Society at the time was dominated by views we would now call white supremacist. That is enough to explain why the unions behaved as you describe. Since you ask

Society at the time was dominated by views we would now call white supremacist. That is enough to explain why the unions behaved as you describe. Since you asked above, I think this might be where the feeling of "bad faith" comes in. You're pushing this point harder than it can support and more harshly than you need to. That creates a feeling in the reader of something being off. That's too bad, because it's a good point. I found the information interesting, but because of this extra torque you're putting on it, one ends up responding more to that "off" feeling than to the informative parts of your comment.