Workers in the South and beyond striking against the intransigence of their bosses, hedge fund owners, and even their own union leaders

 

(Memorial to the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis)
 

 

Whether it’s the ongoing pandemic, rising frustrations within the rank-and-file of unions against not only corporate bosses but their own labor leaders, or both, workers are taking to the streets and going on strike across the country for better pay and working conditions.

 

Alabama miners strike as the company’s hedge fund owners reward execs

 

Mine workers have waged a six-month-long strike at two Warrior Met Coal mines in Brookwood, Alabama, near Tuscaloosa, as the mines’ hedge fund owners refused to restore the pay and health care cuts that were made several years ago in an effort to get the company back on sound financial ground.

 

A consortium of as many as 30 hedge funds took over the company in 2016 after its previous owner filed for bankruptcy. In classic hedge fund tradition, the new owners are insisting on up to 16-hour days and seven-days-a-week work schedules as the company enjoys new prosperity to the tune of $4 billion in revenues since the takeover. Company executives are lapping up as much as  $35,000 in bonuses as a result.

 

The company’s latest contract offer would only restore $1-an-hour of the $6 pay cut miners had accepted after the takeover.

 

“This company has prospered,” miner Dedrick Gardner told Steve Wishnia of Labor Notes. “We worked a whole year during the pandemic. The mine didn’t shut.”

 

Dana workers on one side, union and company bosses on the other

 

Wildcat strikes are taking place at the Dana Inc. auto parts company after workers in Paris, Tennessee, Louisville and Dry Ridge, Kentucky, Columbia, Missouri, and other plants across the country soundly rejected a contract offer that was negotiated by the United Auto Workers and United Steelworkers.

 

Despite low pay and 12-hour-per-day, 7-days-per-week, poor COVID-protection working conditions at Dana, union officials have thus far ignored workers’ rejection of the contract, instructing them to keep working.  The unions have okayed a number of pay-cutting concessions ever since Dana came out of bankruptcy 13 years ago.

 

Auto mechanics in Chicago defy their own strike-breaking union

 

In the spirit of the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike in 1968, one of the most famous of wildcat strikes in the country’s history, auto mechanics in the Chicago area are also on strike in defiance of their own union, the International Association of Machinists (IAM). They’re demanding higher pay for their low-tier members and better health care provisions.

 

The response from IAM leadership has been to encourage strikebreaking and isolation of the strikers. Union leaders want the workers to accept lower pay than what the strikers demand as necessary just to keep up with inflation.

 

In the 1968 strike in Memphis, Mayor Henry Loeb refused to even recognize the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) as a valid union representing the sanitation workers. The workers struck anyway, winning their work action ultimately but strike supporter Martin Luther King Jr. lost his life in the process.

 

A strike in Bourbon country

 

Over in Bourbon country, some 400 workers at Heaven Hill in Bardsdown, Kentucky, are also on strike after rejecting a contract offer by a wide margin. “During the pandemic and all that, the company has told us, we’ll remember you all during contract time,” local union leader Jerry Newton told Mike Elk of the Payday Report. “Well, contract planning is here. They have showed us no respect.”

 

Workers say their wages are significantly lower than those at other whiskey-making companies and that they’re now being asked to work weekends as well as during the week.

 

Heaven Hill makes Evan Williams and other well-known whiskeys. Whiskey sales have risen since the onset of the pandemic even as restaurants and bars have experienced declining revenues.

A Labor Day look at the intersection of labor and religion over the course of labor movement history

(To the left, Harper magazine's depiction of the violence that broke out on Haymarket Square in Chicago in May 1886 when police confronted workers demanding an 8-hour workday)
 

My friend and relative the Reverend Gail Tapscott, an old radical like me, invited me to speak to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Oxford, Mississippi, today (Sunday, Sept. 5, 2021) about "Labor and Religion" to mark the nation's observation of "Labor Day" on Monday, September 6.   Below are my prepared remarks, which I'm leaving in all caps. That's the way I typed it to ease pressure on these old eyes! I thought I'd share my "sermon" with my readers at Labor South. By the way, I grew up in the Pentecostal Church but joined the Catholic Church in 1989.

