Public Employee Press

Book Review

"Unions for Beginners": a primer on working class history

Despite its title, David Cogswell's brief, richly illustrated introduction to unions and working class history is not just for beginners. It helps us all understand our current crisis in the context of broad historical trends by fast-forwarding through our history.

He begins with the frequently bloody class war that raged before World War II, when the Robber Barons of industry often used company and state police to suppress waves of labor unrest. John D. Rockefeller's private army and the Colorado National Guard slaughtered striking miners and women and children in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914, but labor had some victories like the 1912 "Bread and Roses" textile strike in Lawrence, Mass.

Cogswell offers short biographies of many of our working class heroes and sheroes, including Mother Jones, the fearless mine workers organizer; A. Philip Randolph, head of the Sleeping Car Porters union and organizer of the 1963 March on Washington; and Eugene V. Debs, Railroad union leader and presidential candidate of the Socialist Party.

He tells of the newly energized labor movement that responded to the Depression of the 1930s with new forms of militancy including industrial unions, sit-down and general strikes that unionized millions of workers, many previously considered unorganizable, and laid the basis for new social legislation that protected unions and fought poverty with unemployment insurance, Social Security and the minimum wage.

Labor's victories in this long period of class war created the basis of our present labor institutions, produced economic growth and relative labor peace for about 25 years after WW II and led to the 1960s civil rights movement, new anti-discrimination laws, Medicare, Medicaid, the War on Poverty and job safety legislation. The corporations organized a counterattack in the 1970s, busting unions and offshoring production, which led to the decline of unions, stagnant wages, growing income inequality and the recent "Great Recession," whose aftermath threatens to bring us back full circle to the age of the Robber Barons.

Cogswell wrote "Unions for Beginners" during the heady days of the Occupy movement, which sparked a new fight back against the power of the 1 percent who control the economy, erode good jobs and attack public workers' unions. Occupy stimulated new tactics, including coalitions of unions with community organizations and a renewed movement of low-wage workers.

The DC 37 Education Fund Library in Room 211 at the union (catalog at www.dc37library.org) has numerous books, DVDs and CDs that fill in details and amplify Cogswell's analysis, which hopefully will lead to further study, understanding and organizing.

— Ken Nash,
Education Fund Library