Salt Lake City, UT – It is an exciting time to be a labor organizer in Utah. In the past weeks, workers at the SunTrapp Bar in Salt Lake City struck against unfair labor practices, winning the love and support of the community, and nine Starbucks stores in the state have organized under Starbucks Workers United. Now, campus workers at both the University of Utah and Utah State University are flexing their organizational muscle as the United Campus Workers swells its ranks, building a wall-to-wall union of staff, graduate student workers, career instructors and faculty.

This upsurge in the labor movement in Utah and across the country is a perfect time to celebrate the life of Joe Hill, a labor activist executed in Salt Lake City 110 years ago this November 19, 1910. Framed up on a murder charge by the police, who were in league with the railroad bosses, Hill was put to death in Sugarhouse Prison despite mass nationwide opposition. A coalition of personalities from AFL President Samuel Gompers to Helen Keller opposed the execution, which was carried out by firing squad.

A Swedish immigrant, Hill was an itinerant worker and musician. As an organizer with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), songs like Everybody’s Joining It stirred workers to organization with a touch of relatable humor which earned Hill widespread movement fame and support:

The Boss is feeling mighty blue

He don’t know just what to do

We have got his goat, got him by the throat

Soon he’ll work or go starving.

Songs like Workers of the World, Awaken! written shortly before his death in 1915 demanded revolutionary change:

Workers of the world, awaken

Break your chains; demand your rights

AII the wealth you make is taken

By exploiting parasites.

Indeed, Hill was an activist who walked the walk with other organizers. He spoke to working people and delivered rousing speeches on their behalf as he traveled on freight trains, as many dispossessed workers did in the early 20th century. Salt Lake City had been a hotspot of union activity before Hill’s arrival here, as organized workers on a railroad construction site forced the bosses to concede food, bedding and a 25 cent pay raise after a strike.

The state of Utah killed Joe Hill. Hill’s now-famous last words before he was killed were, “I die like a true-blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize.”

To organize despite setbacks and repression remains an important lesson for those interested in fighting injustice. Murdering Joe Hill only exposed the Utah courts and police as tools of the bosses, and he became even more famous in death than in life, his music and message reaching new generations and an even wider working-class audience.

People should heed this call to organize by getting involved in movements for change. Join and participate in your union or organize your workplace. Attend and organize protests against racist and reactionary political schemes.

All workers at the University of Utah and Utah State University are encouraged to join the UCWU.

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It's fitting his end came in Utah. Few other places have been as hostile to organized labor, or as willing to use violence to beat down laborers in their fight for basic rights. Despite the burden of an especially hostile ruling class, Utah has a long and proud history of radical worker struggle.

Like a true working-class rebel, Joe Hill keeps fighting even in death. He knew his legacy would live on to inspire millions, and he wanted it that way. Now, more than ever, we need to heed his words: “Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize!”

Union organizing in Utah

The first real union in Utah began among Mormon pioneers, newly established in Salt Lake City, at the First Annual Printers' Festival in 1852. None other than future Governor Brigham Young gave the opening prayer. This would eventually evolve into the Deseret Typographical Union.

During the Civil War years, local elites saw higher pay among workers as a drag on the economy, the same argument that gets pushed today. Unions and other labor associations pushed to keep wages up. More and more workers from outside Utah – especially miners – flooded the territory, which caused alarm among some. But in fact, unions gained more power and independence from these elites due to the influx, putting them on better footing to protect their wages.

An interesting episode happened in 1864 among theater workers. The tradition had been for theatrical labor to go unpaid, as it was considered a form of missionary service. A campaign by the Deseret Dramatic Association eventually forced Brigham Young to cave in and begin paying a wage.

The Knights of Labor began organizing coal mines in the 1880s, rapidly becoming powerful for a short time. As the struggle continued and mining became more important to the area, workers became more militant. The radical Western Federation of Miners and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) later found great success in Utah.

Historian J. Kenneth Davies called Utah at the time “an unofficial headquarters of revolutionary unionism,” a situation that would last until Joe Hill's murder. In fact, it was one of the reasons killing him was so important to the upper class. In 1897, it was widely reported that future IWW co-founder Eugene Debs had chosen Utah as a place to try to establish a socialist cooperative.

At the turn of the 20th century, direct attacks on unions became more frequent and more focused. Local capitalists considered unions an attack on freedom, despite the beatings workers took due to greedy bosses. Working in unsafe and deplorable conditions, a mineworker could only expect to make $3 a day, and even less for surface workers. Often, people looking for a job would have to pay someone as much as $20 to get hired at a mine, and then keep paying a monthly kickback.

Unsurprisingly, this led to a number of strikes. In 1903, miners in Carbon County fought for better conditions and wanted to force the Utah Fuel Company to recognize their union, the United Mine Workers of America (UMW).

