ONLINE VERSION	VOLUME 106 - NUMBER 9 - OCTOBER 1997

To Unionists, 'Scab' is Truly a Four-Letter Word

An interesting letter to the editor recently appeared in the Lansing State Journal. The letter writer objected to a "truly vile letter" that the paper had printed several days earlier. What was it that this letter writer found so "vile?" It was the use of the word "scab." "Derogatory, hate-filled terms like this ought to be banished from civil discourse," huffed the offended resident of East Lansing who, after referring to "union zealots," said strikebreakers are really only "people who prefer to work rather than to 'honor' a picket line ..." As we approach another Labor Day, it's important to remember "the bad old days" that workers in this country used to endure, and how we're in danger of regressing to those conditions--especially if attitudes like those of the letter writer above become prevalent. The American labor movement was launched in 1827 when several Philadelphia trade groups organized the first central labor body, the Mechanics Union of Trade Associations. One of the factors that gave the labor movement its initial impetus was that workers had just won the right to vote. While everyone knows that America was slow to extend voting rights to blacks and women, it's often forgotten that workers too were long denied a voice in the nation's political life. One of the practices of that era which labor began protesting was imprisonment for debt. It's hard to imagine today, but at one time people in this country were jailed for not being able to pay their bills. One example cited at the time was a widow whose husband had died in a fire trying to save the property of a man who later had the widow put in jail for a 68-cent debt. Also back in the early days of our nation, education was something available only to the children of the well-to-do. Labor fought for public education and against child labor, a scourge that still exists in the world today. With the rise of industrialism in the mid-19th century, workers were treated as commodities to be obtained at the lowest cost possible. Competition among workers for jobs was tremendous, and before the turn of the 20th century it was not uncommon for workers to crowd before plant gates and bid down wages against neighbors and friends with low bidders receiving work for a 16-hour day. The modern-day labor movement has its roots in the 1935 Wagner Act which not only guaranteed workers the right to organize, but encouraged it. But that didn't make it easy. Sixty years ago the infamous "Battle of the Overpass" occurred. UAW organizers including future UAW President Walter Reuther, were viciously beaten by company goons while passing out flyers to workers at the Ford River Rouge Plant in Dearborn. Many were hurt so badly they had to be hospitalized. One volunteer organizer eventually died from the injuries he received. Workers persevered, and eventually millions unionized. Through collective bargaining and political action, improved working conditions were won--many of which are taken for granted today such as: The eight-hour day, 40-hour week and overtime pay. Rest periods and workplace safety regulations. Pensions and company-paid medical, dental and vision plans. Paid vacations and holidays. Unemployment insurance and workers' compensation. Social Security and Medicare. Unions have improved the standard of living of all workers, union and non-union alike. But these gains came at a price: the sweat and blood and sometimes the lives of unionists who fought for better futures for their families. Those who cross picket lines are not paragons of work. Rather, they debase work and workers for their actions harken back to that time when people gathered outside plant gates and undercut one another. That's why scabs are reviled, and rightly so. By Frank Garrison, Michigan State AFL-CIO News, September 1997.