Thanks, Jeff, for the apt reminder that as we build a new source of worker power, we must build it as a global one. Your point goes to this larger question of how we define success.
I applaud Rich for putting forth a specific idea for getting us out of the mess that we’re in. Yet in his essay on fortress unionism, Rich defines success as, “to organize enough workers so that union density increases significantly, or at least keeps pace with workforce growth.” But organize workers into what? Traditional unions in which workers’ source of power is through a one-on-one collective bargaining relationship with one employer? Is that the best we can do? We must build new worker power structures that are better suited to today’s challenges than is the current collective bargaining sytem.
I organized in the clothing and textile union in the South throughout the 1990s, and we won a lot of campaigns - - Tultex (5000 workers in Martinsville, VA), Healthtex, Springs Fashions. We won contracts, too. Every shop I helped organize is gone today because of the global turn in the industry, and when the employer went, the local union dissolved because there was no longer a collective bargaining agreement. What if we had spent the 1990s building an organization that could continue to mobilize those workers, perhaps in an industry or regionally-based organization? Impossible the leaders said. But now there is nothing…
There’s no point building a fortress, hoping one day to increase union density, if all we have to offer is today’s weakened system of collective bargaining. When workers do begin to militantly mobilize, they will remain ill equipped for today’s economy, and will be crushed.
Worker militancy does not solve the kinds of structural problems which Rich points out - - today we have smaller work places, a mobile workforce and global capital. History can serve as a guide here. Rich spotlights the worker militancy in 1937 and the Republic Steel strike in which 18 workers were murdered for standing up for a union. But militancy alone does not cut it. Workers also need the appropriate structure and strategy. Steel workers tried for decades to organize and were crushed – aka Homestead in 1892 and the Great Steel Strike in 1919. It was only in the post-Wagner Act period that hundreds of thousands of steelworkers were able to form unions - - and they were able to do so because of the new-fangled industrial unionism and state-backed collective bargaining. I agree that FDR signed Wagner because he was pushed by striking workers to do so. Nevertheless, those workers needed that particular new structure in order for their militancy to stick.
I just attended the Labor Research Action Network (LRAN) conference in Washington, DC - - and I was struck that many of the young people who attended that conference are way beyond us on this - - especially the ones in what Rich calls “alt labor.” They have taken many of these ideas and are running hard, building a worker power movement and trying out a host of new ways for workers to leverage power. (And, Jeff, be cheered by the fact that they're leagues ahead of us on the global power issue.)
Yes, yes… they struggle with sustainability. And, yes, many of the organizations that work best are the ones that combine collective bargaining with new tactics. But maybe we can take a break from brick-and-mortaring our fortress to really … REALLY… help them wrestle with how to build sustainability. Someone asked Saru Jayaraman (co-director and founder of ROC – the Restaurant Opportunity Center) what labor could do to help and her answer… she wants help making a 25-year plan. She wants labor leaders to sit down and help this new movement build a plan. Seems like we can do that, right, everyone?
We need to stop defining success according the Bureau of Labor Statistics union density figures. Success is about worker power. Maybe that means fixing collective bargaining somehow. Maybe it means finding another source of leverage. But whatever path we choose, now is the time to expand our vision of success, not narrow it.
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Monday, June 17, 2013
Should We Adopt "Fortress Unionism" - An Answer to Yeselson's Thoughtful Essay
In a recent essay on "fortress unionism" Richard Yeselson argues that given the realities of today's political economy, unions should hunker down and defend our strongholds and wait for another worker-led union surge. While the essay is provocative, I have some different ideas.
Here's Yeselson's essay: http://www.democracyjournal.org/29/fortress-unionism.php
Here's my response:
Yeselson may be correct that a solid defense is the labor movement’s best move in 2013; nevertheless, there are two major considerations that we should take into account as we have this discussion.
First, we should consider a broader definition of success than expanding union density. Who cares if unions are big, as long as the movement makes this world a better place to live for workers and their families? Our goal is economic and social justice, not necessarily big unions. For example, the dominant narrative on the women’s association 9to5 seems to be – “great idea, but they didn’t succeed.” Really? Yes, they did not make unions get bigger. But they helped put sexual harassment on the map as a workplace issue and helped transform the working experience for entire future generations of women workers. Seems like success to me.