THANK YOU, REVEREND GAIL. IT IS A PLEASURE TO BE HERE.

 

YOU KNOW WE SHOULD BE CELEBRATING LABOR DAY ON MAY 1, LIKE MOST OF THE REST OF THE WORLD, BUT WE DON’T.

 

KNOW WHY? PRESIDENT GROVER CLEVELAND AND THE POLITICAL/BUSINESS LEADERSHIP DIDN’T WANT AMERICAN WORKERS CELEBRATING IN SOLIDARITY WITH WORKERS AROUND THE WORLD. THAT’S S WHY HE SETTLED ON THE FIRST MONDAY IN SEPTEMBER. NOW BANKERS AND CEOS CAN ALSO CELEBRATE LABOR DAY. IT ALL GOT STARTED WITH THE PROTESTS FOR THE 8-HOUR WORKDAY, SOMETHING THAT LED TO THE HAYMARKET SQUARE PROTESTS IN MAY 1886, A DECISIVE DAY IN U.S. LABOR HISTORY.

 

BUT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT LABOR AND RELIGION. I HAVE TO GO BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT.

 

SIRACH 34:22 > “HE SHEDS BLOOD WHO DENIES THE LABORER HIS WAGES

 

MALACHI 3:5 > “I WILL BE SWIFT TO BEAR WITNESS AGAINST THOSE WHO DEFRAUD THE HIRED MAN OF HIS WAGES.”

 

AND THE NEW TESTAMENT:

 

JAMES 5:1 > “THE WAGES YOU WITHHELD FROM THE WORKERS WHO HARVESTED YOUR FIELDS, (WHO ARE) CRYING ALOUD, AND THEIR CRIES ARE BEING HEARD BY THE LORD.”

 

I’LL LOOK MOST CLOSELY AT OUR JUDEO-CHRISTIAN HERITAGE TODAY, BUT I COULD ALSO LOOK TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD AT ZEN BUDDHISM, THE BUDDHIST MONKS WHO PROTESTED INJUSTICE IN VIETNAM IN THE 1960S AND IN MYANMAR IN THE 1990S AND LATER. THE BUDDHIST SCHOLAR D.T. SUZUKI NOTED THE POVERTY OF THE BUDDHIST MONK WITH HIS “ONE DRESS AND ONE BOWL, UNDER A TREE AND ON A STONE,” AND THEN IN THE WORLD “THE DESIRE TO POSSESS, ONE OF THE WORST PASSIONS, WHAT CAUSES SO MUCH MISERY IN THE WORLD. … AS POWER IS DESIRED,” HE WROTE, “THE STRONG ALWAYS TYRANNIZE OVER THE WEAK; AS WEALTH IS COVETED, THE RICH AND THE POOR ARE ALWAYS CROSSING SWORDS OF BITTER EMNITY.”

 

(To the right, Pope Leo XIII)

 

WE SEE THE RISE OF THE MODERN LABOR MOVEMENT PARALLEL THE GROWTH OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AROUND THE WORLD AND IN THIS COUNTRY IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE CIVIL WAR WITH THE ELIMINATION OF SLAVE LABOR IN THE SOUTH. THE RISE OF FACTORIES AND ACCOMPANYING EXPLOITATION OF WORKERS LED TO KARL MARX AND FRIEDRICH ENGELS AND REVOLUTIONS ACROSS EUROPE IN THE MID-1800S. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH FELT COMPELLED TO RESPOND TO THESE CHALLENGES. THUS POPE LEO XIII AND HIS ENCYCLICAL LETTER “RERUM NOVARUM” (“THE CONDITION OF LABOR”) IN 1891. HERE HE DEFENDS THE RIGHT TO PRIVATE PROPERTY. HE’S NO MARXIST THIS POPE. HOWEVER, HE ALSO DEFENDS THE RIGHTS OF THE WORKER TO A FAIR WAGE AND TO BE ABLE TO JOIN UNIONS WITHOUT FEAR.

