35-40 minutes.
Part 1
Part 2
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Launching Warships and Unions: Industry, State-Led Economics, and Working-Class Ideology at Depression-Era New York Shipbuilding Corporation
Behold, my thesis. I had to write a good deal of this while working full-time at a sewage plant, listening to my co-workers (one of whom was a former shipbuilder at Phila Navy) groan about contract negotiations. At least it was authentic. While flying out of Philly to a revolutionary socialist conference in Chicago, I unexpectedly got a bird's-eye view of the NYSC shipyard in person not even a week before I would finish this. Anyone who is curious or confused about Obama's brand of "socialism" (corporate welfare) should read this, as well as anyone interested in Phila/South Jersey local leftist history. The Great Depression/New Deal time period is more relevant now than it ever has been in US history. May this be my contribution to what I am sure is going to be a massive wave of young (and possibly older) organic revolutionist intellectuals attempting to grasp the terrible times and terrible world they live in.
The Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America (IUMSWA) was founded in 1933, during the Great Depression, at a shipyard in
The story of the IUMSWA’s founding strikes demonstrates a trend which was prevalent in American society during the New Deal and Great Depression. This trend was the politicization of the economy. This phenomenon took several forms and meant different things in different contexts. Generally it implied that the boundaries traditionally existing between what are considered the distinct categories politics and economics break down – private business interactions came under the jurisdiction or focus of the state or society in general. In the context of government actions, politicization of the economy took the form of greater government oversight of corporate behavior through regulations and labor laws, or direct government participation in the economy. In terms of labor, politicization of the economy occurred in the minds of working people. In practice it meant laborers began to view their work or their economic conflict with their employers as something that required governmental intervention. They also came to view their work and conflict as significant to society beyond themselves, in various ways. Labor and government also intersected: the state absorbed the pressure of economic conflict by placing itself between labor and management as a mediating force. Politicization of the economy has been present in many if not all periods of American history. However, it was especially prevalent and visible during the 1930s and played itself out in
In the Orbit of
Shipbuilding was one of the hallmarks of
State Capitalism and the War at Home
The federal government was a powerful player in the NYSC’s labor disputes. While it played a mediating role, and sometimes a dictating role, the government’s intervention in the situation had actually begun before the existence of the IUMSWA. The
The Shipping Act of 1916 called for the formation of a Shipping Board which would be granted $20 million, though NYSC claimed that by the end of the spending spree, the amount was more in the range of $3 billion. The Board would use its funds to commission or purchase ships for mercantile use, often leasing them to private firms for operation. To be sure, there was debate and disagreement in Congress over the proposed bill. The vote was close and mostly fell along party lines. A Republican senator called the proposal “a measure of state socialism which, if established, will inevitably destroy individual liberty.” While the definition of socialism above may be disputed, the senator was unquestionably correct in sensing that something noteworthy was taking place. In the form of the Shipping Board, Congress created one of the first government-operated business firms, participating in one of the most explicitly commercial sectors of life no less.[9]
The argument in favor of the bill was that “
The government’s commercial ambition was not without grounds – time would tell that a huge opportunity was developing. In 1916 the Allies of World War I dramatically escalated trade with
Besides serving as NYSC’s main customer, the federal government acted as a coordinator of information-sharing between shipyards, both public and private. In 1918 the chair of the US Shipping Board sent the president of NYSC a friendly letter, warmly thanking him for all he had done for the war effort through ship construction. The letter then politely requested that the NYSC president send a reply containing any innovations in ship construction – essentially asking NYSC to donate its trade secrets for free. This relationship continued later; by World War II the Navy was sharing the construction innovations of its own shipyards with New York Ship. During the World War I buildup, the government’s Emergency Fleet Corporation even allocated funding and resources to expanding NYSC’s private ship construction facilities, building an entire new yard section with state-of-the art equipment.[12]
Besides practically commissioning the entire shipbuilding industry, the
Director of the Federal Works Administration John Carmody said “
The spirit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration has been characterized as “the New Deal.” When given a second look, this phrase suggests bartering and negotiation. The New Deal was a new social contract. This begs the question of why, exactly, a new social contract was necessary. The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression could serve as an impetus for steering governmental policy in a different direction. According to some philosophies, they could even justify expanded government participation in the economy. However, such a policy would merit a name that signified a restructuring, or new wave of national planning – an American version of a “five-year plan” or the “Great Leap Forward,” possibly. A “New Deal” was necessary not only because the “old deal” had destabilized, but also because many people were in practice rejecting the old deal by going on strike. In 1934, 1.3 million workers were involved in 1,740 strikes and lockouts. Across the river from
However, all of that activity was a shadow of what could have become a much larger problem. Between the AFL, CIO, and other independent unions, organized labor included over 4 million workers in 1936. The height of the Great Depression featured 23.6% unemployment. Most frightening, the unrest had the potential to take on a political form. This was demonstrated earlier during the postwar strike wave in 1919 when thirty five thousand workers joined a strike initiated by longshoremen, which among other things declared its sympathy for the Russian Revolution. Understandably, the political climate of that time period was defined by a wave of hostility to labor and leftist groups which foreshadowed the later Red Scare, but this had faded by the 1930s.[15]
Such a situation was disruptive, and a government that intended to retain its sovereignty would be interested in finding a way to calm the situation and restore order. One of the results was greater intervention by the Department of Labor in labor negotiations. Instead of crushing the strike waves, the New Deal attempted to accommodate them, or at least to project such an image. In 1931 the Department of Labor handled 385 conciliation cases and by 1934 that number had grown to 1,140 cases. From 1931 to 1935 it handled a total of 4,124 disputes.[16] This was besides the array of federal agencies created by the National Recovery Act charged with regulating and overseeing labor relations in various industries, such as the Industrial Relations Committees (IRCs).
