Margaret Levi
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Small children toiling all day and even into the night in noisy, polluted factories.
or immigrant women workers jumping from a burning sweatshop because the fire escapes were locked so that they could not take breaks.
But unions changed that by winning protections for workers.
They transformed lives.
They enabled even the worst off to achieve the American dream.
Consider the longshore workers, those who load and unload ships.
In the morning, the boss came and yelled all along the shore, thus the name Longshore.
They pleaded for the scarce jobs, just as migrant day laborers do today at places like Lowe's and Home Depot.
It was humiliating, degrading.
But when the unions won the right to organize and won contracts, the wharf rats became lords of the dock.
They became middle class.
They could marry.
They could support families.
They could send their children to college.
They had health insurance and benefits.
They had dignity, respect.
They were full American citizens.
Unions enabled others to attain the American dream by raising wages generally and by reducing wage disparities between men and women and among the races.
My research has shown me
that with every transformation in the economy, the technology, the way we work, there has been an evolution in the labor movement.