G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
The War On Working Americans - Part I
By Stephen Lendman
Created Aug 27 2007 - 8:58am
As Labor Day approaches, what better time to assess the state of working
America. It's under assault and weakened by decades of eroding rights in the
richest country in the world once regarded as a model democratic state. It's
pure nonsense in a nation always dedicated to wealth and power, but don't
try finding that discussed in the mainstream. Today, it's truer than ever
making the struggle for equity and justice all the harder. That's what
ordinary working people now face making beating those odds formidable at the
least.
In a globalized world, the law of supply and demand is in play with lots
more workers around everywhere than enough jobs for them. It keeps corporate
costs low and profits high and growing with Business Week (BW) magazine
reporting in its April 9 issue "the share of (US) national income going to
corporate profits (compared to labor) is hovering around a 50 year high." BW
then quoted Harvard economist Richard Freeman's research paper saying only
"a global pandemic that kills millions of people" could cause a labor
shortage and elevate worker bargaining power.
There's little in sight, and the result is a huge reserve army of unemployed
or underemployed working people creating an inevitable race to the bottom in
a corporatized marketplace. It harms workers everywhere, including in
developed nations. They're outsourcing good jobs abroad to lower wage
countries and pressuring workers to do more for less because they've got
little bargaining power to fight back. More on this below.
Organized Labor in the US - Its Rise and Decline
Organized labor's rise began modestly and was fragile in the earliest days
of the republic. It gained strength in good economic times, then lost it in
downturns like the depression in 1873. By the 1880s, things were better as
the nation underwent rapid industrialization. With it came rising prosperity
and workers wanting a share of the benefits. They turned to unions for help
with skilled artisans leading the way helping the unskilled as well in their
efforts to organize.
New labor organizations arose, older ones expanded, and as they did, they
grew more active and militant. It led to the "great uprising of labor" in
1886, including the landmark Chicago May 4 Haymarket Riot protesting police
violence against strikers the previous day. Its impact was hugely negative
at first. It forced organized labor to regroup and settle in for a long
period of recovery.
This was at a time the incipient labor movement was over two million and
rising beginning with its organizing efforts launching it in the 1870s. By
the 1880s, it had enough strength to stage huge strikes for better pay and
working conditions like the struggle for an eight hour day that had 80,000
strikers parading peacefully down Chicago's main Michigan Avenue on May 1,
1886 in what's now regarded as the first ever May Day Parade.
Workers were helped from community-based emerging independent political
parties sensitive to their rights. That's unheard of today in an age where
no effective political party stands for working people despite Democrats and
Republicans saying they do. Workers are now on their own. They're left to
struggle in a global marketplace with pathetically little help weak unions
can provide.
Earlier in the 19th century, the first national union arose as workers began
asserting their rights. It was called the National Labor Union (NLU),
emerged after the Civil War, but was short-lived. Next came the Knights of
Labor in 1869 with a mandate to protect all workers including women and
blacks after 1883. They were represented by industry groups rather than
trade and skill level that was common until then. Its goals were high but
achievements few at a time of widespread worker repression in the 1880s. It
led to its decline as a more resilient union emerged the result of
disaffection with the Knights.
It was called the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and was founded by
Samuel Gompers in 1886 to replace its predecessor, the Federation of
Organized Trades and Labor Unions. The ill-fated American Railway Union
(ARU) followed in 1893, the largest industrial union of its day for a time,
and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) that at its peak in the 1920s
had 100,000 members.
The Wobblies are still around 102 years after Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs
and others founded the union in 1905 as a commitment to working people in
their struggle with corporate employers. It's motto was "an injury to one is
an injury to all," its goal was revolutionary, and it's still true to its
root ideology today as stated in the current IWW Constitution:
"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can
be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the
working people.....Between (workers and employers) a struggle must go on
until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the
means of production, abolish the (unfair) wage system, and live in harmony
with the Earth....It is the historic mission of the working class to do away
with capitalism....By organizing industrially we are forming the structure
of the new society within the shell of the old."
That philosophy under dedicated men like Haywood, Debs and others set the
Wobblies on a collision course with government and big business that tried
to crush it. During WW I in 1917, it was vicious under Woodrow Wilson's
Justice Department (DOJ). It used the repressive Espionage and Sedition Acts
to raid and disrupt union meeting halls across the country. It's the same
tactic used today against Latino immigrants and Muslims in the concocted
"war on terrorism" and the one against undocumented workers.
