Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses, 1904-54

The Working Class in American History

by Rick Halpern

Rick Halpern examines the links between race relations and unionization in Chicago's meatpacking industry. Drawing on oral histories and archival materials, Halpern explores the experiences of and relationship between black and white workers in a fifty-year period that included labor actions during World War I, Armour's violent reaction to union drives in the late 1930s, and organizations like the Stockyards Labor Council and the United Packinghouse Workers of America.

Genres: History, Labor, American History, Food, Race, Politics, Historical

336 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1997

Reviews

[Amy Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for a Black Urban History course in college and 11 years later it still haunts me. Describes the deplorable conditions endured by workers in Chicago's meat packinghouses in the days before the workers unionized. This book will make you want to be a vegetarian (even if only until you're done reading it).

[Brendan Campisi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent history of the long struggle for, and eventual victory of, industrial unionism in the Chicago stockyards, but doesn't accomplish all that it sets out to. Halpern wants to use the stockyards experience as a case study for the relationship between race and class in US history, to fill the "white blindspot" in American labour history (in a very '90s way). He sets up a three-part timeline, with a first period up to 1929 where racial and ethnic divisions prevailed among the packinghouse workers, a second in the 1930s and '40s when interracial unity enabled the formation of the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee and then the United Packinghouse Workers of America, and finally a third in the 1950s when Black workers effectively made the union their own and (non-leftist) white workers withdrew from active engagement.

The three periods don't receive equally compelling treatment. The core section on the period of unity is a fantastic portrayal of how CIO unions were built; how they overcame ethnic and racial divisions, the role of the Communists and other leftists, a microcosm of how the CIO influenced the emerging New Deal order in the wider community (churches, the Democratic party, neighbourhood groups, etc.)

The book also provides a fascinating account of the way Black workers' attitudes towards and approach to unionism changed. While his treatment of early racial conflict in the stockyards leaves something to be desired, he acknowledges that Black workers' rejection of unionism in the first decades of the 20th century was basically rational. Their shift in the era of the CIO into being industrial unionism's most enthusiastic adherents is shown not as a benevolent gift by white unionists (even white Communists, who rightly receive positive treatment for their role) but as a changed calculation by Black workers themselves on how best to advance their struggles in the plants and in the wider community.

But Halpern's analysis of those periods in which racial division prevailed is much weaker, because despite his avowed purpose of overcoming labour history's white blindspot, he never really puts his finger on *white workers' racism* analytically. White packinghouse workers' racism in the early 20th century is treated in an economistic fashion as a simple response to the companies' use of African Americans as strikebreakers. While he cites Roediger in his introduction, Halpern doesn't seem to have taken the arguments of The Wages of Whiteness on the ways white workers' racism stemmed from deeply-held elements of their self-conception as 'free white workingmen' into account in understanding why, on his own evidence, a Black scab was treated as a greater offense or threat than a white scab. Likewise in his discussion of the 1950s he mentions that the transfer of the UPWA headquarters to a Black neighbourhood contributed to declining white participation, citing racist statements by white members about how afraid they'd be to travel there, without connecting it to the wider segregationist mobilization in postwar white Chicago, which he had already discussed in the context of the way Black workers mobilized union strength to resist it. Both show an inability (unwillingness?) to recognize the autonomous effects of white workers' racism and the influence of the wider society's racism on relations within the workplace and union.

[Eliza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent history of the meatpacking workers struggle in Chicago. Centers on how the organizing and uniting the Black and white workers workers was the key to building a powerful union in the stockyards that could keep the packers in line. During the Great Depression communist militants and other leftist radicals steeled in the unemployment struggles went into the stockyards, fused with the Black workers, and built a powerful militant labor movement. The union was successful for many years, and in some ways stood out against the conservative turn in the post-ww2 labor movement. The United Packinghouse Workers of America had strong rank-and-file shop floor activity, came through on bread and butter issues while being a pioneering organization in movement for Black freedom. Ultimately defeated when the stockyards were closed down and the meatpacking reorganized.

Well researched by Rick Halpern and clearly written, with the appropriate scope to understand all of the major developments in the struggle.