Published:
Friday, August 31, 2012
(This article is appearing in the September issue of King County Bar Bulletin.)
Labor issues were much on the minds of the small group of people who began meeting in Seattle in 1920 to discuss civil liberties violations in Washington state. After all, this was the year after the famous (or infamous, depending on one’s politics) five-day Seattle General Strike, the first general strike by labor unions in an American city.
Moreover, the whole area was a hotbed for radical activism. The militant Industrial Workers of the World – better known as the Wobblies – had a regional office in Seattle and was organizing strikes in logging camps and lumber mills. The previous year also had seen another high-profile event which labor activists called the “Centralia Massacre.” On Armistice Day of 1919, American Legionnaires attacked the Wobbly hall in Centralia. One Wobbly was lynched and seven received lengthy prison terms, but no Legionnaires were prosecuted for their role in the tragedy.
Anxiety over labor and social unrest had fueled a backlash from the political establishment. DOJ officials seized the plant of the Union Record, Seattle’s labor-backed newspaper, and arrested staff members. The State Legislature gave legal teeth to the Red Scare in 1919 by passing a Criminal Syndicalism Law. This broad, vague legislation made it a crime to advocate, teach, publish, or further any doctrine promoting force as a way of bringing about social change. Eighty-six people were convicted under the law during its first year on the books.
The people who met in Seattle felt the need for an ongoing group to protect basic rights. They hoped to establish a local branch of a newly formed national organization, the American Civil Liberties Union. Their first recruitment letter expressed their concerns in dramatic terms:
“Continued violation of the Constitution and breaking of laws, together with forgery, perjury, and assault, are charged against the Department of Justice and the U.S . . ."
“This lawless disregard for human freedom and constitutional rights turns to mockery our boast of a free America . . .”
It would be another 15 years until a Washington branch of the ACLU was founded. Defense of free speech, assembly, and organizing rights for labor activists remained high on their agenda. An ACLU team investigated the use of the National Guard during a 1935 strike at Tacoma’s lumber mills. “To say that the city is an armed camp of terror is not an exaggeration,” reported a team member. During the bitterly fought Newspaper Guild strike in 1936 against the Seattle P-I, the ACLU acted to protect peaceful picketing and mass meetings.
Two successful early campaigns completed work from the days of the Red Scare. The ACLU began lobbying to repeal the Criminal Syndicalism Law. In 1937, supporters of repeal led by Sen. Mary Farquharson, an ACLU chapter founder, maneuvered the bill out of committee. With the clock stopped to avoid ending the session and the bill the last measure of the day to be considered, the State Senate voted to get rid of the law. The governor signed the repeal measure.
In 1939, Ray Becker, the last of the incarcerated Centralia Wobblies, gained freedom from Walla Walla penitentiary. Believing he had done nothing wrong, the Wobbly would accept nothing less than complete vindication and refused a pardon because it implied guilt. National ACLU founder Roger Baldwin arranged a job for him through a wealthy benefactor who admired the Wobblies’ courage. Finally, in 1939 Governor Clarence Martin commuted Becker’s sentence on condition that he be escorted out of state. ACLU board members Fred Shorter and Mary Farquharson met him at the prison and drove him to meet friends in Oregon.
Since these early years, the ACLU has been involved in a wide range of cases and advocacy for worker rights. Here’s a small sampling.
Union Democracy: The ACLU group backed local labor activists in a longstanding battle for democratic control of their union. When members of Local 104 of the Brotherhood of Boilermakers had acted to cut officers’ salaries, officials of the International Union had seized control of the local. ACLU chapter founder Ed Henry, supported by an ACLU amicus brief by Mary Ellen Krug, gained a Washington Supreme Court ruling in 1949 saying the local had the right to run its own affairs.
Due Process: In 1953 trustees of Eastern Washington College of Education granted unearned academic credit to the school’s Director of Athletics. Prof. Obed Williamson was one of several faculty members to file protests saying that the man had failed to complete work for their courses. All the protesting professors were dismissed – without hearing or notice – and subsequently were denied pensions. While the other professors left the college for new positions, Williamson continued to press for a fair hearing. In 1958 a delegation from the ACLU-WA approached Gov. Albert Rosellini to urge that he appoint more fair-minded people to vacancies on the board of trustees. That was done, and a hearing was finally held. Williamson was reinstated and his pension rights restored.
Symbolic Speech: In 1969, Seattle City Light threatened to fire male employees who worked in trenches 10-15 feet below the ground for having long hair or sideburns below the middle of the ear. The official justification for this policy was the need to maintain a good public image. ACLU-WA executive director Mike Rosen informed a Seattle Times reporter, and the paper published a story with a cartoon which depicted citizens peering into a manhole and expressing shock at the sewer workers’ long sideburns. City Light quickly dropped the threat. Rosen explained that government control over personal habits was highly offensive, and the right to wear one’s hair as one pleased was a basic freedom of expression issue.
Invasion of Privacy: In the early 1980s, Michael Lloyd was suspended from his job as security officer at Seattle’s Cabrini Hospital for refusing to take a polygraph test. Hospital administrators were conducting an investigation because $20 was missing from a coin purse left in the lost-and-found area. Given the choice of taking the test, resigning, or being fired, Lloyd resigned. But he also called the ACLU, which took up his case. Washington state law prohibits an employer from requiring a lie detector test as a condition for hiring or continued employment. Handled by cooperating attorney Linda Cochran, the case was settled with Lloyd winning $25,000 in damages and Cabrini agreeing not to compel polygraph tests in the future. In 1985 the State Legislature passed an ACLU-sponsored bill strengthening the right of employees to sue for damages they suffer for refusing to submit to examination by lie-detector.
Sex Discrimination: Stacy Hegwine was fired from a job as an order checker for Longview Fibre Company after the company found out she was pregnant. When Hegwine sued the company for violating the Washington Law Against Discrimination, her former employer asked that the case be considered a disability matter. The ACLU and Northwest Women’s Law Center (now Legal Voice) submitted an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to treat Hegwine’s termination as sex discrimination. In 2007 the Washington Supreme Court ruled that the Longview company broke state laws against sex discrimination when it refused to employ a woman because she was pregnant. The brief was written by cooperating attorney Kathleen Phair,the ACLU’s Sarah Dunne, and Sara Ainsworth of the Law Center.
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