Managing Labor, Finding a Future

MANAGINGLABOR, FINDINGA FUTURE John Cumbler Howard M. Gitelman. Legacy of the Ludlow Massacre: A Chapter in American Industrial Relations. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. JN + 355 pp. Illus. Michael Goldfield. The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. xv+ 294 pp. American labor history has been known for its violence, its radicalism and its conservatism. Although America has produced some of the left's most uncompromising and dynamic leaders, America has also produced a labor movement and leadership renowned for its conservatism. That labor movement has struggled for existence in a nation which is liberal in its political structure but dogmatically conservative when it comes to industrial relations. A central tenet of American industrial relations has been the resistance by employers to any attempt by workers to gain recognition for independent labor organizations. Employers have used the power of the state, the courts and private armed force to keep unions out. Because employers' central purpose is to realize the highest possible profits, they want the greatest possible productivity for the lowest possible labor costs. Unions thwart capital by demanding the highest possible wages for the least backbreaking effort by their members. The conflict between labor and capital is centered at the work place, but it seldom stays there. Both labor and capital call upon all the resources at their command to shift the balance of power to their side. Labor can withhold work--strike--and capital can withhold wages--lock out union workers or give the jobs to others--and in the struggle, both sides mobilize outside forces; labor attempts to bring in strike relief from other workers, while capital looks to government intervention to break up picket lines, arrest and intimidate strikers and issue injunctions againstunions. Although capital has used its ability to influence the government through cash donations, control over the private (usually anti-union) press and control over the institutional structures of the party system, the political arena has been open to contest. 74 John Cumbler Howard Gitelman begins his book with one of America's more notorious labor-capital conflicts, the Colorado coal miners' strike of 1914. During the strike the coal operators called upon the state to send state militia into the area to arrest and harass strikers. The strikers, thrown out of company housing, set up a tent community in Ludlow. The coal operators hired private detectives and local thugs and had them incorporated into the state militia. On April 20 the militia, made up mostly of coal company employees, moved against the tent community at Ludlow and opened fire. A pitched battle and rioting followed, which left twenty-four men, women and children dead. Following the riot, the coal operators had union leaders arrested for conspiracy, murder and rioting. The strike of 1914, although extreme in the loss of life which resulted, was typical of many nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American labor conflicts. Capital looked to the courts, the state and public opinion to defeat labor, which, in turn, attempted to win support for its position in the state and public opinion. In 1914,capital won the battle; although labor had the support of Congressman Frank Walsh, it was unable to gain the activeintervention of the Wilson administration, and the local governments and courts remained in the hands of the coal companies. Gitelman is less interested in the strike of 1914 than in the consequences of the conflict, particularly in how it thrust two characters, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (connected to the strike through the dominant ownership by his family of stock in one of the largest of Colorado's coal companies) and Mackenzie King (an adviser on labor relations) into a cooperative relationship which would produce the Rockefeller plan ("company unions" as labor would call them) that would--at least in the minds of American employers using it--represent an alternative to unionism. By focusing on the developing relationship between these two men and their ideas on labor-capital relations, Gitelman tells a fascinating story. Using personalities and the interactions of the people involved in the evolution of the Rockefeller plan, he is able to give life to an otherwise minor aspect ofAmerican...