The surge in labor action around the
In this context, the odds were already stacked in the favor of the IUMSWA if the government intervened in the dispute. However, a factor that aided the IUMSWA in gaining a hearing with the government was the fact that they were indirectly public employees. The union at NYSC, when challenging management’s right to make decisions, often called for federal intervention, implying that the management and labor conditions of NYSC were not a private corporate affair but were the concern of society at large. While they were making this case for selfish reasons, they had a point – society at large was in fact paying for NYSC’s contracts. John Green, IUMSWA organizer and eventual president, denounced the NYSC as “feeding at the trough with public funds – taxpayers’ funds.” While NYSC’s use of public money was not the only reason Green thought the government should enforce workplace rights – his socialist affiliations might have also had something to do with it – it was a compelling argument. For example, the government was directly accountable for conditions at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, just down the river, because wages there were directly set by Congress.[18] The position of government-funded private entities, or private companies whose sole customer is the government, could be viewed as similar to a private management group operating what is essentially a government-owned institution. The company acts with a degree of autonomy but is aware that its sponsor can effectively step in at any time and demand a change of course. Likewise, while sometimes criticisms for unpopular actions are aimed only at the corporation, creating a red herring of private mismanagement for what should actually be a political scandal, sometimes blame finds its way back to the sponsoring government. The fact that NYSC was formally private, even though government-funded, created a schism between its use of public funds and its labor standards which did not meet those of public-sector shipyards. The IUMSWA denounced this schism and exploited it in order to gain sympathy, collecting signatures in
This, combined with a national mood that was both labor-sympathetic and volatile, placed pressure on the government. The simple fact that the New Deal involved government spending was not necessarily enough to placate the working class upsurge. Citizens had to see that this government spending was going to what they perceived to be the right places. A socialist group that included some of the IUMSWA leaders, such as John Green and Phil Van Gelder, labeled the National Recovery Act as “a gigantic attempt to use methods of planning – state capitalism – in the interest of the most powerful financial and industrial magnates.”[20]
The Shipyard and the Strikes
Ironically named for the city at which it was originally intended to be located, New York Shipbuilding Corporation was founded in
NYSC was a critical shipyard for both the mercantile buildup during WWI, as well as the naval expansion of WWII. A company-written history of NYSC claimed that they pioneered the way in shipbuilding production techniques later adopted across the industry, having introduced massive roofs for year-round construction in all weather, templates for mass production, a shipyard layout that allowed for efficient flow of materials throughout the yard, and a “wet” construction bay which eased the transition between construction and launch. NYSC constructed 200,000 tons of merchant ships in its peak during 1929. The firm also built two hundred and eighteen ships that were involved in naval combat during World War II, and from March 1942 to March 1943 built $217 million worth of ships, before inflation. This may have been the highest annual rate of output in a single shipyard in human history.[22]
The time period of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America’s founding strikes, however, did not reflect this record of glory. Ship production was barely emerging from one of its interwar ebbs, though business was increasing. It was not a moment of glory for unionism at NYSC, either. The company’s labor culture, if one even existed, was dominated by the company union and a network of management-sponsored (and unattended) shop committees, called the Employee Representation Plan. Previously the American Federation of Labor had been established at NYSC during the strike waves centering around 1917. While shipbuilding declined after the war, the AFL was eliminated at NYSC as each craft union ineffectively struck in isolation, unaided by other shipyards or even other crafts at NYSC itself. Of course the confidence of workers to fight was sapped by the conditions of unemployment. Phil Van Gelder, one of the initial union organizers, claimed that between 40% and 50% of shipbuilders were unemployed. He later wrote “Work was so scarce for all these years right up to 1933, that most men were afraid to kick for fear they would lose their jobs. They took it on the chin and kept their mouths shut.”[23]
