INDIANAPOLIS —Popping across Indiana's labor battleground are signs of times both present and past.
"Hoosiers want lifelines, not bread lines," they say. "We oppose punitive legislation." "This law of suppression invites a depression."
They were wielded by hundreds of union members who packed the Statehouse in protest of a "right-to-work" measure – in 1957.
Now that the same fight is happening again, the Indiana State AFL-CIO is reprinting those signs, and hundreds of union members are again carrying them into the Statehouse to protest the actions of a Republican-controlled General Assembly.
Indiana has already been a state with a right-to-work law prohibiting workers from being required to pay union dues as a condition of employment on its books.
When Republicans controlled both the Legislature and the governor's office in 1957, as they do now, they approved the measure.
"The Centennial History of the Indiana General Assembly," a book written by Justin E. Walsh and published in 1987, recounts that year's action.
It originated in the House, where Speaker George S. Diener's support from the chair was enough to push the bill through on a 54 to 42 vote.
In the Senate, the Republican chairman of the labor committee was almost certain to kill the bill. So the sponsor, D. Russell Bontrager, depended on Lt. Gov. Crawford F. Parker's "fast gavel" to move it straight to the full chamber, where it passed, 27 to 23.
The bill's passage prompted a protest that drew 7,500 labor supporters to the Statehouse. One of their supporters from the corporate level was J. Irwin Miller, then the 47-year-old chairman of Cummins.
"The classic argument against the union shop," he said, "is the right-to-work argument. The average American manager feels that there is a character known as the 'loyal employee,' and this is a fellow who is supposed to figure that joining the union is a fate worse than death.
"Well, this man is in the same category, in my opinion, as the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. I've never found him."
The protesters carried signs and chanted "Veto!" Eventually, some pushed past state police and into the office of Gov. Harold W. Handley, who ducked out a side door.
Handley was no fan of the bill, but absent a veto, bills become law even without the governor's signature, and that's what happened then. Indiana became the nation's 18th right-to-work state.
However, the new law was so unpopular that many Republicans were turned out at the polls in 1958. By the 1960s, Democrats controlled both chambers of the General Assembly and the governor's office. And in 1965, they repealed the right-to-work law.
This year, the Republican House Speaker, Brian Bosma of Indianapolis, and the Senate President Pro Tem, David Long of Fort Wayne, have both announced their support for a right-to-work law.
By now, 22 states have adopted right-to-work law. But the fight is one that has been dormant since 2001, when Oklahoma adopted one.
As it braces for another fight, the Indiana State AFL-CIO has found old copies of the 1957 signs, and photos of the 1957 protest that they're hanging up in the group's Indianapolis office.
"We thought it was certainly fitting," said Jeff Harris, a spokesman for the Indiana State AFL-CIO, "since this argument has been going on for so long."