

unions

A Short History of Labor Around Dallas

March 13, 2026
education, history, unions
Leave a comment

If you have a lot of time, you might spend it nosing around my labor history web site. Start with the time line at https://lilleskole.us/labordallas/hist/histdate.htm. There are very few honest books about Texas labor, but Patricia Evridge Hill’s “Dallas, the Making of a Modern Industrial City” and Michael Phillips “White Metropolis” are worth your time if you have some.

If you are as short of time as I, read this.

Dallas labor was slave labor from the city’s inception in 1841 to well past 1865. Milestones were the execution of a slave woman in 1853 and the downtown fire of 1860, which was used as an excuse to get people to vote for secession. Three slaves were murdered for it and all slaves were given lashes. Not much more is known.

Dallas and Tarrant barely voted for secession, and the 8 counties northward voted against it.

Violent Texans ended the Reconstruction Era in 1868, long before the rest of the nation. Hardly anything is known about it in Dallas. The person who was supposed to head the Freedman’s Bureau in Dallas was murdered in East Texas and never arrived.

The Knights of Labor established several chapters here in 1882. Their great rise, and their downfall, were associated with our area. The big influx of members came about because of their successful fight against railroad baron Jay Gould in the Great Southwest Railway Strike. It originated at a convention in Sherman in 1885. A year later, Gould broke the contract and hired murderers to break the union.

The downfall of the Knights may have also come about because they failed to support the Haymarket Martyrs in Chicago during their show trial 1886-7. A new organization called American Federation of Labor was named in 1886. They nominally supported the Haymarket martyrs and found a way to outlast both of the previous national labor federations by organizing only the most skilled and highest paid of laborers. They also enthusiastically supported government foreign policy to the detriment of international solidarity, and that helped them avoid the punishment that destroyed the Industrial Workers of the World.

Just about the only AFL union that successfully organized everybody on a worksite instead of only the elite was the United Mineworkers of America. They had some great battles, including the Ludlow strike that included a massacre of women and children. In Thurman, Texas, West of Fort Worth, mineworkers put together a militia to send to Colorado.

The idea of organizing everybody, not just the elite, outlasted the Industrial Workers of the World. In the early days of the Great Depression, socialists and communists did their best to organize “industrially.” Often, it took the form of organizing the unemployed.

T.E. Barlow, a Communist organizer, was murdered in the Tarrant County Jail in 1933 for the crime of organizing unemployed workers. Carl Brannin, socialist organizer that turns up here and there all over labor history of the period, helped organize a sit-in at the Dallas City Hall that lasted a month. Brannin lived out his old age in Dallas and I had the honor of knowing him. I believe his last public action was to oppose the nuclear reactor being built at Commanche Peak.

In 1935, the Mineworkers were able to convince the AFL to form a Committee for Industrial Organizing. Immediately, the progressive union organizers went to work and reaped the reward of their previous decades. The Autoworkers union was put together in 1937. AFL leaders demanded that the new unions divide out their elite workers, but they refused and were kicked out of the AFL. They formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and started organizing everything that moved.

Inspired by the CIO, the old craft unions in the AFL also began adopting industrial organizing. Unions that had limited their membership to skilled machinists or electricians, for example, started organizing entire factories and entire industries.

In the 1930s, Wallace Reilly (yes, he owned the print shop now known as Reiley Echols) was state president of the AFL and resisted the coming of the CIO, as did also and most notably the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas police. I think that millinery workers were the first to try to penetrate the Dallas anti-union barricades. Textile workers were next. A lot of women suffered and a lot of them spent time in Dallas jail.

In 1939, major aerospace plants were built in Dallas and Fort Worth. Eventually, the Autoworkers got the one in Dallas and the Machinists won in Fort Worth. But the CIO still hadn’t had a successful breakthrough.

The giant Ford assembly plant in East Dallas was the CIO’s big target. But the Dallas Morning News, head of the Citizens Alliance then and now, and the Dallas police had other ideas. Ford also hired goons to beat up, tar&feather, and even assassinate union organizers. None of them were ever prosecuted.

In 1941, the CIO got a break. The new attorney of the new NLRB was visited by three former employees at Ford. They had been fired, possibly for stealing, and wanted the NLRB to help them get their jobs back. Their jobs, as they explained to the young lawyer, was to beat up union organizers and sympathizers. They provided detailed descriptions of their activities.

