Morning Wire XX
[0] Today, the nation celebrates Labor Day, commemorating the contributions of the American worker throughout our country's history.
[1] In this special episode, we talk about the origins of Labor Day and the history of workers' unions, both the good and the bad.
[2] I'm Daily Wire, editor -in -chief John Bickley, with Georgia Howe.
[3] It's Monday, September 4th, and this is Morning Wire.
[4] As Americans take the day off to celebrate Labor Day and prepare for the start of fall, we talked to a number of labor experts on the history of the holiday and the role of worker unions in the modern day.
[5] Here with Moore's Daily Wire Senior Editor, Cabot Phillips.
[6] Cabot, everyone knows Labor Day is about workers, but there's quite a bit more to it, right?
[7] Yeah, that's right.
[8] So the day first gained traction during the 1800s at the height of the Industrial Revolution.
[9] workers frustrated with seven -day work weeks and 12 -hour shifts began to organize and protest for better conditions.
[10] They wanted sick days, health benefits, etc. As that movement gained traction, a number of states passed laws creating an official day to recognize the contributions of workers to the social and economic fabric of the country.
[11] But it wasn't until June 28, 1894, that Congress passed an act to officially make the first Monday in September an official holiday.
[12] For more on that, I spoke with Bruce Watson, an author who specializes in American history and has written a number of books on America's labor movement.
[13] He also runs an online magazine called The Attic.
[14] Labor uprisings and the labor movement organizing started as early as the first industrial workers in America.
[15] The mill girls that we all study in school, the sweet mill girls who came out of the farms of New Hampshire and worked in the textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, were actually the first strikers.
[16] They were satisfied at first, but then wages were cut.
[17] Conditions in the mills were horrible, and they waged the strike, which they called.
[18] called a turnout.
[19] That was way back in the 1820s and 30s.
[20] And so that's where the first labor uprisings and labor organizing began.
[21] Then nothing much happened until the mid -1870s or so when the nights of labor began to organize in other industries.
[22] And the movement really got going in the 1880s and 90s when the big steel mills came up in Pittsburgh and a number of textile mills were growing along the rivers of New England.
[23] And so by 1900, it was a fierce battle between labor and management, sometimes incredibly violent, sometimes incredibly peaceful, but I always found it incredibly inspiring the way ordinary Americans rose up, usually when their wages were cut.
[24] This wasn't about raises.
[25] This wasn't about health benefits.
[26] This was simply when wages were cut without any cut in hours, and they were often working 60 hours a week.
[27] And people walked out of the steel mills and mines and began striking.
[28] And certain unions, including the very radical and industrial workers of the world and the much more conservative American Federation of Labor, began to organize labor and by the 1920s, it was moving along pretty well.
[29] While the United States celebrates Labor Day in September, most of the world actually celebrates their own version of Labor Day, International Workers Day, on May 1st.
[30] The reason we don't use May 1st is because of its association with the Haymarket Affair.
[31] So back in 1886, a large group of industrial workers in Chicago went on strike the week of May 1st, calling for an eight -hour workday.
[32] The strike began peacefully but turned violent on May 4th when police attempted to break up the demonstration.
[33] Someone, we don't know who, from the pro -labor crowd, threw a dynamite bomb into the group of police, and gunfire soon erupted from both sides, resulting in eight deaths and dozens of injuries.
[34] That incident was a major blow at the time to the labor movement and led to a rise in anti -union sentiment around the country.
[35] Eight years later, when the day was finally recognized by Congress, organizers chose the first Monday in September as a means of distancing the movement from that Haymarket affair.
[36] But even after the holiday was officially recognized, progress among labor unions was still fairly slow.
[37] According to Watson, it wasn't until FDR took office that federal action was taken on a broader scale.
[38] Striking was technically illegal in all industries.
[39] There were no rights for collective bargaining.
[40] Minimum wage laws were passed but struck down by the Supreme Court.
[41] 40 -hour work weeks or shorter work weeks were passed again in Congress, but struck down by the Supreme Court.
[42] So labor was really spinning its wheels.
[43] until the New Deal.
[44] When a woman named Francis Perkins, who was the first female cabinet member and FDR's Secretary of Labor, worked with him to pass a number of labor laws, including the first minimum wage, including the first shorter work week, guaranteed overtime pay, and of course Social Security and other issues, that's when labor really began to take off and began to sort of have an equal footing in America.
[45] And then we saw a huge spike in labor activity, membership, and strikes in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.
[46] Now, it's worth noting.
[47] There are plenty of folks, especially some on the right, who feel more conflicted when it comes to celebrating Labor Day.
[48] While many people on both sides view private sector unions favorably and support legislation to protect workers, they note that many of the original organizers of Labor Day did have socialist ties and eventually pushed for New Deal measures like Social Security.
[49] One of those critics is Aaron With, who now heads the Freedom Foundation, a think tank combating public sector unions.
[50] Here's his take.
[51] Labor Day started as a good -intentioned holiday.
[52] I mean, it was an opportunity to celebrate workers and their contributions to building American infrastructure.
[53] And you look at the work that workers were doing back then, the work on the steel mills, the work in the coal mines, building the railroads.
[54] I mean, these were all things to be separated that we still obviously used today.
[55] So I think that Labor Day really started with good intentions, but I think it's been hijacked by unions.
[56] I think that they're now using it to pursue their own.
[57] agenda, especially in the private sector, but also in the public sector as well.
[58] As Witt sees it, labor unions were a useful tool for workers following the Industrial Revolution, but soon became more focused on partisan politics as the 20th century progressed.
[59] When unions started, you're talking about over 100 years ago, they started basically to help people band together to stop dying in the coal mines, to stop 70 -hour workweeks, to stop child labor.
[60] I mean, these were all good things that could and should be celebrated.
