[When the union organizer showed up, all the small town’s
upstanding citizens agreed he was a disgrace. Here he was, still
sweaty from yesterday’s train, slicked hair talking to workers about
how they were being exploited by them — the pillars of the
community! This guy didn’t even speak proper English, but those
workers listened to him anyway. ]
[[link removed]]

NEW LABOR MOVEMENT MIGHT SAVE AMERICA JUST YET  
[[link removed]]


 

Aaron Brown
August 18, 2022
Minnesota Reformer
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ When the union organizer showed up, all the small town’s
upstanding citizens agreed he was a disgrace. Here he was, still
sweaty from yesterday’s train, slicked hair talking to workers about
how they were being exploited by them — the pillars of the
community! This guy didn’t even speak proper English, but those
workers listened to him anyway. _

,

 

When the union organizer showed up, all the small town’s upstanding
citizens agreed he was a disgrace. Here he was, still sweaty from
yesterday’s train, slicked hair talking to workers about how they
were being exploited by them — the pillars of the community! This
guy didn’t even speak proper English, but those workers listened to
him anyway.

One newspaper pulled no punches in describing the man. They described
him as “dirty” and “repulsive.” They used ethnic slurs,
calling him a “dago” in print.  

The man’s name was Teofilo Petriella. He arrived to Hibbing,
Minnesota, in 1907 to organize the first widespread strike on the
Mesabi Iron Range for the Western Federation of Miners. Petriella was
a dark-skinned southern Italian, and well-read: a professor of
literature in another life. If he was dirty, it was because he was
denied access to a hotel, forcing him to sleep in the attic of the
town’s clapboard Finnish social hall.

There were several reasons for the strike. The companies, led by U.S.
Steel, paid poverty wages from which they deducted the cost of
equipment and even the candles in underground miners’ helmets.
Workers faced dangerous conditions and a back-breaking pace of work
that European immigrants said they wouldn’t compel upon a horse or
ox for fear of killing the animal.

Petriella united a workforce separated by significant ethnic and
language barriers, something no other labor organizer had done on the
Mesabi Range. Here, half the population was foreign born at this time.
Petriella bridged a cultural gap with strident Finnish socialists, who
in turn provided significant leadership for the cause. Their
collective efforts deeply rattled the mining companies and the local
business class. 

_“We’re being treated unfairly and we’re not going to take it
[[link removed]].”
— Kasey Copeland, Minneapolis Starbucks barista and union
organizer, 2022_

When the union organizer showed up, all the small town’s upstanding
citizens agreed he was a disgrace. Here he was, still sweaty from
yesterday’s train, slicked hair talking to workers about how they
were being exploited by them — the pillars of the community! This
guy didn’t even speak proper English, but those workers listened to
him anyway.

One newspaper pulled no punches in describing the man. They described
him as “dirty” and “repulsive.” They used ethnic slurs,
calling him a “dago” in print.  

The man’s name was Teofilo Petriella. He arrived to Hibbing,
Minnesota, in 1907 to organize the first widespread strike on the
Mesabi Iron Range for the Western Federation of Miners. Petriella was
a dark-skinned southern Italian, and well-read: a professor of
literature in another life. If he was dirty, it was because he was
denied access to a hotel, forcing him to sleep in the attic of the
town’s clapboard Finnish social hall.

There were several reasons for the strike. The companies, led by U.S.
Steel, paid poverty wages from which they deducted the cost of
equipment and even the candles in underground miners’ helmets.
Workers faced dangerous conditions and a back-breaking pace of work
that European immigrants said they wouldn’t compel upon a horse or
ox for fear of killing the animal.

Petriella united a workforce separated by significant ethnic and
language barriers, something no other labor organizer had done on the
Mesabi Range. Here, half the population was foreign born at this time.
Petriella bridged a cultural gap with strident Finnish socialists, who
in turn provided significant leadership for the cause. Their
collective efforts deeply rattled the mining companies and the local
business class. 

