A lock­out like this is a weapon increas­ing­ly deployed by cor­po­ra­tions to injure work­ers, fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. And cor­po­ra­tions are doing it even as work­ers engage in sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er strikes. The grow­ing use of lock­outs to force work­ers to accept cor­po­rate demands demon­strates that the already pow­er­ful — cor­po­ra­tions — have secured even more might in their rela­tion­ship with work­ers. Cor­po­ra­tions’ lop­sided hold on pow­er in the Unit­ed States has sup­pressed labor unions and con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to wage stag­na­tion and income inequality.

ATI threw them out of the mills on Aug. 15 even though the Steel­work­ers clear­ly told the cor­po­ra­tion that they were will­ing to work — that they want­ed to work — while nego­ti­at­ing a new labor agreement.

These 2,200 Steel­work­ers are not on strike. They nev­er even took a strike vote to threat­en a walkout.

Instead of pic­nick­ing, Steel­work­ers in six states spent this Labor Day pick­et­ing the gates of a dozen Alleghe­ny Tech­nolo­gies Inc. (ATI) spe­cial­ty mills.

A cen­tu­ry ago, the pow­er imbal­ance between cor­po­ra­tions and work­ers looked like Jab­ba the Hutt com­mand­ing one end of a see­saw and Yoda cling­ing to the oth­er. By the 1930s, work­ers fumed about this inequity and labor unrest was ram­pant. In 1935, Con­gress passed the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Act (NLRA) encour­ag­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing and giv­ing a lit­tle weight to the work­ers’ end of that seesaw.

For sev­er­al decades, work­ers orga­nized and secured gains in pay and ben­e­fits. By the 1960s, a third of the U.S. work­force was union­ized. Because orga­nized work­ers had the pow­er to win labor agree­ments call­ing for bet­ter wages, income inequal­i­ty declined sig­nif­i­cant­ly from its peak in 1929. Thir­ty years after the NLRA passed, CEOs earned about 20 times the pay of aver­age workers.

Since the day the NLRA took effect, though, cor­po­ra­tions lob­bied to recov­er the small mea­sure of pow­er Con­gress gave work­ers. Con­gress, courts and too many state leg­is­la­tures com­plied with cor­po­rate demands, hand­ing them more mus­cle in their deal­ings with workers.

As a result, now only 11 per­cent of U.S. work­ers are rep­re­sent­ed by labor unions, about the same por­tion as before the NLRA passed. The num­ber of strikes in a giv­en year is down to a sixth of what it was just two decades ago. Income inequal­i­ty is back to 1929 lev­els. CEOs now pull down near­ly 300 times what work­ers get.

ATI is an exam­ple. It locked out work­ers to force them to accept mas­sive ben­e­fit cuts. Just one year ago, how­ev­er, it hand­ed its top man­age­ment team rais­es of up to 70 per­cent, so that the top five exec­u­tives pulled down more than $19 million.

Between 1978 and 2013, cor­po­ra­tions increased com­pen­sa­tion for their CEOs by 937 per­cent, while rais­ing work­er pay a pal­try 10.2 percent.

The sit­u­a­tion wors­ened for work­ers recent­ly. A study by the Nation­al Employ­ment Law Project released last week found that con­sid­er­ing infla­tion, medi­an work­er wages actu­al­ly fell by 4 per­cent between 2009 and 2014.

This occurred even while work­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty increased. Anoth­er report released last week, this one by the Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, shows that the ben­e­fits of bet­ter pro­duc­tiv­i­ty have near­ly all gone to cor­po­ra­tions, share­hold­ers and top exec­u­tives. Work­ers pro­duced more and got less. Instead of invest­ing in work­ers, research and devel­op­ment, cor­po­ra­tions are increas­ing­ly spend­ing vir­tu­al­ly all prof­its on stock buy­backs, a prac­tice that increas­es CEO compensation.

Cor­po­ra­tions are using lock­outs to try to take even more from work­ers. That’s what the Min­neso­ta com­pa­ny Amer­i­can Crys­tal Sug­ar did. It was earn­ing record prof­its, yet demand­ed con­ces­sions from work­ers. When the 1,300 mem­bers of the Bak­ery, Con­fec­tionery, Tobac­co Work­ers and Grain Millers Union said they want­ed a fair share of the wealth that their labor had cre­at­ed, the com­pa­ny locked them out on Aug. 1, 2011.

