Posts tagged stool pigeon
Commentary: How organized labor shames its traitors − the story of the ‘scab’
September 16, 2024 // In the 19th century, American workers started using the word to attack peers who refused to join a union or worked when others were striking. By the 1880s, periodicals, union pamphlets and books all regularly used the epithet to chastise any workers or labor leaders who cooperated with bosses. Names of scabs were often printed in local papers. Scab likely caught on because it directed visceral disgust at anyone who put self-interest above class solidarity.