Second, Yeselson highlights the big moments of union growth, and asserts that we should hang tight and “wait.” Do we really think that workers just built those moments of union growth out of the blue? They built those growth moments on decades of slow and persistent organizing. The seeds of the 1930s uprising were planted throughout the entire Progressive Era, starting in the late 19th century. Workers learned to form organizations, work in broad coalition, and that “success” would have to come through changes in federal law ( a fairly new concept then.)
Now is not the time to wait. Now is the time to understand that the unions in which all of us have been working for 20, 30, 40 years are specific creatures born of the New Deal and the Wagner Act, and that we need new creatures that are more fitting for the Wal-Mart economy that Yeselson describes so well. Yes, real change can’t happen without worker activism and passion. But workers need structures and tools. And the tools - - the unions - - we are offering them today are the wrong shape and size. So what should today’s worker power organizations look like? That’s the conversation I’d really like to see us engaged in.
Here's Yeselson's essay: http://www.democracyjournal.org/29/fortress-unionism.php
Here's my response:
Yeselson may be correct that a solid defense is the labor movement’s best move in 2013; nevertheless, there are two major considerations that we should take into account as we have this discussion.
First, we should consider a broader definition of success than expanding union density. Who cares if unions are big, as long as the movement makes this world a better place to live for workers and their families? Our goal is economic and social justice, not necessarily big unions. For example, the dominant narrative on the women’s association 9to5 seems to be – “great idea, but they didn’t succeed.” Really? Yes, they did not make unions get bigger. But they helped put sexual harassment on the map as a workplace issue and helped transform the working experience for entire future generations of women workers. Seems like success to me.
Second, Yeselson highlights the big moments of union growth, and asserts that we should hang tight and “wait.” Do we really think that workers just built those moments of union growth out of the blue? They built those growth moments on decades of slow and persistent organizing. The seeds of the 1930s uprising were planted throughout the entire Progressive Era, starting in the late 19th century. Workers learned to form organizations, work in broad coalition, and that “success” would have to come through changes in federal law ( a fairly new concept then.)
Now is not the time to wait. Now is the time to understand that the unions in which all of us have been working for 20, 30, 40 years are specific creatures born of the New Deal and the Wagner Act, and that we need new creatures that are more fitting for the Wal-Mart economy that Yeselson describes so well. Yes, real change can’t happen without worker activism and passion. But workers need structures and tools. And the tools - - the unions - - we are offering them today are the wrong shape and size. So what should today’s worker power organizations look like? That’s the conversation I’d really like to see us engaged in.
Friday, May 24, 2013
The Roots of a Union City: The Los Angeles / Orange County Organizing Committee
Here's a little history of an important joint organizing committee that I am sharing with the AFL-CIO for their upcoming convention in Los Angeles:
The Roots of a Union City: The AFL-CIO Los Angeles / Orange County Organizing Committee
by Lane Windham
Jimmy Hoffa didn’t believe it. He charged that the new AFL-CIO Los Angeles / Orange County Organizing Committee (LAOOC), launched in 1963, would “not organize 50 people…it’s all propaganda and hot air.” In fact, this joint organizing campaign organized nearly half a million workers over its more than 20 years in operation, making it the largest such joint effort in the labor movement’s history and helping to forge Los Angeles as a 21st century pro-union city. The LAOOC offers several lessons to today’s union movement, including the importance of broad solidarity over narrow organizational interests, the need for big vision coupled with long-term investment, and the missed opportunity of community engagement.
In the early 1960s, Southern California’s workforce was booming as companies moved to the Sunbelt, but those jobs were increasingly non-union. Since 1950, union density in the LA metropolitan area had dropped from 37 to 30 percent, with no end to the slide in sight. The leaders fretted about the challenges ahead of them - - challenges that ring familiar to unionists today. They blamed the laws, the anti-union companies and the young people in the “space age” who seemed to see no need for unions. Inter-union rivalry was a big problem - - too often unions fought one another in big organizing campaigns rather than branching out into new territory.
The AFL-CIO itself was still a freshly-minted organization in 1962 and it was carving out its relationship on organizing with its affiliate unions. UAW President Walter Reuther had only agreed to the 1955 merger if the new AFL-CIO established the Industrial Union Department (IUD), a free-standing, autonomous department for industrial unions that would be a seat for much of the work of the former CIO. Reuther headed it and pushed the new federation to take a lead role in organizing. When Reuther started to put together an IUD organizing effort in Southern California, the non-industrial unions wanted in, too.
