This Day in Labor History: January 6, 1909. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in Moyer v. Peabody. Let's talk about what happens when the state simply won't let unions function, something we are seeing today.
In 1902, the Western Federation of Miners was organizing mill workers in Colorado City, CO. Company places spies, workers get fired, tensions rise, strike happens.
Colorado governor James Peabody works with Pinkertons, employers, other anti-union agencies to crush the WFM.
After the strike spreads to other mining towns, Peabody calls out the militia and engages in obviously unconstitutional mass arrests.
Among those arrested are WFM president Charles Moyer. His "crime" was traveling to Telluride to support strikers and signing a poster denouncing the mass arrests.
The strike was crushed, but Moyer decided to fight the actions of Colorado. His case wound to the Supreme Court five years later, in 1909.
The Court, in an unanimous decision written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, completely rejected Moyer. The justification: If the governor says there is an insurrection, he can call out the National Guard. Period.
This of course meant that governors could declare any labor action an insurrection and call out the National Guard. Constitution didn't apply to workers.
Holmes and the other justices ignored the tricky constitutional questions entirely. They just gave governors all the power to bust unions at their will.
Holmes has a legendary reputation as a jurist. But he frequently created excuses to promote corporate power through his career.
This draconian anti-labor decision helped reinforce radical rhetoric from the IWW that the state simply would never work for laborers.
Holmes' opinion was so shoddy that the Court completely ignored it for years--until the George W. Bush years! Then, it was used to justify indefinite detention and the horrible policies of the so-called War on Terror.
Moyer v. Peabody isn't a well-known case today. But it's a key object lesson in labor history. If workers don't have friends in government, it simply will not succeed in the United States.
The number of people on the labor left, even some labor historians, who say, "Unions should stop playing politics and organize!!!!" is incredibly high. While we need organizing, this is insane. It flies in the face of all US labor history. Government central to success or failure
It was only when workers began electing pro-worker politicians and holding them accountable that the government shifted its positions on unions. That has to happen again if workers are to advance their rights. All the organizing won't matter without it.
And despite 4 solid Democratic voters, the Roberts court will create anti-worker requirements out of whole cloth just like the Holmes court. It's going to get ugly.
That's why the left rhetoric in 2016 that talking about the Supreme Court was "blackmail to get us to vote for Hillary" was so stupid. The Court literally defines your rights. There is nothing more important. Nothing.
So now we have Neil Gorsuch, a legitimately terrible human being who openly brags about ruling that a worker who left his truck so he wouldn't freeze to death, should have been fired. That's a Gilded Age justice right there.
Cases such as Moyer v. Peabody are critical for us today because they remind us just how the SCOTUS can destroy workers' constitutional rights just because they are rich people who hate unions.
There is no reason to think that any Republican judge will do anything other than rule against workers again and again based on the solid constitutional principle that they hate unions.
And thus, cases such as Moyer v Peabody are critical to use today to understand where this is going and what it is going to take to recreate some semblance of workers' rights in this nation.
Here is a longer writeup I did on Moyer v. Peabody for those who want a little more.
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