The Real History of Labor in the United States

Recently, it came to my attention that Chicago Teachers Union Boss Karen Lewis had made some extremely disturbing comments about labor history.  Here they are, but I warn you they're not for the faint of heart:

”The labor leaders of that time, though, were ready to kill. They were. They were just - off with their heads. They were seriously talking about that.“I don’t think we’re at that point. The key is that they think nothing of killing us. They think nothing about putting us in harm’s way. They think nothing about lethal working conditions.”

As you can see, she's practically calling for workers to rise up and kill everybody making more money them.   No less an authority than Michelle Malkin called Karen Lewis "Chicago thuggery personified."

Still, my complaint isn't that Karen Lewis is inciting violence, but that she was speaking at a labor history conference and acting like labor history was all about violent confrontations between labor and management.   Could anything be further from the truth?   Sure, there were violent trade unionists, but that was mostly from agitators and communists.  I believe a better depiction of labor history in our country comes from this 10 minute video that was made by the National Association of Manufacturers in 1940.

This is the type of employee/ worker relationship that I grew up with.   Workers would help companies and the companies would help their employees.  When employees wanted more money, they simply asked for it and if it wasn't too unreasonable, the employer gave it to them.  Even more, sometimes productivity grew enough the employers could give benefits or shorter work schedules for their workers.  That's the spirit that built America.

My grandfather was a friend to workers and businesses alike.  When there was a strike, some of his buddies and him would head down to the picket line and they could usually be counted on to break up a work action almost immediately.  Workers respected them and if they didn't, they were probably communists anyway.

Please don't be fooled by tearer downers like Karen Lewis.  I wonder why people like that always want to stir up trouble.  The video talks about man named Manson who had a dream.  I think we need to ask ourselves, do we want to follow Karen Lewis's dream or Manson's?  I for one am following Manson.