Emily Moberg

Emily Moberg's powerful essay about the importance of unions as seen through her family's eyes easily caught the attention of our scholarship committee. The MIT-bound high school senior from Media, PA is captain of her school's tennis team, and is incredibly active in her school and community. Ranked first in her class, she still has time to be a leader in school theatre, academic teams and won a local award for volunteering while working with her church's food center.

Emily's essay: 

Once upon a time, seventy years ago, there was a young man who lived and worked in West Virginia. He worked in a coal mine, and every day he went down into the sulfurous mine, hoping that today would not be the day the shaft collapsed or that a gas explosion took him out of the workforce. He hated his job, but he had a job and that was all that mattered. Every night he would come back up from the mine, knowing the clothes he wore, the home in which he lived, everything he owned, the bed upon which he slept, all belonged to the company.  Years later he would die of black lung disease, but not before he ensured that none of his sons would ever set foot in the mine he hated so much.

            That was my great-grandfather.

 I could imagine him standing at the edge of the mine, watching the canary going down to see if there was any oxygen in the mine, his mind filled with anger, yet powerless to rebel because he needed the work. He was a hero to me; he loved his family and sacrificed everything for them. He worked hard and saved his children from his own fate. He epitomizes the time when the welfare of workers was not given a second thought.

            Unions provide countless benefits to workers and prevent their rights from being systematically eroded along with their wages as has occurred in times past. This is the first time in human history when the disparity between the privileged and the worker has not been insurmountable; we have come so far from the factory-age, from the Gilded Age, from slavery.

            The problem is, detractors of unions are looking at the few problems they see in the system and not looking at the benefits. It is the same logic of anarchists; they see the few faults in the government and wish for its utter abolition, while failing to consider all the benefits they derive from it. For decades, the governments of the United States and Europe struggled to suppress unions, even at times using legislation intended to crush monopolies to prevent unionizing. Why? Because they are a powerful, potent force. Unions allow the small to take on the strong, allow the disenfranchised to challenge the empowered. So much of history is a tale of the aristocracy and the rich exploiting those who toiled by the work of their hands to support themselves; unions threatened to change that forever. Unions threaten the status quo because they allow the masses to speak on the same levels as the bourgeoisie. Take a look at the Gilded Age, the wealth of the monopolists J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller hiding the abject misery of their workers. Think of The Jungle—the conditions that prevailed in Chicago’s meatpacking industry when the workers had been stripped of all power to fight for themselves. Keeping one’s job was the only security. Each day, those miserable hours provided the subsistence on which his family lived. If he lost a limb, he was out of work, un-hirable, without aid. Another worker could replace him in an instant. No one dared be sick, for there would be no place when he came back. When unions finally fought and gained the right to be heard and to form, they managed to right these gross injustices. They fought for the basic rights and dignities of the workers. While the factory owners and bankers argued that the workers would cease to work and become lazy if given the representation of unions, they ignored the reality that those workers slaved for inhuman hours every day.

            At this time, “Social Darwinism” was accepted; laissez-faire economics prevailed. The fact that some could oppress was accepted, because they were “the strong” and it was the travail of “the weak” to eke out an existence. This theory failed to take into account that the system itself oppressed those in the lower socio-economic tiers and did not give them an equal chance to succeed. In my European history class, we did a very interesting experiment. We were given beads and a trading schedule to mimic an economy. Once we had traded, the value of the beads was revealed and those with the most “money” were allowed to make the new rules. In each case, they made new rules to benefit themselves. The rest of the class was slowly rendered powerless, as our economic and political power was eroded by the powers that existed. We were in no way less capable than those in power; we were systematically disabled. This simple activity demonstrated that the natural trend is for the strong to exploit; the exploited can band together to fight back.

            If we abandon unions now, we are abandoning the fight for equality and fairness in the workplace. We are allowing the system to slide inexorably back to the deplorable conditions of the past. Now, we are so far removed from those times that many do not recall the story of my great-grandfather, of many others’ grandfathers who suffered so greatly. Those people do not understand the protection the unions afford; they do not understand the situation to which the workforce could return.

            However, even beyond ensuring that we never return to an age in which the factory or coal-mine owner is the ultimate arbiter, unions serve important functions for today’s workforce. They serve as a second family and support for their members. For example, my uncle was recently diagnosed with cancer and has undergone many intensive treatments of chemotherapy and surgeries. His union supported him above and beyond their call of duty, helping him receive treatment at the best hospitals, supporting his decisions to get a second opinion, standing up for him while he convalesced. Not once did I hear of a problem he had with his work throughout this ordeal; his union’s support allowed him to focus on combating his disease. I cannot say how glad it makes me that he had the freedom to seek treatment without hassle from his workplace, because now he is on the way to recovery.