Thus the Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO Executive Council established the new LAOOC in 1963, with Reuther’s support, and it originally included 57 unions. The level of coordination was impressive. Each union submitted to the AFL-CIO a list of its current locals in the two county area, and a list of potential organizing targets. The unions then divided themselves into five divisions: hard goods (lumber, steel, glass, etc.); soft goods (textiles, oil, chemicals, etc.); retail; government; and hotel and restaurant. Each union agreed to contribute money and organizers, according to their size. The original budget was for $230,000 a year, half of which the AFL-CIO paid, including for a director. The unions in each division then sat down and hashed out the acceptable organizing targets. Unless the group agreed to the target, the unions would not organize there. Unions would sometimes agree to petition jointly, or to confer with one another, but they would not oppose one another.
It worked. After five years, by 1967, the joint effort had helped hold union membership in Los Angeles at 30% density, even as national density slid from 30% to about 28%. There were over 1100 union elections in that same period, a whopping 98% of which only had one union on the ballot (compared to 89% nationwide.) They also counted 800 voluntary recognitions, many of which were card check agreements, and a number of new government units. By 1967, they’d organized about 110,000 new members in the two counties. Many of the elections were in traditional manufacturing, like UAW at Cadillac Gauge and USWA at Harvey Aluminum. Others were in newer industries, like the Machinists’ win at Scientific Data Systems or the Chemical Workers’ wins at Shell Chemical Division and Bio-Sciences laboratory, the largest privately-owned clinical lab in the world.
But it wasn’t perfect. Many of the unions backed out - - by 1965, the group had shrunk from 57 to 39 unions - - and the project was constantly having to harass unions to pay their share of the costs. One of the great tragedies of the project was that it dropped retail entirely as one of the original five divisions when the Retail Clerks and Amalgamated Clothing Workers union could not settle their differences over who should organize in retail. This was a very bad choice. Retail would end up driving the 21st century economy, and it would largely be non-union. In this case, the union movement would have done better to have a big vision for retail that pushed the bounds of what was acceptable by the jurisdictional unions, and insist on a plan that worked - - even if feathers were forever ruffled.
The project also did not have a seat for community groups, despite the fact that there were
contemporaneous models it could have emulated. For example, by the late 1960s Walter Reuther was driving through the UAW and IUD what he labeled a “socially-conscious” unionism which sunk resources into organizing the poor, such as through backing tenants’ unions. The LAOOC did not have this level of engagement. It stuck to traditional organizing, sometimes supported by ministers and community groups, but which was designed to lift wages and working conditions through traditional collective bargaining only. Such a narrow view later helped divide unions from the larger community, an issue that late 20th century Los Angeles labor leaders would be forced to tackle.
However, what the project did have was longevity. A core of about 35 unions stuck with the project for over twenty years. They’d meet each quarter, banging out those approved targets. The project served to not only coordinate organizing, but to spur it, for organizers routinely had to go sit next to their peers from other unions and talk about the state of their campaigns. By 1978, they’d organized 358,000 workers, 217,000 of whom came through board elections, and about 114,000 of whom came through new organizing in governmental sectors. By 1984, they’d organized nearly half a million.
The leaders who formed the LAOOC in 1963 had no idea that they were enriching the soil in which the LA County Federation of Labor - - under the leadership of Miguel Contreras and Maria Elena Durazo - - would grow a new kind of union movement after 1996, rooted in immigrants and deeply intertwined with the community. The 21st century Union City that is Los Angeles rests on the willingness of these early union leaders to think beyond their narrow institutions, to challenge their organizations’ cultures, and to invest in a geographically-targeted, long-term, joint organizing effort.
Sources:
Based on various memos, statistics, newspaper articles and meeting minutes surrounding the LAOOC, found at the George Meany Memorial Archives, Silver Spring, MD, RG28-002, Organizing Department, Boxes 1, 52, 53 and RG95-009, Alan Kistler papers, Box 6, Box 12.
Bernstein, Harry. “AFL-CIO Drive Here Will Fail Hoffa Says,” Los Angeles Times, March 27, 1963.
Murphy, Michael J. “Developing Communities: The UAW and Community Unions in Los Angeles, 1965-1974.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Vol. 6, Issue 4, 19.
National Labor Relations Board Annual Report, 1965.
