Peter Rachleff: Minneapolis Teamsters’ strikes resonate 90 years later

June 10, 2024 by

The Remember 1934 Committee plans a series of events to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the strikes, beginning in June and culminating July 27 with a picnic in Minnehaha Park.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters’ strikes. These strikes changed the course of history and the lives of tens of thousands of working people. They transformed Minneapolis from one of the country’s most notorious anti-union citadels into a “union town,” and they inspired labor organization from Fargo to Omaha, and Duluth to St. Louis. The story still resonates with the challenges faced by working people in 2024.

In the late 19th century a vibrant and diverse labor movement surged across Minnesota. Its ranks included native-born and immigrant workers employed as flour millers and barrel makers, railroad engineers, firemen, brakemen and track workers, garment workers and laundresses, horse and wagon drivers, building trades craftsmen, longshoremen and stevedores, skilled machinists and shop workers. They were affiliated with the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor, the railroad brotherhoods, the Teamsters and the American Railway Union, and they created cooperatives, mutual benefit societies and a broad-based movement for the 8 hour day. These workers participated in the rail strikes of 1894, and they built political alliances with farmers. In the early 20th century, many took part in the creation of the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist Party, and they challenged some of the biggest businessmen in the U.S., including James J. Hill, Andrew Carnegie and Charles Pillsbury.

But bankers, businessmen and their political allies launched a powerful counter-offensive, seeking to eliminate unions through a “double-blacklist” – a refusal to hire union members and a refusal to extend loans to employers who bargained with unions. They created a new organization with a slippery rhetorical name, the “Citizens’ Alliance,” not only to implement their strategy but also to spin it as a defense of individual independence. They won accolades of employers’ organizations across the country. Minneapolis became an icon of non-unionism.

The Citizens’ Alliance’s success was devastating not just for unions but also for workers, who were disciplined, fired and blacklisted at the whim of employers. Although productivity rose with the introduction of new modes of work organization and technologies, wages lagged. Workers struggled to find economic security, and when they organized to challenge the Citizens’ Alliance, businessmen trumpeted the ideology of wartime “loyalty” and leveraged state government to limit workers’ gains. The reign of the Citizens’ Alliance seemed untouchable.

And then, in the winter of 1934, a small group of experienced, dedicated labor activists began to change the course of history. Several of them had been working in the city’s coal yards, earning miserable wages to handle and deliver coal to Minneapolis homes and businesses. Teamsters Local 574, with 75 members, initiated a strike on Feb. 7 that spread within three hours to 65 of the city’s 67 coal yards. They organized “inside” workers (warehouse and coal yards) and “outside” workers (drivers and helpers) together in an industrial strategy, and they ignored both the New Deal’s weak labor board system and the cautious advice of the Teamsters’ national leadership. They relied on cruising pickets, which shut the entire industry in the midst of a cold snap. Two days later, the coal employers offered a settlement, and the strike ended. Some 3,000 trucking and warehouse workers signed up to join Local 574. The inspiration was spreading.

In May, Local 574 called a larger strike across the city’s market district. Again, they linked inside and outside workers, ignored the labor board and relied on cruising pickets. Activists built an impressive infrastructure – a rented garage as a strike headquarters for dispatching mobile pickets, a soup kitchen and an infirmary, fully staffed by volunteers, many from the newly organized women’s auxiliary. They formed a “committee of 100,” mostly stewards from individual shops and warehouses, to make key decisions for the union, and a committee of the unemployed, not only to prevent strike-breaking but also to advocate for those without jobs. A network of farmers brought food for strikers and their families. They also secured the support of other unions and the Central Labor Council. The strike, which lasted 10 days, revolved around control of the streets. Despite police violence, the roving pickets were effective, and on May 25, employers offered an agreement, which the union accepted.

The ink had hardly dried on the agreement, however, when employers began to violate its terms. Over 700 complaints of discrimination were logged in June and early July. On July 17, Local 574 renewed its strike, this time with more than 10,000 participants. Another 35,000 workers engaged in a sympathy strike. The union mobilized with a new weapon, a daily strike bulletin (the first ever in the U.S.) called “The Organizer.” Once again, control over the streets was central to the strike, and there was more violence, even deaths, on both sides. A funeral procession for striker Henry Ness drew 100,000 sympathizers. The dispatch of the National Guard and the arrests and imprisonment of many union leaders could not bring the strike to an end. After President Roosevelt exerted pressure through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Citizens’ Alliance finally yielded on Aug. 21, and employers were ordered to hold union elections, almost all of which ended in victories for Local 574 and new collective bargaining contracts. This broke the more than two decades’ reign of the Citizens’ Alliance.

