Strike Breaking and Union Busting, 1890s-1935
Hiring agencies specializing in anti-union practices has been an option available to employers from the bloody strikes of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, until today.
Creative methods of union busting have been around for a long time. In 1907, Morris Friedman reported that a Pinkerton agent who had infiltrated the Western Federation of Miners managed to gain control of a strike relief fund, and attempted to exhaust that union's treasury by awarding lavish benefits to strikers. However, many attacks against unions have used brute force of one sort or another, including police action, military force, or recruiting goon squads.
Read more about this topic: History Of Union Busting In The United States
Famous quotes containing the words strike, breaking and/or union:
“What happens in a strike happens not to one person alone.... It is a crisis with meaning and potency for all and prophetic of a future. The elements in crisis are the same, there is a fermentation that is identical. The elements are these: a body of men, women and children, hungry; an organization of feudal employers out to break the back of unionization; and the government Labor Board sent to “negotiate” between this hunger and this greed.”
—Meridel Le Sueur (b. 1900)
“With their ever breaking newness
And their courage to be new.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Let’s have the Union restored as it was, if we can; but if we can’t, I’m in favor of the Union as it wasn’t.”
—Artemus Ward (1834–1867)