by Paul Garver
When President Obama devoted a notable section of his speech at the AFL-CIO Convention to celebrating the history of working class struggles in Pittsburgh, it helped him connect to his enthusiastic audience. For those of us who had worked in Pittsburgh’s labor movement, it was a highpoint. Obama succintly and accurately cited the great Railroad strike of 1877, the Homestead strike of 1892 and the breakthrough organizing victories of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee in 1937-38.
I don’t believe that Pres. Obama has had time to read Charles McCollester’s THE POINT OF PITTSBURGH, published in 2008 by the Battle of Homestead Foundation, but clearly his speechwriters had absorbed the summary provided them by McCollester. A labor historian and professor of labor relations at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, McCollester had been a milling machine operator and the UE’s chief steward at the Union Switch & Signal plant in Swissvale, PA. When the plant closed along with most of the Mon Valley’s industrial base, Charlie joined other laid off activists leading the so-called Mon Valley insurgency that tried to stop plant closures and rebuild the regional economy.
McCollester’s well researched and engagingly written history of the struggles of working people in the Pittsburgh area stretches from geological time and the resistance of native peoples, through revolutions and civil wars, waves of immigration, the heroic worker uprisings cited by Obama to the heyday of the mill towns around 1960. It includes but transcends an institutional history of labor. The book is informed by a fierce moral passion derived from McCollester’s upbringing and education through the progressive Catholic movement. It is well worth reading even by those unfortunate enough not to have had the opportunity to take part in the Pittsburgh labor and social movements.
The attractive and well illustrated soft cover edition can be ordered online for $35 at www.PointofPittsburgh.com, or from Steel Valley Printers at 412-461-5650 (fax 412 461 5653). Half of the proceeds are donated to labor education programs.
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