Answer:
The claim that organized labor has been a force for racial egalitarianism can only be called a myth. It is one of the many myths that
pro-union historians have perpetuated—similar to those, for example, that unorganized workers suffered from an “inequality of bargaining power” (Reynolds 1991), that strikes are conflicts between
employers and employees rather than between different groups of
employees, or that violence was more often employed against than
by unions (Thieblot and Haggard 1983). Perhaps the greatest myth
of all is that organized labor is good for workers generally. In fact,
unions transfer income from the unorganized to the organized, and
depress total income to such a degree that even organized workers
are poorer (Vedder and Galloway 2002).
This article gives an account of the ways in which unions have
used racial discrimination as an economic weapon. Before the Civil
War, labor leaders claimed that the classical liberal, antislavery vision
of “free labor” actually established “wage slavery” for white workers.
The former slaves, excluded from white unions, often had to fight
their way into industrial employment as strikebreakers. Organized
labor lobbied for decades for special legislation that would enable
them to make their strikes effective. When they finally achieved this
in the New Deal, the federal government faced the problem of
securing “fair representation” for black workers. This ended up producing affirmative action after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964.
Explanation:
