Struggle of 100 years ago offers a lesson for today

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4296

By Tony DeAngelis
4 January 2010

As 2009 ends and 2010 begins, I’d like to take a look back at an event that took place a century ago.
In 1906, a young Ukrainian immigrant and his wife emigrated to McKees Rocks, an industrial community just downriver from Pittsburgh, Pa., the center of a burgeoning steel industry. Michael and Mary Kiselicia had little idea of what was about to happen to them, along with 4,000 other immigrants from southeastern Europe, and the impact they would have on labor history.

They settled in Presston, a company town owned by the Pressed Steel Car Company, a manufacturer of railroad cars, most of them hoppers (open-air cars built to transport coal and iron ore to the steel mills in the Pittsburgh area). Mike Kiselicia was hired by the company, and two years later he and Mary began their family with a daughter, Katherine.


artwork depicting McKees Rocks strike
Artwork by Pennsylvania Labor History Society

What was coming was an event that is not well-known: the McKees Rocks Pressed Steel Car Strike of 1909. Although it is not as famous as the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892 or the Steel Strike of 1919, it was the second bloodiest strike in Pittsburgh history (behind the Great Railroad Uprising of 1877).

The Pressed Steel Car Company was formed by a merger with the Schoen Pressed Steel Car Company in 1899. The new company built an immense new plant on the Ohio River bottoms in Stowe Township, adjacent to the borough of McKees Rocks. To house most of the 4,000 new employees, it built company housing – the town of Presston, also called “Hunky Town” or “Hunkeyville,” after the ethnic immigrant groups that came to work for the company (Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Slovaks, and Slovenians, among others). Most of them were unskilled or semi-skilled workers who spoke little or no English.

n 1903, the English-speaking workers struck to protest low pay and hazardous working conditions. Their strike was broken when they were replaced by Slavic immigrants. By 1909, the company employed 6,000 workers – 4,000 foreign-born – speaking 16 different languages.

Conditions in the plant remained extremely unsafe. The Allegheny County Coroner’s Office estimated that one worker per day died at Pressed Steel. It was known at the time as the “Last Chance Job” and the “Slaughterhouse.”

In addition, according to labor historian, Charles McCollester, workers had to pay to get and keep a job, being fired occasionally and hired back for a fee; and were paid through a “pool system,” where individual wages were determined by how much their “team” produced on a weekly basis. And, as pay rates were not published, workers never knew what their pay would be from week to week. This led to workers going in debt to the company store, falling behind in their rent and eventually leading to eviction from company housing. Another charge made by the workers was that their wives and daughters were being subjected to sexual harassment to repay food and rental debts.


FULL story at link. Several links in story.

[madokie]

1. We've made so much progress in the last hundred years

and the Unions have been the driving force for it all but with the twit reagan at the helm we started going downhill and been going downhill ever since. Even during the clinton years we were still sliding downward, slightly less so but downhill never the less.

[happyslug]

2. "200 State Constables" were hired by the employer, Coal and Iron Police

The "Coal and Iron Police" existed from the 1869s till 1931, when Governor Pinchot refused to renew their commissions. The Coal and Iron Police were the result of the law of Pennsylvania permitting any corporation to hire "State Constables" (Called "Coal and Iron Police"). Over 7000 thugs became "State Constables" via this method. While they were technically "State Constables" they were paid by any one who wanted to hire them (i.e. NO state pay, just pay for "Services" rendered).

The "Coal and Iron Police" have been called the worse terrorist organization that has ever reached the shores of the US (and that includes Al Queda). They were nothing but thugs and when their killed someone, their employers would pay for them to leave the state (prior to they being outlawed in Pennsylvania in 1892 the Pinkertons did the same when it came to their strikebreakers many of who were also "Coal and Iron Police"). Being out of State no criminal charges could be brought against them and being STATE Constables the people who hired them were NOT liable for the actions their did (i.e. the Steel, Iron and Coal Companies could NOT be sued for the actions of the Coal and Iron Police for they were either independent agents OR agents of the State, in the later case Sovereign immunity protected the state from being sued).

The State Police was founded in 1903 to replace the Coal and Iron Police, but till 1931 only supplemented the Coal and Iron Police not replaced them. The Coal and Iron Police not only has pistols and billy clubs like a Police Officers, they often had access to rifles, Gating guns (later Machine guns) and even Cannon (and had plans to use them, through the only cannon used in an American Strike, that I know of, was during the 1892 Homestead strike and that was by strikers who took a Civil War Cannon sitting in Homestead as a War Memorial and used it to try to sink a ferry trying to bring in Pinkertons detectives to the Homestead work. The leader of the Strike, when they found out the Cannon was being used, rush to the Cannon and told the men shooting the cannon to stop (Never hit the Ferry, down hill shot, moving target, using black powder charges made up from whatever they could find getting close as they did was an achievement. The chief side affect was the removal of all Civil War Cannons from the Big Cities Civil War Memorials, and other areas with labor unrest i.e. the Coal mines).

Please note the Cannon used at Homestead was one everyone had access to, the Cannons held by the Coal and Iron Police were completely under their control and they had the correct ammunition for the cannons and training to use the cannon, something the strikers did NOT have).

Anyway, do to the Homestead strike and the questions that came up when the Pinkertons said they were deputized by the Sheriff, and the Sheriff saying he NEVER deputized them Pennsylvania adopted a law that you MUST be a resident of Pennsylvania for one year before you can be a law Enforcement Officer in Pennsylvania, a law that is still on the books.

While the Pinkertons grabbed the Headlines in 1892 and the Pennsylvania Militia ended up being used during Homestead (and the problems that occurred with the use of the Militia, which held together much better in 1892 then it had in 1877, but not quite the strike breaker the Coal and Iron Police were) but after 1892 they was a decided effort NOT to use the Militia to break a strike UNLESS all else failed. Thus the Militia was NOT used in the 1909 Press Car Strike, the State Police and Coal and Iron Police ended up doing the dirty work (The Pennsylvania State Police quickly came to have a bad reputation among labor, so bad that when Pennsylvania wanted to have Police Patrols on its Highways in 1923, Pennsylvania formed the "Pennsylvania Highway Patrol" instead of giving that duty to the State Police. The two agencies co-existed till 1937 when the two organization were merged). I can NOT find a cite to support what I have read about the merger, but if I remember correctly the Highway Patrol was LARGER then the State Police in 1937 AND was cost efficient (the Tickets issued by the Patrolmen of the Highway Patrol paid for the cost of the Highway patrol, while the State Police came out of General Revenue, under the merger the funding of the State Police became the duty of the then Pennsylvania Department of Highways, now the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, i.e. paid out of tickets and gasoline taxes NOT general revenue).

For more on the Coal and Iron Police:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_and_Iron_Police

Pennsylvania State Police (Pennsylvania State Police from 1903 to 1937, then merged with the Highway Patrol to become the "Pennsylvania Motor Police", in 1943 back to the "Pennsylvania State Police"):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_State_Police
http://www.psp.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/psp/4451

Previous thread on strikes:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=114x16305#16350

More on the Homestead Strike:
http://thesis.haverford.edu/dspace/bitstream/10066/1019/1/2007PickardD.pdf

More on the Pressed steel strike:
http://www.library.pitt.edu/labor_legacy/PressedSteelStrike.htm
http://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=628
http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/history/history/mckees_strike.cfm


More on the history of the Pressed Steel Company:
http://www.midcontinent.org/rollingstock/builders/pressedsteel2.htm