The Roots of a Union City: The AFL-CIO Los Angeles / Orange County Organizing Committee
by Lane Windham
Jimmy Hoffa didn’t believe it. He charged that the new AFL-CIO Los Angeles / Orange County Organizing Committee (LAOOC), launched in 1963, would “not organize 50 people…it’s all propaganda and hot air.” In fact, this joint organizing campaign organized nearly half a million workers over its more than 20 years in operation, making it the largest such joint effort in the labor movement’s history and helping to forge Los Angeles as a 21st century pro-union city. The LAOOC offers several lessons to today’s union movement, including the importance of broad solidarity over narrow organizational interests, the need for big vision coupled with long-term investment, and the missed opportunity of community engagement.
In the early 1960s, Southern California’s workforce was booming as companies moved to the Sunbelt, but those jobs were increasingly non-union. Since 1950, union density in the LA metropolitan area had dropped from 37 to 30 percent, with no end to the slide in sight. The leaders fretted about the challenges ahead of them - - challenges that ring familiar to unionists today. They blamed the laws, the anti-union companies and the young people in the “space age” who seemed to see no need for unions. Inter-union rivalry was a big problem - - too often unions fought one another in big organizing campaigns rather than branching out into new territory.
The AFL-CIO itself was still a freshly-minted organization in 1962 and it was carving out its relationship on organizing with its affiliate unions. UAW President Walter Reuther had only agreed to the 1955 merger if the new AFL-CIO established the Industrial Union Department (IUD), a free-standing, autonomous department for industrial unions that would be a seat for much of the work of the former CIO. Reuther headed it and pushed the new federation to take a lead role in organizing. When Reuther started to put together an IUD organizing effort in Southern California, the non-industrial unions wanted in, too.
Thus the Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO Executive Council established the new LAOOC in 1963, with Reuther’s support, and it originally included 57 unions. The level of coordination was impressive. Each union submitted to the AFL-CIO a list of its current locals in the two county area, and a list of potential organizing targets. The unions then divided themselves into five divisions: hard goods (lumber, steel, glass, etc.); soft goods (textiles, oil, chemicals, etc.); retail; government; and hotel and restaurant. Each union agreed to contribute money and organizers, according to their size. The original budget was for $230,000 a year, half of which the AFL-CIO paid, including for a director. The unions in each division then sat down and hashed out the acceptable organizing targets. Unless the group agreed to the target, the unions would not organize there. Unions would sometimes agree to petition jointly, or to confer with one another, but they would not oppose one another.
It worked. After five years, by 1967, the joint effort had helped hold union membership in Los Angeles at 30% density, even as national density slid from 30% to about 28%. There were over 1100 union elections in that same period, a whopping 98% of which only had one union on the ballot (compared to 89% nationwide.) They also counted 800 voluntary recognitions, many of which were card check agreements, and a number of new government units. By 1967, they’d organized about 110,000 new members in the two counties. Many of the elections were in traditional manufacturing, like UAW at Cadillac Gauge and USWA at Harvey Aluminum. Others were in newer industries, like the Machinists’ win at Scientific Data Systems or the Chemical Workers’ wins at Shell Chemical Division and Bio-Sciences laboratory, the largest privately-owned clinical lab in the world.
But it wasn’t perfect. Many of the unions backed out - - by 1965, the group had shrunk from 57 to 39 unions - - and the project was constantly having to harass unions to pay their share of the costs. One of the great tragedies of the project was that it dropped retail entirely as one of the original five divisions when the Retail Clerks and Amalgamated Clothing Workers union could not settle their differences over who should organize in retail. This was a very bad choice. Retail would end up driving the 21st century economy, and it would largely be non-union. In this case, the union movement would have done better to have a big vision for retail that pushed the bounds of what was acceptable by the jurisdictional unions, and insist on a plan that worked - - even if feathers were forever ruffled.
The project also did not have a seat for community groups, despite the fact that there were
contemporaneous models it could have emulated. For example, by the late 1960s Walter Reuther was driving through the UAW and IUD what he labeled a “socially-conscious” unionism which sunk resources into organizing the poor, such as through backing tenants’ unions. The LAOOC did not have this level of engagement. It stuck to traditional organizing, sometimes supported by ministers and community groups, but which was designed to lift wages and working conditions through traditional collective bargaining only. Such a narrow view later helped divide unions from the larger community, an issue that late 20th century Los Angeles labor leaders would be forced to tackle.