Here begins the story of Minneapolis’ transformation into a “union town.” Some 10,000 workers not only won large raises, but they also got seniority provisions and a grievance procedure – a promise of justice in the workplace. Their success inspired other workers across the Midwest that they, too, could organize and improve their work lives. Rank-and-file Teamsters’ participation in the strikes – and their continuing participation in the life of the union – gave them a new awareness of their class position and solidarity with other workers. Their experiences also fueled their sense of their own capacity and power. They shared their new consciousness, and they embodied it in expressions of solidarity, supporting women workers in the Strutwear Knitting strike a year later, building of an interstate network of trucking workers and inspiring the unionization of packinghouse workers, timber workers, iron miners and steelworkers from Lake Superior to the Iowa border and beyond. Minneapolis had become a “union town,” and workers’ activism there was becoming a rising tide to lift all boats.

This situation persisted for half a century, for two generations. It became normal for workers throughout Midwest to earn a living wage with health benefits, vacations and pensions; to gain access to easier assignments as their seniority grew; and to expect a safe, respectful workplace. This was especially true in unionized workplaces, but non-union employers felt pressure to offer similar conditions. It was not a labor paradise, but many were able to buy cars and homes, send their children to college and enjoy retirement.

This changed abruptly in the 1980s and 1990s. Employers closed plants and sent manufacturing jobs abroad. They reorganized work via outsourcing and subcontracting. They chipped away at benefits, then wages, then unionization itself. While legislatures and judges weakened workers’ rights to picket, employers threatened those who still dared to strike with permanent replacement. The unionized cohort of the working class no longer enjoyed economic security, their ability to improve their own conditions diminished greatly and, increasingly, their role as trendsetters for all workers faded. By the turn of the 21st century, Minneapolis could no longer be called a “union town.” For that matter, neither could St. Paul or anywhere else in Minnesota and the Midwest.

But workers’ situations have not simply deteriorated; they have changed. Immigrants play an increased role in the economy and are more vocal, visible and significant in the labor movement. Public employees, white collar workers and retail, service, and fast-food workers have come to the fore. Educators and healthcare workers, from doctors and nurses to personal care assistants, see that unionization enables them to provide the care that brought them into their occupations in the first place. Members of Gen Z, struggling for economic security since the Great Recession, are bringing new energy into the labor movement. We are living in exciting times.

Now is a great time to look back at 1934, to learn how a wide range of workers changed the course of history and to consider how today’s workers might change this course themselves. A diverse group of activists, some of them descendants of the 1934 strikers, are organizing a series of events – an art exhibit, a picnic, film screenings and panel discussions – to curate a series of conversations between the past and the present.  For details, visit rem34.ampmpls.com.

– Peter Rachleff is an emeritus professor of history at Macalester College and co-founder of the East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul.

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Peter Rachleff: Looking for History Day help? Check out the East Side Freedom Library

December 9, 2022 by

Students and mentors worked on History Day projects at the ESFL last year.

The East Side Freedom Library invites the middle and high school students in your families to benefit from our rich resources and our experienced mentors.

National History Day is a great program in which students are challenged to develop a project as an illustration of a theme. Students, individually or in small teams, might take months developing their approach, conducting research and shaping their presentation. They take ownership of presenting their project – on a storyboard, in a paper, in a performance, in a video or via an interactive website. They not only present historical materials, but they must also make an argument about how their topic affected individuals, communities, nations or the world, changing the course of human society.

History Day students not only learn new things about history and learn the value of historical thinking, but they also develop their social skills and self-confidence.

The 2023 theme asks young people to think about how engagement with frontiers – in space, among people and in the emergence of new ideas – has shaped our history, in the U.S. and around the world.

This is a great theme within which they might explore labor activism, racial justice, women’s rights, the impact of GLBTQ+ movements, environmental activism and more. A frontier may be geographical – an area thought to be on the edge of a settlement – or a border between countries or peoples. Ideas can also be presented as frontiers.

Students might explore the work of individuals or organizations who have thought of new ways of organizing human life politically, economically, religiously or socially, and assess the impact of these new ideas. Frontiers are crossed by those who challenge conventional thinking. Students may find inspiration in the stories of those who have challenged traditional boundaries of race, class and gender.

Here’s one great example. In 1920, economist Carter L. Goodrich published “The Frontier of Control: A Study of British Workshop Politics.” At the heart of this book was his argument that every workplace has an invisible line dividing where management’s authority ends and workers’ authority begins.