In order to stave off unemployment, the practice of sharing the work by granting fewer hours became widespread. In some cases, lower hours were even a demand of shipyard workers because of the grueling nature of the work. However, cutting hours was often a sleight of hand covering an effective pay reduction. Other times, wage cuts were enacted openly, and management cited the Depression as the reason. One 15% reduction in 1932 was the last straw for many people who would become the founding organizers of the IUMSWA. Worse, it would later be learned that NYSC had in fact been making profit from the beginnings of the naval buildup, simultaneous with wage reductions and layoffs. Workers hopes were piqued with the election of Roosevelt, whom they perceived as a potentially pro-labor president. One of the reasons for starting the union, however, was the fact that pro-labor reforms were either being enacted too slowly or were for some reason ineffective. Van Gelder said, “When the NRA [National Recovery Act] was set up, the government forced corporations to raise the wage rates. But hours were reduced at the same time, leaving us just about where we were before.” Such maneuvers were especially offensive to workers who harbored high hopes because President Roosevelt was increasing ship orders. They assumed workers would share in the new economic stimulus.[24]
After management cut hours in 1933, unionists at NYSC began holding half-secret meetings on and off the shipyard, which benefited from extra word of mouth but were certainly not mentioned to management. Some of the unionists entered the existing pro-management company union in order to fight from the inside, and William Mullin captured the presidency of the Employee Representation Plan. He then used it as a venue for advocating a fighting union, and even used his power as president to dissolve the company union so that the IUMSWA could take precedence.[25]
In 1934 the union attempted to appeal to the Industrial Relations Committee (IRC) for shipbuilding, establish under the New Deal’s National Recovery Act. The New Deal IRCs were usually governed by equal representatives from management and labor as well as a few from the government, but in this case the labor counterbalance to management could not be relied upon because it was staffed by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The AFL was either indifferent or hostile to the IUMSWA, because of its founding decision to strike out on its own independently of the AFL in order to reject organizing by skill group.[26] Once the union was established, and both management and the shipbuilding IRC had proven uninterested in discussing the union’s main demands, Local 1 leadership sensed that a strike was both appropriate and possibly winnable. The membership voted in support of a walkout on March 24th and acted on it three days later.[27] About 3,000 employees formed a picket line to prevent management from reopening the yard with replacement workers, and the plant was effectively shut down. The
During the deadlock of the strike, both the union and management attempted to gain favor with the labor mediator departments which they sensed would be more sympathetic. NYSC courted the shipbuilding IRC, and the union pursued the attention of the Labor Department but also Congress and the executive branch. The last nail in the coffin for NYSC management, already facing a determined workforce and a fairly sympathetic community, was the Navy’s threat to tow away a ship that was being worked on at NYSC before the strike, to be taken elsewhere for completion. On May 11th, management increased their proposed wage hike to a level that the union found acceptable. After slightly more than a month of picketing, the union won almost a 15% increase, reversing the earlier wage cut, as well as securing formal recognition of the union by management.[28]
The next, more decisive strike in 1935 took place because the NYSC was using the AFL in order to claim that the IUMSWA was not the sole representative of the employees. There had been a change of management, and the new regime was more directly hostile and anti-union. Stonewalling by NYSC and the AFL meant that Local 1 was never truly recognized or acknowledged by the IRC, causing consideration of a new work stoppage. In April Local 1 elected a committee to organize and represent the action. The union sent a request to NYSC for a new contract, asking among other things for another 15% wage increase and preference of union members in hiring and layoffs. Once again, the National Recovery Act shipbuilding committee proved to be an obstacle to the IUMSWA’s demands, and dedicated its efforts to searching for ways it could declare some of the union’s demands to be in violation of the law. Management tactics were much heavier-handed this time around, with NYSC representatives talking to workers one by one and warning them against participation in any strike action. The government, however, eventually came to favor Local 1. An increasingly left-wing mood caused a high-ranking official within the central National Recovery Act Board to scold the IRC, as well as denounce and countermand their statements that Local 1 had been acting illegally. Various members of Congress began to sympathize with the strike, including the famous anti-war Republican Senator from North Dakota Gerald Nye, who led a committee investigating the role of financial and military-industrial interests in promoting
On May 4th, the membership voted to authorize a strike if NYSC did not entertain granting a wage increase and other demands. Though the Labor Department had sent a representative at the last minute, the wheels were already in motion and once again 3,000 picketers stood in front of the gates of NYSC on May 13th. The union set up a system of round-the-clock picketing, with each member required to join the mass picket twice a day at the times workers would normally change shifts, and also again at a specific hour. Community support for the strike was more active this time, with landlords agreeing to accept delayed rent payments, small businesses providing goods, and