Industrial historian Frank L. Palmer wrote in 1928 that U.S. Steel
spent a quarter million dollars during the 1907 strike hiring and
arming private detectives. Adjusted for inflation, that meant several
million dollars, far exceeding the amount the miners sought in wage
increases. The allure of long term profits helped the company justify
the enormous cost of suppressing workers. In the heat of battle, they
became willing to pay a private army to avoid paying their workers.

Ultimately, the WFM strike failed. Threats against Petriella prompted
him to carry a gun, which was later used as grounds to arrest him. The
judge fined him an amount equal to the $9,990 strike fund, plus $10.
Petriella asked a friend for the sawbuck and paid his way out of jail.
Just as the workers contemplated a coming winter with out food or
coal, the mines shipped in hundreds of new immigrants from eastern
Europe to take their places. Thus, the strike was smothered by a new
wave of hunger. 

Tactically, the mining companies hastened the end of the strike by
stoking fear and singling out union leadership. For a generation, the
“dirty” Petriella and the disappearing strike fund fueled a
negative stereotype of union organizers in this region.

Nevertheless, worker demands for living wages and a safer workplace
remained. The exact same issues would resurface during the Mesabi
Range Industrial Workers of the World strike of 1916. That strike went
further, but also met a bitter end. Still, the issues remained. 

Though it took time, struggle, several defeats and two world wars, the
goals of that 1907 strike would eventually be realized with the
recognition of the United Steelworkers of America in 1942. Dismissed
in his time, that unkempt organizer revealed the capacity of regular
people to better their own situations through unified action. The fact
that the companies took such drastic retaliatory action underscored
the potency of his arguments. Only decades later, amid the euphoria of
wartime prosperity, did politicians claim these concepts as their own
ideas.

The unionization of mid-20th-century America built a historic rarity,
a robust middle class. Had the movement been racially integrated this
anomaly could have proven even stronger. Nevertheless, available
resources and supercharged markets made the United States a global
superpower. 

Success slopped over the brim. Gauzy notions of democracy and the
common good seemed sufficient to preserve these gains. Perhaps the
struggle of workers was over. In this land of milk and honey, some
began to view these newly powerful unions as redundant relics of an
unpleasant past.

The labor movement suffered as a result. Automation, consolidation,
and investor supremacy gutted the ranks of private industrial
unions. As machines and computers do more of the labor
[[link removed]],
more humans string together gig work and non-union service jobs.

Doughty leaders of legacy unions try branding initiatives and
outreach, which for prospective union members only means a cavalcade
of generic mailers and text messages begging you to robocall your
indifferent member of Congress. Despite the din, it remains the
market, not collective bargaining, that holds sway over the lives of
low-wage workers.

After decades of stagnation held over from the late 20th century,
however, the labor movement is breaking through in surprising new
places. 

One of the most famous labor victories this year came from the
creation of a union at an Amazon shipping warehouse on New York’s
Staten Island. Last March, workers there voted to authorize the
Amazon Labor Union
[[link removed]],
a new organization formed by a group of package sorting workers led by
Chris Smalls.

Smalls is a great story. A charismatic former rapper with a gift for
compelling television interviews, he defies modern union stereotypes.
But in the time since this historic union vote, Amazon has frozen
Smalls and the Amazon Labor Union out of contract negotiations. The
stagnation has now created division within the union and brought
criticism upon Smalls
[[link removed]].

Smalls’ success and subsequent difficulties might be compared to
those faced by Tiofilo Petriella a century ago. 

Petriella’s foe, U.S. Steel, was last century’s largest
corporation in the world. Smalls’ adversary, Amazon, is the
world’s third-largest company today. This summer, Amazon topped
Wal-Mart in sales over a 12-month period for the first time
[[link removed]].
Unionization could complicate Amazon’s path to the No. 1 spot, and
so the upstart Amazon Labor Union might not fare much better than the
Western Federation of Miners all those years ago.