Goodrich argued that these “frontiers of control” moved from the day shift to the night shift, from days with higher absenteeism (e.g., Mondays and Fridays) to fully staffed days. They moved in response to technological change and innovation, and, above all, in response to workers’ organization, in the workplace itself and, especially, in unions.

Today’s young scholars might use the “frontier of control” as a framework within which they can explore the impacts of computers and robots, the strengths or weaknesses of unions, even such contemporary concerns as “the great resignation” or “Striketober.” The concept is just one great door-opener into the dynamics of the world of labor. National History Day is a wonderful opportunity to introduce students to the rich world of labor history.

The East Side Freedom Library has rich resources available to students for their research projects. Our collections include labor newspapers from the 1930s, documentary videos, recordings of labor songsters, photographs of labor-themed visual art, union buttons and posters, and more.

Perhaps even more importantly, students will also find experienced mentors eager to help them shape their project. Our team of mentors include retired public-school teachers, college professors and college students. For eight years now, we have worked with students in the Twin Cities, some of whom have won recognition in local, statewide and even national competition.

Our mentoring team is on hand, now, every Saturday morning from 10 a.m. to noon. We ask that students make an appointment by emailing info [at] eastsidefreedomlibrary [dot] org, that upon their arrival they show proof of vaccination or a negative test within the previous two days, that they wear a mask and that they observe safety precautions while here.

After their initial mentoring consultation, students will be welcome to come at other times to use our resources, and our mentors will be available for one-on-one conversations, in person or remotely.

If you or your students would like to speak with us, call us at 651-207-4926. We look forward to working with them!

– Peter Rachleff is co-executive director emeritus at the East Side Freedom Library, an independent, nonprofit organization located at 1105 Greenbrier St.

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State Capitol dedicates a ‘place and space’ for Nellie Stone Johnson – and all she represents

November 22, 2022 by

Family of Nellie Stone Johnson, who died in 2002, got the first look at a new statue honoring her legacy.

A new statue unveiled in the Capitol yesterday celebrates the legacy of Nellie Stone Johnson, a towering figure in Minnesota’s labor, political and civil rights history. 

After a ceremony that included music, a video remembrance and speeches from the honoree’s colleagues and admirers, Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan joined the youngest members of Stone Johnson’s family in pulling a drape off her statue, installed just north of the rotunda.  

It is the Capitol’s first new statue in six decades and the only to honor woman of color. Flanagan boasted that Minnesota is the first state government in the U.S. to authorize the installation of a statue in its Capitol honoring a Black woman. 

“Now when our students are visiting the Capitol, they are going to see and learn about the legacy of Nellie and all she represents,” Flanagan said. “They are going to see themselves reflected in the people’s house in a way they haven’t before.” 

Born in Lakeville in 1905, Stone Johnson herself accomplished many “firsts” during her lifetime, including a successful bid for a seat on the Library Board in 1945 that made her the first Black person elected to citywide office in Minneapolis.  

A powerful figure in the Farmer-Labor movement, Stone Johnson helped lead its eventual merger with the Democratic Party in the 1940s. Candidates often sought her endorsement, including Hubert Humphrey during his mayoral campaigns of 1943 and 1945. She served as a member of the Democratic National Committee in 1980, and joined a delegation to Africa with Vice President Walter Mondale.   

But before becoming a political leader, Stone Johnson was a union organizer, as Workday Minnesota remembered in an obituary published after her death in April 2002:

“In the 1930s, while working as an elevator operator at the Minneapolis Athletic Club, her wages were cut from $15.00 to $12.50 per week. She responded by secretly organizing the workers into a union. Later she was elected the first woman vice president of the Minneapolis Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union.” 

Stone Johnson was the first woman vice-president of the Minnesota Culinary Council, and she pushed a national contract negotiations committee to address issues like pay equity. 

At the same time, Stone Johnson was active in the movement for civil rights and racial equality. She helped lead a fundraising drive, organized by the Civil Rights Congress, to help Black voters in Texas pay poll taxes, which would otherwise have prevented them from voting. Stone Johnson remained active in the NAACP throughout her adult life. 

Many speakers at the ceremony recalled Stone Johnson’s passionate support for education as a gateway to good-paying jobs. She served on both the Minnesota State University Board and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Board of Trustees, and several current Minnesota State administrators were on hand for the unveiling. 

So, too, were past recipients of a scholarship bearing Stone Johnson’s name, awarded each year since 1989 to racial minority union members and their families attending a Minnesota State institution.  

