“Virginia Workers Have Benefited from Organized Labor,” proclaims the headline of a press release promoting a new exhibit at the Virginia Historical Society. The press release continues:
“For most people, unless they have someone in their family who has been a union member or has been very involved with union work, they have no idea how organized labor has shaped their working world today,” said William Rasmussen, lead curator at the Virginia Historical Society. “This exhibition will show visitors, especially young visitors, that there hasn’t always been a 40-hour work week, minimum wage, health benefits, and required lunch breaks. Thousands of Virginia workers—white, black, male, female, young, old—have sacrificed and suffered to give us the adequate, healthy, and safe working environment that most of us presently enjoy.”
I wonder if the exhibit will explore the role of the labor movement in cementing white working- class privilege of the expense of African-American workers. I’m guessing not.
I wonder if the exhibit will explore the relationship between rising wages/improving workplace conditions and rising labor productivity made possible through the investment of capital, entrepreneurial innovation and the free-market competition for workers. I’m guessing not.
I wonder if the exhibit will explain why the marketplace demand for organized labor in Virginia today is virtually nil, surviving for the most part in large industrial corporations with national ?
I hope to be proven wrong, thus pleasantly surprised, but judging by the press release, I’m surmising that the exhibit will push a traditional liberal narrative. An interesting point for some dogged investigator to pursue: Has the Virginia Historical Society become another cultural institution taken over by liberals and funded through the donations of an oblivious public? Has the Virginia Historical Society swung from one extreme to another, from romanticizing a flawed past to propagating an equally lopsided progressive narrative?
Just asking.
(Photo credit: Virginia Historical Society.)
