The Survey, Volume 30, Number 5, May 3, 1913Various
History
The Survey, Volume 30, Number 5, May 3, 1913
Various
Charities -- Periodicals; Social problems -- Periodicals; United States -- Social conditions -- Periodicals
The strikers crowded in hundreds to the house of their dead comrade, but
after their first outbreak they were found to be so peaceably inclined
that all deputies, except the police department’s aides from New York,
were withdrawn, and the strikers were even given permission to follow
the hearse to the cemetery, the day after the strike settlement. This
cortege passed through many of the strike centers at Mamaroneck,
Larchmont, New Rochelle, Mt. Vernon, and other towns in which the
laborers’ union claims a membership of 10,000. It was the occasion for
no disorderly effort at vengeance.
The laborers’ demands of three months ago covered recognition of the
union, wage payments by the week, an eight-hour day, a wage minimum for
pick and shovel men of $2 a day with revised hour rates for others of
the lower grades of work. The eight-hour demand is essentially a demand
for compliance with the state law which all the contractors on these
public jobs have been breaking by working a nine hour day. The inquiry
brought out the fact that the superintendent of the biggest job of all,
the state road, was a brother of an official of the State Engineers’
Department, which is charged with the supervision of such work.
WHAT THE ARBITRATION BOARD HEARING REVEALED
By the agreement reached by strikers and contractors at the hearing
before the Bureau of Arbitration, the men waived the point of union
recognition. Since present estimates on the contractor’s work were made
before union demands were presented, the rate of pay for an eight hour
day is to be based on $2 for a nine hour day until present contracts
expire, all new contracts to be based on $2 for eight hours. Other terms
of the agreement call for the abolition of the padrone system; the
preferential employment of laborers living in the neighborhood of any
piece of work—in itself a blow at the padrone system, with its big
employment fees and rake-off from feeding and transporting the labor
gangs;—the abolition of the shack lodging house and its keeper and the
enforcement of weekly wage payments. The last two are merely corrections
of illegal conditions. This agreement was unsigned. It is perhaps given
some security by being filed with the bureau, but there was no one
designated to follow up and enforce any point except those correcting
illegal conditions.
However much the unearthing of these illegal conditions may reflect on
the state labor authorities as a whole, they are not the fault of the
bureau of arbitration, whose representatives settled the strike largely
on terms which call for a living up to the law in the future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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