While Martin Luther King junior was leading the charge in the South, one Californian woman was fighting on the front line for workers’ rights … She might well be the most vocal activist you’ve never heard of. Dolores, news bulletin, 2017
‘But when it came time then to make it a union, the CSO decided not to support us.’ ibid. Dolores
‘The feudal wage slavery of agro-business is just an extension of the attitude that has existed in the country.’ ibid. activist
1962: ‘We had 1,000 members. We had benefits. We had a life insurance plan. We had an office. We started a credit union.’ ibid. Dolores
‘There was so much violence against the Filipinos.’ ibid.
‘Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez felt it was possible to organise farm workers when no-one believed that that was possible.’ ibid. Angela Davis
‘It was total government interference. So this was very clearly not only a battle against the growers, it was a battle against the government and their support of the growers.’ ibid. Angela Davis
I need 200 teachers … I need a full picket … Get me 200 bodies. Call the Teamsters. Maybe they can help us. We’ll give them glasses is we have to. House of Cards US s1e5: Chapter 5, teachers’ union dude, Netflix 2013
In the summer of 1917, World War I was raging and the Queen of the Copper camps, Bisbee, Arizona, was crucial to the war effort. Copper was essential for munitions, and the mining companies were making record profits.
The miners, many of them immigrants, grew tired of the unsafe working conditions, imbalance of power and the discrimination they faced in the camp.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) seized upon this opportunity and came to Bisbee, to radicalize the workers and help cripple the war effort.
The IWW called a strike and the townspeople were forced to choose between the strikers and the mining companies.
Then on July 12 1917 a posse of two thousand men, led by Sheriff Harry Wheeler, rounded up the strikers at gunpoint, threw them onto cattle cars and shipped them to the barren desert of New Mexico, leaving them to die.
This event came to be known as the Bisbee Deportation. Bisbee ’17, 2018, captions
Thank you for riding the deportation express. ibid. coach tour
The Bisbee deportations seemed to disappear from the town’s history. The story was rarely told or mentioned. ibid.
December 23 2008: When the GM plant closed in Dayton, Ohio, over 10,000 local jobs were lost. In 2010 Chinese factories began ramping up investment in US manufacturing, re-opening shuttered American factories. American Factory, Netflix 2019
What we’re doing is melding two cultures together … Plenty of opportunities. ibid. company presenter
Audience question: Is this a union shop?
Presenter: We are not. It is our desire to not be. ibid.
They’re pretty slow. They have fat fingers. We keep training them over and over. ibid. supervisor to chairman
We don’t want to see the union developing here … If a union comes, I’m shutting down. ibid. chairman
The conditions are not favourable. Doing the same thing over and over again. That wears on you. Body, mind and the soul – is sometimes you think, Why am I doing this? You think about whether you have the stamina and the will to do this type of job. ibid. worker
American workers are not efficient and output is low. ibid. Chinese supervisor
There have been eleven safety complaints filed against Fuyao. ibid. television news
At least 3,000 people have either come and gone: either fired or quit. ibid. worker
Man, they treat these people like shit in here. ibid. pro-union dude
Fuyao paid LRI over $1 million to keep workers from organizing a union. ibid. caption
Since the 1970s, the union avoidance industry has grown steadily as average wages and union membership have declined. ibid.
Recently, we fired a lot of union supporters. ibid. supervisor to chairman
Mrs Thatcher came to power on a promise to middle England. But she saw one big obstacle in the way … How she dismantled it: the cunning, the ruthlessness as she weaponised the police. And the killer instinct … Thatcher vs the Miners. Mrs Thatcher v The Miners: The Battle for Britain, Channel 5 2021
Thatcher watched on as Ted Heath made a fatal mistake. Heath called an election on the question, Who runs Britain, the Tory government or the Miners? Heath lost. ibid.
‘Scargill and Thatcher deserved each other; absolutely no-one else deserved either of them.’ ibid. Neil Kinnock
Spurred on by his first brush with Thatcher, Scargill demanded a pay rise for his miners towards the end of 1983. The government refused. So the miners stopped working overtime. But Scargill had miscalculated Thatcher’s determination to stand firm. And on March 6th 1984 when news leaked out that Cortonwood colliery in Yorkshire would be shut down, and the men would all lose their jobs, Scargill was taken by complete surprise. The men walked out on strike immediately. A few days later, it was announced that another twenty pits would close with 20,000 job losses. Caught off guard, Scargill went for the kill and called for a national strike. ibid.
When the men walked out of the collieries, Scargill didn’t call a national vote. This was his next big mistake. ibid.
On March 12 1984 Scargill’s call for action resulted in almost 165,000 men downing tools and walking out on strike. Over 35,000 others remained at work. ibid.
Those on strike had nothing; they weren’t entitled to benefits. Families were really struggling. ibid.
One thing Thatcher did underestimate was their resilience. ibid.
The Christmas bonus really worked, and it became clear that the strike was nearing its end game. ibid.
How Walmart is Destroying America (and the World). Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price, Brave New Films 2005, book Bill Quinn
I’ve seen a lot of small communities crucified and forced out … It appears that that is their intent. ibid. Don Hunter
Walmart drives down retail wages $3 billion every year. ibid. caption
Walmart public costs: $86 to California taxpayers; $25 million more to County taxpayers: health care, income tax credits, housing subsidies, food stamps. ibid.
Walmart workers on public assistance: Alabama: 3,864 children of Walmart employees are enrolled in Medicare; Arizona: 2,700 workers on Medicaid … Walmart costs taxpayers $1,557,000,000 to support its employees. ibid.
Walmart is very opposed to unions. ibid. Jon Lehman, store manager 19 years
$7,000 anti-union camera package per store; $30,000 undercover spy van per store; $100,000 24-hour anti-union hotline; $7,000,000 rapid response team with corporate jet. ibid. caption
Walmart is fighting legal battles with scores of former employees in 31 states, hourly workers who say the company has cheated them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime pay. ibid. news report
Walmart is paying $11 million to settle federal allegations it used illegal immigrants to clean its stores. ibid. news report
We truly are living the American dream. ibid. television advert
City of Cameron gives Walmart $2.1 million to set up shop. ibid. caption
Currently in the US there are 26,699,678 square feet of empty Walmarts. ibid.
2001: EPA orders Walmart to pay $1 million fine for Clean Walter violations in Texas, Oklahoma and Massachusetts … fined $3.1 million etc. ibid.
The worker is given a fake pay slip … We really work day and night in order to get the wage of less than $3 a day. ibid. Chinese Walmart worker
Bangladesh: forced to work from eight in the morning to ten o’clock at night … trapped in utter misery … sucking down standards all around the world. ibid. critic
The future was not breaking heads on the picket line but in dominating the unions themselves. Mobsters s1e3: Louis Lepke, Bio 2007
His men simply came into their union headquarters with guns drawn and opened fire. When the shooting was over, a dozen were dead, and Lepke had another union under his belt. ibid.
‘Hoffa did a tremendous disservice to truckers across America. Let’s face it he was corrupt.’ Mobsters s1e6: Jimmy Hoffa
The union that Jimmy Hoffa built was once the biggest and most powerful in America. It was also the most corrupt. ibid.