“She had a sense of humanness that could only come out of where she came from,” said Dr. Tamrat Tademe, a professor at St. Cloud  State University who worked with Stone Johnson and serves on the scholarship board. “And with Nellie there was always a call to do better.  

Students from Nellie Stone Johnson School in Minneapolis attended the dedication ceremony.

“I hope we all listen to Nellie’s call. I hope we don’t shelve her statue and leave it there. We have to listen to her call to do better in this state.” 

Minnesota unions and their members played a critical role in creating a space to honor Stone Johnson at the Capitol, from lobbying in support of authorizing the statue to donating funds toward its completion.  

“Thank God for the unions,” said former state Rep. Joe Mullery, who authored the 2014 bill. “They understood how important it is for working people and students to come to the Capitol and be inspired by seeing someone like them.” 

The first students to get a look at the new statue, appropriately, were part of a delegation from the Minneapolis elementary bearing Stone Johnson’s name.  

Thinking of the countless others soon to follow, Flanagan closed her remarks with a note of gratitude: “Thank you for this opportunity for every little girl to know that she has a place and space in this building in whatever role she chooses.” 

Learn more about Nellie Stone Johnson, her legacy and the scholarship bearing her name at nelliestone.org. 

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Peter Rachleff: Labor Day roots trace to St. Paul’s East Side

August 31, 2022 by

Most of us, from St. Paul workers and labor activists to labor historians like me, have been unaware of the role that St. Paul workers played in the establishment of the Labor Day holiday.

In April 1894, railroad workers from Montana to Chicago struck the Great Northern Railroad. Owner James J. Hill had cut their wages three times since a depression had begun in the fall of 1893, and, across all the running trades, workers had joined the new American Railway Union under the charismatic leadership of Eugene V. Debs. Debs made the case to workers that, facing the country’s biggest corporations, they were ill-served by belonging to 14 different craft unions rather than coming together in one big union of railroad workers. By spring of 1894, this argument made sense to tens of thousands of engineers, firemen, brakemen, switchmen, trainmen, conductors, maintenance of way workers and more.

The very center of the strike was the East Side of St. Paul. Strikers met in the second-floor meeting room of a mutual benefit society located at 896 Payne Ave. Following their spirited meetings, they would march, singing, to the newly built overpass above the tracks three blocks south on Payne, just north of Minnehaha Avenue. There they dumped garbage on the tracks, seeking to interfere with the scab-operated trains that Hill had funded. Great Northern trains on these tracks ran from the flour mills on the Minneapolis riverfront, through St. Paul’s Swede Hollow, on their way to Duluth. There, barrels of flour would be loaded onto ocean-going ships and sent across Lake Superior, out the Saint Lawrence Seaway and across the Atlantic Ocean. Due to the productivity of midwestern wheat farming, flour milling and transportation, barrels of Minnesota flour undersold European flour in cities across the continent and made the Pillsburys, Washburns and Crosbys oligarchs to rival Hill.

And they were unhappy when “his” workers went on strike and disrupted the shipment of “their” flour. Pillsbury called on Hill and urged him to settle with his workers. Hill agreed to participate in the first ever third-party arbitration of a major strike and to allow Pillsbury to serve as arbitrator. Debs agreed, too.  Lo and behold, Pillsbury ruled in favor of the American Railway Union and ordered Hill to restore the wage cuts!

Word spread among railroad workers that the American Railway Union had defeated Big Jim Hill, and in the next months Debs was deluged with requests for membership.  One of those requests came from the machinists, molders and foundry workers who made Pullman sleeping cars in a company town just outside Chicago. Pullman had not only cut his workers’ wages several times, but he had refused to reduce their rents or the prices charged by his company stores. Workers explained to Debs that, while they did not work on moving trains, they were railroad workers, and he agreed. And when they added that they were already on strikes, Debs called for a nationwide “boycott” of all trains that included Pullman cars. This was tantamount to calling a nationwide railroad strike, since virtually all trains included Pullman cars, and the East Side railroad workers, back on the job only two months, returned to the picket lines.

Pullman hired the former U.S. Attorney General Richard Olney to help him break the strike. Olney argued before a federal judge in Chicago that, because every train included a mail car, the strike was interfering with the shipment of the nation’s mail. The judge agreed and issued the first ever federal injunction against a strike. Debs was hauled into court and told to issue an order ending the strike. When he refused, the judge found him in contempt and ordered him to jail. Debs would spend the next 18 months in prison, refusing to call off the strike.

