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A lot of change in 85 years; Gino Piroli; Beaver County Times; February 27, 2011.
Below is a detailed critique of the relevant section of the subject column.
“In the news are stories of elected officials trying to kill unions, but rather than get into any discussion on that, we should acknowledge that most of the benefits workers receive today, no matter what their role, came about from unions fighting for them.
“I remember when the hard-fought steel industry strike in 1937 brought collective bargaining to the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. plant in Aliquippa. I was 11 at that time and have reflected on that period throughout these many years.”
[RWC] While there were strikes at individual steel companies, there was no “steel industry strike in 1937.” The “hard-fought … strike” at the Aliquippa Works lasted only about 40 hours.
“There were changes for the workers - 40-hour work weeks and other benefits - but for a youngster living in that period, I know the greatest accomplishment for workers was restoring their dignity. No more would your ethnic or racial background, religious persuasion or personal relationships determine your opportunity to be hired.”
[RWC] Back in November 2010, Mr. Piroli painted a rosy picture of J&L at its demise.
My maternal grandfather was an “unskilled” laborer at the Aliquippa Works from the mid-1920s to the early-1950s. Prior to that, Grandpa worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad in Beaver Falls. Before that, he started working as a coalminer at 12 years of age (about 1888). Coal mines hired kids to lead donkey-pulled coal carts because, unlike most adult males, their height meant they didn’t have to walk bent over all day in tunnels with low ceilings.
The reason I mentioned my grandfather’s work history is he opposed the formation of a union at J&L in 1937. I don’t recall if my mother told me why Grandpa opposed the union, but the following didn’t help his opinion of unions. Grandpa wasn’t an anti-union activist and didn’t lobby others to oppose the union, but when asked his opinion he gave it. Grandpa’s position wasn’t popular with the union organizers and resulted in thinly-veiled threats against my grandmother and mother (16 years old at the time). Fearing for my mother’s well-being, Grandma asked Grandpa not to comment when asked about his position and he agreed. Despite my grandfather’s lack of secondary education, my grandparents owned their own home on Main Street and put my mother through secretarial school in Pittsburgh, all without a union.
As for the “40-hour work weeks” comment, I don’t know about the Aliquippa Works, but capitalist pig Henry Ford instituted a 40-hour work week at non-union Ford at least 11 years before the Aliquippa Works unionized.
“No more would your ethnic or racial background, religious persuasion or personal relationships determine your opportunity to be hired?” Is Mr. Piroli kidding? The management of the United Steelworkers of America union, along with nine steel companies, was slapped with a federal consent decree in 1974 to address “discriminatory hiring, promotion, assignment, and wage policies directed against women and minorities.”
In 2003 the EEOC charged AK Steel – Butler with racial bias. The EEOC charged “that the steelmaker condoned offensive language and graffiti and the open display of nooses, swastikas and Ku Klux Klan videos at its plant in Butler.” If the charges were valid, what was union (Butler-Armco Independent Union at the time) management doing? Shouldn’t union management have filed grievances on behalf of the offended workers long before workers had to involve the EEOC? If the offending employees were union members, couldn’t union management have handled the problem internally?
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