Collective Bargaining Quotes
Ford was then 74 years old and had become a very different man than in his youth when he was the hero of labor. He was very paranoid at this time. He even thought that financiers were actually backing the labor unions because their purpose was to go to war against Hitler who Ford greatly admired and supported. See {642379}. He claimed that the way they would do it is to fund the labor unions so most workers would join unions. This he thought would eliminate competition and lower workers’ wages. When workers’ wages were pushed low enough, the workers would demand American entry into the war to create government spending on armaments and a labor shortage to drive wages up again. There was not a single financier who was actually paying or lending any money to labor unions, and most industrialists other than Ford complained that labor unions would always demand higher wages. Ford’s son Edsel was the chief operating officer of Ford Motor Company, and did his best to work around his father to keep the company healthy and deal with a terrible labor relations problem his father caused.
Shanker was particularly honest and candid. Of the record, many politicians say the same think about their representing the interests of schoolchildren when the children are given the right to vote. Despite Shanker’s interest in representing his teachers, his policies and the UFT’s practices put much emphasis on student achievement as this is a goal of almost all teachers. The conflict with teachers are almost always with the politicians and school administrators who have their vested interests to protect and for whom the teachers make good scapegoats.
The then Vice President was accosted on the train by southerners who believed that he was on his way to his home state of Tennessee to persuade the legislature not to secede from the union. Amid cries to hang him and after he was punched by one of the mob, ex-Senator Wigfall—the man who had received the surrender sword at Sumter, who was also on the train, persuaded the crowd to hear Johnson out. Johnson thus began his speech which was potentially for his life, but never wavered from his view that secession was a mistake. Most of the crowd calmed down and as the train pulled out, they let him go though there were still a few shouts for “hanging.” There was no secret service protection for the President or vice President at the outbreak of the Civil War. Pinkerton had organized some informal protection for the President and thwarted some plots, but it was the Vice President who was attacked first. And there was not sufficient protection to prevent Lincoln’s assassination.
At the time, industrialists could not even conceive of the notion of negotiating over wages must less collective bargaining.
In 1902 there was a major coal and railroad labor crisis. The owners and operators refused to negotiate or bargain with labor: This quotation is very famous because it is an iconic picture of the views and attitudes of the large industiralists at the turn of the 20th Century. More than opposing labor unions, they actually believed that God had selected them to run the economic and business affairs of the country if not the world. It was their Christian values and paternalism that the workers should look to in order to determine the rights and priviliges of the working man or woman. This upper class attitude was one of the major reasons that class warfare broke into the open. Ironically, there was not much difference between the attidudes of the industiral leaders and the notions of fudalism.
He did previous research on the operators and their most visible factors of great wealth.
In 1892 President Harrison and the Republicans were trying to win a second term and were embarrassed by a bloody strike and riot at the Homestead steel works. Frick, the Homestead General Manager, was visited by a Republican emissary suggesting that Frick recognize the union and reduce the public embarrassment.. The Republicans lost to Grover Cleveland and the Democrats.
This quotation was reprinted and widely distributed by the CIO in its 1936 organizing drive of the Ford Motor Company
