Nelson Lichtenstein

Remarks

Sidney Hillman Foundation

Sol Stetin Award for Labor History

May 1, 2012

I am delighted to receive this award from the Hillman Foundation and quite humbled to stand at the same podium where that great generation of labor history pioneers and teachers – the late David Montgomery, David Brody, and Melvin Dubofsky – once stood.

They made labor history, which had once been the marginal stepchild of business administration and an unwelcome bother to most economists, a central component of what we study in the academy, not just in history, but in English, Sociology, Politics, Law, and Gender Studies. Indeed, it has been somewhat of an embarrassment in my own profession that so many of those who win prizes or get elected to top offices began their careers as students of labor history. And among the new generation of historians that it has been my privilege to mentor, few study the labor movement per se, but in their studies of business, politics, globalization, and capitalism, all are thoroughly grounded in labor history and its distinctive ideological and ethical imperatives. (Of that I make sure, in part through the activities of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.)

In truth, there is something different about labor history. Although they are entirely welcome, you don’t find many conservatives, and certainly very few opponents of the labor movement, identifying with the research agenda pursued by most labor historians. And that is because men and women like David Montgomery and James Green and Dorothy Sue Cobble, the latter two also previous Stetin Award winners, have been passionately committed to the labor movement in all its manifest forms. They have been “labor intellectuals” in the best and truest sense of the word.

Indeed, I accept this award in the spirit manifest by one of the great labor intellectuals of his day, a man who was for decades associated with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, the union founded and long led by Sidney Hillman himself. This was Jacob Benjamin Salutsky or J.B. S. Hardman, the editor of the Amalgamated’s newspaper, The Advance, for many years during the first half of the 20th century. Hardman was part of the great generation of exiles from Czarist Russia who helped found the garment trades unions and who never stopped pushing and prodding the entire labor movement to fulfill its humane and socialist destiny. He tutored America’s most influential and radical sociologist, C. Wright Mills, in labor politics, so that when in 1948 Mills published The New Men of Power, America’s Labor Leaders, he dedicated the book to “J.B.S. Hardman, labor intellectual.”

I wish that the leaders of the union movement today could once again be described as “the new men of power.” But regardless of the status of the unions, then or later, Mills knew that the insights, arguments, and empirical research of labor intellectuals like Hardman was essential if unionists were to understand the trajectory of capitalism and fulfill labor’s potential. As Mills then wrote “To have an American labor movement capable of carrying out the program of the left, making allies among the middle class, and moving upstream against the main drift, there must be a rank and file of vigorous workers, a brace of labor intellectuals, and a set of politically alert labor leaders. There must be the power and the intellect.” I accept the Sol Stetin Award in the interests of that alliance.

[Photo credit: Clark Jones.]

Flame-retardant foam is found in couch cushions, breastfeeding pillows, TVs, and countless other household items. After a sweeping investigation, reporters from the Chicago Tribune conclude that these chemicals are not only ineffective but potentially dangerous to people and the environment. The flame-retardant industry and its allies have used deceptive tactics to convince the public that these chemicals are necessary, the Tribune found.

In today’s installment of this important multi-media series, we learn that the tobacco industry pushed for flame-retardant furniture to divert attention from its inability to design a viable “fire-safe” cigarette. Cigarettes are the leading cause of furniture fires. Firefighters and burn victims were pushing for cigarettes that would extinguish themselves when not being smoked. Under pressure, big tobacco spent millions of dollars courting fire marshalls, aka, “our fire safety friends” in tobacco industry parlance. Big tobacco even had a mole in the National Association of State Fire Marshals–a former Tobacco Institute VP who volunteered as legislative director for the NASFM while working as a lobbyist for the Institute. The industry tried to divert attention from cigarettes to flame-retardants.

Some background on flame-retardants, from the Tribune’s investigation: Chances are, the foam seat of your chair is laced with flame-retardants. As the cushions age, the chemicals leech out and mix with house dust. Most American babies are born with traces of these compounds in their blood. Flame retardants are polluting the environment and may even be making people sick.

This might be a small price to pay if flame retardant foam saved lives or prevented horrific burns, but according to the latest tests, flame retardants don’t even work. In one experiment, a chair made with flame-retardant foam burned just as fast as an otherwise identical chair without the chemical–both were engulfed in flames in 4 minutes flat:

“We did not find flame retardants in foam to provide any significant protection,” said Dale Ray, a top official with the Consumer Product Safety Commission who oversaw the 2009 tests at a laboratory outside Washington.

Moreover, the amount of smoke from both chair fires was similar, Ray said, noting that most fire victims die of smoke inhalation, not the flames.

The previously undisclosed test results call into question the widespread use of flame retardants in household furniture. Some of those chemicals have been linked to cancer, neurological disorders and developmental problems. [ChiTrib]

The flame retardants may not even be necessary. Experts say that smoldering cigarettes are responsible for the majority of furniture fires. Most furniture coverings are already smolder-resistant. If the furniture industry wanted to save lives during fires, it would put a flame-resistant barrier layer between the covering and the core. These barriers are far more effective than flame-retardants and they can be made without chemicals, or with less toxic chemicals. The industry is balking, claiming that these barriers would make furniture uncomfortable. This excuse is hard to believe given that barriers are already standard on mattresses.

The Tribune investigation is an important piece of public service journalism that sounds the alarm about a major threat to safety, health, and the environment while holding powerful interests to account.

[Photo credit: eighteen1, Creative Commons.]

The Hillman Prize bloggers outdid themselves. Here’s a roundup of their longer pieces:

• Jamil Smith of MSNBC, “The Struggle for Social Justice is Not Rated PG-13,” at the Melissa Harris-Perry Blog.
• Adele Stan reports on Tom Morello, Occupy, and the Guitarmy, for AlterNet.
• Anna North of Buzzfeed Shift interviewed Hillman judge Katrina vanden Huevel about how great journalism can subvert women’s magazines.
• Howard Greenstein shot the video, above, of Tom Morello talking Wisconsin with the bloggers in the green room. Howard also compiled what may be the first ever Hillman-related Storify.
• Lance Mannion has an essay about the Hillman Prize-winners and the importance of storytelling in journalism.

The 2012 Hillman Prizes will be awarded tonight at the TimesCenter. Watch the blog and follow @sidneyhillman on twitter for updates.

[Photo credit: byasaa, Creative Commons.]