principled nitpicking (zachedcheck.org)

A while back, commenter Julio claimed that "...this [workers' putative rejection of UNITE's camapign to organize American Apparel] was teh [sic] first industrial protest against organized labour in US history, outside of agriculture. They just didn't want it." I've seen this same claim voiced on other blogs and on comments posted to several newspaper and magazine articles about American Apparel. As folks who read this blog know, I'm skeptical about the claim that what occurred at American Apparel was, in fact, a "protest against organized labor" and not, at least in part, a campaign of veiled and pernicious scare tactics by American Apparel management.

But right now, i'm less interested in debating this than looking at the claim, which seems like it must be part of "AA's" PR campaign, that had this been a "protest" against organized labor, it would have been the first such "outside of agriculture" in US history. This is a ridiculous assertion. There have, of course, been numerous protests against organize labor by workers [we'll assume this is what Julio meant] in various industries. I call readers' attention to the battles throughout the (long) twentieth century to desegregate unions, their leadership, and, particularly in the building trades and in manufacturing, their hiring halls. I also could call readers' attention to the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, who, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, mounted autonomous workers movements inside Michigan auto-industry plants against what they understood as the racist collusion of the UAW leadership with the giants of automobile manufacturing, using the phrase "finally got the news about how our dues are being used" as a rallying cry. In 1968, when the New York City teachers' union became embroiled with Black and Puerto-Rican parents in a struggle for community control over schooling, the overwhelmingly white teachers struck. Many teachers, including my mother, crossed picket lines because they felt that the union's position was a racist and reactionary one. And this doesn't even consider the long history of interunion struggles - like the battle between UCAPAWA/FTA-CIO and the Teamsters over Chicana and Jewish women cannery and agricultural workers in 1940s California or the Teamsters' battles with the UFW decades later.

Does AMerican Apparel think it's the first corporation to defeat a union drive? Do they want us to look at every defeated union drive as "an industrial protest against organized labor," or will they ever provide evidence they didn't threaten to close the factory or hold captive audience "rallies," thus attempting to bolster their claims of exceptional circumstances? Regardless, whether this line is part of American Apparel's PR campaign or it is simply a mistaken claim that has been circulated from person to person on internet comment threads, there are absolutely no circumstances under which this claim could be true, regarldess of what may or may not have actually occurred at American Apparel.