 

(Karl Marx)
 

THE LETTER BECAME ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS IN CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING, ONE THAT ASPIRED TO REFLECT THE TRUE TEACHINGS ON SOCIAL JUSTICE OF JESUS CHRIST. IN THE WAKE OF THIS LETTER, YOU’LL SEE WORKER PRIESTS IN FRANCE, LABOR PRIESTS IN THE UNITED STATES, AND DECADES LATER, CATHOLIC PRIESTS WORKING WITH THE LEADERS OF THE SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT IN POLAND. THE NUNS WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR THE POOR AND MARGINALIZED IN EL SALVADOR. EVEN THOUGH THE CHURCH LEADERSHIP TO ITS SHAME OFTEN SIDED WITH THE POWERFUL, THE CAPITALISTS, THE ESTABLISHMENT, SOMETHING THAT HAS GONE ON SINCE ROMAN EMPORER CONSTANTINE IN THE 4^TH CENTURY LEGALIZED INSTEAD OF CONDEMNED CHRISTIANITY.

 

(A garment industry sweatshop in 1890)

 

IN THE LAST YEARS OF THE 19^TH CENTURY AND FIRST DECADES OF THE 20^TH, JEWISH IMMIGRANTS ESCAPING THE POGROMS IN RUSSIA AND EASTERN EUROPE POURED ONTO ELLIS ISLAND IN NYC AND POPULATED THE GHETTOS OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE, BRINGING SOCIALIST IDEAS WITH THEM AS THEY WENT TO WORK IN THE SWEAT SHOPS OF THE GARMENT INDUSTRY.

 

THE RABBIS OFTEN SIDED WITH THE FACTORY OWNERS, BUT NOT ALWAYS. THERE WERE RABBLE ROUSERS LIKE NATHAN DAVIDOWSKY IN YIDDISH WRITER SHOLEM ASCH’S NOVEL EAST RIVER WHO TOLD THE CROWDS THINGS LIKE THIS: “WHEREVER GOD’S WORD HAS COME TO US—THROUGH MOSES OR THE PROPHETS, OR THROUGH JESUS AND THE APOSTLES—GOD HAS CHAMPIONED THE OPPRESSED AGAINST THE OPPRESSORS. GOD IS ALWAYS ON THE SIDE OF THE WORKERS AND AGAINST THOSE WHO EXPLOIT THEM.”

 

IN MY OWN RESEARCH I’VE FOCUSED ON MY NATIVE SOUTH, AND YOU SEE AND LABOR AND RELIGION COME TOGETHER IN THE COTTON MILLS OF THE CAROLINAS AND IN THE COTTON FIELDS OF THE ARKANSAS DELTA IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20^TH CENTURY. POOR FARMERS ESCAPING THEIR DEAD FARMS FOUND THEMSELVES DOING THE SO-CALLED “STRETCH-OUT” IN THE NEW FACTORIES, WHERE THE BOSSES DEMANDED INHUMAN LEVELS OF PRODUCTION ON THEIR NEW MACHINES.

 

LABOR LEADERS SENT PEOPLE LIKE LUCY RANDOLPH MASON, DAUGHTER OF AN EPISCOPALIAN MINISTER, ARISTOCRATIC RELATIVE OF ROBERT E. LEE, ACROSS THE SOUTH TO ORGANIZE THOSE WORKERS. DEEPLY RELIGIOUS WITH A FAITH THAT SOCIAL JUSTICE LAY AT THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY, MASON FOUND HER STRONGEST OPPOSITION OFTEN IN THE LOCAL CLERGY WITH THEIR CALVINIST BELIEF IN AN ORDER THAT MADE SOME PEOPLE MASTERS AND OTHERS SERVANTS.

