Championing Workers: Restoring Government’s True Role

by Steve Share, Jul 13, 2007

A memorial to labor hero Floyd B. Olson, Minnesota governor 1930-1936, now overgrown with weeds.

Greetings from Minneapolis, where we’ve had so little rain this summer that I’ve cut my grass only once.

During another hot summer—73 years ago in July—workers here shed blood in the streets in a struggle for better wages and working conditions and for the right to organize unions and bargain collectively. The Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934 helped make Minneapolis a union town and also helped lead Congress to pass the landmark National Labor Relations Act of 1935.

In my work as editor of the Minneapolis Labor Review, I’ve been learning more about those hard-won victories of 70-plus years ago and every day see how workers’ struggles for justice continue today. I hope to share some of those stories here in the weeks and months ahead.

The Labor Review, first published in April 1907, this year is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Founded as a weekly, the newspaper today is published monthly by the Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council. The Labor Review is mailed to more than 68,000 union households in the Minneapolis area.

This year, starting in March, we began publishing a 10-part labor history series, taking in turn each 10-year period of the newspaper’s back pages beginning in 1907. I’ve been pouring through bound volumes of the Labor Review, struck by the stark struggles of the workers and the labor movement and how so many of the issues faced in the past continue to challenge us today.

I’ve also been using the Labor Review’s searchable, on-line archive, available free of charge to the public at www.minneapolisunions.org/. Visitors to the Labor Review archive can search by topic, by the name of an individual union, or by date. The archive also includes the most recent issues of the Labor Review, so you can find our 100th anniversary history series there.

During my own almost four years as editor of the Labor Review, I’ve reported victories to celebrate and tragedies to mourn. As I’ve researched our back pages for our 100th anniversary labor history series, I’ve also learned something else.

History is not just the few big events that years later make it into the history books. History is made every day by ordinary workers who insist on respect for their labor and stand up for their rights. History is made every day by workers who speak up about injustice. History is made every day by women and men who keep faith with labor’s cause through years of struggle—sustained by hope and by a vision of better times ahead.

Today, unfortunately, we’re fighting to preserve the very right to form unions and bargain collectively. Here in Minnesota we have three examples from recent news:

• In Minneapolis, workers at Walker Methodist Health Care Center voted four years ago to choose AFSCME as their bargaining agent, but instead, faced challenge after challenge to the vote by the employer. Only just last month did the employer agree to give up further challenges, recognize AFSCME and begin to bargain a contract.
• In Rochester, a new owner of the Holiday Inn Express fired all 19 union  employees four days before this most recent Christmas. Despite the fact that UNITE HERE Local 21 had represented the hotel workers for three decades, the new owner refused to recognize the union. Last week, however, a federal district court judge issued a rare 10J injunction and ordered the employer to rehire all the employees, recognize the union and bargain a contract. (For more details, visit www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_3145.)
• In St. Paul, the State of Minnesota recently awarded the contract for cafeteria services at state office buildings to a non-union contractor, who is laying off union workers. UNITE HERE Local 17 had contracts with a series contractors at the state cafeterias going back to 1958. Local 17 now is calling for a boycott of the state cafeterias.(For more details, visit: www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_3154.)

The workers who took to the streets in Minneapolis in July 1934 likely would be dismayed to see another generation of workers engaged in these fights for basic union recognition.

Those workers of 1934 had a friend in Minnesota governor Floyd B. Olson, elected in 1930 as the candidate of the Farmer-Labor Party. After striking Teamsters were attacked by police and an army of vigilantes from the business-backed Citizens Alliance, Olson sent in the Minnesota National Guard—not to break the strike, but to stop the violence. Olson then worked for a settlement that ultimately brought victory to the workers. When Olson tragically died of cancer in 1936 at a young age, the Labor Review reported that 1 million people were on the streets the day of Olson’s funeral to honor a true champion of working people.

A statue of Olson, erected in 1937, stands today on Minnesota Highway 55 (Olson Memorial Highway) near the western boundary of Minneapolis. I’ve driven by that
statue many times but just a week ago stopped by for a closer look with my camera. I was saddened and dismayed to find the memorial unkempt and overgrown with weeds. Weeds at the base of the statue stood waist high. Weeds grew from the cracks in the concrete plaza encircling the statue. And a hedge bordering the plaza’s edge was seriously overgrown, blocking approaching sidewalks.

The scene said a lot to me. In the lack of maintenance of the Floyd B. Olson memorial, I saw physical evidence of cutbacks in state government services and state aid to Minneapolis under the administration of Republican governor Tim Pawlenty. (Pawlenty allies even have urged taking down the Olson statue and renaming the highway after Ronald Reagan).

In the overgrown weeds at the Floyd B. Olson memorial, however, I also saw a metaphor: Where once government stood as a champion for workers and workers rights, that legacy is now largely abandoned. We need to restore that legacy.

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