At least, not at first.

The Amazon campaign comes amid a wellspring of union activity in the
service sector, certainly visible in Minnesota. Max Nesterak of
the _Reformer_ reported on July 31 about a surprise two-day strike
at a south Minneapolis Starbucks store
[[link removed]].
That strike, mirrored by others around the country, was led by Workers
United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.

Nesterak reported that workers at a Minneapolis Trader Joe’s grocery
store overwhelmingly voted
[[link removed]] to
join a newly formed union. Like Smalls’ Amazon union, they seek to
start their own independent union, Trader Joe’s United.

These efforts are fueled by a combination of COVID-era workplace
dissatisfaction, record corporate profits and higher costs of
living. 

In a report for his investigative newsletter _Popular Information_,
Judd Legum along with reporter Tesnim Zekeria, explored the appeal of
these new unions with younger workers
[[link removed]]. While CEOs argue that
workers have it pretty good compared to the old days of underground
mining and polio, employees would rather focus on their cost of living
and the historically vast disparity between the salaries of upper
management and those who serve the product.

Indeed, after many — even some progressives — seemed willing to
write off the labor movement, labor’s cause has found new life. Why?
Because unions can sometimes deliver results when the political system
can’t or won’t. This builds trust and shared purpose among people
with divergent points of view.

_“We’re being treated unfairly and we’re not going to take it
[[link removed]].”
— Kasey Copeland, Minneapolis Starbucks barista and union
organizer, 2022_

When the union organizer showed up, all the small town’s upstanding
citizens agreed he was a disgrace. Here he was, still sweaty from
yesterday’s train, slicked hair talking to workers about how they
were being exploited by them — the pillars of the community! This
guy didn’t even speak proper English, but those workers listened to
him anyway.

One newspaper pulled no punches in describing the man. They described
him as “dirty” and “repulsive.” They used ethnic slurs,
calling him a “dago” in print.  

The man’s name was Teofilo Petriella. He arrived to Hibbing,
Minnesota, in 1907 to organize the first widespread strike on the
Mesabi Iron Range for the Western Federation of Miners. Petriella was
a dark-skinned southern Italian, and well-read: a professor of
literature in another life. If he was dirty, it was because he was
denied access to a hotel, forcing him to sleep in the attic of the
town’s clapboard Finnish social hall.

There were several reasons for the strike. The companies, led by U.S.
Steel, paid poverty wages from which they deducted the cost of
equipment and even the candles in underground miners’ helmets.
Workers faced dangerous conditions and a back-breaking pace of work
that European immigrants said they wouldn’t compel upon a horse or
ox for fear of killing the animal.

Petriella united a workforce separated by significant ethnic and
language barriers, something no other labor organizer had done on the
Mesabi Range. Here, half the population was foreign born at this time.
Petriella bridged a cultural gap with strident Finnish socialists, who
in turn provided significant leadership for the cause. Their
collective efforts deeply rattled the mining companies and the local
business class. 

Industrial historian Frank L. Palmer wrote in 1928 that U.S. Steel
spent a quarter million dollars during the 1907 strike hiring and
arming private detectives. Adjusted for inflation, that meant several
million dollars, far exceeding the amount the miners sought in wage
increases. The allure of long term profits helped the company justify
the enormous cost of suppressing workers. In the heat of battle, they
became willing to pay a private army to avoid paying their workers.

Ultimately, the WFM strike failed. Threats against Petriella prompted
him to carry a gun, which was later used as grounds to arrest him. The
judge fined him an amount equal to the $9,990 strike fund, plus $10.
Petriella asked a friend for the sawbuck and paid his way out of jail.
Just as the workers contemplated a coming winter with out food or
coal, the mines shipped in hundreds of new immigrants from eastern
Europe to take their places. Thus, the strike was smothered by a new
wave of hunger. 