The NLRB used their written complaints in the lawsuit that eventually forced Ford to allow the UAW to organize them nationwide. I have the lawyer’s complete story as provided by his son, who was County Treasurer for some while. The lawyer, whose name I think was Nat young, was the first person to accept our “Hero of Labor Award” at a Labor Day Breakfast around 1990.

The successful UAW local in East Dallas looked around for someone to organize the giant North American Aviation plant at the far western edge. They came upon Jack Anderson, who personally told me how the African American trash haulers organized the plant. The rest of the history of unions at that plant is detailed on my web site, already mentioned.

The CIO was well established. By the early 1950s, it was headed by Roy Evans, a friend of mine. Evans became an officer of the AFL-CIO when they merged in 1955. In 1958, the UAW pulled out of the federation and Roy had to find another union, but he went on to serve a term as President of the combined federation in Texas.

Another outstanding “graduate” from my union in western Dallas (Grand Prairie) was Pancho Medrano, also a friend of Roy’s and mine. He was a boxer and was chosen to be Sergeant at Arms at the new union at North American. Later, he was chosen by UAW President Walter Reuther to head up Civil Rights work. If you hear of milestones of the civil rights movement, you may also hear that Pancho was there.

I believe it was 1962 when Pancho became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against Texas Ranger violence against Farmworkers. The suit was won and the Texas Rangers, once the scourge of all working families, has not been known to use violence against strikers again.

By 1984, the old “North American” factory was known as LTV and the union as UAW Local 848. During a long contract fight 1984-5, I began to be known as an organizer of workers, and organizer of retirees, and, especially, a communications director. I’ve continued that work to the present.

Union militancy had more or less died with the 1955 merger and the AFL-CIO was suffering a long period of decline. From around 35% of the workforce organized, they fell to below 10%. In 1987, some of the most active unions from the CIO days organized Jobs with Justice to restore solidarity. In 1990, my wife and I established North Texas Jobs with Justice with a meeting at Local 848.

 Our first action was to have a labor contingent in the Dallas MLK parade. After that, we carried out solidarity actions with unions, churches, civil rights organizations, and community groups regularly.

The AFL-CIO began to catch up nationally after a “palace coup” election in 1995. They made sweeping improvements, but they didn’t take effect in Dallas until 2013. After that, I gave up Jobs with Justice and devoted all my efforts to AFL-CIO. We did some amazing things.

The AFL-CIO took over an older retiree organization and established the Alliance for Retired Americans around 2001, the year before I retired early. They chartered Texas in 2006. I am a charter member and its longest-serving president. One of my first projects was to get national to hire Judy Bryant as state organizer. The Texas Alliance, TARA, allows everybody to join, union or not.

Allowing everybody to join was also a strength of the Young Active Labor Leaders when it was established by the Texas AFL-CIO around 2020. TARA and YALL are powerhouses of solidarity for the labor movement. YALL is unchartered and TARA is a 501c4. Both are considered “constituency groups” even though they are like no other.

In April, 2025, I learned that national AFL-CIO had a plan to merge Dallas and Tarrant into a new labor federation similar to the one in Houston. On January 1, the Dallas Central Labor Council was terminated. I was its final president.

We Cannot Fail!

January 3, 2026
civil rights, democracy, history, politics, strategy, unions
Leave a comment

As I write this on January 3, 2026, the nations of the world, even moderate nations, are condemning the U.S. invasion and occupation of Venezuela. For American workers, the best news is that the national labor movement, the AFL-CIO itself, has joined the international labor community in condemnation.

The AFL-CIO’s action opens the way for discussions and resolutions in every labor body in America. The obvious demand is to remove all U.S. military forces from Venezuela immediately. Everyone must participate!

What we face in the United States goes much further than the invasion of a sovereign nation. We are facing a government that has committed itself to the use of bullying and brute force in order to achieve its aims. That bullying will not stop in Venezuela, nor will it stop in other invaded nations. It is, and has been for some time, the regular practice of the Trump Administration within the United States.

We can expect violence from them as they try to stop us from exercising our rights as citizens. They will be attacking protesters. They will be, they already are, looking for ways to frame anybody who stands against them.

And yet we will protest. We will demand our rights, including the right to vote unfit people out of office. This is the greatest test of the democracy in our history since the Civil War. We cannot fail.

It’s YOUR Strike Upsurge!

October 24, 2023
civil rights, democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy, unions
Leave a comment

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
Leave a comment

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
Leave a comment

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
Leave a comment

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
Leave a comment

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
Leave a comment

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
Leave a comment

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