Amer­i­can Crys­tal Sug­ar con­tract­ed Strom Engi­neer­ing to find replace­ment work­ers. That’s the same com­pa­ny ATI hired in an attempt replace its hard­work­ing, high­ly-skilled Steel­work­ers. Amer­i­can Crys­tal Sug­ar paid the inex­pe­ri­enced replace­ment work­ers more than it did its vet­er­an work­ers — just as ATI is doing.

They’re will­ing to do that because their goal is even­tu­al­ly to kill the union, just as rob­ber baron Andrew Carnegie and his hench­man Hen­ry Clay Frick did in 1892 when they locked work­ers out of the Home­stead Steel Works.

That lock­out cost the lives of six steel­work­ers and at least four Frick-hired Pinker­ton guards. But Frick and Carnegie didn’t care about that. In the end, with the help of troops sent by the state, they got what they want­ed — the abil­i­ty to impose wage cuts and haz­ardous work­ing con­di­tions with no threat of push­back from orga­nized workers.

In Min­neso­ta, after 22 months locked out, a slim major­i­ty of Bak­ery, Con­fec­tionery, Tobac­co Work­ers and Grain Millers Union mem­bers vot­ed to accept the con­ces­sions Amer­i­can Crys­tal Sug­ar demand­ed. That seemed to give the com­pa­ny what it want­ed — the abil­i­ty to more eas­i­ly stuff into the fists of exec­u­tives all the sweet prof­its pro­duced by the hands of labor. But the Bak­ery, Con­fec­tionery, Tobac­co Work­ers and Grain Millers Union is fight­ing back to pro­tect its members.

Labor is not down for the count. Far from it. Check out the thou­sands of Steel­work­ers who ral­lied in Pitts­burgh, Chica­go and Burns Har­bor last week, demand­ing fair con­tracts from ATI, U.S. Steel and Arcelor­Mit­tal. Check out the suc­cess of the Fight for 15 move­ment, strong­ly sup­port­ed by the Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union and oth­er labor groups. Check out the polls show­ing surg­ing sup­port for labor unions.

Lar­ry Cur­ry, 61, drove from Maple Heights, Ohio, to Pitts­burgh to join the Steel­work­ers’ ral­ly last week. The retiree from Arcelor­Mit­tal said he was mak­ing a stand. He explained, ​“The cor­po­ra­tions are get­ting greed­i­er and greed­i­er. They want to give us peanuts. If we con­tin­ue like this, with them cut­ting every­thing, we can’t take care of our families.”

Carl LeDonne, 48, a Team­ster, joined the Steel­work­er ral­ly because he felt he had to defend unions against the cur­rent cor­po­rate assault on labor. ​“We can’t give away what my dad’s gen­er­a­tion fought and died for,” he said as he marched on Grant Street. ​“They are com­ing after all of us. Today it is the Steel­work­ers under attack, tomor­row it is my union. They want to destroy all unions and force peo­ple to work for $2 an hour, 80 hours a week, like a Third World country.”

Eric Mar­tin, 45, of Fombell, a mem­ber of the Inter­na­tion­al Union of Oper­at­ing Engi­neers, marched in the ral­ly because he believes the ATI lock­out specif­i­cal­ly, and lock­outs in gen­er­al, are attacks on work­ers. ​“Cor­po­ra­tions are try­ing to break any­one who they think is stand­ing in their way. I am stand­ing with my broth­ers in this strug­gle,” he said.

As the ral­ly began at the Unit­ed Steel­work­ers (USW) Inter­na­tion­al Head­quar­ters on the Boule­vard of the Allies in Pitts­burgh, David McCall, who is Direc­tor of USW Dis­trict 1, held aloft 7‑year-old Mar­lee Gri­nage, daugh­ter of Steel­work­er Jaimee Gri­nage. ​“This is what this fight is all about,” McCall said. ​“It is about a decent future for our children!”

On this Labor Day, with the pub­lic at its back, orga­nized labor demands an end to lock­outs and to this new age of rob­ber barons who impose them.