OPINION: Unions as Agents of Social Change
The Industrial Workers of the World call on sympathizers throughout Washington to save the right to free speech in Spokane. (Eastern Washington University State Archives, courtesy of Katie Hawkinson.)
Katie Hawkinson (COL ‘23) is a guest writer for the Caravel's opinion section. The content and opinions of this piece are the writer’s and the writer’s alone. They do not reflect the opinions of the Caravel or its staff.
It’s November 1909, and the streets of Spokane, Washington are filled with hundreds of workers illegally protesting a law that criminalized the act of protest itself. The police force is overwhelmed, and the county jails are overflowing with Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) members from every corner of the country. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the IWW’s proud Rebel Girl, stands upon a soapbox, nineteen and pregnant, proudly fighting for the people of Spokane to regain their right to free speech.
Through the IWW’s passionate fight, workers in the city of Spokane gained access to more equitable employment opportunities. And thanks to one young woman’s valiant efforts as a labor leader for the IWW, Spokane also achieved real social change for women outside the workplace.
Few people outside of Washington know about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the Spokane Free Speech Fight of 1909. But her movement is as relevant as ever: it shows us how local labor issues can create monumental social change. Just as Gurley Flynn used the resources afforded to her by the IWW to create positive change for Spokane’s women, so too can today’s workers use labor unions to fight for sweeping, necessary social reforms. Notably, 21st-century labor unions can be used to achieve equity and liberation for transgender and queer workers across the U.S.
The Spokane Free Speech Fight is a blueprint for the intersection between social justice and labor movements. We must apply these lessons to U.S. labor movements today.
“One Big Union” Reaches Spokane
“The working class and employing class have nothing in common,” declares the Industrial Workers of the World’s official preamble. Proudly proclaiming the slogan “One Big Union!”, the IWW is an organization that welcomes workers from any profession who wish to organize and advocate for an equitable, democratic workplace. Founded in 1905, the IWW defines itself as a union that seeks to empower the working class by building mass organizing capacity and class consciousness.
In 1908, the IWW learned that the City of Spokane was complicit in the significant abuse of day laborers. The employment agencies in Spokane were charging workers to be placed in employment during a time of low job availability. Little to the worker’s knowledge, these agencies were creating fake positions to maximize their profits. When workers arrived at their assignments, often in rural areas, they found that their employers never even existed. Upon returning to Spokane, these workers were broke, tired, and still unable to find employment.
Unsurprisingly, the IWW felt that Spokane workers needed an advocate.
IWW sympathizers from across the country flocked to Spokane and began protesting with Spokane’s workers against the local employment agencies. The city council, which by and large supported these agencies and showed immense disdain toward left-leaning political organizations, sought to stop the IWW’s organizing by any means necessary.
In a fateful decision that changed the course of Spokane history, the Spokane City Council ratified Ordinance No. A3890 on January 1, 1909, which unconstitutionally criminalized any form of public protest or demonstration in the city of Spokane, no matter how peaceful.
The Fight for Free Speech Begins
What had begun as a demonstration advocating for the rights of disenfranchised workers quickly turned into a full-blown battle for the right to free speech. After ten months of advocating for the repeal of the ordinance, the IWW took to the streets and staged a massive (and, under the Ordinance, illegal) protest that began on November 2, 1909. In the days leading up to the fight, the IWW advertised Spokane’s crimes to supporters around the nation; hundreds of IWW sympathizers flocked to the city. One by one, volunteers mounted a soapbox and spoke to the masses before being dragged away by members of the Spokane Police Department.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn gives an impassioned speech on behalf of the IWW. (Gurley Flynn, Elizabeth. "The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography," 1955, courtesy of Katie Hawkinson.)
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was one of the first IWW members arrested that day. Given preferential treatment due to her pregnancy and put on bail by the local women’s club, she was only in jail for a night. Those few hours she spent in a Spokane County jail cell, however, changed everything for imprisoned Spokane women. In her autobiography, she describes the experience in great detail.
“When I came [to the jail] there were two prostitutes in the women’s quarters. They were kind to me, gave me fruit and a blanket. But during the night a jailer came, opened the door and took one of the women downstairs, ostensibly to see her sweetheart. After a long time she returned. This was repeated several times during the night. She told the other woman the jailer had said they'd ‘have brought Jack up here only for her being here’—indicating me. I said in my article that the performance looked to me as if she were expected to ply her trade inside the jail. In the morning, the chief jailer came with our breakfasts—sour bread and weak coffee. He opened the door, marched right into our quarters where we were in bed and put his hand on my face to wake me up.”
Spokane’s jails forced women to prostitute themselves; Gurley Flynn saw it herself.
Soon after she was released, Gurley Flynn detailed the abuses women faced in Spokane jails in a piece published in the Industrial Worker, a popular socialist newspaper run and distributed by the IWW throughout the country. The small Washington town received an impressive amount of backlash nationwide. Already embarrassed by news of the free speech scandal, the city of Spokane begrudgingly installed matrons in their county jails for the first time in history. While this certainly could not solve every jail abuse, installing matrons granted imprisoned women a small sense of safety and security in these jails.
