Can the pandemic lead to worker solidarity in Kansas? Lessons from 100 years ago
On Aug. 25, 1922, in a headline for an article in the weekly labor newspaper, the Plaindealer, George T. Ashley posed a question to Wichita union members: “Will organized labor survive or perish?”
Less than five years after the end of World War I and the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, which historians believe originated in Kansas, Ashley wrote that organized labor experienced its most critical period a century ago.
“During the late war organized labor, for the first time in its history, came into its own,” he wrote. “But the victory gained was apparently only temporary, born of the stress of the times, rather to any solidarity in its organization.”
Nearly a century later, leaders of Wichita’s contemporary labor movement are facing a similar question — how will the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent recession impact solidarity among workers.
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