Tactically, the mining companies hastened the end of the strike by
stoking fear and singling out union leadership. For a generation, the
“dirty” Petriella and the disappearing strike fund fueled a
negative stereotype of union organizers in this region.

Nevertheless, worker demands for living wages and a safer workplace
remained. The exact same issues would resurface during the Mesabi
Range Industrial Workers of the World strike of 1916. That strike went
further, but also met a bitter end. Still, the issues remained. 

Though it took time, struggle, several defeats and two world wars, the
goals of that 1907 strike would eventually be realized with the
recognition of the United Steelworkers of America in 1942. Dismissed
in his time, that unkempt organizer revealed the capacity of regular
people to better their own situations through unified action. The fact
that the companies took such drastic retaliatory action underscored
the potency of his arguments. Only decades later, amid the euphoria of
wartime prosperity, did politicians claim these concepts as their own
ideas.

The unionization of mid-20th-century America built a historic rarity,
a robust middle class. Had the movement been racially integrated this
anomaly could have proven even stronger. Nevertheless, available
resources and supercharged markets made the United States a global
superpower. 

Success slopped over the brim. Gauzy notions of democracy and the
common good seemed sufficient to preserve these gains. Perhaps the
struggle of workers was over. In this land of milk and honey, some
began to view these newly powerful unions as redundant relics of an
unpleasant past.

The labor movement suffered as a result. Automation, consolidation,
and investor supremacy gutted the ranks of private industrial
unions. As machines and computers do more of the labor
[[link removed]],
more humans string together gig work and non-union service jobs.

Doughty leaders of legacy unions try branding initiatives and
outreach, which for prospective union members only means a cavalcade
of generic mailers and text messages begging you to robocall your
indifferent member of Congress. Despite the din, it remains the
market, not collective bargaining, that holds sway over the lives of
low-wage workers.

After decades of stagnation held over from the late 20th century,
however, the labor movement is breaking through in surprising new
places. 

One of the most famous labor victories this year came from the
creation of a union at an Amazon shipping warehouse on New York’s
Staten Island. Last March, workers there voted to authorize the
Amazon Labor Union
[[link removed]],
a new organization formed by a group of package sorting workers led by
Chris Smalls.

Smalls is a great story. A charismatic former rapper with a gift for
compelling television interviews, he defies modern union stereotypes.
But in the time since this historic union vote, Amazon has frozen
Smalls and the Amazon Labor Union out of contract negotiations. The
stagnation has now created division within the union and brought
criticism upon Smalls
[[link removed]].

Smalls’ success and subsequent difficulties might be compared to
those faced by Tiofilo Petriella a century ago. 

Petriella’s foe, U.S. Steel, was last century’s largest
corporation in the world. Smalls’ adversary, Amazon, is the
world’s third-largest company today. This summer, Amazon topped
Wal-Mart in sales over a 12-month period for the first time
[[link removed]].
Unionization could complicate Amazon’s path to the No. 1 spot, and
so the upstart Amazon Labor Union might not fare much better than the
Western Federation of Miners all those years ago.

At least, not at first.

The Amazon campaign comes amid a wellspring of union activity in the
service sector, certainly visible in Minnesota. Max Nesterak of
the _Reformer_ reported on July 31 about a surprise two-day strike
at a south Minneapolis Starbucks store
[[link removed]].
That strike, mirrored by others around the country, was led by Workers
United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.

Nesterak reported that workers at a Minneapolis Trader Joe’s grocery
store overwhelmingly voted
[[link removed]] to
join a newly formed union. Like Smalls’ Amazon union, they seek to
start their own independent union, Trader Joe’s United.

These efforts are fueled by a combination of COVID-era workplace
dissatisfaction, record corporate profits and higher costs of
living. 

In a report for his investigative newsletter _Popular Information_,
Judd Legum along with reporter Tesnim Zekeria, explored the appeal of
these new unions with younger workers
[[link removed]]. While CEOs argue that
workers have it pretty good compared to the old days of underground
mining and polio, employees would rather focus on their cost of living
and the historically vast disparity between the salaries of upper
management and those who serve the product.