President Grover Cleveland decided to send the National Guard to break the picket lines in Chicago. There was considerable violence, and the strike began to crumble. But this “success” sullied Cleveland’s political reputation, and the Democrat’s advisors told him he had to do something to win back working class support, which had put him in office. And so, in August 1894, he decreed there would be an annual national holiday called “Labor Day.”

On Saturday, Sept. 10, from 3 to 6 p.m., the East Side Freedom Library will host a Labor Solidarity Picnic on our beautiful front lawn. Come learn other labor history stories that you and your families might not know. And come hear about current labor struggles, from union organizing at Starbucks, Amazon and Half Price Books to the struggles of railroad workers nurses, nurses and other health care workers, and of Building Trades workers today.

Yes, there is history to learn, and there is history to be made. Join us!

– Peter Rachleff is co-executive director of the East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul.

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Photos: Teamster horses bring union’s history to life in Blaine

September 23, 2021 by

Before they were driving 18-wheelers and UPS trucks, Teamsters drove horses. The union’s name refers to the people who drove a team of horses pulling a wagon, and the Teamsters’ logo still features two horses, Thunder and Lightning, to this day.

It’s a history lesson Teamsters Local 120 brought to life Aug. 25 at its union hall in Blaine, where Thunder and Lightning (or their descendants, anyway) made a guest appearance, offering wagon rides to members and their families.

Shawn Gordon, a member of Teamsters Local 41 from Kansas City, Mo., travels across the country with Thunder and Lightning as part of his nonprofit organization, dedicated to raising awareness of the Teamsters’ early history.

Gordon’s nonprofit has retrofitted an old freight wagon with benches that are perfect for leisurely rides, and he sits in the driver’s seat, dressed like a Teamster might have around the time of the union’s founding in 1903.

“The wagon you’re in is a little fancier than they would’ve used back then, but it’s a freight wagon,” Gordon told riders in Blaine. “And this is the original way people got their goods.

“We’re trying to preserve that, to keep our heritage alive and remember where we came from as a union. At the same time, we want to try and get younger people engaged again, to use the past to reflect our future.”

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Northwest Airlines museum gets parting gift from union retirees

May 5, 2021 by

Mary Sansom presents Bruce Kitt with a check for the airline retirees club’s remaining funds, made out to the Northwest Airlines History Center.

Local airline retirees placed their social club into retirement last month, but not before donating the organization’s remaining funds to a museum preserving of the history of Minneapolis-St. Paul’s longtime union carrier, Northwest Airlines.

Founded in 1976, the Machinists Airline Local 1833 Retired Members Social Club met for the final time April 15 in Bloomington. As the last order of business before gaveling into permanent adjournment, Club President Mary Sansom presented Bruce Kitt, executive director of the Northwest Airlines History Center, with a check made out to the Twin Cities museum.

“Recognizing the history that we’ve all shared and have all been a part of, literally, this is bittersweet,” Kitt told some 30 club members gathered for the final meeting. “But on behalf of the museum, I do thank each and every one of you because each and every one of you are represented in this museum – your history, your names, your faces and your accomplishments.”

The social club, affiliated with Machinists Local Lodge 1833, made the difficult decision to fold as a result of dwindling participation, Sansom said.

The local represents airline workers based at MSP, once a hub of operations for heavily unionized Northwest. But Northwest folded into non-union Delta Air Lines as part of a merger announced in 2008, and Local Lodge 1833’s membership cratered.

“Our ability and resources to enlist new members for the retiree club was gone,” Sansom said. “With our current members growing older, unable to move around as easily as they used to or moving out of state to a warmer climate or passing away, the membership has steadily been going down.

“The remaining members decided it was time to ‘retire’ the social club.”

Local Lodge 1833’s membership peaked at over 10,000 airline workers and retirees in 1988, two years after Northwest merged with Republic Airlines. Most members were Northwest employees, as the airline was headquartered in Eagan.

Local Lodge 1833 represented mechanics, stock clerks, cleaners, flight-kitchen workers, equipment-service and plant-protection workers, and the merger with Republic brought bus drivers, reservation and ticket agents and clerical and office workers into the fold. (Northwest mechanics voted to leave the Machinists union in 2000.)

After their final order of business – transferring their accounts to the museum – retirees took the opportunity to share memories of working at “the Red Tail,” as Northwest was familiarly known in the airline industry.

But it doesn’t have to be the last opportunity for reflection, Kitt said, noting that the Northwest Airlines History Center museum is open to visitors four days a week at the Crowne Plaza Aire MSP Hotel in Bloomington.

“I like to say it’s the only place you can still get a Red Tail fix that Delta can’t touch,” Kitt said.

