Heart not in work, striking Homestead workers declare
After weeks of refusing to stay working at the steel mill past 2 a.m., employees at Homestead Steel Works have finally gone on strike. They are protesting outside the factory, saying that working all day without a lunch break is “unethical.” Some complain they have not been home to visit their families in months, hoping to desert their sacred duty to make the billionaire Andrew Carnegie more money. The strikers should rest easy knowing that their hard labor is going into the construction of libraries and museums they will never be able to see.
The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AA) is promising workers a life of luxury and ease that they, unlike Andrew Carnegie, have not earned. Furthermore, the AA is only increasing inequality within the workplace by allowing only skilled workers into their ranks. The AA is forming an exclusive club that allows skilled workers to slack off while their unskilled counterparts are hard at work supporting the military industrial complex.
The strike culminated in egregious and shocking acts of violence committed by factory employees. Steelworkers tried to burn Pinkerton agents alive on their barges as they tried to approach the factory to negotiate, and attacked them even after they surrendered. Our hearts go out to the families of the two Pinkerton agents brutally murdered while sailing down the Ohio River on an innocent joyride that happened to pass the site of the strike. Andrew Carnegie defends his decision to implement high-pressure water cannons against the strikers, saying, “We protected ourselves with ingenious technology, just as the poor villagers of yore poured boiling oil down on the marauding Vikings who besieged them.”
As we all know, the devil finds work for idle hands of strikers. Discussions are now underway about building a school to institutionalize the grindset and train a new generation of morally upstanding workers to add to the wealth and reputation of Andrew Carnegie.