 

HERE IS THE STORY OF MASON'S ENCOUNTER WITH "PREACHER JONES" FROM HER AUTOBIOGRAPHY TO WIN THESE RIGHTS: 

"THE PREACHER DROPPED HIS BULL-LIKE HEAD AND HUNCHING FORWARD SAID TO ME: `YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN NO KIND OF RELIGION--YOU BELIEVE IN A SOCIAL RELIGION AND THAT AIN'T CHRISTIANITY.'

"I, TOO, LEANED FORWARD AND ASKED EARNESTLY, BUT POLITELY: `THEN YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS? ... YOU CAN'T BELIEVE IN WHAT JESUS TAUGHT IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A SOCIAL RELIGION. HIS WHOLE LIFE, HIS TEACHINGS, AND HIS DEATH WERE ALL PART OF A GREAT SOCIAL RELIGION. JESUS SAID THE COMMANDMENT TO LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF WAS SECOND ONLY TO THE COMMANDMENT TO LOVE GOD WITH ALL ONE'S HEART, MIND, AND SOUL.'"

 

WORKING WITH THE COAL MINERS IN WHAT SHE CALLED “MEDIEVAL WEST VIRGINIA” WAS ANOTHER POWERFUL AND FIERY WOMAN OF LABOR, MARY HARRIS JONES, BETTER KNOWN AS MOTHER JONES. MOTHER JONES WOULDN’T HAVE HAD MUCH PATIENCE WITH PREACHER JONES. FAMOUS FOR HER MOTTO “PRAY FOR THE DEAD AND FIGHT LIKE HELL FOR THE LIVING,” MOTHER JONES ALSO SAID THIS: “I WOULD FIGHT GOD ALMIGHTY HIMSELF IF HE DIDN’T PLAY SQUARE WITH ME.”

 

(Highlander historical marker)

 

IN THE 1930S YOU SAW THE RISE OF LABOR AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS LIKE HIGHLANDER IN EAST TENNESSEE, A LABOR SCHOOL AND TRAINING CAMP ORGANIZED BY SEMINARIAN MYLES HORTON AND THEOLOGY STUDENT DON WEST. ROSA PARKS WOULD BE AMONG ITS FUTURE STUDENTS.

 

IN TYRONZA, ARKANSAS, YOU SAW THE RISE OF THE SOUTHERN TENANT FARMERS UNION, FOUNDED BY SHARECROPPER-TURNED SOCIALIST H.L. MITCHELL AND GAS STATION OPERATOR CLAY EAST. THE SCHOLAR ELIZABETH ANNE PAYNE, WHOM SOME OF YOU KNOW AND WHO MAY BE OUT THERE LISTENING, WROTE ELOQUENTLY ABOUT THE “QUASI-RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT” THAT THE STFU WAS EVEN AS THE COMMIES TRIED TO MOVE IN AND TAKE OVER, HOW THEIR MEETINGS WERE LIKE RELIGIOUS REVIVALS WITH FIERY SERMONS AND HEARTFELT HYMNS SUNG.

 

(A call to strike by the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in the 1930s)

 

LABOR WRITER STANLEY ARONOWITZ, A GREAT SOUL WHO RECENTLY PASSED AWAY, HAS COMPARED THE EARLY PENTECOSTALISM OF RURAL SOUTHERNERS WITH THE CATHOLICISM OF SICILIAN AND POLISH IMMIGRANTS, HOW PENTACOSTALISTS, THOSE USUALLY POOR AND POWERLESS HOLY ROLLERS, LOOKED TO AN OLD TESTAMENT GOD WHO HAD NO PATIENCE WITH RUTHLESS TYRANTS WHO SUBJUGATED GOD’S PEOPLE.