About the history center 

The Northwest Airlines History Center is dedicated to preserving and presenting the history of all 12 airlines that are part of Northwest’s corporate legacy. Learn more at northwestairlineshistory.org.

The museum is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday on the third floor of the Crone Plaza Aire MSP hotel, 3 Appletree Square, Bloomington. Admission is free.

The history center also maintains a vast archive of Northwest Airlines history at Flying Cloud Airport in Eden Prairie. Access is by appointment only.

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From the Eight-Hour Day to the $15 Minimum Wage: A conversation between past and present

March 24, 2021 by

By Peter Rachleff and Kristi Wright, East Side Freedom Library

The study of labor history, while rooted in the past, has everything to do with how we envision the future – and how we chart a path to get there. At the East Side Freedom Library, we think that placing the movement for the eight-hour day in conversation with the movement for a $15 minimum wage can help us learn how to shape our future.

Take a trip into labor history with us. At the time of the American Revolution, one journeyman shoemaker out of every two could expect to become a self-employed master shoemaker. Decades of a division of labor and the invention of machines brought a very different world of work into being. By the Civil War, only one journeyman out of twelve became a self-employed master shoemaker. His 11 peers looked forward to a lifetime of wage labor. Facing that future, hours of work and days off altogether became serious issues for individual workers and the unions they organized.

As artisan work structures evolved into structures of permanent wage labor, unions not only bargained over the length of the working day, but also participated in social and political movements seeking to pass laws regulating hours and schedules. The more that individual employers insisted that granting “their” workers shorter hours would leave them at a competitive disadvantage, the more that unions sought city, state and even federal legislation.

The call for “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will” became the rallying cry for the American labor movement after the Civil War, even as most workers put in 10-, 11- and 12-hour days. Skilled building trades workers, railroad workers, miners and factory workers came together with one vision and one voice. In 1886, the country’s two major labor organizations, the Knights of Labor and the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions joined together to call for a nationwide general strike. Their members pledged to walk out on May 1 and not to return to work until every worker was offered a standard eight-hour day.

At the center of the movement was the McCormick Harvester Works in Chicago, the largest factory in the U.S., with a workforce that included unskilled as well as skilled workers, and immigrants and workers of color alongside native-born whites. When police broke up a rally at the factory gates on May 4, there was violence and bloodshed. Strike leaders were arrested; some would be tried for murder and executed. The movement came to a halt for a generation, but workers and their unions revived the movement for an eight-hour day, and, after yet more years of organizing and protesting, finally received it with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.

It had taken three generations to make the eight-hour day a reality. Many of you might well be thinking how elusive that reality has remained, from Amazon warehouse workers assigned mandatory overtime, to fast food workers assigned “clopen” shifts, closing at night and opening the next morning. But the struggle, especially in the extended periods when it had traction as a movement, enabled the labor movement to reach beyond the boundaries of formal unions and the procedures of collective bargaining, connect workplaces with communities, unite experienced union members with women and men new to labor organization, and bring workers of color and immigrants into conversations, relationships and solidarity with white men. It was also a fertile ground for workers to make art and music, and dream of a better way of life.

Fast food strikers and supporters rallied during a one-day strike in Minneapolis in 2015. (UA file photo)

It is frustrating that a parliamentary maneuver allowed Congress to avoid dealing head-on with the issue of a $15 minimum wage. But that it had to consider raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 suggests the power that this movement – and its core ideas – now manifest. The Fight for $15 began in 2012 when two hundred fast-food workers walked off the job to demand $15 an hour and union rights in New York City. Today, it is a global movement of fast-food workers, home health aides, childcare teachers, airport workers, adjunct professors, retail employees and other underpaid workers in over 300 cities on six continents. Unions are among this movement’s most important supporters and resources, but it also includes workers without union affiliations, members of worker centers, teenagers, seniors and immigrants with and without documentation, encompassing a diverse group of whites and people of color with men, women and individuals across the spectrums of sexual orientation and gender identity.

In its inclusive membership, its vision of broad and sweeping change, and its insistence that all workers should share in the wealth that they produce, we can recognize this movement’s kinship with the movement for the eight-hour day. Organizers of the Fight for $15 proclaim on their website:

“When we first took the streets, the skeptics called us dreamers. They said a $15 wage was ‘unwinnable.’ We didn’t listen. We organized and we fought for what we knew was right. We didn’t win these increases because we elected supportive politicians to office. We won because we made them support us…

“We’ve already won raises for 22 million people across the country – including 10 million who are on their way to $15 – all because workers came together and acted like a union.”