As both sides of the conflict continued to hold out on their demands, the IUMSWA turned to lobbying in
The clash at the front gates of NYSC had created considerable publicity, helping to generate governmental (and public) interest and sympathy at the national level. This was in addition to the fact that the strike had been going for more than two months and the Navy was still waiting for the ships it had ordered. Furthermore, as negative publicity grew, divisions within the government began to emerge, such as debate in Congress and head-butting between the Labor and Navy departments. At this point President Roosevelt intervened, and informed NYSC that if it did not meet with its employees, it would no longer receive government contracts. While government representatives appeared to mediate negotiations, at first they proposed a contract that was little different from the conditions that had already been prevailing in the shipyard. The workers voted it down and even booed at the names of the Navy and Labor Secretaries for lending their legitimacy to a bad contract. This displayed that the shipyard workers were willing to work with the government but also retained considerable independence from it. The continued deadlock prompted Franklin Roosevelt himself to write a proposal to the negotiators which was more favorable to labor, which both sides adopted. The yard workers returned to the job on August 29th and watched as negotiations were finalized in their favor over the following months. As the company dragged its feet and public sensitivity remained high, FDR gave copies of the following memo to his Secretaries of Labor and the Navy in late July.
I think you had better tell the N.Y. Shipbuilding Co. that:
(1) They must arbitrate
(2) They must meet their employees
(3) They will not get allowance for loss of time under Navy Contract from now on if they don’t.
(4) They will not be allowed to bid on new ships if they don’t settle.[32]
This was one of the harshest actions the federal government could take toward NYSC management, short of nationalizing the shipyard. The union bragged that the pair of strikes had resulted in “the highest average wage rates on the east coast.” Interestingly, NYSC’s corporate-written histories did not give a single mention to the entire sequence of events described above.[33] While the IUMSWA enjoyed a number of favorable conditions such as a sympathetic community and beneficial federal intervention, none of it would have happened without workers who developed their own point of view about the workings of the world, and who believed in their own cause enough to rock the boat.
Politicized Workers in a Political Workplace
Thinking of laborers as people with ideas beyond going to work every day and relaxing in the off hours is not conventional. However, throughout their struggle, New York Ship workers were forced to grapple with questions of economics, politics, and ethics. For a long time, a working-class perspective at NYSC found no articulation or embodiment. Instead discourse was dominated by company literature or the risk-averse, respectability-seeking American Federation of Labor. NYSC ran a newsletter, Yorkship News, “published in the interest of the employees of the New York Shipbuilding Corporation.” Many of the articles were thinly-veiled attempts to boost productivity and ensure workplace discipline by reducing the perceived differences between labor and management. One editorial from 1920 did this quite literally by blaming the end of the “good old days” on “YOU and I. YOU being the management and I the worker.” The editorial warned employees that if they were not productive, both they and management would lose Navy contracts of increasing scarcity, and then attempted to humanize management’s disciplining of the workforce by reminding them that managers, too, have obligations to meet. “If you were the boss and responsible for getting the work done…wouldn’t you lay off the man who was not producing first? Sure you would!” Of course this hypothetical situation was entirely not applicable to the majority of NYSC employees who would never hold a management position.[34]
The philosophy contained within the corporate newsletter was not limited to employee-management relations at NYSC but touched on issues of economics and class far beyond the shipyard itself. Another article in the same issue of Yorkship News titled “Production or Distribution?” criticized the idea that anyone would benefit from redistribution of wealth. The message downplayed class differences; one article claimed “a progressive economist told me the other day that I was probably overestimating when I stated that a complete leveling of all incomes in the United States might possibly increase the income of the average worker by 10 percent.” Given the perspective of negligible class difference which the author put forward, the logical conclusion would be that the working class (and everyone) would be helped most not by redistribution of the economic pie, but by a general enlargement of it. The anonymous author then criticized the “stupidity” of “labor leaders who are endeavoring to improve the conditions of labor by limiting production” – “limiting production” meaning either limits to the working day or strike-actions. The statements of NYSC management raises interesting questions. Were they knowingly saying what benefited them, regardless of its truth? Did their class position motivate them to believe their own propaganda? Even if their writings contained a visible class bias, did this necessarily mean their statements were not true? Whatever the case, this kind of thinking was part of the consciousness of NYSC employees for a long time.[35]