In 1917 and later, Wilson's DOJ acted much the same way arresting 165 Wobbly
leaders on the grounds they hindered the war effort by using their First
Amendment right to speak out against it. They were tried near war's end in
1918, all convicted, and given long prison terms under a Democrat President
thought of reverentially today. Bill Haywood was luckier. After conviction,
he was released on bail and fled to the Soviet Union where he remained until
his death, but the IWW was never again the same.
They were hammered again from 1918 - 21 during the infamous Palmer Raids
under Wilson Attorney General Mitchell Palmer. He targeted radical left wing
groups like the Wobblies at the time of the first "Red Scare" after the 1917
Russian Revolution. It launched J. Edgar Hoover's career in the DOJ Bureau
of Investigation's new General Intelligence Division that later became the
FBI in 1935. The IWW is still around, still dedicated to its founding
principles, but it's worldwide membership is only around 2000, mostly in the
US.
The AFL fared much better. It became the largest union in the first half of
the 20th century even after the founding of the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO) in 1935 with which it merged in 1955. Today, it's still
the country's largest federation of unions. Its web site claims a membership
of around 10 million workers, even after the Service Employees International
Union (SEIU), Teamsters, UNITE-HERE and United Food and Commercial Workers
(UFCW) broke away from the federation in 2005. The United Brotherhood of
Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBC) did as well in 2001, and the
Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) left in 2006. They
formed a new Change to Win federation in September, 2005 representing about
5.5 million workers. It likely left AFL-CIO with fewer members than it
claims with its true size closer to 8 million or less.
AFL-CIO's state is a metaphor for the times. Organized labor today is weak
in the face of declining membership and corporate dominance with workers
losing out in a globalized world. It's fall has been long-term and painful
with worker rights hammered since the 1980s. It's a long way today from when
the landmark Wagner Act passed in 1935 under Franklin Roosevelt. It
established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) guaranteeing labor the
right to bargain collectively on equal terms with management for the first
time ever, but it wasn't an act of kindness.
It came at the height of The Great Depression when those in power feared the
worst. FDR and Congress acted to save capitalism at a time they feared mass
worker hostility might boil over like it did in 1917 Soviet Russia. Like all
other worker victories, this one came through struggle. It was from
organizing, pressing their demands, taking to the streets, going on strike,
holding boycotts, battling police and National Guard forces supporting
management against working people, paying with their blood and lives and
finally achieving results. They got an eight-hour day, a living wage, and
on-the-job benefits because strong unions went head-to-head with management
and won. It's worlds different now with corporate giants in bed with
friendly governments, and Democrats and Republicans vying to see which party
can be more accommodative.
>From the 19th century forward, it was never easy for labor from the height
>of the movement's strength to the present. Unions were always disadvantaged
>even at a time of reasonable labor-management harmony. The passage of the
>harsh 1947 Taft-Hartley Labor-Management Relations Act showed how tenuous
>their position always was. Harry Truman vetoed the bill but was overridden.
>He called it a "slave labor bill" and then hypocritically used it 10 times,
>the most ever by any President to this day. The law throttles organized
>labor by giving the President power to stop strikes by court-ordered
>injunction for 80 days. He can claim the national interest, some other one,
>or none at all that's always the same one - to help corporate management
>deny workers their rights.
Taft-Hartley is still the law and was last invoked by GW Bush in the summer
of 2002 against 10,500 west coast dock workers "locked out" (not striking)
by the Pacific Maritime Association representing shipping companies and
terminal operators.
Earlier in 2001 and new in office, Bush showed his anti-labor stripes
straightaway. He invoked the Railway Labor Act blocking a threatened strike
by 10,000 mechanics, cleaners and custodians at Northwest Airlines set for
March 12. He acted again against United Airlines' 15,000 mechanics in
December. He also took management's side in August, 2006 against Northwest's
8700 flight attendants' planned job action against the bankrupt airline's
unfair demands for huge wage cuts and increases in hours worked. Bill
Clinton was just as unfriendly invoking the Railway Labor Act against
American Airline's pilots and to prevent railroad strikes 13 times.
Laws like these, and Presidents' willingness to use them, crushed the spirit
and letter of the Wagner Act. They greatly weakened or revoked hard won
provisions, and as a consequence, diminished union clout. Taft-Hartley
allows stiff penalties for union violations but minimal ones for companies.
