The Problem

"A fair day's work for a fair day's pay. That is what I remember my father saying since I was a little girl. He explained it was the theory behind organized labor."

-- New Jersey high school senior, 2011   

"A fair day's wages for a fair day's work" has a checkered reputation. On the one hand, it (or something very much like it) is widely recognized and accepted in trade union circles as a clear and succinct statement of one of the labor movement's central goals. The formula is, as it were, the theory of trade unionism. On the other hand, the slogan itself, and the practice of trade unionism it theorizes, have been widely dismissed in radical intellectual circles as a second-best, if not actually a second-rate, aspiration. Lenin's idea that "trade union consciousness" is not only different from but also detrimental to and even destructive of true revolutionary "class consciousness" comes to mind here. So, too, does the IWW's pointed dismissal of “fair wages” as a conservative dodge, which can be found in the preamble of its constitution, adapted in 1908. Moreover, “Big Jim” Thompson, the influential Wobbly organizer who wrote the preamble, took the sentence in which he disparaged fair wages for fair work more or less word for word from Karl Marx’s lecture to June 1865 meeting of the London section of the International Working Men's Association on the role trade unions in a capitalist system of production, which first appeared in English as Value, Price and Profit in 190_. There Marx had concluded, “Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!’ they [‘the working class’] ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system!’” Similar sentiments are common in contemporary academic discourse (Ian Christie; David Harvey; Istvan Metzaros).

But how "conservative" is the program of a fair day's wages for a fair days work, really? Is it in fact a poor substitute for a truly radical program of "Abolition of the wages system"? Or does it have its own transformative virtues, not only from the standpoint of its moderation but also from the standpoint of its stringency? In the essay that follows, I propose, first, to explore the origins of slogan, discussing in some detail who coined it, in what context, and to what effect. I then propose also to explore the ways the slogan was subsequently used, by whom and to what purpose, and to compare it to other strategic alternatives on offer at various times. Doing proves an excellent opportunity to review the theory and practice of Anglo-American trade unionism, the world’s first, as it has developed and as it has come down to us.