Indeed, it is because of those who went to jail for justice -- and many died in the fight -- that we have gained improved wages, largely employer-paid healthcare insurance, paid holidays and vacations, overtime pay, the lawful right to organize and join a union, and union-negotiated contracts that improve our standard of living, make the workplace safer, and protect us against workplace discrimination.

As we celebrate Labor Day, 2009, let us remember -- and, for some of us, to learn about -- the grueling struggles our forebears fought in the workplace, in the streets, in the courts and in the legislatures so that we can proclaim, today, and without fear of retribution, "Union, Yes."

Following is a labor history excerpted from a newly published book, "Understanding the Railway Labor Act."

American workers had few protections under the law prior to the 20th century.

Through most of the 1800s, the function of unions was to provide financial aid to workers and their families following injury or death on the job.

When and where workers did, collectively, pursue economic objectives -- such as limiting the length of the workday or achieving overtime pay -- they initially failed for lack of economic power.

Early unions in America found courts as unfriendly as employers. Where unions sought to exert influence in the workplace, courts viewed such actions as unlawful conspiracies in restraint of trade -- a restraint that might diminish free competition between employers.

Eighteen trials took place between 1806 and 1842, in each of which labor unions and their members were convicted of engaging in criminal conspiracies.

A turning point in U.S. labor law occurred in 1842, when the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts overturned a lower court decision and dissolved the connection between unions and the criminal conspiracy doctrine.

Although this Massachusetts state-court decision partially decriminalized union activity, employers elsewhere continued successfully to pursue civil actions against labor unions and their members, seeking and collecting monetary damages and injunctions.

In both criminal and civil actions, it remained for the courts to scrutinize the lawfulness of both a union's objective and the means used to reach that objective -- and the majority of courts continued to demonstrate little support for organized labor.

The term "unlawful" was used to denote any objective that the courts disapproved. In fact, there were more labor conspiracy cases in the second half of the 19th century than during the first half, with judges most often favoring the side of capital over that of labor.

In 1896, for example, the same Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts that had dissolved the connection between unions and the criminal conspiracy doctrine ruled that picketing interfered with freedom of contract and the right to employ an individual at a price agreeable to the parties.

Even into the 20th century, a New Jersey court, in 1926, banned a solitary picket on the theory that his walking back and forth was as ominous as Edgar Allen Poe's "pendulum in the pit." It would not be until 1940 that the Supreme Court, citing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ruled that peaceful picketing during a labor dispute is lawful.

Working conditions on railroads were harsh. Most 19th century train and engine-service employees worked 70 hours weekly -- 12 hours each weekday, and 10 on Saturdays. (Until the late 1800s and growth in railroad traffic, requiring seven-day, round-the-clock operations, most railroads did not operate on Sunday.)

On the Central Pacific Railroad, which in 1867 was building east through the Sierra Nevada mountains to meet the Union Pacific so as to bridge the East and West coasts by rail, Central Pacific financier Charles Crocker handled a workers’ strike in July 1867 in the following fashion:

"Crocker cut off the men’s provisions. No food got through to them. After a week of such treatment, Crocker went up to them and told them that he would not be dictated to – that he made the rules for them and not they for him. If they went to work right away, all would be well, but if they did not, then he would pay them nothing for June [for which they were still owed wages.]"

Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad official Charles Eliot Perkins said men would work effectively only under "extremely firm supervision." When employees presented demands to the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad in 1868, the general superintendent advised the railroad’s president that there were "sufficient numbers of men looking for work to fill the positions of dissatisfied workers."

In 1855, railroads operating in Chicago signed an agreement with Allan Pinkerton to have agents of his newly founded National Detective Agency supply information concerning the habits and associations of employees, and blacklists (do not employ lists) were established and circulated among railroads.

Local supervisors fixed compensation in an arbitrary manner, and supervisors dictated even where employees might live. Railroads forewarned employees in writing that their wages covered "all risks" of injury and accident. This was not inconsequential. In 1889, 1,972 rail workers (one in 357) were killed on the job, and more than 20,000 (one in 35) injured on the job.

