10

The American Plan

The 1919 strike wave frightened employers. Coming on the heels of wartime labor shortages and federal support for union pay scales, the specter of a relentlessly organizing labor force haunted the captains of American industry. Union membership reached five million in 1920, twice the number of unionized workers just four years earlier. As a steel mill owner commented, it seemed as if “the gods were fighting on the side of Labor.” But the heavens and labor soon parted company. Bruised but not battered, business leaders across the country retooled for a new offensive. Federal authorities, no longer constrained by the need for wartime labor peace, launched an antiradical political vendetta to complement the antilabor campaigns. Employer associations of all kinds rediscovered the value of class solidarity, organizing a furious and unceasing assault on union labor under the label of the “American Plan.”

Building employers, suitably underwritten by industrialists and local Chambers of Commerce, did their share. They tackled construction unions in San Francisco, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia. In San Francisco, the Industrial Association broke the twenty-year reign of one of the country’s mightiest closed shops. Financed to the tune of $1.25 million, the Industrial Association overpowered the unions and prohibited collective bargaining in the city’s building industry after June 13, 1921. An Association pamphlet labeled the practice a violation of “the principles of the community.”¹

Builders had particular axes to grind in the postwar turnabout on labor. Beyond their obvious objections to the numerical growth of the building trades unions, contractors complained of a cumulative loss of control and authority on the job site. In the supportive political climate of the American Plan era, building employers felt free to propose sweeping changes. For example, a column in the The Builders’ Record, the Boston BTEA monthly, ticked off a list of “essential requirements for a successful year in building construction.” These modifications added up to a repudiation of the fundamental tenets of unionism in the industry. BTEA suggestions included the elimination of any restrictions on output, a ban on sympathetic strikes and jurisdictional disputes, absolute freedom in hiring and firing, removal of the right of a union representative to consult with workers during working hours, and the transfer of the foreman from the obligatory status of union member to unquestioned agent of the employer. BTEA members attributed the increased costs of buildings to the many layers of union rules. These rules, fumed Arthur Joslin of Joslin & Landry, “do not leave it to our or our foremen’s judgment as to just how or who will do a certain class of work.”²

The image of a shackled and helpless foreman symbolized much of the contractors’ indignation. Most locals’ by-laws required foremen to be union members. These crucial clauses did, in fact, soften ties to the employer and presumably preserved the foreman’s loyalty to the union. Few foremen objected to the rule. Given erratic construction manpower needs, building employers offered foremen barely more job security than any other employee. They rarely held permanent supervisory positions, instead floating back and forth from foreman to working craftsman. As long as a foreman knew he might return to the tools one day, he was reluctant to turn his back on the union and cast his lot with an employer. “It is getting increasingly difficult,” moaned army construction chief Charles Gow, “to find a foreman who regards his obligations to his employer as superior to his union.”³ Even more importantly from the contractors’ perspective, foremen hesitated to be severe disciplinarians, knowing that yesterday’s underling could easily be today’s coworker and, possibly, tomorrow’s boss. As union members, foremen were represented by their locals in collective bargaining. Their rates of pay were often negotiated individually with employers, but always in relation to the standard union scale. And if all these bonds were not enough, union by-laws included stiff fines and/or the penalty of expulsion for foremen who violated work rules. Regulations for carpenter foremen in Boston stated: “they shall not rush, use abusive language or otherwise abuse workmen under their direction.”⁴

This notion of a “foreman on a leash” was firmly embedded in contractors’ minds. On occasion, foremen played on this concern in order to evade responsibility for poor production. In a report filed with a major Boston construction firm, one nervous foreman justified slow job progress by his inability to supply the necessary aggressive leadership for fear of “getting in wrong with [the] Local and having a fine put on.” In closed shop towns, a fine was the least of a pusher foreman’s worries. On the giant $24 million Boston Army Base job during World War I, a notoriously offensive foreman had his union card taken away by his local on the charge of profanity. Though he was the contractor’s favorite foreman, widely feared by the men for his hard-driving supervision, he was still discharged. Much to his chargin, the contractor could not retain the offender since the man was no longer a union member and it was a closed shop project. All in all, Joslin spoke for most employers when he lamented, “foremen very seldom get after the men the way they ought to.”⁵

