The "Incident" Over the Tea in Boston

On this date in history, 1773, the "incident over the tea" took place in Boston Harbor, as a number of men, lightly disguised as "Indians," boarded a ship anchored in the harbor, broke open all of the chests containing tea, and dumped the contents and chests overboard--all while a crowd of several thousand watched silently from the docks.In response, the British government in London ordered the port of Boston closed. This in turn provoked the various colonies to call for a meeting in Philadelphia to formulate a protest. Eventually, events led to the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolutionary War, and the establishment of the United States of America.

This act is generally portrayed as a reaction by the Americans to the ideal of "no taxation without representation; however, the Tea Act actually reduced the tax paid on tea. It did promise to vigorously enforce the prohibition on importing tea other than from the East India Company, and promise prosection of smugglers. Among the most prominent smugglers of tea (and other goods) was John Hancock (the guy with the big signature).

What often gets overlooked is the role of the "lower sort" in this protest. As Alfred Young demonstrated in The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, the support of these kinds of people was instrumental to accomplishing this particular incident, as well as enforcing the boycott that preceded it.

Pro-Labor Republican?

Sarah Palin, the gift that keeps on giving, on the Hugh Hewitt radio show yesterday:



The money quote:

"We’ve gone through periods of our life here with paying out of pocket for health coverage until Todd and I both landed a couple of good union jobs,"

The interviewer being Hugh Hewitt, there was no real follow-up on this point, of course.

Joe and Jill Six-Pack (aka Todd and Sarah Palin) benefited from their "good union jobs," so surely Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin supports the Employee Free Choice Act--right, Governor? Being in a union family, she must also be aware of how Taft-Hartley tilted the playing field in favor of management, and supports amending the Labor-Management Relations Act to rollback those stipulations--right, Governor? And Senator McCain, surely you agree with your veep choice, and believe that it is important enough to suspend your campaign to parachute return to Washington to introduce this legislation, right?

It's what Teddy Roosevelt would've done, after all.

The Billionaire Bailout

Because of the "principled" opposition of an overwhelming number of Republican US House members, the Billionaire Bailout flamed out this afternoon. In my opinion, this is a desirable outcome--if Wall Street is really in need of a huge bailout, then they will have to accept some stipulations that they have resisted to this point. In my view, those stipulations should be (in order of importance):

1.) Changes in the bankruptcy law that allow judges to change the terms of mortgages, so that people in danger of losing their homes can find a way to stay.

2.) An equity stake for the taxpayer in any company that accepts money for this bailout, along the lines that the Swedish government imposed in the early 1990s. If Wall Street's losses are going to be socialized, so should the profits.

3.) Greater regulation of the financial industry, to prevent another fiasco like this happening ten years from now.

4.) Executive compensation should be brought in line with performance--no more Carly Fiorina-style golden parachutes.

Now is the time for tough bargaining on the part of Democratic Party leaders--put together a package that Main Street can support. As for the opposition from Wall Street, I'm reminded of one of my mother's favorite sayings: "Beggars can't be choosers."

Labor and the Civil Rights Act

On this date in history, July 2, 1964, Lyndon Johnson cajoled and twisted the arms of enough congressmen to pass the Civil Rights Act. This landmark piece of legislation segregation in schools, public places, and employment. It also ensured that the Democratic Party would become the minority party in the South; despite Johnson's landslide victory over Goldwater in November 1964, Goldwater won the in the formerly "Solid South" states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, in addition to his home state of Arizona.

Since the ostensible subject this blog is suppose to cover is all things labor, I would like to focus on the effect of this legislation on the labor movement. As a means of combatting segregation in the workplace, the act provided for the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). During its early years of existence, the EEOC filed few cases.

Griggs v. Duke Power changed that posture dramatically. Duke Power before the passage of the Civil Rights Act had maintained a strictly segregated workforce, with African Americans relegated to the laborer occupations. To maintain this system after the passage of the Act, the company changed the requirement for any position other than laborer to be limited to high school graduates. This eliminated nearly all African American candidates, while "grandfathering" whites in better postions who had not earned a high school diploma. Because the requirement of a diploma was "race neutral," lower courts had ruled that the company was justified in making this change.

The US Supreme Court, however, ruled that the company had to prove that the requirements were "reasonably related" to job qualifications if these changes had a disparate impact on ethnic groups, and overturned the decision of the lower court. During this same time frame, the "Philadelphia Plan" was implemented. In Philadelphia, the construction trades were especially obstinate in removing obstacles to hiring more African Americans on construction jobs. In 1968, Johnson's Secretary of Labor, William Wirtz, attempted to implement the first Philadelphia Plan, which would set "affirmative action" goals to hire African Americans in greater numbers for projects paid for by the Federal Government. Wirtz backed down under pressure from the building trades, however.

Since labor unions had led the opposition to Nixon in 1968 (nearly succeeding in electing Hubert H. Humphrey), Nixon felt no such compunction to buckle under to union pressure. In fact, Nixon saw this as a "wedge" issue, to further divide the labor/liberal opposition--which it certainly did.