The railroad workplace during the 19th century not only was unsafe, but one of frequent reductions in pay; favoritism in hiring, job assignment, promotion and termination; arbitrary posting (and changing) of rules; harsh discipline; constant harassment by foremen; and no machinery for handling of grievances. A labor historian wrote:

"There was a feeling among the employees that they were almost in a helpless condition to stand against the oppression of the petty officials, and the petty officials took advantage of that feeling and deviled the men just as their particular temperament at the moment led them to do."

When the fledgling Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers struck the then-largest coal-hauling railroad, the Philadelphia & Reading, on July 1, 1864, President Lincoln, citing Civil War power authority, ordered the carrier seized and operated by the U.S. Army.

Rail workers engaged in militant action again in February 1877, as tens of thousands of rail workers rioted nationwide -- protesting wage cuts-- in what later were termed the "Great Railroad Strike," and whose toll was 200 killed and more than 1,000 injured.

In Pittsburgh, during a job action, the Pennsylvania Railroad called for National Guard troops, but they didn’t respond, out of sympathy for the strikers. So the railroad’s president, Thomas Scott, asked for militia from Philadelphia to provide "a rifle diet for a few days" -- and 600 of them arrived, soon killing 20, including women and children.

President Rutherford Hayes sent federal troops and ordered the arrest of local strike leaders for obstructing the U.S. mails, with all later found guilty in federal court. This was the first time in American history that federal troops were called out in peacetime to suppress civil unrest.

By the mid-1800s, the four major rail operating unions (engineers, conductors, firemen and trainmen) had been organized. Also coming into existence at this time was the American Federation of Labor.

Samuel Gompers built the AFL with an eye toward influencing congressional legislation. Gompers adopted a political strategy of rewarding labor’'s friends and punishing labor's enemies as part of a non-partisan political strategy. The AFL business unionism strategy fully endorsed the capitalist system, recognizing that as society's wealth increased, so would the absolute and relative share going to labor. Unions would bargain for labor's "equitable" portion.
     
Congress acted in 1890, but not as labor preferred. The Sherman Antitrust Act, more often recognized as a means to regulate corporate monopoly, was a potent weapon against organized labor when used in concert with a court injunction.
 
George Mortimer Pullman, who in 1867 began mass production and operation (under contract to the railroads) of sleeping and parlor cars called Pullmans, became, in 1894, forever associated with labor unrest and violence.

Just outside Chicago, Pullman employed some 5,000 in manufacturing and maintenance, with almost 2,000 living in Pullman-provided homes in a paternalistic community that included playgrounds, parks, shops, a bank and a library.

When Pullman cut wages by between 25 and 40 percent, but not rents or utility charges on the homes his workers occupied -- and with officers' and managers' salaries and Pullman stock dividends not reduced-- the American Railway Union ordered a boycott of Pullman rolling stock.

Pullman resisted the ARU's demands to restore wages. When Pullman officials refused, a nationwide boycott commenced, with rail workers detaching all Pullman cars from trains and neither servicing nor handling them.

Each time a train crew member was fired for this activity, other crew members walked off the job in sympathy, causing the boycott to elevate to a strike and spread quickly.

Within three days, 29 railroads were affected as far west as Omaha, Denver and Raton, N.M. Violence soon erupted at Chicago rail yards. Some 5,000 deputy U.S. marshals, 4,000 Illinois state militia, Chicago police and 2,000 U.S. Army soldiers from nearby Ft. Sheridan, north of Chicago, were sent to restore order -- the federal troops ordered in by President Cleveland.

As Pullman cars were attached only to passenger trains, and since passenger trains carried U.S. mail, Attorney General Richard Olney concluded that every car of every train carrying mail was part of a mail train, and subject to federal protection. Olney, characterizing railroad strikes as impediments to interstate commerce and the mails, obtained an injunction based on the Sherman Act's prohibitions.

Said President Cleveland: "If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a postal card in Chicago, that card will be delivered."