It enacted a list of "unfair (union) labor practices" prohibiting
jurisdictional strikes (relating to worker job assignments), secondary
boycotts (against firms doing business with others being struck), wildcat
strikes, sit-downs, slow-downs, mass-picketing against scabs brought it,
closed shops (in which employees must join unions), union contributions to
federal political campaigns, and more while legalizing employer
interventions aimed at preventing unionizing drives.
It began a process of gradual erosion of union power to bargain
collectively. That's their weapon now weakened because of devious employer
tactics. They can illegally fire union sympathizers (thousands each year)
and get away with only minor wrist slap fines after years of expensive
litigation to prove wrongdoing. Further, employers can fire workers for any
lawful reason like incompetence or no stated reason at all. Even the right
to strike is neutralized with employers able to hire replacements or
threaten to ship jobs offshore. With government on their side, they're
empowered to fire union workers and legally replace them with lower-paid
scabs or Latino immigrants.
The Reagan administration marked the beginning of the current trend in its
first year. He was contemptuous of organized labor while hypocritically
saying "I support unions and the rights of workers to organize and bargain
collectively." He showed it in August, 1981 by firing 11,000 striking PATCO
air traffic controllers, jailing its leaders, fining the union millions of
dollars, and effectively busting it in service to the monied interests
backing him. It was a shot across organized labor's bow and a clear message
to business and industry of what to expect from a friendly Republican
President. Nothing changed since under Democrat or Republican
administrations with workers unable to match the power and influence of
capital. The toll ever since has been devastating.
Union membership has been in steady decline from its post-war high of 34.7%
in the 1950s. It held fairly constant through most of the 1970s at around
24% where it stood in 1979. At the end of the Reagan era, it was down to
16.8% and is currently around 12% overall with about 36% of government
workers unionized but only 7.4% of them in the private sector. It's the
lowest it's been since the beginning of the mass unionization struggles of
the 1930s and in the private sector in over 100 years. It's because of
Democrat and Republican antipathy to organized labor and corporate threats
to close plants and outsource jobs. It's forced workers to take pay cuts and
fewer benefits that are dropping to where they'll be none, and they'll be on
their own to live or die by market-based rules rigged against them.
George Bush supports corporate interests aiming to crush unions so they have
free reign to treat workers any way they wish or go find other work. In the
wake of 9/11, he took on public sector unions straightaway. He denied
170,000 new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees their civil
service protection and right to bargain collectively. Those affected
included Transportation Security Administration (TSA) newly federalized
airport screeners. They lost their right to unionize in the name of national
security that could as easily been for any reason or none at all. But this
was just for starters. Bush also wants federal positions contracted out to
private companies. That jeopardizes 850,000 federal employees likely to get
lower pay, fewer benefits, loss of other unionized rights, and many of them
ending up out of work.
Overall, organized workers always get higher wages and greater benefits,
which explains why strong unions are vital. The evidence comes from David
Sirota in his his 2006 book, "Hostile Takeover." He showed:
-- 89% of union members have employer-paid health care coverage compared to
67% for nonunion members; as fewer companies now provide it, those numbers
are lower; in addition, companies continue making employees pay a greater
share of the cost of coverage;
-- employers pay a larger share of union member health care premiums than
nonunion members get (but the percentage is falling);
-- over two-thirds of union members have short-term disability insurance
compared to about one-third for nonunion workers;
-- union members get about 26% more vacation time and 14% more total paid
leave than nonunion workers; and
-- Economic Policy Institute (EPI) data show union influence gets high
school graduating members about 8.8% more pay than nonunion workers.
Greater worker clout under unions is why management wants to destroy them.
It's to deny working people their right to organize, earn more and get
greater benefits corporations don't want to provide. It's happening in the
gilded age of George Bush, and a recent example came in a ruling late last
year when his administration's NLRB ruled 3-2 against registered nurses'
right to union membership if they perform certain minimal supervisory
duties.
It was in a case where United Auto Workers (UAW) were trying to organize
nurses at a Taylor, Michigan-based hospital. US labor law doesn't guarantee
supervisors the right to organize making the NLRB ruling hugely important
for up to eight million workers in other trades. It may potentially deny
their right henceforth to qualify for union representation if employers want
to use this ruling to add enough supervisory responsibilities to employees'
job descriptions to throw them into a union-exempt category.
Bush further ended the Clinton administration's regulation requiring federal
agencies vet companies' compliance with the law when awarding federal
contracts. He also issued harsh anti-union, anti-worker executive orders
(EOs) as well as a tsunami of other repressive ones. He barred automatic
union-recognition agreements on federally funded construction projects,
abolished labor-management cooperation partnerships aimed at improving
productivity and working conditions, and mandated contractors henceforth
must inform employees they no longer had to join a union without having to
tell them it's their legal right.