 

OF COURSE, SOME OF TODAY’S PENTACOSTALIST PREACHERS, ESPECIALLY THOSE ON TELEVISION, AREN’T SO POOR ANY MORE, AND THEY TEND TO SIDE WITH THE TYRANTS. MANY OF THE GRANDCHILDREN OF CATHOLIC IMMIGRANTS, TOO, HAVE FORGOTTEN THEIR ROOTS.

 

 

(Pentecostal preacher)

 

 

FATHER CHARLES OWN RICE OF PITTSBURGH, PA., ONE OF THE GREATEST OF THE LABOR PRIESTS, CALLED THE PHENOMENON OF CATHOLIC REPUBLICANS “ANOTHER CROSS TO BEAR IN MY OLD AGE.”

 

THE WRITER AND FOUNDER OF THE CATHOLIC WORKER DOROTHY DAY IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE WRITERS AND TO ME A KIND OF HERO. SHE DEDICATED HER LIFE TO HER FAITH AND HER WORK WITH THE POOR AND THE WORKING CLASS. SHE WORKED WITH UNIONS BUT SHE ALSO SAID THEY COULD BE BAD AS WELL. SHE COULD BE A SHARP CRITIC OF UNIONS THAT BECOME SELF-ABSORBED AND SELFISH AND DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD AS THEY BECOME MORE SELF-INTERESTED THAN DEVOTED TO THE WORKING MAN AND WOMAN. YET HER SOLIDARITY WITH THE WORKER NEVER WAVERED.

 

(Dorothy Day)

 

OF COURSE, THERE IS ATHEISTIC COMMUNISM, SHE SAID, BUT, AND THERE’S ALSO ATHEISTIC CAPITALISM THAT TURNS GREED, POSSESSION AND ACCUMULATION INTO GODS. AND HER WORDS: “WHAT IS WORST OF ALL IS USING GOD AND RELIGION TO BOLSTER UP ONE’S OWN GREED, OUR OWN ATTACHMENT TO PROPERTY, AND PUTTING GOD AND COUNTRY ON AN EQUALITY.”

 

THIS NATION’S LABOR MOVEMENT ONCE WAS THE PREMIER SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT IN THE COUNTRY. AS IT FADED AND BECAME MORE INWARD LOOKING, THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT TOOK HOLD.

 

IN MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. WE SEE THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT JOIN WITH THE IDEALS OF THE OLD LABOR MOVEMENT WHEN HE CAME TO MEMPHIS TO STAND WITH THE STRIKING SANITATION WORKERS. IT COST HIM HIS LIFE.

(To the right, Martin Luther King Jr.)

 

THERE ARE THOSE CARRYING ON THAT LEGACY TODAY. THE SOUTHERN FAITH, LABOR AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION IS AN EXAMPLE. THE FARM LABOR ORGANIZING COMMITTEE’S FIGHT FOR IMMIGRANT WORKERS IS FUELED BY THE RELIGIOUS FAITH OF ITS FOUNDER, BALDEMAR VELASQUEZ, AN ORDAINED MINISTER AND EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN. WHO ONCE LOOKED AT RELIGION AS A “ANGLO TRICK”. HERE IN MISSISSIPPI, FATHER JEREMY TOBIN WAS A CHAMPION OF THE UAW ORGANIZING EFFORT AT THE NISSAN PLANT IN CANTON.

 

SO RELIGION AND WORKERS’ RIGHTS GO HAND IN HAND, AND THEY HAVE FOR A LONG TIME AND STILL DO. KARL MARX MAY NOT LIKE IT, AND DONALD TRUMP AND MITCH MCCONNELL MAY NOT EITHER, BUT THEY’LL JUST HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT.

A Rolling Stones fan says goodbye to Charlie Watts, remembers six decades of fandom and encounters, including winning an argument circa 1965 that they would outlast the Dave Clark Five!

Presenting in the accompanying photo yours truly’s Rolling Stones creds.

