Organize the South

This makes me happy to be entering this field professionally. Find out more at the Labor and Working Class History Association. This post originally found on portside.org.

Historians in Support of the Employee Free Choice Act

By Michael Honey, Fred and Dorothy Haley Professor of Humanities, President, Labor and Working-Class History Association University of Washington, Tacoma http://faculty.washington.edu/mhoney/

One hundred historians have declared their support for the Employee Free Choice Act, introduced into Congress on March 10 by Senator Tom Harkin and Rep. George Miller. The legislation would make it easier for workers to organize unions and harder for employers to evade them. Workers could obtain a union when fifty percent sign cards authorizing a union. The law would also force employers to respond quickly and bargain in good faith or face increased fines and mandatory, binding arbitration by the National Labor Relations Board.

Why are faculty members, who are so notoriously un-organized, speaking on behalf of unions? There are many reasons, but on one level the reason is simple:

democracy depends upon it, and our economy needs it.

The last great depression occurred when unions declined to almost nothing in the 1920s. Republican government cut taxes on the rich and removed many of the regulations of the Progressive era, which in turn allowed bankers and corporations to make sky-high profits. The housing and stock market boomed, and the rich got richer. That led to the crash of 1929.

Because labor was not organized, it had almost no restraining influence on government, leading to a vast divide between the rich and the working class. Sound familiar?

In 1935, the Wagner Act made it easier for workers to organize, establishing the right to freedom of association and speech on the job without employer intimidation or interference. The rise of unions paved the way to the Social Security Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and many of the government safety nets we rely upon today.

Because unions gained in strength, workers increased their wages and their buying power. When the economy came out of its stupor during the rapid industrialization of World War II, unions became widespread. The result was the rise of the largest middle class in world history.

This history favors two arguments about the need for labor law reform today. Without unions, government will not reflect the needs of the great majority of people who work for a living. Not only will democracy suffer, but wages will stagnate, people cannot afford to buy what they produce, and our economy will suffer.

Those who have jobs need to be able to advocate for themselves. Employers will not voluntarily raise wages, and government will not do very much to make that happen either. Only workers themselves can do that, but to do it, they need to be able to harness their numbers in an organized way.

Employers will say EFCA takes away the workers right to a secret ballot. It isn't true. If thirty percent or people in a work place petition for it, they can demand a secret ballot election. The trouble is, employer strategies since the 1980s have turned elections into a nightmare of intimidation, delays, and poor results for workers.

EFCA allows that if fifty percent petition for a union, it will take effect immediately. The choice of methods belongs to workers, not to the employers, who seem perfectly capable of protecting themselves. Let's face

it: Labor laws are written to protect workers.

History shows that we are in a time where worker rights need increased protection. Unions are clearly not the answer to every problem. But for capitalism to function in a democratic manner, we need them.

For a list of signers to the historians' petition, and for more information on the Employee Free Choice Act, see the web site (http://LAWCHA.org/tls.php).

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Michael Honey is Haley Professor of Humanities at the University of Washington Tacoma, and author of "Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign."

David Brody University of California-Davis

Alice Kessler-Harris Columbia University

Michael Honey University of Washington, Tacoma

Joseph Hower Georgetown University

Bethany Moreton University of Georgia

Brian Greenburg Monmouth University

Eileen Boris University of California, Santa Barbara

James J. Lorence University of Wisconsin—Marathon County

Alison Jaggar University of Colorado, Boulder

(Philosophy)

Michael C. Pierce University of Arkansas

Charles A. Zappia San Diego Mesa College

Susan Hirsch Loyola University, Chicago

Thomas Dublin SUNY Binghamton

Kevin Boyle Ohio State University

Bruce Cohen Worcester State College

Eric Fure-Slocum St. Olaf College

John S. Olszowka Mercyhurst College

Leon Fink University of Illinois, Chicago

Harvey Schwartz San Francisco State University

David Montgomery Yale University

Peter Cole Western Illinois University

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Susan Levine University of Illinois, Chicago

John L. Revitte Michigan State University

Elliott Gorn Brown University

Harvey Kaye University of Wisconsin, Green Bay

Deborah Cohen University of Missouri, St. Louis

Nancy F. Gabin Purdue University

Robert Reutenauer Middlesex Community College

Charles Williams University of Washington, Tacoma

Peter Rachleff Macalester College

Michael Denning Yale University

Ellen Schrecker Yeshiva University

George Hopkins College of Charleston

Joshua B. Freeman City University of New York

Ina Clausen University of California

Jacob Remes Duke University

Joseph Abel Rice University

Matthew Basso University of Utah

Daniel A. Graff University of Notre Dame

Daniel Clark Oakland University (Michigan)

Michael Kazin Georgetown University

Roberta Gold Fordham University

John Enyeart Bucknell University

Alan Derickson Pennsylvania State University

Linda K. Kerber University of Iowa

Jennifer Klein Yale University

Laurie Mercier Washington State University – Vancouver

Fraser Ottanelli University of South Florida

John P. Lloyd Cal Poly Pomona

Leslie S. Rowland University of Maryland, College Park

Scott Saul University of California, Berkeley

Andrew H. Lee New York University, Bobst Library

James N. Gregory University of Washington

Landon Storrs University of Houston

Theodore Steinberg Case Western Reserve University

David Zonderman North Carolina State University

Rachel Batch Widener University

Alexander Keyssar Harvard University

José A. Soler University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

Liesl Orenic Dominican University (IL)

Gordon K. Mantler Duke University

Lizabeth Cohen Harvard University

Devra Weber University of California, Riverside

Randi Storch State University of New York, Cortland

Shannan W. Clark Montclair State University

Elizabeth Shermer University of California, Santa Barbara

Patricia Cooper University of Kentucky

Stanford Jacoby University of California, Los Angeles

Steven Attewell University of California, Santa Barbara

Dolores Janiewski Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand)

Jennifer Luff University of California, Irvine

Dana Frank University of California, Santa Cruz

Elizabeth Lamoree University of California, Santa Barbara

Cassandra Engeman University of California, Santa Barbara

Tobias Higbie University of California, Los Angeles

Mary O. Furner University of California, Santa Barbara

Lisa Phillips Indiana State Universsity

Jack Epstein Ohio University

Matthew Bewig University of Florida

Michael Robert Bussel University of Oregon

Roxanne Newton Mitchell Community College (NC)

Kenneth Fones-Wolf West Virginia University

Otto Olsen Northern Illinois University

Melvyn Dubofsky State University of New York, Binghamton

Robert Schaffer Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania

Michelle Haberland Georgia Southern University

Linda Gordon New York University

Moon-Ho Jung University of Washington

Jennifer E. Brooks Auburn University

Seth Wigderson University of Maine at Augusta

Sean Burns University of California, Santa Cruz

Darryl Holter University of Southern California

Beth English Princeton University

Eric Foner, Columbia University

Robert Zieger, University of Florida

Mai Ngai, Columbia University

Charles Bergquist, University of Washington

Nelson Lichtenstein, University of California Santa Barbara

Kimberly Phillips, William and Mary

Nikhil Pal Singh, University of Washington

Michelle Nacy, University of Washington Tacoma

Grace Palladino, University of Maryland