Their strike was considered the most important American labor battle of the time, and the famed Mother Jones, another future co-founder of the IWW, came to Utah to support the strikers. After she met with a labor leader afflicted with smallpox, she was quarantined and held captive for 26 days to prevent her from energizing the strikers. Mother Jones nevertheless broke the quarantine several times to rally workers.

Utah Socialist Party organizer A. B. Edler became a lawyer for the miners and went to Carbon County to help. However, he was forced to leave the county after the Utah Fuel Company accused him of slander and he was convicted in a sham trial.

The strike only ended when the governor sent in the entire Utah National Guard to break it on behalf of the Utah Fuel Company. Similar strikes with an allied UMW and IWW met with more success in Bingham Canyon in 1912, leading to wage increases. By 1917, several UMW locals were organized.

Utahns played a prominent role in the founding of the IWW in 1905. The legendary “Big Bill” Haywood was born and raised in Utah. At least seven other Utahns were present at the founding convention as well, with socialist Charles Spiegel serving with the Committee on Rules.

Utah Socialist Party members played important roles in the local labor movement around this time as well, with several having positions in the Utah Federation of Labor and helping to organize workers here. Both socialist and IWW organizers put on street speeches and demonstrations, with one Wobbly, Lee Pratt, calling out, “Let the workers as a class fight the bosses as a class.”

Joe Hill's death

In 1915, the notorious murder of Joe Hill took place. Hill was an organizer with the IWW for some time, and wrote a number of famous songs like There is Power in a Union and The Preacher and the Slave. In fact, he coined the phrase “pie in the sky.” He was equally beloved by workers and reviled by bosses fearful of the good work he was doing through organizing, songwriting and inspiring laborers nationwide.

He had come to Utah in 1915 to work the Silver King mine in Park City. In November, local grocer and sheriff John Morrison and his son were shot. The same night, Joe Hill turned up in a local hospital with a bullet wound, which the doctor falsely presumed was given by Morrison in self-defense.

Despite a total lack of evidence against him, and the suppression of evidence that would have exonerated him, Hill was sentenced to die for shooting Morrison. In fact, Morrison was shot by the jealous ex-fiancé of a woman he was seeing. Joe refused to tell his real alibi, he said, because he didn't want to harm the reputation of the woman.

A nationwide campaign was mounted to set him free by labor organizers and IWW supporters, and gained support from some public officials and even President Woodrow Wilson. But it was no use. Officials in Utah wanted to see the famed singing union organizer dead, and the movement dead along with him. He was executed by firing squad on Nov. 19, 1915. As the firing squad commander called out “Ready! Aim!” Joe called out the order to fire himself. “Fire – go on and fire!”

After Joe Hill

In 1919, a nationwide red scare took its toll on Utah, but labor was able to fight back effectively on some fronts. Laws were passed banning the display of red flags, and this law was even used to prevent circulating IWW literature that used red ink. A so-called anti-sabotage law was passed in order to curb support for the IWW, but the group was still able to mount a miners’ strike that year. The Utah legislature also tried to ban the right to peacefully organize for labor unions, but the bill was defeated after workers flooded the Utah capitol building.

Nevertheless, the repression of IWW and other union organizers that followed the death of Joe Hill proved to be a huge blow to labor in Utah. Internal union conflicts weakened the movement and allowed more conservative elements to attack them. Constant arrests of labor leaders left the movement with fewer resources. Only the Culinary Alliance was able to maintain their hold on workplace power, but the rest of the labor movement was devastated as they were forced into open shops.

Despite the blow, labor continued to move forward, with communists organizing miners in Carbon County under the National Miners Union beginning in 1932. By 1933, they mounted a strike in mines near Helper, but the peaceful strike was broken only by the use of tear gas, fire hoses and calling in the National Guard on behalf of the mine owners. Women and children who helped the miners were also beaten and many were jailed. Local officials were also able to make use of division between the United Mine Workers of America and National Miners Union miners, undermining the long-term strength of the labor movement in Carbon County before the strike even began. Still, some of their demands were met.

Where we are now

Before he died, Joe Hill humorously wrote to “Big Bill” Haywood asking him to take his body and bury it elsewhere, saying, “I don't want to be found dead in Utah.” It's a sentiment Bill would have understood, having left Utah himself.

Joe Hill's memory was recently tarnished again in Utah, when reactionary anti-union vandals painted over a beautiful Joe Hill memorial. In July of this year, local members of IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees ) painted a mural of Joe on the side of the union hall, using union money given to them for that purpose. Several days later, vandals painted over the union solidarity mural, replacing it with a poorly done American flag.

Though they may have tried, in a sense, to kill Joe Hill again, the reality is he can't be killed, and he isn't dead in Utah – he is alive and well, in every labor dispute, at every union drive, in every workplace where laborers are exploited and abused. We are the inheritors of his message not to mourn, but to organize, and we can keep him alive by fighting the way he did, as a true rebel worker.

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