 

I loved this group before I even heard them. As a young teenager I saw a magazine article headlined “Would You Let Your Daughter Date A Rolling Stone?”, and that got me Rolling, then I heard “Not Fade Away” on the radio and there was no turning back.

 

Charlie Watts’ recent death at 80 is like a personal loss. A great drummer who didn’t like drum solos or the spotlight, jazz man as well as rock ‘n’ roll legend. I had just bought two of his jazz CDs—“Long Ago & Far Away” and “Warm & Tender”—when I heard about his passing. Love you, Charlie.

 

I’ve seen them three times, including in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1965–see my $3 ticket stub near bottom right of the photo. Brian Jones was still with them then. “Get Off My Cloud” was their latest hit at the time.

 

Met Bill Wyman when he came to my town of Oxford, Mississippi, in 2001 to push his blues book, Bill Wyman’s Blues Odyssey, and tightened my lip a tiny bit when the notorious lecher looked at some length at my beautiful daughter Rachel and said, “I’ve always heard the Ole Miss girls are very pretty.”

 

I once made eye contact with Mick Jagger when he passed by me at the much-respected Lindberg Music Store in Munich, Germany, in circa 1974, where I was working and he was shopping. I didn’t know what to say so I just let him pass by. I had been working upstairs in the store’s warehouse/storage section when my German-born sister Evi, a saleswoman downstairs, came up and said, “Joe, have you ever heard of Mike Jagger?” I said, “Do you mean Mick Jagger?” She nodded. I rushed down, and there he was!

 

Lindberg was a store famous in Munich for its famous customers. During my four-year stint there—I doubled as a student at the University of Munich—I saw jazzmen Oscar Peterson and Count Basie, French chanson singer Georges Moustaki (almost ran him down as I was dumping trash and didn’t see him on the other side of the big trashbox!), King Hussein of Jordan, orchestra conductor Herbert von Karajan, and many others walk through Lindberg’s doors.

 

None made the impression that Mick Jagger did, however!

 

I loved the Beatles, but the Stones were all about grit and rebellion, working class guys who played the blues with a vengeance. Mick’s maracas, and Brian’s harmonica, Bill’s electric base held upright like a shield, Keith like a whirling dervish knees bent and pointing his guitar like the Rifleman’s sawed-off shotgun, and then Charlie, cool, calm, and collected behind it all, laying down the beat that held it all together.

 

They rocked & rolled hopping country blues like “I Just Want To Make Love To You”, “Little By Little”, and “It’s All Over Now”, Chuck Berry tunes like “Around And Around” and “You Can’t Catch Me”, preached rock ‘n’ roll gospel with Solomon Burke’s “Everybody Loves Somebody”, and rumbled ‘n’ rolled with Bo Diddley’s “Mona”. They made those minor chords cry in songs like “Empty Heart”.

 

Years later they sang revolution in “Street Fighting Man” and made “Paint It Black” the unofficial score to the Vietnam War. Then showed the Bee Gees and the rest of  that crowd how to really disco with “Miss You”.

 

The music in their more recent CDs like “Rainfalldown” and “Blue and Lonesome” are excellent , but no one buys CDs any more.

 

Just this past year, my filmmaker buddy Tom Thurman came for a visit from his home in Lexington, Kentucky. As I was taking him back to the airport in Memphis, he asked me to take him to see a good friend of his in Memphis for a short visit. Lo and behold, that friend was the great music writer Stanley Booth, who wrote what many consider to be the definitive book about the Rolling Stones, True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, back in 1984. The long-haired scribe lives in a modest home with the walls lined with music, books, posters, paintings, the artifacts of a life devoted to art. He signed my copy of his book. 

 

As a young teenager in Sanford, North Carolina, in the early-to-mid 1960s, I defended the Rolling Stones against all attacks. A good buddy of mine once insisted the Dave Clark Five would be around long after the Stones were gone and forgotten. I’d like to pick up on that conversation today!