BTEA employers also linked the shorter work week to their loss of authority. By 1921, five of the twenty-seven building trades (including the carpenters) worked forty-hour weeks. The rest were obliged to show up on Saturday mornings for four additional hours. The lack of uniformity created problems. As contractor Ralph Stewart pointed out, it was harder to organize the extra four hours of work without the presence of carpenters. Employers therefore often chose between delaying carpentry tasks or paying double-time for overtime hours. According to Gow, either option was unacceptable. In the absence of crucial carpentry work, Gow claimed Saturday mornings were unproductive and turned a forty-four-hour week into a de facto forty-hour week in terms of output. Paying overtime for just one craft, on the other hand, caused dissension between trades and ensured the eventual implementation of a shorter week for everyone.⁶

Contractors blamed their “predicament” on the war. As overall construction slowed in 1920–21, the massive federal contracts and accompanying record-setting profits of the war years receded from their memories. As the builders looked back, the clarity of their vision was clouded by their obsession with labor’s gains. Gow could only recall the period as a time of excessive worker power. Steady year-round work had been, for once, available, and tradesmen sometimes selected between competing jobs. Stewart believed that the combination of ample work and standard union wage rates had driven worker efficiency to an all-time low. With large numbers of new and untrained “green hands” receiving the same pay as experienced union craftsmen, Stewart suggested that “the efficiency of labor [was] measured by the most inefficient” worker. Joslin asserted that the efficiency level of a postwar carpenter was half that of a prewar man. Employers recited as gospel the conclusions of a 1921 construction report from the War Department to support their contentions:

The universally attractive high standard wages paid to organized labor have placed the second-rate craftsmen on a par with the high-class efficient artisans; and instead of the average day’s work being raised, it is proportionately lowered because the first-class journeyman must carry along his less efficient brother.⁷

Labor officials acknowledged the unusual nature of the wartime job site environment. Year-round work was a novel experience for most construction workers and the scale of jobs was unlike anything seen before. The Boston Army Base project had 7,500 workers, two-thirds of them skilled mechanics. The government paid little attention to total expense, preferring to contract on a cost-plus basis rather than to hold builders to fixed estimates. Federal priorities emphasized the total volume of work regardless of the size of the workforce or the number of overtime hours worked. Even John Carroll of the Boston Cement Finishers Union argued that the wartime system offered “no incentive on the part of the supervisory force to get the desired efficiency out of the men.”⁸

The contractors had never noticed or, in any case, mentioned these problems during the war. On the contrary, the cost-plus system combined with minimal federal oversight meant that whatever costs a contractor declared were quickly reimbursed with little or no inspection. A certain profit margin was guaranteed regardless of the efficiency of the operation, and that margin could be boosted easily with minor manipulations of the figures on labor and materials. It was only later, when the federal cookie jar closed, that builders developed a conscience about bad wartime labor habits.

Building tradesmen had no quarrel with the employers’ version of the nature of the wartime job site, but they deeply resented any attempts to pin the blame on lazy and inefficient workers. Arthur Huddell of the Boston Building Trades Council angrily reminded contractors that they had been the ones to pressure the unions to accept a horde of contractors’ relatives and acquaintances. These men were “not mechanics and did not pretend to be mechanics,” said Huddell. Furthermore, he noted, the contractors did not care, since “Uncle Sam paid the bills.” As a result, the employers set an overall lackadaisical tone for production.