In the course of the union’s activity, workers would develop a rather different perspective on economics and employee-management relations than articulated by the corporate newspaper. Phil Van Gelder wrote a pamphlet in 1936 on behalf of the IUMSWA called the Book of Facts for Shipyard Workers. It chronicled the rise of the IUMSWA but also served as a general justification for its existence. One of the first points that the IUMSWA history made was a condemnation of the company unions as mouthpieces for management. “They called in the company union stools and said, ‘Boys, business is bad. For the good of all concerned we will have to have a wage cut.’ The company stools, as always, answered ‘Yes, boss,’ and the wage cut went into effect.”[36] Van Gelder’s history explicitly rejected the ideas of shared sacrifice and labor-management partnership advocated in Yorkship News, dismissing it as the ideology of “company stools.”
Using statistics borrowed from the Nye Committee, the Book of Facts contained an understanding of economics dramatically distinct from that put forward in Yorkship News. This new perspective had the effect of justifying a spirit of separation and conflict between labor and management. The development of an alternative perspective by the NYSC employees necessitated illuminating often-hidden areas of life, such as wage levels and profits. The Book of Facts claimed that “the big shipbuilding corporations keep their wage scales a secret.” They had good reason – the overwhelming majority of laborers at New York Ship were earning over 15% less than their Navy-employed counterparts. The Book of Facts argued this was not simply a NYSC problem – “the
As mentioned above, the 1930s were a time of considerable government intervention in the economy. The
McCann: I think as an American citizen I have the right to discuss with you and say whether I shall work piece work.
Pommerer: Isn’t that the same thing as joining the
Cameron: Yes, but the management is running the plant.
Pommerer: It is our muscles that built that damned plant before you ever thought of
Green: These men have banded themselves into an organization and I think they have a right to sell their labor and say under what conditions they shall work. Don’t you think that is their prerogative as a free American citizen?...
Though not explicitly calling for workers’ management, any inroads into company decisions by the influence of the employees implied a degree of it. NYSC was formally a privately-owned workplace, at which no one had any rights which the owner did not grant – and yet IUMSWA felt as if workers could demand workplace rights anyway. If management was acting as a ruling elite within a space that the IUMSWA believed was the domain of civil rights, then it logically followed that they were morally and politically equivalent to contemporary dictators or pre-Enlightenment monarchs. By making a mental equation between political rule and private ownership, some of the workers came to see management as a literal obstruction to their rights. Furthermore, they believed that the federal government had a responsibility to enforce this idea if management would not.
Tom Gallagher, one of the early organizers, said “the obligation of the federal government is clear. It must force this corporation to come to terms with the union or else let somebody else step in who knows how to manage a shipyard.” John Green said to a session of Congress, “Up to the present time we have been unable to move that firm from its original position. We feel that the
The workers of NYSC not only made demands of the political sphere, but were also quite dependent on it for their economic well-being, and knew this. Working in an industry which was funded by the state and that mainly bloomed during wartime was sure to have effects on laborers’ perceptions and values. In Suburban Warriors: the Origins of the New American Right, Lisa McGirr theorized that Orange County, California’s conservative tendencies were encouraged by the residents’ economic dependency on military contracts from the federal government.[41] The beliefs of the IUMSWA’s membership reflected a moderate-left version of the same phenomenon. They were aware of their economic reliance; in 1936 the IUMSWA president wrote, “Today there is no shipbuilding in the country to speak of outside of naval shipbuilding.”[42] The unionists had repeatedly relied on federal intervention during their strikes, and felt they could do so because they worked in a publicly-funded industry. This encouraged a hybrid of New Deal liberalism and moderate socialism among the workers and union leadership. Notably there was a lack of substantial Communist Party presence in Local 1, which made sense given that an organization which wanted to overthrow the government was basically biting off the hand that fed the shipbuilding industry.[43] Besides limiting the more radical left-wing tendencies, dependency on Navy contracts both created liberal tendencies within the union and encouraged it to incorporate war into its worldview.
