21st July 2015, 7:39 PM
Great Rumbler Wrote:But there's the thing, the reason the labor movement took so long to get off the ground in the early years was that they had no government protection at all. Corporations crushed fledgling unions before they could take root [often employing violence or threats of violence] and the employees were left with no recourse. It was not until efforts by union-friendly Presidents and Congresspeople to actually put into place laws that protected unions that the labor movement finally took hold and solidified its place as a check on corporate abuse.
And the biggest threat to unions today is far-right politicians rolling back those protections one law at a time, using the argument that unions are no longer needed or are even harmful.
The history of the labor movement and the class struggles of the 20th century, has been intentionally omitted from school text books and buried out of public knowledge,a good example is the Ludlow Massacre were striking coalminers and their families were gun down by private security and militiamen hired by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, the mining town of Ludlow became a privately owned fiefdom of the CF&IC, miners and workers brought in by the company had to sign a contract before hand, many were immigrants semi-literate in English, so it was easy to trick them into signing away their Civil-rights on a dotted line becoming no better then indentured servants to their new employer. workers no longer had freedom of movement and couldn't leave town without permission from superiors, could not quit until their contract expired.