The feeling among the men was that there was plenty of time for the work to be done. Two men were set to do one man’s work. . . . They worked side by side, the mechanic and the man who knew nothing about the business. . . . Now you come along and want efficiency. Who broke down the efficiency of labor? I say the employer and the cost-plus system.⁹

Huddell and other Boston building trades workers realized that the heightened concern over inefficiency and “excessive” union power was the first step in an employer campaign to capture the hearts and minds of the public in an upcoming showdown between management and labor in construction. The American Plan–vintage employer was a much more sophisticated operator than his predecessor. Boston contractors knew they had paid a political price for their previous standoffish and arrogant stance in labor disputes. Charles Gow told a Boston Chamber of Commerce hearing of his frustration with a tradition of public support for construction union craftsmen against their employers. It was a tradition that the BTEA was intent on reversing.¹⁰

The city’s builders had been licking their wounds since the 1919 agreement. By the end of 1920, conditions appeared increasingly favorable for a counterattack. Building had declined even further; workers were desperate for employment. The official unemployment rate for construction workers in Massachusetts in the winter of 1920–21 was 27.6 percent, the highest since the depression of the 1890s. Despite their own lack of contracts, a number of the state’s builders actually welcomed the salutary influence of postwar unemployment, suggesting the revival of economic insecurity had “resulted in an entire reversal of attitude on the part of the average employee.”¹¹ In addition, spiraling inflation was finally slowing, enabling employers to argue against union demands for wage increases to keep up with the cost of living. From the BTEA’s point of view, the economic circumstances and political climate of 1920–21 could not have been more ideal for a siege of the unions.

The 1919 agreement expired on New Year’s Day 1921. Union members sought a raise. Though prices had stabilized since the summer of 1920, building trades workers felt overall that the two-year agreement had put them even further behind in their standard of living. “Somebody says the cost of living has come down 10 percent.” said Arthur Huddell. “But it went up 160 percent. Labor never got a 160 percent increase in wages.” The wartime focus on military construction had drained resources from the residential market. The ensuing housing shortages were driving up workers’ rents astronomically. Thus, despite the larger postwar paychecks, most rank-and-filers agreed with Huddell and James Dobbs of Plasterers Local 10. “I would prefer to go to the 1914 rate of wages, 65 cents per hour,” Dobbs said, “and have the dollar buy now what it would buy in 1914.” In the early winter, the United Building Trades Council informed the BTEA that the city’s tradesmen wanted an increase from $1 an hour to $1.50.¹²

The BTEA refused immediately. On December 29, the Association offered instead a wage freeze and a cut in overtime pay from double time to time-and-a-half. Faced with the cold winds of a New England winter on top of a slack building year, the UBTC realized the precariousness of its bargaining position. On January 10, the unions proposed extending the 1919 agreement until May 1. As the Council backpedaled, the employers quickly moved in for the kill. On January 13, the BTEA announced a new set of working conditions to govern job sites beginning on January 20. Under the new regime, wages would be cut by 10 percent to 90 cents an hour, overtime would be paid at time-and-a-half, a uniform forty-hour week would be established, and the travel time formula was to be amended in such a way as to add an unpaid hour and a half to the working day.¹³

Union officials were stunned by the unilateral action. They had assumed the extension of the old contract would be automatically accepted. UBTC spokesmen John Carroll and E. A. Johnson reported that the BTEA announcement came as a complete surprise. Scrambling for an appropriate response, the Council issued a statement denouncing the ultimatum as a threat to “the principles of collective bargaining, decent travelling conditions, and humane laws in trade organizations.” The unions knew the employers were capitalizing on the cyclical and seasonal slowdown, allowing them to take a strike “without any financial loss.” The BTEA offer still incorporated the principle of a closed shop, but slump or not, the concessions were unacceptable to the unions. On the twentieth, ten thousand construction workers within a 45-mile radius of the city of Boston walked off all BTEA-member projects.¹⁴