However, what the project did have was longevity. A core of about 35 unions stuck with the project for over twenty years. They’d meet each quarter, banging out those approved targets. The project served to not only coordinate organizing, but to spur it, for organizers routinely had to go sit next to their peers from other unions and talk about the state of their campaigns. By 1978, they’d organized 358,000 workers, 217,000 of whom came through board elections, and about 114,000 of whom came through new organizing in governmental sectors. By 1984, they’d organized nearly half a million.
The leaders who formed the LAOOC in 1963 had no idea that they were enriching the soil in which the LA County Federation of Labor - - under the leadership of Miguel Contreras and Maria Elena Durazo - - would grow a new kind of union movement after 1996, rooted in immigrants and deeply intertwined with the community. The 21st century Union City that is Los Angeles rests on the willingness of these early union leaders to think beyond their narrow institutions, to challenge their organizations’ cultures, and to invest in a geographically-targeted, long-term, joint organizing effort.
Sources:
Based on various memos, statistics, newspaper articles and meeting minutes surrounding the LAOOC, found at the George Meany Memorial Archives, Silver Spring, MD, RG28-002, Organizing Department, Boxes 1, 52, 53 and RG95-009, Alan Kistler papers, Box 6, Box 12.
Bernstein, Harry. “AFL-CIO Drive Here Will Fail Hoffa Says,” Los Angeles Times, March 27, 1963.
Murphy, Michael J. “Developing Communities: The UAW and Community Unions in Los Angeles, 1965-1974.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Vol. 6, Issue 4, 19.
National Labor Relations Board Annual Report, 1965.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Ok, this could be interesting...
Did anyone else catch the buzz around the speech that AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka made in Chicago about new models for the union movement?
I don't know if it's rhetoric or real... no one does, yet. But the fact that the AFL-CIO seems to be soliciting widely for ideas for new models of worker power...that's very interesting, no?
Here's the link to the speech:
Basically, the ideas is that with union membership at SUCH a low rate - - we saw a 400,000 membership drop last year - - we have got to really think about new ways of affecting change.
Trumka acknowledges that NO amount of union organizing, within or without the NLRB, will get us up to the level of membership that we need in order to leverage power the old way.
So what are new possible models? Maybe the Taxi workers alliance or the Domestic Workers union which organize outside the parameters of a contract with one employer. Maybe a bigger or bolder Working America, the AFL-CIO affiliate for workers who don't have a union at work. Or maybe it's a new form entirely.
At any rate, Trumka says that the AFL-CIO will convene a wide conversation within the labor movement and with community groups in order to get ideas.
But, I'm still a bit skeptical.
I'm a historian, and I spent many days in the AFL-CIO archives. There was another attempt like this in 1983-85 when the labor movement realized that membership was first really sliding. The had a "Committee on the Future" (no joke). While the Committee on the Future considered a wide range of alternative forms of membership and organization, in the end they punted. The leadership couldn't wrap its head around a form that didn't lead directly to a dues-sustaining model. So, instead, they came up with a consumer-focused model that got us the Union Plus credit card, etc. Needless to say, it didn't save the movement.
Nevertheless, the union movement must do something.
The ultimate question will be whether it will be too weighed down by the old forms of unionization that it is carrying on its back (like the single-employer based contract model), or whether it will be able to have the vision and flexibility to create entirely new forms of organizations.
I don't know if it's rhetoric or real... no one does, yet. But the fact that the AFL-CIO seems to be soliciting widely for ideas for new models of worker power...that's very interesting, no?
Here's the link to the speech:
Basically, the ideas is that with union membership at SUCH a low rate - - we saw a 400,000 membership drop last year - - we have got to really think about new ways of affecting change.
Trumka acknowledges that NO amount of union organizing, within or without the NLRB, will get us up to the level of membership that we need in order to leverage power the old way.
So what are new possible models? Maybe the Taxi workers alliance or the Domestic Workers union which organize outside the parameters of a contract with one employer. Maybe a bigger or bolder Working America, the AFL-CIO affiliate for workers who don't have a union at work. Or maybe it's a new form entirely.
At any rate, Trumka says that the AFL-CIO will convene a wide conversation within the labor movement and with community groups in order to get ideas.
But, I'm still a bit skeptical.
I'm a historian, and I spent many days in the AFL-CIO archives. There was another attempt like this in 1983-85 when the labor movement realized that membership was first really sliding. The had a "Committee on the Future" (no joke). While the Committee on the Future considered a wide range of alternative forms of membership and organization, in the end they punted. The leadership couldn't wrap its head around a form that didn't lead directly to a dues-sustaining model. So, instead, they came up with a consumer-focused model that got us the Union Plus credit card, etc. Needless to say, it didn't save the movement.
