![]() ![]() 22.Īs McCartin explains the legacy of the Kohler strike: “What makes the Kohler strike interesting to consider today is it points out how some of the same resistance continues among leaders of some of America's biggest and most successful businesses. Sponsoring legislators drafted the bill, which provided presidential authority to seize productions of wartime industries, in response to 1,200 recorded strikes from December 1941 through the late summer of 1942. In a modern-day parallel, he argues, the Hollywood studios publicized their offer to striking writers on Aug. In June 1943, Congress passed the SmithConnally Act (or War Labor Disputes Act) to ensure continued wartime production. Lichtenstein explains that in the late 1940s and early 1950s, companies like Kohler would publicize their offer to strikers to increase pressure on them to accept. Some of the anti-union tactics in today's Hollywood strike can be traced back to the Kohler era. TIME reported at the time that the boycott was only “partially successful,” despite the UAW pouring $12 million into the effort, and essentially declared victory for Kohler management: “Despite the most extensive boycott campaign ever mounted by organized labor, the effect of the long dispute on the company was hardly shattering Kohler today is still a leader in the industry.” The strike technically ended in 1962, but the labor dispute didn’t fully resolve until 1965, when new Kohler management came in and paid wages that the strikers had been demanding and put more money in their pension funds. The Kohler strike came to an end in the early 1960s, when the National Labor Relations Board found Kohler guilty of unfair labor practices. We think of Leave It to Beaver-but in fact, there were strikes and strikes and strikes and strikes.” Nelson Lichtenstein, a historian at UC Santa Barbara, argues that while there’s been a “Renaissance of union sentiment” in recent years-from efforts to unionize Starbucks and Amazon to the Hollywood strike- it’s “minuscule compared to what was happening in the 50s.” Lichtenstein says, “Many, on the one hand, think of the 50s as a period of social harmony. “Almost 35% of non-agricultural workers in the country at that time were represented by unions.” By comparison, 10% of wage and salary workers were members of unions in 2022- the lowest rate on record-and the rate for private sector workers was 6 percent. McCartin, professor of History at Georgetown. “This was the height of postwar union strength,” says Joseph A. history, it fit into a larger pattern of labor movements at the time. While the Kohler strike's length gives it a unique place in U.S. Sheboygan's hate reaches even to the children: an everyday sight is a tight-lipped child followed by other children shrilly jeering, 'Your father's a dirty scab!’ - time magazine At night, normally law-abiding citizens vent their gnawing hatred against their enemies in acts of vandalism: slashing automobile tires, scattering nails in driveways, hurling glass jars filled with paint through house windows. Passing on the street, men who used to be coworkers, neighbors and friends now glare at each other in deep-frozen enmity. ![]() 45,000), the Wisconsin city of She-boygan-'the greatest little town in the world’-may well be the most hate-ridden community in the U.S. ![]()
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