The Union Label as a Weapon for Economic Justice
Everett workers are urged to boycott 'sweatshop' products and prioritize union-made goods to protect their own livelihoods.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Discussing the aims of the new union label department of the American Federation of Labor, Thomas F. Tracy, the secretary-treasurer, makes plain the duty of trades unionists. It is to their own interest to purchase only union-made products. The department was organized to systematically bring to the attention of the purchasing public the advantages of buying products that bear the union labels of the various crafts. While we do not contend that the union label is the complete salvation of the workers, it cannot be successfully denied that it is an important adjunct to the trades union movement. If our members and friends are alive to their own interests, they will realize that a greater interest is now more necessary than ever before in the purchasing of union-made products. We must expend our purchasing power rather than patronize products of prison-made labor or the unclean, unhealthy sweatshop, which breeds disease and contagion, or products containing the life blood of little children engaged in unhealthy work at a tender age, so that the sordid greed of some unscrupulous employer may be satisfied.
“Let all take up the work of purchasing union products... rather than expend our purchasing power in patronizing the products of prison-made labor or of the unclean and unhealthy sweatshop.”
This 1909 call for 'conscious consumption' mirrors current efforts to trace the supply chains of everything from coffee to electronics. The push to use one's purchasing power as a moral and political tool is a recurring tactic for labor movements, whether in the mills of early Everett or in today’s gig economy.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.