JAMES BROWN! Ladies and Gentlemen

Just to counteract that little throw-up taste in you mouth from that last post:

The End of Racism

Not so fast there, Dinesh D'Souza

Let the Texas Republican Party know how you feel about their marketing campaign.

"A Third-Rate Burglary"

On this date in history, five burglars were arrested in the offices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters on the sixth floor of the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Three of the men--Eugenio Martinez, Virgilio R. Gonzales, and Bernard L. Barker, were Cuban exiles who had taken part in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. The fourth man, Frank Sturgis, was described by DC police as a "soldier of fortune," who had led three three Cuban exiles during the Bay of Pigs incident. The fifth man gave police the name of Edward Martin; his real name, however, was James W. McCord, who was employed with Richard M. Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President, known by the acronym CREEP. Later, two co-conspirators, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, were also indicted.

Hunt encouraged the men to plead guilty, as he planned to do, assuring them they would receive light sentences and that their families "would be taken care of." Hunt had readily supplied the Cuban exiles (whom he had led during the CIA-directed Bay of Pigs operation) with money, but had cut off funds when the men threatened to tell police what they knew. Hunt appealed to the men's patriotism, and promised that the money would flow again. Unfortunately for Hunt, however, his wife died in a tragic plane crash just days before with $10,000 in cash in a briefcase; this money is eventually traced back to CREEP.

Despite the scent of scandal wafting through the campaign, Nixon wins a landslide victory over the Democratic Party candidate, George McGovern, in the fall. The story of the attempted cover-up would not die, however, as two enterprising journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, kept digging for information and interviewing sources, guided in part by a source cultivated by Woodward known as "Deep Throat," after the adult movie popular in 1972. As the story "gained legs," it spurred investigations by the FBI, the US Senate, and the US House, culminating in this episode:

"A House Divided . . ."

As a number of bloggers have noted, today is the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's "House Divided" speech, given in the "old" Illinois State House, which now serves as Lincoln's Presidential Library. This video will give you a flavor of how it went down:



The camera movement is a little stiff, but what do you expect for 1858?

Anyway, what inspired me to write about this speech was on opinion piece placed in today's local newspaper, the Toledo Blade. In an otherwise fine article about the signifcance of the speech, author Nick J. Sciullo hauls off and accuses Lincoln of being an abolitionist Um, not really. Lincoln was anti-slavery, but never made the leap to abolitionism until it became a war-time expedient. Historian George Frederickson, in one of his last publications, seriously considered Linclon's ever evolving position on race, and argues that, while Lincoln never publicly argued for the equality of the white and black race, he was Big Enough to be Inconsistent

Events this month also illustrate the complex drama of race as it has played out in this country, since in less than two weeks we will also observe the 30th anniversary of the University of California Regents v. Bakke, which established in law the concept of reverse discrimination.

1909 Hawaiian Sugar Plantation Strike

On May 9, 1909, Japanese workers on the Aiea Plantation walked off their jobs, demanding higher wages and improved working conditions. Japanese workers had been imported to work on sugar plantations for the previous 15 to 20 years, to replace Chinese workers who began organizing for better wages and working conditions. The Chinese workers were imported to replace native Hawaiian, who had died off in alarming numbers since their exposure to European diseases in 1798; many who survived the invasion of the microbes succumbed to overwork when sugar cultivation was introduced to the islands.

By early June, some 7,000 Japanese workers and their families were on strike on Oahu. On June 12, these strikers were charged with inciting disorder. On the previous day, three strike leaders--Makino, Negoro, and Soga, according to the New York Times--were arrested. A large crowd of strikers peacefully assembled outside the jail in Honolulu, chearing loudly when any of the three appeared.

The strike continued into August, with the Hawaiian Sugar Growers Association hiring strikebreakers from the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere--and paying them $1.50 a day. That was more than double what Japanese workers were being paid at the time ($.60 a day), and fifty percent more than the $1.00 a day the Japanese workers were asking for. By the end of the month, most Japanese workers were back on the job, working under the new lower wage.

Factory Girls

Ten years ago on this date, Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturer of America (MMMA) agreed to a $34 million settlement of the allegations that the company's female workers were insulted and groped and management did nothing to stop it. In 1994, 29 female employees filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that the company was complicit in allowing male workers on the shop floor to sexually harass them. In April 1996 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) brought suit on the behalf some 300 to 500 female workers at Mitsubishi's Normal, Illinois plant. The complaints were some of the most egregious that the EEOC had handled to that point; besides the groping of genital areas, women were also subjected to pornagraphy in the workplace, including graphic drawings on automobiles as they came down the assembly line.

The Mitsubishi plant is one of the few Japanese "transplant" factories that is unionized; UAW Local 2488 represents production workers at this location. Unfortunately, the union did nothing when female members of the local raised complaints with local officers. When the EEOC first filed suit, Mitsubishi bused hundreds of workers to the EEOC offices in Chicago to protest the decision. But afraid of the repercussions that "bad publicity" would generate for the already stuggling operation, the company hired former Bush I labor secretary Lynn Martin to study the company's labor relations practices, and by 1998 decided to settle the suit out of court.