Legislators Break Promises to Labor Unions
Despite campaign pledges, Olympia lawmakers stall on key labor legislation, leaving unions with little to show for their efforts.
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.
Olympia, March 10. Labor won one of the four points it battled for during the recent campaign. The forces of labor centered their elective strength on the eight-hour law for women, the eight-hour law for underground miners, the initiative and referendum, and the employers' liability law. Bills to these ends were introduced in both branches of the legislature, but the eight-hour law for miners was the only one that passed through both bodies. This is a compromise measure, and while it will doubtless better the conditions of the miners, it is not radical, as is evidenced by the fact that it was satisfactory to the coal mine operators of the state. The Republicans of the senate repudiated their Spokane platform when they defeated the eight-hour law for women. The Republican platform contained three labor planks: the eight-hour law for women, for miners, and the employers' liability law. Thus, two of the three promises made by the Republican convention failed to come through, and the eight-hour law for miners was only passed because the operators did not object to it.
“The Republicans of the senate repudiated their Spokane platform when they defeated the eight-hour law for women.”
The tension between political campaign platforms and actual legislative action remains a central feature of Washington State politics. Then as now, labor organizations found themselves navigating a political environment where platform promises often withered under pressure from industrial operators.
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