Labor Unions in Alabama — Alabama's labor history
Anniston was built on the shoulders of ironmakers, steelworkers and textile-mill girls. The city was founded in 1873 by Daniel Tyler and Samuel Noble as a planned industrial community. Noble and Tyler provided the capital and vision, but it was the workers who moved into Anniston that helped the founders turn a profit and brought the new city to life. For most of Anniston's history, the vast majority of residents toiled in pipe factories, foundries and mills. They molded iron into elegant lampposts that graced city streets throughout the country. They transformed raw metal into pipes that would travel the world. They built railroad cars and wheels. They stood in the din of the mills and turned cotton into cloth. Rural Alabamians streamed into the city, leaving farms behind for a new life in an industrial city. It is a historical theme that runs through this state. Steel built Birmingham. Huntsville became the "Labor Capital of the South" when textile mills arrived from the North. Shipbuilding sustained Mobile, and longshoremen worked those docks. North Alabama miners went underground to dig coal. Millworkers made Fort Payne the "Sock Capital of the World." The textile industry was a large employer in towns like Decatur, Florence, Jasper, and Albertville. Gadsden was home to both steel and textile mills. Jacksonville produced textiles, and so did Oxford. Railroad workers laid the tracks that transported the industrial products, and served as porters on trains. For many of these workers, belonging to a union went hand in hand with a new life off the farm. Alabama is unique among Deep South states for a more union-friendly environment, said Colin Davis, a labor historian and professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The South has always been hostile to organized labor, he noted, and many union organizers in Alabama were met with fierce resistance, and violence.
But, a comparatively diversified economy that was not dependent on a single industry made high rates of unionization possible in Alabama, when compared with other Southern states, up into the 21st century, he said. "This was a union town," he said of Birmingham. Steel, iron, bricklayers, the railroads, construction, dockworkers, and even textiles, an industry notoriously difficult to organize in the South, were unionized in Alabama, he said. The AFL-CIO had a strong presence in the state and "most of the major industries were organized." With "more industry," there is "more potential" for unionization, said Davis. A "multi-industry, multi-union," environment "creates an atmosphere of acceptance, he said. "When you had that surrounding, you have strength, you have people to help you." A Model City The planned industrial city of Anniston offers a portrait of the state's labor history. The city owes its existence to rich deposits of iron ore nearby. The new city's initial sole purpose was the production of iron. Foundries, pipe factories and steel mills burst to life here as the Woodstock Iron Company went about building its town carved out of the pine forest. Anniston was envisioned as a modern municipality with neatly laid out streets and small cottages where workers would be housed. The industry came first, then the residents. Thousands would head into the mills and foundries every day to work. Life would be dominated by the mill bell that called workers to their jobs each morning. For the city's first decade, it was a private company town — owned completely by the Woodstock Company and made up of management and workers. Members of the founding families also established cotton mills in the city. The Anniston Cotton Manufacturing Company incorporated in 1880. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that Anniston would develop a strong union tradition. Workers shopped at the company store, lived in company housing and sometimes were paid in company scrip. The whole being of the town was centered around industry. By the 1890s, the Knights of Labor were organized in Anniston, but they disbanded by 1889, according to Grace Hooten Gates' "The Model City of the New South: Anniston, Alabama, 1872-1900." But by 1889, Gates wrote, the Iron Moulders Union and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steelworkers had a presence in the city. The Amalgamated struck a railroad-car manufacturer in 1896 over the wage scale. "In 1899, wages increased by 25 percent because of union efforts," Gates wrote. Later, more textile mills came, fleeing higher wages and unions up north. By 1920, along with the textile mills, Anniston was the largest producer of cast-iron pipe, according to Tee Morgan's book "Annie's Town: A Picture History of Anniston, Alabama, 1880-1940." Unionism gains strength Mill owners and industrialists hoped to find a docile, contented work force in the Deep South, but long hours, low wages, child labor and unsafe conditions helped to bring unions into some industries in Alabama. The Great Depression brought many of these grievances to the forefront. The 1930s saw increased organizing work and labor strife throughout the country. The New Deal introduced labor laws that guaranteed the rights of workers to join unions, emboldening the labor movement and increasing union membership. Despite the South's reputation as a region of unorganized workers, the largest textile strike in United States history began in Alabama, and Anniston workers joined in. The strike erupted in 1934, over wage cuts. In Alabama, where textile mills provided employment for 40,000 workers, they were out on strike two months before the national strike even began, according to John A. Salmond's book, "The General Textile Strike of 1934: From Maine to Alabama." The strike dragged on for three weeks and ended with defeat for the textile workers. Union leaders and strikers were blacklisted — some even were struck from the relief rolls, Salmond wrote. After the strike, the United Textile Workers union was "broken as a credible force for labor in the state," according to Salmond. Despite the defeat of the general textile strike, the labor movement would enter its glory years in America after the New Deal, peaking in strength and numbers in the 1950s. Most of the big industries would become heavily unionized, and what was happening on the national scale also was true for Alabama. The large industrial unions, particularly the United Steelworkers and the United Mine Workers of America would have a strong presence in the state. Alabamians have long held deep-rooted populist sentiments, and that also helped the labor movement gain traction in the postwar years, said Davis. There was also an "incredible window there for a while when all manner of liberal Democrats were elected," in the state, he said. But, he said, that window closed when race became a divisive and powerful issue, helping to sweep out of power many of the early progressives. And organized labor in Alabama did not always uphold pledges to refrain from discrimination and to treat all workers equal, said Davis. Many union locals had separate black and white organizations; others sought to keep blacks out of the more skilled jobs, he said. But some unions were ahead of the time in terms of race relations. The United Mine Workers were integrated from their inception in Alabama in the 1890s, although union meetings still had whites sitting on one side of the hall and blacks on the other to comply with segregation laws. Many of those active in the civil rights movement had labor roots, from A. Phillip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, to E.D. Nixon of Montgomery, president of the Alabama branch of the union. Many labor leaders, like Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, also lent support to the civil rights movement. Forgotten history Labor history is forgotten history, said Davis. He said he thinks a lack of knowledge about labor history persists nationwide. He still gets some students who are the children or grandchildren of steelworkers and coal miners and who have some appreciation for organized labor because of family tradition, he said. But now we are nearing "two generations who have grown up in an environment that's union free," he said. Most of his students don't have knowledge of working-class history and don't make the connections between the benefits that were won by the labor movement, often after struggle that was met with violent opposition, he said. "Workers were killed, murdered," trying to organize industries nationwide and in Alabama, he said. "There were shootings, bombings, lynchings. There were coal towns and textile towns with armed guards at the gate." "That level of intimidation and oppression is not known about. The intensity of class conflict, that is not taught," he said. |
||||
|
|