One crucial way in which the NYSC workers imagined themselves in the larger political world was by enthusiastically supporting the
Nowhere else was the syncretism of progressive labor ideology and nationalist militarism better displayed than in the captions for a series of woodcut drawings published by the IUMSWA, Workers at War. They were written by William Frazier, also part of Local 1’s Education Committee. The introduction’s vision of wartime national unity involved the racial progressivism which was stirring during the era, and cast unionism and patriotic militarism as comparable forces:
MEN and women; white, black, yellow; mechanic, laborer, white collar worker; those who build the ships, and those who man them in battle – this is America at war…On the home front solidly joined together in one strong industrial union; on the battle front firmly knit into one great fighting force.[46]
This ideological mixture was reinforced by the apparent similarity between unionism and militarism, as they both involved mobilizing ordinary people into highly organized units which inevitably entered some kind conflict. It equated the workers’ solidarity in unions with the spirit of collective zeal in wartime nationalism. The booklet referred explicitly to the similar semblance of the two phenomena: “In the last two and a half years the American people have learned a great deal about action, on the battle front and on the home front. They have learned that action plus unity of purpose spells Victory.” This may have allowed for
One fascinating incident speaks volumes about the effect of this contradictory political orientation of the NYSC employees. Due to the emotional investment of NYSC workers in the New Deal, the strike waves of the 1930s, and the Second World War, the passing of President Roosevelt was a very poignant day. A union bulletin about the event even referred to him as “our Great Leader.” On April 14th, 1945 all businesses in
Aftermath
The end of the war brought simultaneous high expectations but also a recognition that wartime agreements might no longer be binding, either formally or informally. In 1946 a union bureaucrat at NYSC submitted a report to the membership, warning of this new situation. “This membership must realize that we are now back to normal times and that collective bargaining will be done with representatives of the Corporation and the Union, as in the past…There are no more agencies to which this Union can appeal if the Corporation is not inclined to go along with any proposals.” By this it was meant that the government would no longer be favoring labor during disputes, nor even intervening in the negotiation process. The committee reported that they were trying to hang on to some of the gains from the New Deal and wartime, but analyzed the situation with a tone suggesting the unionists should lower their expectations: “You must also realize that in collective bargaining there is such a thing as giving and taking.”[50]
After this, Local 1 struck for over four months, starting in 1947 and ending in 1948. As earlier, their willingness to be confrontational paid off. The union won a small wage increase, the right to automate the payment of union dues out of company paychecks, and back payments for striking workers. The press release which detailed the union’s victory listed NYSC and IUMSWA as members of the negotiating committee. Some federal mediators were mentioned but did not seem to provide any decisive intervention in either direction.[51]
The NYSC workers were not alone in resuming their war footing on the home front when the war between nations was over, though they fared better than other workers. One of the best-kept secrets of labor history is the massive post-war strike wave in the 1940s. As troops came home from World War II, their high expectations were met with unemployment and the deterioration of labor-friendly contracts made during wartime. Within a year of the war’s end, more than five million workers in the
As early as 1954, the union at NYSC (having changed names several times by this date) displayed anxieties over the potential closure of NYSC as they witnessed layoffs and a decline in contracts. Louis Wolfson, a former junkyard operator with a reputation for buying operations and shutting them down, gained control of NYSC. The union newsletter On the Line reprinted scathing articles accusing him of using family political connections and even mafia ties to receive unfair non-competitive bids for government properties. One issue displayed a mortal fear that he would shut down the yard and made a moral appeal against this, drawing on the union’s record of patriotism. The newsletter said that the workers “did their bit in World War II” – indeed, they had “produced more ton per man hour than any other shipyard worker in the world.” Besides that this issue of On the Line made no particular call to action to the membership, the fact that the union resorted to invoking patriotic sympathy demonstrated that they were basically vulnerable and powerless over the situation, whether conscious of it at this time or not.