Federal troops restored order and the two-month old Pullman boycott and strike fell apart as strikers became demoralized.

If labor were to reopen the door, it would have to do so through the legislative branch -- and that is where labor did succeed.

Under the prodding of Presidents Harding and Coolidge, and the presidential platforms of both political parties, railroads and their unions joined hands and recommended legislation that might facilitate more harmonious labor-management relations and reduce the threat of wide-spread railroad shutdowns.

Legislation drafted in February 1924 by labor-union lawyers Donald Richberg and David Lilienthal was jointly introduced in Congress by Sen. Robert Howell (R-Neb.) and Rep. Alben Barkley (D-Ky.).

Jointly supported by labor and management, the bill passed in the Senate by a 69-13 vote, and in the House by a 381-13 vote. Because it was jointly drafted and supported by labor and management, it was described as "a collective agreement sanctioned by Congress."

Formally designated the Railway Labor Act of 1926, the RLA was signed into law by President Coolidge on May 20, 1926.

Its premise was that arms-length negotiations would promote more stable labor relations in the railroad industry. The law’s constitutionality was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1930.

The RLA’s five basic purposes are set forth in its second section:

* To avoid any interruption to commerce.

* To ensure an unhindered right of employees to join a labor union (added in 1934).

* To provide complete independence of organization by both parties to carry out the purposes of the RLA.

* To assist in the prompt and orderly settlement of disputes covering rates of pay, work rules, or working conditions.

* To assist in the prompt and orderly settlement of disputes growing out of grievances or out of the interpretation or application of existing contracts covering the rates of pay, work rules or working conditions.
  
The New York Times, in an editorial, said:

"The great virtue of the railway labor bill is that it seeks a solution, not in drastic statutory law, but on a basis of conciliation and arbitration conducted jointly by carriers and unions ... As a last resort a strike is possible; but it can come only after every other resource, including long delay, has been exhausted."

A dozen years following passage of the RLA, Labor Secretary Frances Perkins told Congress, "The Railway Labor Act embodies the fullest and most complete development of mediation, conciliation, voluntary agreement, and arbitration that is to be found."

The Supreme Court characterized the RLA's collective bargaining procedures, which include a prohibition against strikes or lockouts during the bargaining process, as "almost interminable," but that is the core of the act's scheme to prevent work stoppages. Said the Court:

"The act's status quo requirement is central to its design. Its immediate effect is to prevent the union from striking and management from doing anything that would justify a strike. In the long run, delaying the time when the parties can resort to self-help provides time for tempers to cool, helps create an atmosphere in which rational bargaining can occur, and permits the forces of public opinion to be mobilized in favor of a settlement without a strike or lockout."

Rather than regulating wages, rules and working conditions, the RLA recognized that railroads and their employees can best settle their own disputes and that government ought to intervene only when they fail. Ruled the Supreme Court in 1943, wages, rules and working conditions "may be as bad as the employees will tolerate or be made as good as they can bargain for."

To encourage voluntary settlements, the RLA, at Section 2, First, made it a legal mandate of all carriers and their employees to exert every reasonable effort to voluntarily settle disputes.

The right of railroad employees to strike is limited. While Section 2 of the RLA provides that "Nothing in the Act shall be construed to require an individual employee to render labor or service without his consent ... or construed to make quitting of his labor or service by an individual employee an illegal act," the provision is directed at individuals and not collective activity.

The RLA became the first federal law guaranteeing the right of workers to organize and join unions and elect representatives without employer coercion or interference. "Otherwise," said the Supreme Court, "collective action would be a mockery."

(Preceding is an excerpt from "Understanding the Railway Labor Act," newly published by Simmons-Boardman Books of Omaha, Neb. (1-800-228-9670). Essays by UTU General Counsel Clint Miller, National Mediation Board member Harry Hoglander, veteran arbitrator Frank Quinn and retired CSX chief labor negotiator Ken Peifer, all in support of the Railway Labor Act, are included in the book, which explains details of the law, discusses major and minor disputes, details labor protection, and examines the RLA's mechanisms and effectiveness.)