The strike delighted the BTEA. According to the Boston Globe, the Association’s resources were well up into the hundreds of millions of dollars. “There never was a time in the industry,” crowed BTEA secretary Joseph Walsh, “when the employers were so close together.” The MBA, alienated from the BTEA since the 1916 split, rushed to provide assistance and close ranks. The employers took a leaf from the unions’ book, organizing and expanding instead of just waiting the workers out. Within a week of the strike, the Association added thirty-six new members and organized two chapters outside the city. They assured the public they were not interested in crushing unionism but merely intent on reforming a labor agreement that “blocks progress and penalizes initiative and kills ambition.” They discussed plans with and won endorsements from independent contractors, real estate dealers, and architects. And they even adopted the traditional union form of the mass meeting, firing up five-hundred Association members at the plush City Club to a level of frenzy that “shook the chandeliers.” When inspirational methods failed to do the job, the BTEA turned to hardball. A number of public officials accused the Association of coercion and collusion. James Moriarty, president of the Boston City Council as well as a business agent for the Sheet Metal Workers Union, claimed BTEA leaders forced uncooperative builders to join or be “locked out” from any future contract work in the city. The president of the United Building Trades Council wryly remarked that if he had employed similar methods it “would have resulted in 10 indictments.”¹⁵

The strike continued with no signs of scabs or returning union craftsmen. A few smaller non-BTEA jobs employed union workers, but the dominoes did not fall as they had in previous years. On the contrary, not only did Association employers not give in on a one-by-one basis, instead the association pulled in independent builders and thereby removed a significant number of jobs for union men. By February, the original UBTC demand for a wage increase was ancient history. The unions were fighting to stave off reductions. “Labor go back? To what? The Poor House?” asked Arthur Huddell in frustration. “If a man is going to starve to death, it is better for him to starve to death loafing than to wear himself out like a dog for nothing.”¹⁶

The employers turned up the pressure. The MBA, the Real Estate Exchange, and the Society of Architects introduced two pieces of related legislation at the State House. One bill would have prevented any interference with employment practices or restriction on output and the other called for the repeal of an existing law requiring any advertisement for scabs to include notification of a labor dispute. The BTEA was convinced that the strike was over and all that remained was to fine-tune the new arrangements. The Association confidently rejected offers of mediation from the Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Peters, and the State Board of Conciliation and Arbitration. They refused to consider negotiating until the “hysteria” over wage reductions dissipated. On February 23, the BTEA asserted that, with twenty-four thousand tradesmen out of work, “Every red-blooded man is tired of loafing and sick of the strike business and wants to go to work now.”¹⁷

They misjudged the mood. After two months on strike, a union referendum revealed that workers rejected the $1 wage freeze by a 15,298 to 2,569 vote, let alone the BTEA-proposed 10 percent cut. But worker militance had no outlet. The unions struggled to devise a counter-strategy. The strike had essentially become a lockout. Its continuation benefited the employers far more than the workers. The usual tactics, such as out-of-town jobs, union-initiated cooperatives, regular mass meetings, and displays of inter-trade solidarity were either unavailable, neglected, or sorely lacking. The first major mass meeting, initiated by the Trade Union Defense Committee of Greater Boston, was not held until late April. Worse, the strong bonds between the trades of 1919 were collapsing. The bricklayers, plumbers, plasterers, and electricians had either withdrawn or been suspended from the UBTC. Cognizant of their weakness, the unions had pinned all their hopes on the intervention of the State Board of Conciliation and Arbitration. When the employers ignored the Board’s letters, the Council was reduced to pleading—without success—for the $1 wage rate.¹⁸

In other strikes, the employers had been divided over the issue of compromise with the unions. In 1921, whatever dissension existed flowed in the opposite direction. Once the 10 percent cut had been proposed, not a single employer could be found in favor of the original wage freeze offer. The Boston Globe reported that if not for a small group of BTEA members (mostly former unionists themselves) who favored keeping the closed shop, the Association would have crushed the strike and declared an open shop. On March 11, the BTEA withdrew its previous proposal and announced plans to deal directly with the workmen, not the UBTC. A Cambridge job site was opened with police protection. In the next two weeks, twenty-five small to medium-sized projects started up again. By mid-April, the closed shop advocates within the BTEA had been isolated. The Association announced the opening of its own Employment Bureau and made plans to conduct business on an open shop basis. The BTEA severed all formal contacts with the UBTC and put three thousand tradesmen back to work in the following months.¹⁹