Indeed, after many — even some progressives — seemed willing to
write off the labor movement, labor’s cause has found new life. Why?
Because unions can sometimes deliver results when the political system
can’t or won’t. This builds trust and shared purpose among people
with divergent points of view.

A July 5 Juliana Kaplan story in _Business Insider_
[[link removed]] detailed
results of mid-summer Gallup polling on Americans’ trust in various
institutions. Across the partisan spectrum, people lost faith in
business, government and the media this past year. Organized labor
stood out as the only institution retaining its level of trust from
2021 to 2022
[[link removed]]. 

A March 31 BBC analysis by Anne Cassidy implied that both the United
States and United Kingdom might be entering a “golden age” of
trade unions [[link removed]], more than a
century after the original expansion of the American Federation of
Labor. 

This suggestion might be a little overhyped, however, because
Cassidy’s article mostly describes a labor movement that finally
stopped shrinking and now slowly regains ground. Still, one
potentially important observation is that the fastest growing sector
of U.S. union membership is among those aged 25 to 34
[[link removed]].
In Britain, freelancers represent the biggest source of new union
members.

At the heart of any organization are its people. Unions do well when
workers buy into what they can do. As Americans lose faith in their
government and corporate leadership, unions might be an outlet for
those who want to make a difference.

Though he wasn’t talking about unions specifically, Jimmy
Stewart’s George Bailey in “It’s A Wonderful Life” argued for
the merits of a contented working class. “This rabble you’re
talking about,” he said, “they do most of the working and paying
and living and dying in this community.”

Today, we see what he means every day. That is, if we take the time to
look. Low-wage workers hover just above the poverty line and just
below any position of power, respect or dignity in our community. The
most powerful people in our society memorize a list of reasons such
people deserve this second class citizenship. They would happily
condemn the next generation to the same fate. This thinking is not
new. It is very, very old. 

Recent political news seems to suggest that the future will bring a
toxic mix of fascism and struggle. We might take comfort that people
faced these kind of challenges before and came out alright. Yet, each
time we belly up to a bar full of political division and authoritarian
impulses we roll a dangerous set of historical dice. Times like these
produce any number of extreme, sometimes tyrannical outcomes.

But I will not bore you with a dystopian screed. Like the hungry lust
of market capitalism, the bargaining power of workers remains an
enduring force. No, not just in factories and mines. Government
workers need not be the only ones expanding their professional unions.
Coffee shops and hotel clerks, gas station attendants and legions of
creative gig workers may also unite in action. 

Living wages. Maternity leave. Paternity leave. Universal access to
vocational training, sick leave and health care. With unions, all of
this is possible, even when the politics seem impossible. 

If political representation fails workers, they may organize outside
current systems. They already are. Their opponents crib notes from
long-dead generations of power and privilege. Perhaps mighty corporate
forces will crush this new labor movement forever and always. But
that’s not how it went the last time.

You might stop a Teofilo Petriella or a Chris Smalls one year, only to
see his cause carried forward by others. When workers ask for a bigger
share of profits, for living wages and other benefits, they temper
forces that have grown bigger and more powerful than our elected
government. Historically, wealth disparity like what we see in our
present society hastens demand for change. Without peaceful assembly
and worker-centered organization, the alternatives loom ugly and
violent. 

These new unions and their unconventional approaches might not be
perfect. But the old unions all started under similar circumstances.
These new upstarts represent an opportunity for our nation and
humanity in general to reject calls for anti-democratic
authoritarianism. 

Unions promise a better life for workers, but in today’s climate
they just might save our country, too.

Aaron J. Brown is an author, community college instructor and radio
producer from Northern Minnesota’s Iron Range.

* Teofila Petriella
[[link removed]]
* Western Federation of Miners
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

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