Labor's Untold Story: The Adventure Story of the Battles, Betrayals and Victories of American Working Men and Women [Paperback]

Richard O. Boyer (Author), Herbert M. Morais (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1979 | ISBN-10: 0916180018 | ISBN-13: 978-0916180010 | Edition: 3rd

The adventure story of the battles, betrayals, and victories of American working men and women. Two newspaper reporters tell the story of labor unions in the United States from their first appearance in the mid-1800s through the early 1950s. We concentrate on just a few of the chief events and protagonists from the early portion of the 20th century. The authors write from a decidedly pro-union stance. Reading this book, one comes to understand how and why socialism and even communism could have had such a popular appeal!

Product Details

• Paperback: 399 pages
• Publisher: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of Amer; 3rd edition (June 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0916180018
• ISBN-13: 978-0916180010
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #356,577 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Illusion-shattering and heartbreaking, worldview changing, June 19, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Santa Barbara, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Labor's Untold Story: The Adventure Story of the Battles, Betrayals and Victories of American Working Men and Women (Paperback)

The plans of John D. Rockefeller had more to do with the course of American Labor history than those of Samuel Gompers. This is the main premise of Labor's Untold Story, an economic history of America from Labor's viewpoint. Covering the years from 1860 to 1955, when it was published by the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union, it presents a fast-paced narrative, skillfully weaving stories in a highly readable and entertaining format. United Electrical was and is a progressive union, in the lead for workers rights. This union has suffered for its advocacy of the worker. It still exists and has a membership of about 35,000 workers in occupations ranging from highway toll-takers to graduate student assistants.

Labor's actions have been determined, in the long view of history, not so much by the actions of Labor leaders but Labor's adversaries. Boyer and Morais maintain that Labor has reacted to employers rather than the opposite. Division and destruction of Labor occurred primarily through actions of employers and the government. Multitudes of people have sacrificed their livelihoods, families, and even their lives to further the cause of Labor, with mixed and halting progress. Labor's Untold Story tells us that Business' exploitation of employees causes depression and other economic upheaval, and makes a convincing case.

As a beginning example the "Molly McGuires" of the Pennsylvania coal mining region will do nicely. For starters, historians agree that no group called the Molly McGuires existed in that area in 1873. This was fabricated for publicity purposes by the mine owner, Franklin B. Gowen. He originally recognized the union in the belief that a strike would help to create a coal shortage and push up the price. He used the Molly McGuire myth, along with $100,000, to persuade Pinkertons to come in and help infiltrate this alleged secret organization that was plotting such harm to mineowners. When Gowen cut the miners' wages below the contract level, they struck. The miners and their families were starved, hunted, ambushed and some killed by a vigilante group sponsored by the president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. After six months of hunger and bloodshed they went back to work, defeated. The union was destroyed, and those who had led the strike were blacklisted (not allowed to work in the coal mining industry). Six Irishmen and the men they led in the Ancient Order of the Hibernians were determined to rebuild the union and restore miners' wages. Gowen decided that no action was unjustified in getting rid of these troublemakers. He paid two informants who swore that the Irishmen had freely confessed to many murders in their presence. The first trial featured Gowen, the mine owner, as the special prosecutor. The man who actually committed the crime with which these Irishmen were charged testified against them and won his freedom. Nineteen men were convicted and hanged. The last two men were hanged in a rush so the governor's pardon would not reach them in time to save their lives.

Ethnic conflict, a primary tool of Big Business to set workers against one another, is surpassed in its effectiveness by the Red Scare tactic. "Calling red" has worked for over 100 years. Union organizers and sympathizers, oppressed workers, regardless of the desperate conditions they tried to alleviate, became ineffective once identified as Socialists or Communists. The opposition's definition of Socialism or Communism was often wildly inaccurate. It made no difference whether the charge was true; it still worked to cripple Labor action.