Just the way Ronald Reagan busted PATCO, George Bush tipped his hand
straightaway in office. He's a company man and union-hater, so henceforth
it's been open season on workers and their rights under his administration.
His policies range from:
-- a one-sided support for management;
-- stripping workers of their right to unionize;
-- cutting pay raises for 1.8 million federal workers on the pretext of a
"national emergency;"
-- denying millions overtime pay;
-- appointing anti-union officials;
-- scheming to weaken (and then end) retirement security by replacing Social
Security with risky private accounts managed by Wall Street sharks that so
far has gotten nowhere because of public opposition to it;
-- weakening environmental regulations and protections; and more in an
endless war on workers in service to corporate interests that elected and
own him.
The failed "immigration reform" legislation was, in fact, a Trojan Horse.
It's down but not dead and remains a thinly veiled scheme targeting all
workers. It's a dagger aimed straight at organized labor in a plan to create
a workplace of unempowered serfs, a "bracero America," including US citizens
having few or no benefits and no security. If this legislation ever becomes
law, workers will be at the mercy of business to hire and fire them at will.
Another anti-labor tool is the repressive Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arm. It conducts
paramilitary border and workplace assaults on undocumented Latino workers as
part of a larger agenda to disenfranchise all working Americans and deny
them the right to bargain collectively with management through unions. By
targeting undocumented workers first, the eventual aim is to create a large
exploitable disposable reserve army worker pool; strip all workers of their
rights; empower employers to offer low wage, low or no benefit jobs; and
pretty much be able to operate as they please.
The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) - Some Hope for Worker Rights Now Denied
EFCA was introduced to "amend the (landmark pro-labor) National Labor
Relations Act (passed in 1935)" that's been systematically dismembered piece
by piece ever since. Its aim was to "establish an efficient system to enable
employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for
mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts,
and for other purposes." On June 26, Senate Republicans blocked labor's top
legislative priority by preventing the bill's supporters from getting the 60
votes needed to end debate and bring it to a vote.
For now the bill is dead, but if it ever passes, it will change federal law
on worker rights. They'll henceforth be able to organize by signing cards
authorizing union representation, penalize employers violating worker rights
to do it, and establish new mediation and arbitration processes for
first-contract disputes. It might also end or slow down the firing,
demoting, laying off, or suspending without pay of over 20,000 US workers
annually because of their union activities.
The bill was introduced in the 108th and 109th Republican-controlled
Congresses but failed to pass. It was introduced again in the 110th Congress
on February 5, 2007, got 233 co-sponsors by month's end, and passed in the
House March 1, 2007 for the first time. On March 2, it was placed on the
Senate calendar where leading Democrats expected it to pass despite
Republican opposition. They were wrong.
That's bad news for a bill that would have won back some worker rights after
decades of losing them. It's backed by over five dozen organizations
including the NAACP, United for a Fair Economy, Jobs with Justice and
numerous other civil, human and labor rights groups. The US Chamber of
Commerce and other organizations joined with big business against the bill.
They oppose all worker rights, and their lobbying paid off. They claimed the
bill allowed them the right to organize before employers can explain why
doing it is not in their best interest. Ignored is that union workers always
have more rights that include higher pay, greater benefits and added job
security. That's bad for business and why corporate giants fought to kill
the bill.
They have a powerful ally in the White House making their job a lot easier.
In a mid-February speech before a business lobby group, Dick Cheney
announced George Bush would veto EFCA legislation if it passed on his watch.
He assured those attending this administration will keep its anti-labor
record unblemished on something polls show 77% of working Americans want but
won't get as long as George Bush is in office.
Global Unionization - Another Potential Ray of Hope
In April editions of The American Prospect, the Washington Post and ZNet,
Harold Meyerson wrote about "a radical new direction for the globalized
economy" in his article titled "Unions Gone Global." He noted the United
Steel Workers (USW) here are negotiating a merger with two of Britain's
largest unions to create "the first genuinely multinational trade union"
that with about three million members will be the world's largest. Meyerson
reported the goal, as USW's Gerald Fernandez put it, is "to fight financial
globalization (by) fight(ing) it globally....by building a global union (in
this case a) federation of metal, mining, and general workers."