Nevertheless, the union movement must do something.
The ultimate question will be whether it will be too weighed down by the old forms of unionization that it is carrying on its back (like the single-employer based contract model), or whether it will be able to have the vision and flexibility to create entirely new forms of organizations.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Training Won't Cut It... Make New Jobs Good Jobs
For years I worked in media outreach for the labor movement, and banged my head against a wall talking to reporters about income inequality. They just yawned. During this last recession the Inside the Beltway types started to finally get it - - the growing income divide is now hot. And what's the wonks' solution.... drumroll,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,., Training! We'll train all the people and send them to college! After all, college grads make more money.
Ok, I'm all for college. I teach college. But the problem is that our nation isn't creating more jobs for college grads. We're creating many, many more low-wage jobs. In fact, even the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco recently pointed out that the vast majority of job losses during the recent recession -- 60 % - - were "middle-income" jobs (paying between $14 and $21 an hour.) But then once we started gaining jobs back, only 27% were such middle-income jobs. Most of the new jobs were low-wage jobs. See today's Washington Post article on this here.
Below is a chart that I completely stole from the National Employment Law Project website. You can see that 8 of the 12 jobs with the most openings are low-paying jobs.
So, what's the solution? Training won't cut it. We have to make these low-wage jobs good ones. We can do that through wage policies - - like raising the minimum wage. We can demand that any employers who get tax incentives in our communities meet certain basic standards. And we can support workers' freedom to collective bargaining -- perhaps in creative ways not now supported by law, like giving a minority of union-minded workers at a workplace the power to bargain over some issues.
What do you think we should do to make the new jobs good ones?
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Obama front-paged Newport News - Now check out this shipyard's little-known union history
Eddie Coppedge and Oscar Pretlow, two of the men who helped lead the USWA unionization effort, talking union on the company gate in 1978.
Today President Obama traveled to Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia to make the point that the sequester will hurt real people, and cost real jobs.
Yet nowhere in the media coverage did I see mention of the workers' union, USWA Local 8888 - - or it's storied history.
The 19,000 welders, painters, inspectors, mechanics and other who formed a union with the Steelworkers in 1978 at the Newport News shipyard overthrew a company-controlled union that had been in place for nearly forty years. They achieved this as part of a workforce that was half white, half black, and increasingly female. Through a union, they sought economic security in deeply insecure times. The Civil Rights movement greased the wheels of their victory. Their insurgency had been started up by four African-American men who were dissatisfied with the pace of ending discrimination at the shipyard under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. It was driven home by increasing numbers of African-American and female workers who believed they should have an equal access to the best jobs in the shipyard and who turned to the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) to help them secure that right.
Tenneco, Inc - - the conglomerate that had owned the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock company for ten years - - refused to honor the workers election victory. But the workers did not wait for the law to slowly churn out justice. They struck their Navy contractor employer for 82 days in order to force the company to recognize their union, even as the governor’s guardsmen met them with dogs on the picket lines and the city police stormed the union hall, beating strikers with abandon.
The photo at the top of this blog shows one of the workers being beaten up by the local police in 1979 during the strike- - the officer in the middle is the chief of police.
USWA Local 8888 went on to build a mixed-race, mixed-gender local union that mobilized its members to shake up local and state politics, and which remains an active progressive presence today.
And in the event that there is a sequester, the Newport News workers will have a union to help them make sure that any layoffs or cuts are done fairly. Cold comfort, perhaps, but they are in a lot better situation than the millions of workers who will be hit who do not have a union.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Today I heard from David, a union member for 25 years. He told me that he appreciated my article "If Not Unions, Then What?" (posted below), and he asked:
However, what would your argument be in regards to our companies (allowing for higher wages, benefits, etc.) competing in a global economy? Nay sayers will contend that unions can and have rendered US companies less competitive, particularly when competing with emerging economies.
Below is my answer to David's question. Does anyone else have answers to David's important question?
You raise an important question, which has to do with profitability in a globalized economy.
I believe that history has much to teach us here.
Before the 1930s, workers and their unions were never able to achieve much lasting power. This was a period when the economy was becomeing nationalized, but much of the economic power and regulation was still at the state level.
Beginning in the 1930s and with FDR's New Deal, our nation got the first widespread national regulations of the economy. As part of that, workers won federal government backing for their unions through the Wagner Act.