[61] by us.
[62] But today they've made it a place where they celebrate mediocrity.
[63] And what I mean by that is they're celebrating the fact that they're able to have workers show up to work, not perform to the highest standard yet still get compensated.
[64] And then they're also celebrating the fact that the highest performing employees are compensated at that medium level as well.
[65] On top of that, you have unions that are operating today that are literally bankrupting companies by striking by forcing collective bargaining agreements that companies simply can't afford.
[66] I think this was most obvious a few weeks ago when yellow, a hundred -year old trucking company, had to go bankrupt because of their labor negotiations with the union.
[67] It cost 30 ,000 people their jobs.
[68] While unions were initially created only for those in private sector jobs, starting in the 1930s, federal employees began to organize, creating the first public sector unions in America.
[69] Those unions soon became some of the largest and most influential in the country.
[70] According to With, that came at the detriment of taxpayers.
[71] So even FDR, who was obviously a leftist and a union sympathizer, certainly in the private sector, even he thought public sector unions wouldn't work because he understood that when you have a government union who's taking basically taxpayer money and then bargaining with the government with those dollars, there's always going to be an insidious.
[72] incentive mechanism.
[73] So what government unions have become today is they figured out a way to take dollars out of public employees' paychecks, teachers, for example, and they then funnel that money into leftist candidates that go into office and pursue their radical political agenda.
[74] And also, by the way, those are the people that they are negotiating with when it comes to getting these people their benefits.
[75] So when you put somebody in office, I'll give you a good example, Brandon Johnson, and the new mayor of Chicago, he had his campaign funded over 95 % by public employee unions.
[76] Now he's going to negotiate with these unions for public employees' compensation.
[77] The taxpayer is not being represented in this relationship.
[78] The taxpayer is going to get screwed in this relationship.
[79] And the people that are going to benefit are the union bosses because they're going to be able to get more union dues and give Brandon Johnson more money in the next election.
[80] Over the last few decades, those public sector unions have not only become a powerful force in the labor market, they've also, like we said earlier, had an immense impact on the nation's political landscape, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign efforts, the vast majority of which benefit Democrat candidates and causes.
[81] They're entirely political entities today.
[82] That is their first and foremost goal, and I think that was most prevalent when looking at the teachers' unions the past few years.
[83] They have completely overplayed their hand by shutting down, schools and masking our kids and all the other stuff that they did during COVID.
[84] But on top of that, we've seen their political agenda come out in a way that I don't really think we've seen before.
[85] We uncovered an internal document from the National Education Association in 2018.
[86] The three things that were on that agenda were critical race theory, sex ed, and defunding the police.
[87] For years later, in 2021, these became mainstream issues pushed by the teachers unions.
[88] And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
[89] We did another study a couple of years ago where in 2021, we looked at the National Education Association's finances and their budget and expenditures.
[90] We found out that 7 .5 % of their budget was spent on representational activity compared to over 50 % that was spent on lobbying, political gifts, and gifts to nonprofits.
[91] So when we talk about their agenda, it is entirely a political agenda representing their members as an afterthought to these guys.
[92] Now, this Labor Day comes at a time when union membership is actually an all -time low.
[93] Tell us about that decline and what's behind it.
[94] Yeah, you're right.
[95] Last year, just 10 .1 % of American workers belong to a union, while the job market added non -union workers at a considerably faster pace than their union counterparts.
[96] For context, one in five American workers were union members, as recently as 1983.
[97] So we're talking about a massive drop in the last few decades.
[98] I asked with about the dip, and he pointed to market forces, saying employers, are essentially being forced to offer employees more benefits and higher pay because of the tight labor market and that unions just aren't as necessary as they were.
[99] Frankly, Cabot, I think it's down to capitalism.
[100] I think that employers in particular are competing with each other to provide the best benefits for workers.
[101] And I think that became most prevalent during COVID as well.
[102] Working from home, that's become a big trend amongst employers.
[103] Flex time.
[104] I mean, even at the Freedom Foundation, you know, we're a nonprofit of 60 -something.
[105] employees, we got rid of our vacation policy last year just to continue to remain competitive.
[106] So I think that employers are doing a bunch of different things to make it more attractive to come and work for them because we're in a labor market right now where it's difficult to find employees, certainly difficult to find top tier employees.
[107] Now for his part, Watson attributes the decline to a crackdown from conservative lawmakers and the rise of overseas manufacturing.
[108] There have been a variety of factors.
[109] As we all know, the industrial heartland is suffered an enormous job loss when companies went overseas because there were no unions.
[110] And so there's always been a fear until quite recently when there have been more strikes, there's always been a fear that to strike was to risk losing not just your job, but see the whole factory go overseas.
[111] That's been a factor.
[112] There have been other things such as right -to -work laws in many states sign into law, and it means that you cannot compel anyone to join a union, which seems like a nice phrase, right to work.
[113] Everybody should have a right to work.
[114] but it also means it really guts the union support because if you can't get enough people to be in a union, you don't really have a union.
[115] And so that's been an issue that's been the fight against public sector unions, against unions in giant corporations like Walmart and Amazon, has been a key factor in the low union membership.
[116] No, it's worth noting labor unions are still widely popular across the U .S., despite the negative publicity they received during COVID lockdowns.
[117] A Gallup poll last year showed that 71 % of Americans approve of labor unions.
[118] That's actually the highest mark since 1965.
[119] At the same time, though, the vast majority of non -union workers in the same poll say they have no interest in joining a union.
[120] So while new membership may be on the decline, union popularity is still near its highest point in modern history on this Labor Day.
[121] Kevin, thanks so much for walking us through them.
[122] Anytime.
[123] That was Daily Wire senior editor, Cabot Phillips, and this has been a special Labor Day edition of Morning Wire.