The small groups of people who see themselves as in charge of larger groups of people — bosses of workers, say — generally don’t like the idea of the people who are supposed to be “under their control” getting more ability to control things for themselves. One way workers can achieve more agency is through trade unions. So naturally the response of the boss thugs has been to try to ban such things.
The disagreement goes back further than you might think; trade unions and collective bargaining were outlawed in England in 1349. They slowly began to reappear, though, and not just in England. It was October 18, 1648 in Boston that the shoemakers of the city (they sere also called “cordwainers” back then) formed the first trade group in North America when they received a charter for the Company of Shoemakers. The barrel makers (“coopers”) became the second union, but only by a matter of minutes — they received a similar charter the same day.
In the US we tend to assume that trade groups and unions have to do with employees in places like factories. But factories were hard to find in 1648; the shoemakers organized not to gain some leverage over bosses, but to exert some control over the people who tried to undercut their pricing by offering shoddier products. Particularly in North America, it seems, there have always been marketeers relying on fast talk, cheap prices, and cheating where they can.
By October 18, 1954 — the day the first transistor radio went on sale — there weren’t many artisans making shoes any more, and probably even fewer coopers building barrels. The industrial revolution built a simulation of craftspeople’s manual skills into the gear trains, belt drives, and steel assemblies of factory equipment.
Radios were exactly the same — in their early days, it wasn’t unusual for a talented (or at least interested) person to build a radio receiver themselves, using mostly household supplies. The only unique component you need is some sort of crystal. But by 1954, radios were mass-market commodities everyone simply bought. The first transistor radio was marketed by the Industrial Development Engineering Associates company (I.D.E.A.; they were probably very proud of that acronym). It was made in the US, but just a few years later, the leading transistor radio makers were located in Asia.
By now, a huge proportion of manufacturing worldwide is located in Asia. The reasons are generally assumed to be related to costs alone; workers in that part of the world earn far less money than their counterparts elsewhere. It would seem that their situation might be helped by more widespread union membership. But there’s more going on than that. In the US, which has a mixed history of hostility toward trade unionism (“mixed” in the sense that it varies from passing laws against unions to hiring contract thugs like the Pinkertons to kill the organizers), about 10% of people in the job market are union members. But in China, unions represent 45% of all workers. Union representation numbers in Vietnam, India, and Japan are also higher than in the US.
Goods made in Asia are also inexpensive because shipping has become very economical. That is, it’s incredibly cheap to carry stuff across oceans. Once again, a lot of that is down to the reification of skilled labor in mechanical (and electronic) systems. The crew of an oceangoing vessel have always needed a certain set of skills, but they’re probably much less specialized now than in, say, 1851. That’s the year, by the way, that Moby Dick was published. On October 18, as a matter of fact.
In spite of the unique conditions of their jobs, many sailors are represented by trade associations, at least to some extent. But the crews of small individual vessels like boats for fishing and sightseeing generally aren’t, at least in the US. So if they run into some sort of problems that you’d never encounter in any other sort of job, they might not get any assistance.
Something like that happened in 1964, when a sightseeing boat carrying a small group of tourists ran aground on a deserted atoll after losing their bearings in a storm. They were stranded for three years, but managed to survive. Their plight became well known when the documentary series Gilligan’s Island was broadcast on CBS (it was a documentary, right?). As it happens, one of the castaways was Dawn Wells, and today is her birthday.
The castaway that might have benefited the most from a trade group was Gilligan. He was the only employee of any sort, and was also handicapped by being the only one of the castaways with no surname. Even “The Skipper” (Jonas Grumby) and “The Professor” (Roy Hinkley, PhD) were “fully named.” But Gilligan was just Gilligan, and as you can see by watching nearly any segment of the documentary record, he was constantly exploited and taken advantage of. In many ways he was barely treated as a person. And this is particularly galling on October 18, because it’s Persons Day in Canada. That’s in honor of the day in 1929 (surprisingly recent) that an important judicial decision was rendered, declaring that in Canada, women are indeed considered…people.
As persons, Canadian women can presumably wear neckties if they want. And today they might want to, because it’s International Necktie Day. It’s especially celebrated in Croatia, which turns out to be where neckties came from, and also the source of the word “cravat” for particularly fancy neckties. From 1618 to 1648, the Thirty Years War was raging in France. Mercenaries from various parts of Europe showed up to fight (they probably didn’t have a trade union), and the ones from Croatia tended to wear a kerchief around their necks. It was just a tradition where they were from.
When they explored Paris, the more fashion-conscious in the population took note of the kerchiefs, and started wearing similar things. But what to call them? Well, the French word for people from Croatia was “Croates,” and the Croatian word for themselves was “Hrvati” — so “cravat” was sort of a portmanteau word made out of those two terms. Now, if you return for a moment to the documentary we were discussing, you’ll remember that Thurston Howell III — undoubtedly the biggest enemy of trade union representation among the castaways — habitually wore a cravat. See? Everything really is connected.