From 1945 to 1973, the US economy expanded greatly - - everyone did well, employers and workers, because there was so much to go around. Unions made sure that employers shared that wealth.
After 1973 the US began to enter a globalizing economy, and global competition increased - - so there was less to go around. US employers were increasingly free to source their labor anywhere in the world. This, of course, pitted US workers against lower-wage workers around the world. Just as the economy shifted from a state-level to a national one at the turn of the 20th century, now the economy is shifting from a national to a global one at the turn of the 21st century. We are still in the middle of this shift. But, yet again, we do not have the legal structure we need to guarantee workers' rights. In this case, we now need a global legal structure.
What I have described above is not a union issue - - it's a larger economic issue. When the media and elites blame unions for driving companies overseas, in fact they are using unions as a scapegoat for much deeper economic structural issues. ALL U.S. workers have faced decreased wages and benefits in a globalized economy, even as their productivity has continued to rise. And as the US economy has globalized, workers' interests have been absent from the larger global legal framework. This is a key factor to today's shocking levels of economic inequality.
Allow me to reframe your question a bit. Perhaps the question for us as union members isn't - "how can our unionized companies compete in a globalized economy?" The question is "how can workers re-shape the global economy to meet workers' needs instead of those of corporations?" Our globe is in the early stages of building a framework for new rules to govern corporations on a world-wide scale. Right now, corporations clearly have the upper hand. We can demand a global economy which lifts all boats. However, like everything else, it won't happen unless we make it happen.
We must call on the WTO to honor workers' rights, we must insist that the US sign the UN Declaration of Human Rights (which defends' workers' freedom of association) and we must insist that all nations follow it. Meanwhile, we need to build global alliances with other workers.
I realize that these are not short-term answers. But I don't see any way for union members to win in the global marketplace under the current rules. We have to re-build power, ultimately, in new ways.
However, what would your argument be in regards to our companies (allowing for higher wages, benefits, etc.) competing in a global economy? Nay sayers will contend that unions can and have rendered US companies less competitive, particularly when competing with emerging economies.
Below is my answer to David's question. Does anyone else have answers to David's important question?
You raise an important question, which has to do with profitability in a globalized economy.
I believe that history has much to teach us here.
Before the 1930s, workers and their unions were never able to achieve much lasting power. This was a period when the economy was becomeing nationalized, but much of the economic power and regulation was still at the state level.
Beginning in the 1930s and with FDR's New Deal, our nation got the first widespread national regulations of the economy. As part of that, workers won federal government backing for their unions through the Wagner Act.
From 1945 to 1973, the US economy expanded greatly - - everyone did well, employers and workers, because there was so much to go around. Unions made sure that employers shared that wealth.
After 1973 the US began to enter a globalizing economy, and global competition increased - - so there was less to go around. US employers were increasingly free to source their labor anywhere in the world. This, of course, pitted US workers against lower-wage workers around the world. Just as the economy shifted from a state-level to a national one at the turn of the 20th century, now the economy is shifting from a national to a global one at the turn of the 21st century. We are still in the middle of this shift. But, yet again, we do not have the legal structure we need to guarantee workers' rights. In this case, we now need a global legal structure.
What I have described above is not a union issue - - it's a larger economic issue. When the media and elites blame unions for driving companies overseas, in fact they are using unions as a scapegoat for much deeper economic structural issues. ALL U.S. workers have faced decreased wages and benefits in a globalized economy, even as their productivity has continued to rise. And as the US economy has globalized, workers' interests have been absent from the larger global legal framework. This is a key factor to today's shocking levels of economic inequality.
Allow me to reframe your question a bit. Perhaps the question for us as union members isn't - "how can our unionized companies compete in a globalized economy?" The question is "how can workers re-shape the global economy to meet workers' needs instead of those of corporations?" Our globe is in the early stages of building a framework for new rules to govern corporations on a world-wide scale. Right now, corporations clearly have the upper hand. We can demand a global economy which lifts all boats. However, like everything else, it won't happen unless we make it happen.
We must call on the WTO to honor workers' rights, we must insist that the US sign the UN Declaration of Human Rights (which defends' workers' freedom of association) and we must insist that all nations follow it. Meanwhile, we need to build global alliances with other workers.
I realize that these are not short-term answers. But I don't see any way for union members to win in the global marketplace under the current rules. We have to re-build power, ultimately, in new ways.
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