In the meantime, the IWW ended up re-securing Spokane citizens’ right to free speech. After a month of incessant protests that bled the police department dry, Spokane repealed the no-protest ordinance. Spokane did not use legislation to put an end to employment agencies, though over half went out of business following the IWW protests. Still, the labor cause that brought them to Spokane ended up causing positive social change for the entire city.
Thanks to the resources and community that the IWW made available to her—most importantly, their publishing organ—Elizabeth Gurley Flynn used her status as a union member to bring national attention to the abuse of women in Spokane jails. As a result, she secured a small, yet priceless social victory for women in this small Washington community.
From 1909 to 2021—A Call for Transgender, Non-Binary, and Queer Organized Labor Leaders
In that Spokane jail cell, Gurley Flynn watched her fellow women suffer abuse at the hands of the men in power. She used the resources afforded to her by the Industrial Workers of the World to right these wrongs. In addition to fighting for the essential labor rights of Spokane workers, Gurley Flynn used her union and the network of resources to enact important social change that reached beyond just labor rights issues in Spokane.
A portrait of Gurley Flynn in 1908, just months before she arrived in Spokane, Washington. (Gurley Flynn, Elizabeth. "The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography," 1955, courtesy of Katie Hawkinson.)
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s impact on Spokane was monumental. The large network the IWW provided its members allowed her to put national pressure on Spokane legislators; thanks to her “one big union,” she was in a position to enact positive social change for her fellow women in Spokane. Just as she gained power from the support of her union, so too can modern-day marginalized communities, and particularly LGBTQ+ workers, use their labor organizations to effect social change.
If a labor movement more than one hundred years ago in Spokane, Washington could transform society, so too can modern-day unions. U.S. citizens have a duty to support labor unions as vehicles of social change that can impact society far beyond issues of labor.
In the United States, the transgender and queer members of our workforce suffer from inequities and abuse both within their workplaces and without. But it doesn’t have to be this way. By supporting organized labor and elevating transgender and queer voices within labor leadership, workers can agitate for reforms that ultimately secure greater safety, agency, and equity for queer U.S. citizens.
There’s a lot of agitating to do.
Despite the landmark Supreme Court decision in June 2020 that established protection against workplace discrimination for transgender and queer workers, non-cisgender and non-heterosexual workers still endure significantly higher rates of abuse in the workplace than their cisgender heterosexual counterparts. Furthermore, transgender and queer workers face higher job insecurity, rates of unemployment, and workplace discrimination compared to their heterosexual, cisgender peers. Women workers, especially in domestic and agricultural industries, suffer a disproportionate amount of sexual abuse in their workplaces.
These abuses cannot be fixed just by making workplaces more equitable. This abuse is symptomatic of a society that perpetuates the oppression of women, transgender, non-binary and queer individuals.
U.S. citizens have a ways to go to enact the widespread social change necessary for supporting these workers. The only way this much-needed change can happen is through unions.
Gurley Flynn holding her nine-month-old son Fred in 1911. When she was not advocating for labor rights, Gurley Flynn was a dedicated single mother. (Gurley Flynn, Elizabeth. "The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography," 1955, courtesy of Katie Hawkinson.)
Already, unions provide many queer U.S. citizens a sense of job security that sometimes feels impossible to achieve otherwise. By providing job security and protection, unions are performing their first (and primary) function: helping workers, especially those who face significant social and economic obstacles, advocate for and achieve equitable workplaces and working conditions.
Just as Gurley Flynn used her union to enact social change for Spokane’s women more than 100 years ago, so too can unions today provide resources for transgender and queer workers to begin addressing transphobia and queerphobia across the country and to address the larger, systematic neglect of non-cisgender and non-heterosexual individuals.
Where Do We Go From Here?
How do we support unions and, in turn, ensure that transgender and queer voices are elevated in the world of labor activism?
First, states throughout the U.S. must strike down “right to work” laws, which prohibit unions from requiring members to pay dues. 28 states currently have right-to-work laws. These rules effectively bankrupt unions, who use their funding for increased organization efforts, collective bargaining, and other upkeep requirements. With greater funds, unions can bring more members under their wing. Strengthening unions nationwide will lead to stronger protections for women, non-binary, and queer union members, and it will provide them with greater resources and chances to lead. Second, supporters of organized labor should promote and donate to organizations such as Pride at Work, a non-profit dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ union members. These organizations give queer workers resources for advocating within their unions and provide a sense of community and solidarity.
Labor unions are an under-utilized resource for LGBTQ+ liberation in this country. We must work to change that. It is time for us to support unions and empower queer labor leaders.
If Elizabeth Gurley Flynn could do it 100 years ago, then we can do it today.
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