The Iron Heel on the Toilers
A labor organizer warns that the U.S. Steel Corporation's wage cuts and anti-union tactics place the entire burden of industrial conflict on the backs of workers.
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The dispatches announcing the reduction of wages among those iron and steel workers employed on a percentage or sliding scale basis, following the cut in prices ordered by the United States Steel Corporation, do not tell the whole story. The wages of the workers not employed under the percentage system will also be reduced on May 1, and perhaps sooner. It is unlikely that there will be a general strike inaugurated in the trust mills. From its inception, the trust has antagonized organization among its employees, and so successful has been this opposition that today not more than 20 percent of the trust operatives are in unions. The most effective of the trust's plans to hinder organization was the disposal of stock at special rates to its thousands of workers. Many purchased stock through fear of losing their jobs, and others because they believed it would be a good investment. So even the union men will hesitate to strike against a wage reduction for fear of losing their jobs and investments. No matter what the outcome may be of the various moves on the iron and steel chessboard at the present time, the tens of thousands of workers will bear the brunt of the industrial battle. It is in the homes of the toilers, it is the women and children of the working class, who will feel the iron heel more severely than the gentlemen higher up, who are manipulating the cards.
“It is in the homes of the toilers, it is the women and children of the working class, who will feel the iron heel more severely than the gentlemen higher up, who are manipulating the cards.”
Peter Power's 1909 critique of how corporate 'investments' were used to break the collective power of workers echoes modern debates about the gig economy, where contractors are kept from organizing by being labeled as 'partners.' The tension between individual economic precarity and the necessity of union organization remains the central struggle for Tacoma's labor movement over a century later.
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