The workers rallying outside the McCormick Harvester Works on May 1, 1886, would have understood them perfectly. As we try to rebuild the U.S. labor movement in the third decade of the 21st century, in the wake of the pandemic and the killing of George Floyd, it is important that we hear this message, too.

– Peter Rachleff is the co-executive director of the East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul. Kristi Wright works with ESFL on developing the library’s relationships with the labor movement. Learn more at eastsidefreedomlibrary.org. 

Filed Under: Labor Voices Tagged With: , , , ,

March events: Expo to connect women with pathways into trades

March 1, 2021 by

Photo by Bre Ana Henry, an apprentice with Ironworkers Local 512.

Women in Construction Week runs from March 7 to 13, and local tradeswomen, in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry (DLI), will celebrate with a virtual event showcasing career opportunities available in the unionized trades.

The Women Building Success Info Expo is open to women statewide who are interested in learning more about construction careers. The free event will run from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. March 11, and participants can join by phone, mobile device or a computer with internet access.

The expo will begin with a panel discussion featuring representatives from the DLI, Apprenticeship Minnesota, Building Strong Communities and Women Building Success. Local tradeswomen will share their firsthand experiences with the earn-as-you-learn apprenticeship model and working in the construction industry.

After the panel, guests will connect individually with registered apprenticeship programs and event sponsors using interactive chat or video technology. They can even apply for an apprenticeship on the spot.

Registration is required. Find a link at metroregioninteractive.easyvirtualfair.com.

Labor Education Service rolls out spring courses

Enrollment is open for spring courses offered by the University of Minnesota’s Labor Education Service.

Offerings include “Basic Steward Training” and “Bargaining from Margin to Center,” as well as an abolitionist study group.

Registration is required. Click here to learn more.

History comes alive at the Freedom Library

The nonprofit, independent East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul is a hub of labor-history programming. To receive event notifications in your inbox, sign up for the newsletter.

Of note this month is a March 6 virtual discussion of Donna Haverty-Stacke’s book “The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist.” It’s part of the ESFL’s History Revealed series, a partnership with the Ramsey County Historical Society.

Additionally, the ESFL is connecting students working on National History Day projects with mentors. To line up a Zoom session, email info [at] eastsidefreedomlibrary [dot] org.

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More than a building, a building block on city’s East Side

May 8, 2020 by

By John Crea, Special to The Union Advocate 

In Greg Gaut’s “Reinventing the People’s Library,” we find a nicely woven story about a place, a people and a public space.  

The place is the east side of St. Paul, where an ancient river punched through the limestone bluffs, allowing easy access to the Mississippi River.  

The people are the Dakota tribes, who had for thousands of years taken advantage of the gentle terrain to set up camp, followed by wave after wave of immigrants, the first from Europe, then Africa and Latin America and Asia. These settlers were and still are a hearty blend of working-class families and the merchants who serve them.  

The public space is the East Side Freedom Library, a magnificent edifice on the corner of Greenbrier and Jessamine, near the busy intersection of Payne and Maryland. The building is a gem, one of over 1,600 public libraries Andrew Carnegie helped build in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was designed by the prolific St. Paul architect Charles Hausler, an impressive building in the beaux arts style, with classic lines and functional space. 

We learn from the author that public libraries, like public education, are relatively recent developments, and though not uniquely American, certainly instrumental to the rapid growth of this country.  

The St. Paul Public Library was firmly established downtown on Rice Park, and to encourage access to its materials set up branch libraries throughout the city, often sharing space with larger retail stores in the neighborhoods. These temporary branch outlets proved so popular that the library worked with the Carnegie foundation to get three permanent branches built. 

 One of those, the Arlington Hills Public Library, opened its doors in 1917. The book tells us how the Arlington library served as a valuable resource for almost 100 years, serving successive communities of skilled workers and laborers. 

In 2014, the St. Paul Public Library teamed up with the City of St. Paul to construct a new building on the corner of Payne and Maryland to house a community center and the Arlington Hills branch library. This left the classic Carnegie building open and available to be repurposed.  

Stepping up to take advantage of this opportunity were Peter Rachleff and Beth Cleary, two professors at Macalester College. These east-side residents have a goal of building bridges between the long-established communities in this area with the newest immigrants from southeast Asia, Latin America and east and west Africa.  

To this end, they signed a long-term lease with the City of St. Paul for the classic building on Greenbrier to house their own and their friends’ extensive personal libraries and cultural artwork from throughout the community. Rachleff and Cleary formally established East Side Freedom Library to provide the space and facilities for shared programs that support the mission of their new organization: “to contribute to the movement of social justice and equity by encouraging solidarity among working people.”  