As it turned out, Wolfson intended to operate NYSC instead of shutting it down. For a time it continued to be a leader of sorts, completing the world’s first nuclear-powered civilian vessel in 1959. However, as government contracts decreased or were sent elsewhere, it became impossible to continue. After two decades of dwindling, NYSC closed in 1967.[53]
Conclusion
At the expense of sounding harsh or partisan, it is only natural to wonder if management and government used the workers at NYSC when such an alliance was beneficial, and then ceased to stand by the laborers once they were not as needed for the goals of management or the government. Of course, a similar charge can be leveled at the workers of NYSC. They were happy to invoke patriotism and even embrace American militarism when it accomplished their objectives. However, perhaps they made the mistake of becoming lost in their own propaganda, by believing too strongly in the patriotic militarist alliance between labor, government, and management which they could have been aware was only a tactical, conditional, and temporary cooperation. After all, their own behavior exhibited the instability of the relationship. Their strikes in the 1930s often involved language of a struggle between classes, or at least an entrenched conflict between workers and management if only at NYSC specifically. Union support for the government was not conditional, either – there were times when the IUMSWA condemned or booed at the names of government representatives. Perhaps the NYSC workers failed to see that the fickleness of their support for management and government was mirrored by a similar lack of commitment in the other forces. Indeed, the laborers may have given their support to the other forces more freely than they themselves realized. After all, believing that all the members of your country are operating as one unified team is a very pleasant and tempting belief to develop, especially in times of war. Most importantly, it may have been very tempting for workers to place greater faith in the other forces than made sense, simply because the idea that your country believes in and values your labor is a very comforting notion. Adopting the opposite idea could be painful and depressing in the extreme, even (or especially) if it were true.
The mere fact that the NYSC laborers worked on Navy contracts certainly shaped their consciousness. While sometimes laborers can feel indifferent to the products of their labor, the NYSC workers embraced the idea that their labor was significant for the fulfillment of a great ideal, and this allowed them to take pride in their work. Even if participation in World War II had been unrelated to or even contrary to the interests of workers at NYSC, identifying with the war effort allowed them to feel significant, even powerful. Both corporate-written and union-written histories and records of NYSC feature pictures of the boats constructed, often surrounded by captions bragging that either the corporation or the workers were part of American military power. Both longed to incorporate themselves into the post-World War II American apotheosis. The magnitude of the ships depicted in the lovingly-taken photographs makes it easy to see why a person working on such a gargantuan, awe-inspiring construct could hardly resist feeling some investment in the use to which it would be put. Of course, besides providing pride in their work, the war effort provided work itself. In the era of Keynesianism’s rise, it was hardly lost on the NYSC workers that governmental war spending was an economy-stimulating demand and was the source of their employment. Even if participation in World War II had been widely disliked by Americans, asking shipyard workers to oppose the source of their employment would have been at best complex and at worst unimaginable. Therefore the fact that NYSC workers drew their livelihoods from the war shaped them towards embracing American militarism and rejecting anti-state forms of labor politics as well.
All of this notwithstanding, the less debatable fact is that by the 1940s, significant sections of the IUMSWA embraced the nation’s syncretism of labor progressivism and patriotic militarism. Entering into this alliance resulted at first in a higher standard of living for NYSC employees, as they received plenty of work. On the other hand, embracing this ideology may have caused IUMSWA members to channel their attention and loyalties toward goals not traditionally connected to unionism or the working class. In a reversal of the initial transformation of workers’ consciousness at NYSC, class struggle over the distribution of resources became submerged beneath an alliance across classes. Whether or not it made sense for labor to take this stance is an issue we may see unfold again in our lifetimes, as globalization interconnects the working conditions of greater and greater amounts of laborers from different nations. Indeed, there are multiple parallels between the issues of the NYSC strike and the debates of today. Today we commonly hear accusations of a sharp class bias in government priorities, as the federal government commits hundreds of billions of dollars to bank bailouts while unemployment has grown and public schools face layoffs or even closure. Many people believe that the government should either stay out of the economy, or be guided by an altogether opposite class bias. Some people hope once more for a nationalist solution to economic problems, this time in the form of immigration controls. Most importantly, the combination of economic fluctuation, government involvement in commerce, and examples to follow in
[1] Barbara Rothschild, “Launching warships – and unions,”
[2] Peter Cole, Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era
[3] John T. McCusker, “Source of Investment Capital in the Colonial
The Journal of Economic History 32.1 (1972): 146-7, 152.
4 C. K. Harley, “On the Persistence of Old Techniques: The Case of North American Wooden
Shipbuilding,” The Journal of Economic History 33.2 (1973): 377.
[5] Cole, Wobblies on the Waterfront, 100.
Richard Sicotte, “Economic Crisis and Political Response: The Political Economy of
the Shipping Act of 1916,” The Journal of Economic History 59.4 (1999): 861, 880.
[6] Cole, Wobblies on the Waterfront, 12.
[7] Kenneth Fones-Wolf, “
1995.