Chapter 10, titled Victory, outlines the rise and fall of the Committee for Industrial Organization, the CIO. The first action of the CIO occurred against the Firestone Tire Plant #1 in Akron, Ohio, on January 29, 1936, where the workers had been subjected to speedup. They stayed in the plant for three days, and won their battle. The speed-up decreased, and the base rate of pay increased. Workers everywhere, exhilarated by the success of Firestone workers began to sit down, and joined the CIO. Within six months, the CIO had 2,000,000 members. "Top AFL Leaders warned workers that the CIO was a Communistic plot but they continued flocking in, unimpressed. Although the formal charge made by the AFL against the CIO was dual unionism and refusal to abide by majority rule, its leaders never tired in associating the new organization with Moscow." In August 1938, President of AFL Metal Trades Department John Frey told the Dies un-American Activities Committee that the CIO was Communist dominated. "This testimony marked the beginning of the a government sponsored blacklist, inaugurating in recent times the Business use of government to destroy Labor via the red scare".

The strength of the CIO was its left-and-center (political) coalition. Philip Murray, the leader of the CIO after Lewis' departure in 1940, was subjected to extreme pressure from Big Business for several years that finally broke him and the CIO. He declared that all member unions had to support the policies and vote for the candidates that the Executive Council approved. Allegedly, patriotism demanded the expulsion of the left unions. This split member unions away from the CIO, undermining its successful policy of unity in the face of external pressures and politics. The United Electrical Workers, Fur and Leather Workers, Mine Mill and Smelter Workers who had been the pace-setters in raising wage scales and winning conditions were expelled from the CIO on October 31, 1949. Labor's Untold Story, ending in 1955, does not look at possible solutions to the way business is financed in western society. If the stockholders are the tail wagging the dog, should be we looking for some other means of capitalizing business?

Labor's Untold Story is remarkable in its ability to recast economic history from the working person's viewpoint. The traditional press does not encourage us to think about what happens in our daily work lives that lessens our dignity as workers and decreases our ability to support our families. Many stories in this book are shocking and heartrending. The authors worked from primary sources and what they judge as credible secondary sources. The book has the ring of veracity. It would be of interest to check other interpretations of the incidents cited in this book to see how others have analyzed them.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Essential history, short on lessons for modern labor, January 30, 2005

By 

Phil Myers (Brooklyn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Labor's Untold Story: The Adventure Story of the Battles, Betrayals and Victories of American Working Men and Women (Paperback)

This is a gripping, eye-opening, well-documented account of the American labor movement from its beginnings through to the mid-1950s. It brings alive the great figures and achievements of working class struggle that have been distorted by or excised from mainstream histories. Highly recommended for anyone who has read "A People's History of the United States" and wants to know more.

Sadly, the book pussyfoots around the important role of communists in the labor movement, and almost totally erases the contributions of anarchists-- mentioning Sacco and Vanzetti's political convictions only in passing, and completely eliding the fact that Albert Parsons and other Haymarket martyrs were anarchists. Also, it ends on a rather pat and rosy note of hope that the then (1955) newly-formed AFL-CIO would rally American labor to even greater achievements. Thus it offers few lessons for the routed, coopted labor movement of today. Important conclusions about internal democracy and autonomy that could have been drawn from labor's defeat are left to readers to draw for themselves.

One more thing--

Notice that those reviewers who paint this book as 'biased' don't actually attempt to refute any of the factual matter Boyer and Morais bring to light. Having a point of view is no crime, in fact it clarifies debate to state your allegiances and conviction in the open, as the authors do. Attempting to conceal bias behind a facade of objectivity, as mainstream textbooks and news sources do, is what ought to be called into question.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must for Union Activists, June 22, 2003

By 

Mother Jones (Sunderland, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Labor's Untold Story: The Adventure Story of the Battles, Betrayals and Victories of American Working Men and Women (Paperback)

The right-wing reviewers who gave this book a one star, did not read this book. This is REAL history about working Americans and our struggles for economic justice. Just like today, (Enron, Worldcom should ring a bell) there were ruthless,greedy corporations who treated their employees like slaves. "Labor's Untold Story" is a must for union activists, anti-globalization protestors and other independent thinkers who want to get the true stories of labor's past battles.