The author, Greg Gaut, does not miss the rich irony of the very progressive East Side Freedom Library finding a home in a staid structure built on the backs of the laborers in the steel mills and coal mines of Carnegie’s empire. It would be wonderful to be able look ahead at the next 100 years of this library’s life to see how the ESFL is promoting solidarity among the vibrant tapestry of cultures that will then call St. Paul’s east side home. 

– John Crea is author of “Recalibrating the Labor Market: How to Have Your Cake and Time to Eat It Too.”  

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: , , ,

Lessons from labor history can inform our labor movement during COVID-19 crisis

May 4, 2020 by

The East Side Freedom Library, in more relaxed times. (submitted photo)

(Peter Rachleff, co-director of the East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul, wrote this essay for The Union Advocate’s May 2020 issue.)

COVID-19 is the biggest crisis of our lives, and workers are on the front lines. Large, profitable employers expect workers deemed “essential” — those in healthcare, grocery stores, food production, and shipping, among others — to risk their health and safety and that of their families, many for meager pay and benefits. Portions of the economy have shut down, leaving millions jobless with a threadbare social safety net. Where do we look for ideas about how to respond?

At the East Side Freedom Library, we believe that studying our past offers valuable lessons for the present. We collect resources and host programs which help us understand how workers developed organizations and strategies to confront the key challenges of their lives. The current situation has led us to reconsider the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934. Their dramatic story shows that the labor movement is strongest when unions boldly organize workers on the job and in the community around a shared vision of fairness and justice.

These strikes changed the course of history, transforming Minneapolis from a notorious anti-labor bastion into a “union town.” In the depths of the Depression and the depths of winter, a group of dedicated activists in the city’s coal yards bypassed the traditional strategy of organizing workers into separate unions depending on the work they did. They organized coal heavers, warehouse workers, truck drivers, and helpers into a single union. With the support of working people and families throughout the city, they won a brief strike in February 1934.

Their success inspired other Minneapolis workers to believe that if they organized together, if they practiced solidarity, and if they involved their families, they, too, could change their lives. Over the spring, activists and organizers built one industrial union of all workers involved in trucking. Five thousand joined. The union built a “Committee of 100,” a network of stewards and rank-and-filers to link workplaces. They organized an Unemployed Committee to advocate for those without work. They started a daily newspaper, The Organizer, to tell their story to the wider community. And they organized a Women’s Auxiliary, which ran a commissary and a soup kitchen.

These steps became critical in May, when, challenged by employers and the fiercely anti-union Citizens’ Alliance, the union struck. They needed all of these innovations to strengthen internal solidarity and gain the solidarity of the community. Their roving pickets challenged scab-driven trucks, and they engaged in physical battles with the local police. In two weeks, they had won many of their demands. When employers tried to undercut their agreements, the union called its members — now 10,000 — back on strike. They held firm for several weeks, and finally won secure contracts, significant raises, and work rules and working conditions that became the model for the industry nationwide.

The Teamsters’ story is instructive for our situation. Their strategy prioritized internal and external organization, linking workers and their families to the union, other unions, and the community. They practiced anti-racism and sought workers of color for membership and leadership roles. The local union’s new constitution even required that every meeting include a presentation on labor history.

No wonder we celebrate this event at the East Side Freedom Library. But the point is not just to celebrate history but to learn from it.

Labor’s crisis did not begin with COVID-19. For decades, employers have evaded labor protections through outsourcing and subcontracting. They have eroded wages and benefits, and through the legislatures and courts attacked the right to picket or have a union at all. This pandemic has laid bare just how far we have slid in terms of work rules, wages, health care, sick pay, and workplace protections. It has also revealed how “essential” workers are to the safety, security, and quality of life enjoyed by our community. Like when those coal yard workers went on strike, the contradictions are clear.

We founded the East Side Freedom Library in 2014 to share stories of the labor movement and to inspire solidarity among unions and with our diverse communities. We are proud to preserve and present our shared history. We have been inspired by recent actions taken by local educators and Amazon workers, and workers elsewhere as well as by the dedication and determination of nurses and healthcare workers to speak up for their rights and for the people who depend upon them. Informed by the lessons of the past, when we fight together, the future is ours to win.

– Peter Rachleff wishes to acknowledge the work of Kristi Wright in conceptualizing and writing this article. Wright was a union organizer among graduate employees at the U of M and is currently working with the library to expand and deepen relationships with labor.

Filed Under: Labor Voices Tagged With: , , , , ,
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