In June, the city’s building trades unions acknowledged the new reality and quietly advised their members to take whatever jobs they could find and win the best terms possible. The BTEA set the prevailing wage at 90 cents and fined any member who paid more. “It is only fair to state,” The Builders’ Record reported at the end of the summer of 1921, “that practically all construction jobs are now fully manned at the rates and on the conditions set forth by the Building Trades Employers’ Association.” The unions never publicly admitted defeat. The strike continued on paper, but as an editorial in the Boston Herald commented, it was “tacitly understood by all parties that the strike was lost.”²⁰

The BTEA had won, but they stopped short of publicly labeling Boston an open shop town. In open shop Los Angeles, employers paraded their antiunion sentiments under the banner of “Americanism, freedom, prosperity.” Boston was different. Mindful of the minority of pro-closed shop attitudes in their own ranks and reluctant to open a Pandora’s box with the unions, the BTEA operated open shop jobs without calling attention to the fact. No agreement existed and the contractors were under no written obligation to abide by union regulations. In those rare instances when employers located suitable nonunion workers, they worked unimpeded beside union members. Construction in the city proceeded with little conflict. A December letter to the Herald from Ernest Parsons reflected employer assumptions about the changed conditions: “It is very doubtful if we need any more ‘agreements’ with unions. We have managed to get along very well for several months without any ‘agreements’ and it is better that way.”²¹

Despite the employer triumph, labor relations in Boston’s construction industry never approached the completeness of Los Angeles’s or San Francisco’s open shop. The many years of union organizing paid off even in the dark days of 1921. The BTEA was able to impose its will and unilaterally set working conditions, but it still depended primarily on union craftsmen to put up the buildings. The city’s contractors had learned how to maneuver politically, how to win greater public approval, and how to brake the steady stream of union gains. But they were unable to break the union within their employees. Except for a brief initial spurt, the Employment Bureau proved to be a failure and BTEA members hired those whom they had always hired—skilled union craftsmen. Loyal to their trade organizations, Boston’s building tradesmen labored without a union contract but with a union consciousness.

When the building slowdown finally eased in 1922, the unions resolved to regroup and rebuild. Construction picked up and the summer actually held out the prospects of skilled labor shortages. With the help of Mayor James Michael Curley, a new contract was signed on July 14. The forty-four-hour week was still in place (except for plasterers and painters) and dreams of a $1.50 wage were long gone. Bricklayers and plasterers boosted their pay to $1.12-1/2 while the rest of the trades returned to their prestrike $1 an hour. Overtime was set at time-and-a-half and, according to the BTEA, a number of “wasteful” practices were eliminated. But more important, the glue that held the unions together—the closed shop and many of the work rules—was still intact.²²

The eighteen-month strike colored collective bargaining for the rest of the decade. The threat of the open shop hung over every negotiating session. A month before the 1922 agreement expired in the spring of 1923, Boston carpenters voted to demand a wage increase to $1.12-1/2, double time, and a forty-hour-week. The BTEA immediately blasted the union’s position as a “return to the old, discarded, obsolete, extravagant working rules and onerous, unreasonable trade union conditions of the past.” Secretary Walsh ominously warned that “nothing but the ‘open shop’ with unstabilized conditions looms unless the men’s representatives recede.”²³

Once again, Mayor Curley stepped in to ward off a confrontation. In May a settlement was reached. The carpenters won a wage increase—$1.10 for 1923 and $1.12-1/2 for the following year—but lost on the hours and overtime. The closed shop remained sacrosanct. With each succeeding contract, the year and a half of unrestricted employer control slipped more and more into the past. The unions had weathered the open shop storm. They had lost some valuable possessions overboard but managed to maintain an overall forward-moving course. The day after the 1923 settlement, a Herald headline wondered “Is It Good News or Bad?” The newspaper’s skeptical columnist questioned if the BTEA’s high-powered offensive and open shop threats had really accomplished their aims: “Hardly one of the wasteful practices ‘the rules’ make possible has been eliminated; hardly one of the methods that ‘make work’ and ‘increased’ costs has been abandoned. . . . Is the signing yesterday good news or bad? We confess we are in doubt. Time will tell.”²⁴