Ohio History Review of From Blackjacks to Briefcases

James E. Cebula, University of Cincinnati

From the last third of the nineteenth century until the present there has been a persistent resistance to collective bargaining in the workplace by management. In From Blackjacks to Briefcases Robert Michael Smith shows how some managers relied on "anti-union entrepreneurs" (p. xvi), as well as varying degrees of support from local, state, and federal authorities, to control the workplace. Utilizing an extensive array of federal and state government reports as well as the pertinent secondary literature Smith nicely chronicles the long history of commercial strikebreaking in the United States.

It became clear during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 that local authorities could not control strikers. Employers promoted the development of National Guard units and armories and turned to private police forces like the Pinkerton National Detective Agency for help. The rapidly changing industrial milieu led to labor unrest. The introduction of armed guard mercenaries into strike situations led to extensive industrial violence. Often, the mercenaries were confronted with widespread community resistance such as occurred during the Southwestern Ohio Hocking Valley coal strike of 1884, the McCormick Harvester Company strike of 1885, and the Homestead Strike of 1892. Whenever outsiders were brought in to protect property rights and management, prerogatives, the violence escalated.

Eventually under political pressure politicians began to denounce "Pinkertonism." By 1899 twenty-six states prohibited the "importation of armed med from neighboring territories" (p. 20). Still, the reliance on armed guard agencies persisted in the coalfields of West Virginia and Colorado. The violence escalated as the Baldwin-Felts Company introduced machine guns and armored vehicles into the anti-union struggle. It was not until 1935 that West Virginia outlawed the practice of deputizing private guards.

Early in the twentieth century, with the use of armed guards on the decline, management turned to hiring professional strikebreakers to protect management's right to hire and the working man's right to work. Entrepreneurs like Paul Bergoff, who became known as the "King of the Strikebreakers," and James Farley, who specialized in transit strikes, for a fee supplied hundreds of men, and on occasion, thousands, to restart struck facilities. These men became wealthy and in some quarters were viewed as heroes. Just as in the era of armed guards, the era of strikebreakers was also marked by industrial violence as local workers sought to protect their jobs. Eventually the strikebreaking firms began to get court injunctions to limit the behavior of the strikers.

The Great Depression and the passage of the National Labor Relations Act ushered in a new economic and governmental structure, which led to the development of new techniques to combat the unionization. Industrial spying now became a seminal tool in the offensive against labor. While industrial spies had been used since the earliest days of struggle against labor, by the end of the 1930s more then two hundred companies nationwide made undercover operatives available to management. Even in the anti-business climate of the 1930's efforts to limit the practice failed to win congressional approval. In addition, in spite of the pro-regulatory climate of the era, in 1938 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of employers to hire replacement workers during strikes.

In the aftermath of World War II labor relations consultants, now armed with degrees in industrial psychology, management, and labor law, became management's newest weapon in the anti-union arsenal. Formed under the auspices of Sears, Roebuck and Company, The Labor Relations Associates under the leadership of Nathan W. Shifferman became the leading consulting firm. In the late 1950s Congressional scrutiny of Shifferman's activities and his close relationship with Teamster's Union president Dave Beck led to the passage of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (Landrum-Griffin Act). The new law required management to report agreements with labor relations consultants and required unions to "open their books." But the new labor specialists found ways around both the Wagner Act and the Landrum-Griffin Act. By the 1970s these specialists were increasingly in demand as management's assault on unions developed labor education programs in order to provide effective representation for their members, the labor consultants offered seminars and training programs on how to defeat unionization efforts.

Smith's model is based on the premise that some management always resisted unions and it stresses the evolution of the process into dominant phases. Like all models it is not always a perfect fit. While armed guards dominated as the tool for professional union busters in the nineteenth century, many firms relied on their own strategies. Foundry men relied on non-union molders provided by their trade association during the last third of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century and Stephen Norwood points out that replacement workers were used in 40 percent of the late-nineteenth-century strikes. In addition, while Smith acknowledges the personnel management movement of the 1920s, he does not tell us about Harry Bennett and the Ford Motor Company "Service Department" and the 1930s General Motors-sponsored anti-union vigilante groups. In spite of the shortcomings of the model used, this book is a welcome edition to the literature of the history of labor-management relations in the United States.

Ohio History
Vol. 113
Winter-Spring 2004