Interchange – Under Cover of Subversion: Employer Activism Against Labor

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While citizens are encouraged to fear and blame so called outside agitators the real menace lies within…A business community committed to the rancor of class and racial divisions with the intent to keeping labor powerless and in the chains of wage slavery.

In our two previous programs we’ve detailed a kind of localized “Mccarthyism” BEFORE Joseph McCarthy took center-stage which highlighted with way anticommunism was used as propaganda against labor activism…promoting and solidifying the idea that collective action is a subversion of what it means to be American.

But the truth is that collective action is exactly what is employed AGAINST the so-called “working class.” Employer activism is deeply collective and is American as apple pie, napalm, and atomic bombs. If you think Charles and David Koch have brought us something new to contend with then you haven’t read any labor history–the Kochs are deeply American it turns out.

And, let’s be honest, not studying labor history is a feature of our educational system, not a bug.

In this program we’ll learn about the deep history of “doublethink” in the American past as we examine concepts like “right to work” which entirely upend the democratic process to claim the privilege of the “one” against “the many”; we’ll look at union busting techniques that stem from the civil war which include the private security agency established by Allen Pinkerton, demonizing immigrants, and fomenting racial divisions among workers; And guess what, “astroturf” groups like the current Tea Party have a long history also as quote unquote citizens associations.

We begin tonight with a look at why this history is hidden, or better, buried, and kept from the country’s citizens.

GUEST
Rosemary Feurer is an associate professor of History at Northern Illinois University. She’s the author of Radical Unionism in the Midwest: 1900-1950, and along with Chad Pearson, co-editor of the essay collection Against Labor: How U.S. Employers Organized to Defeat Union Activism.

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MUSIC
“The Powers That Be” by Roger Waters
“Picket Line” by Robert Calvert
“Never Cross a Picket Line” by Billy Bragg
“Sweetheart On the Barricade” by Richard Thompson

CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Assistant Producer: Rob Schoon
Executive Producer: Wes Martin