[8] Harley, “On the Persistence of Old Techniques,” 384.
Phillip Van Gelder, Book of Facts for Shipyard Workers: Story of the Rise of the Industrial Union of
Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of
[9] Sicotte, “The Political Economy of the Shipping Act of 1916,” 862, 878.
[10] Ibid, 871.
NYSC. 50 Years: New York Shipbuilding Corporation, (NYSC: Camden, 1949) 7.
[11]Sicotte, “The Political Economy of the Shipping Act of 1916,” 861, 879-880.
NYSC. 50 Years: New York Shipbuilding Corporation, 72-3.
NYSC. New York Shipbuilding Corporation: A History and Record, (NYSC Office: Camden, 1931) 8.
[12] Edward Hurley to S. Bellinger, letter, May 10, 1918.
Navy Department, Bureau of Construction and Repair, written instructions. “
at the
NYSC. New York Shipbuilding Corporation: A History and Record, 12.
[13] New York Shipbuilding Corporation exhibit. Camden County Historical Society museum.
[14]
(Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1936) 317-8.
[15] Cole, Wobblies on the Waterfront, 101, 109.
Ruth L. Horowitz, Political Ideologies of Organized Labor : the New Deal Era (
Transaction Books, 1978) 236.
Sharon Smith, Subterranean Fire: a History of Working-Class Radicalism in the
Haymarket, 2006) 90, 102.
[16]
[17] David Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards: Union Strategy in Three Northeast Ports, 1933-1945,
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) 96.
[18] Van Gelder, Book of Facts, 5.
[19] Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards, 48.
[20] Ibid, 26-7.
New York Shipbuilding Corporation exhibit. Camden County Historical Society museum. 1900 Park
Boulevard. 21 May 2010.
[22] NYSC. 50 Years: New York Shipbuilding Corporation, 72-3.
NYSC. New York Shipbuilding Corporation: A History and Record, 11-12.
New York Shipbuilding Corporation exhibit. Camden County Historical Society museum. 1900 Park
Boulevard. 21 May 2010.
[23] Education Committee of IUMSWA, Unionism at Work, (Camden: IUMSWA, 1943) 13-15.
Van Gelder, Book of Facts, 3-4.
[24] Ibid, 4, 15.
NYSC to officers and employees, bulletin, July 28, 1932.
[25] IUMSWA, Unionism at Work, 13-15.
Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards, 36, 38.
Van Gelder, Book of Facts, 6.
[26] Van Gelder, Book of Facts, 28.
[27] Ibid, 7.
[28] Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards, 42-7.
[29] Ibid, 54-8, 62.
[30] Ibid, p62-65
Van Gelder, Book of Facts, 9-10.
[31] Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards, 77, 81, 83.
[32] Ibid, 89.
[33] Ibid, 92, 97.
Van Gelder, Book of Facts, 11, 22.
NYSC. 50 Years: New York Shipbuilding Corporation.
NYSC. New York Shipbuilding Corporation: A History and Record.
[34] “A Word in Passing – Not a Lecture,” Yorkship News, March 1920, p10.
[35] “PRODUCTION OR DISTRIBUTION?” Yorkship News, March 1920, p11.
[36] Van Gelder, Book of Facts, 4.
[37] Ibid, 4, 15-16.
[38] IUMSWA, Unionism at Work, 19.
[39] Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards, 71.
[40] Ibid, 84.
[41] Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: the Origins of the New American Right (Princeton:
University Press, 2001).
[42] Van Gelder, Book of Facts for Shipyard Workers, 5.
[43] David Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards, 66-7.
[44] Smith, Subterranean Fire, 159.
[45] IUMSWA, Unionism at Work, 69.
[46] William Frazier, Workers at War: Seven Woodcuttings, (Cowen Publishing: Camden, 1944).
[47] Frazier, Workers at War.
[48] Marine Draftsmen Association to the Officials of NYSC, bulletin, April 1945.
[49] Smith, Subterranean Fire, 50.
[50] John P. Bonner on behalf of Negotiating Committee to IUMSWA membership, written report,
March 29, 1946, pp4.
[51] John Green to press, press release, July 26, 1948.
[52] Smith, Subterranean Fire, 170-2.
[53] Thomas W. Saul, “Promise or Menace,” On the Line, December 1954, p3-4.
“Wolfson Parlayed Loan of $10,000 Into $200 Million,” On the Line, January 1955, pp3-9.
NYSC to Mamie Eiseinhower, written invitation to attend launching of N.J. Savannah, July 21, 1959.
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