The partners in this one stated a commitment to "fund human rights and union
rights in parts of Africa and Colombia" where more unionists are killed
annually than anywhere else, and the country gets billions in US aid each
year to help out. They also plan a global effort "to protect employees'
retirement benefits" from corporate predators wanting to end them. For now,
there's no way to know if the idea behind the merger will spread, whether
workers here and abroad will benefit from it, or even if the USW and their
British partners will follow through effectively on their committed aims to
help win back what unionized workers have been losing for years.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Stephen Lendman
Created Aug 27 2007 - 8:58am
As Labor Day approaches, what better time to assess the state of working
America. It's under assault and weakened by decades of eroding rights in the
richest country in the world once regarded as a model democratic state. It's
pure nonsense in a nation always dedicated to wealth and power, but don't
try finding that discussed in the mainstream. Today, it's truer than ever
making the struggle for equity and justice all the harder. That's what
ordinary working people now face making beating those odds formidable at the
least.
In a globalized world, the law of supply and demand is in play with lots
more workers around everywhere than enough jobs for them. It keeps corporate
costs low and profits high and growing with Business Week (BW) magazine
reporting in its April 9 issue "the share of (US) national income going to
corporate profits (compared to labor) is hovering around a 50 year high." BW
then quoted Harvard economist Richard Freeman's research paper saying only
"a global pandemic that kills millions of people" could cause a labor
shortage and elevate worker bargaining power.
There's little in sight, and the result is a huge reserve army of unemployed
or underemployed working people creating an inevitable race to the bottom in
a corporatized marketplace. It harms workers everywhere, including in
developed nations. They're outsourcing good jobs abroad to lower wage
countries and pressuring workers to do more for less because they've got
little bargaining power to fight back. More on this below.
Organized Labor in the US - Its Rise and Decline
Organized labor's rise began modestly and was fragile in the earliest days
of the republic. It gained strength in good economic times, then lost it in
downturns like the depression in 1873. By the 1880s, things were better as
the nation underwent rapid industrialization. With it came rising prosperity
and workers wanting a share of the benefits. They turned to unions for help
with skilled artisans leading the way helping the unskilled as well in their
efforts to organize.
New labor organizations arose, older ones expanded, and as they did, they
grew more active and militant. It led to the "great uprising of labor" in
1886, including the landmark Chicago May 4 Haymarket Riot protesting police
violence against strikers the previous day. Its impact was hugely negative
at first. It forced organized labor to regroup and settle in for a long
period of recovery.
This was at a time the incipient labor movement was over two million and
rising beginning with its organizing efforts launching it in the 1870s. By
the 1880s, it had enough strength to stage huge strikes for better pay and
working conditions like the struggle for an eight hour day that had 80,000
strikers parading peacefully down Chicago's main Michigan Avenue on May 1,
1886 in what's now regarded as the first ever May Day Parade.
Workers were helped from community-based emerging independent political
parties sensitive to their rights. That's unheard of today in an age where
no effective political party stands for working people despite Democrats and
Republicans saying they do. Workers are now on their own. They're left to
struggle in a global marketplace with pathetically little help weak unions
can provide.
Earlier in the 19th century, the first national union arose as workers began
asserting their rights. It was called the National Labor Union (NLU),
emerged after the Civil War, but was short-lived. Next came the Knights of
Labor in 1869 with a mandate to protect all workers including women and
blacks after 1883. They were represented by industry groups rather than
trade and skill level that was common until then. Its goals were high but
achievements few at a time of widespread worker repression in the 1880s. It
led to its decline as a more resilient union emerged the result of
disaffection with the Knights.
It was called the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and was founded by
Samuel Gompers in 1886 to replace its predecessor, the Federation of
Organized Trades and Labor Unions. The ill-fated American Railway Union
(ARU) followed in 1893, the largest industrial union of its day for a time,
and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) that at its peak in the 1920s
had 100,000 members.
The Wobblies are still around 102 years after Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs
and others founded the union in 1905 as a commitment to working people in
their struggle with corporate employers. It's motto was "an injury to one is
an injury to all," its goal was revolutionary, and it's still true to its
root ideology today as stated in the current IWW Constitution:
"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can
be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the
working people.....Between (workers and employers) a struggle must go on
until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the
means of production, abolish the (unfair) wage system, and live in harmony
with the Earth....It is the historic mission of the working class to do away
with capitalism....By organizing industrially we are forming the structure
of the new society within the shell of the old."
That philosophy under dedicated men like Haywood, Debs and others set the
Wobblies on a collision course with government and big business that tried
to crush it. During WW I in 1917, it was vicious under Woodrow Wilson's
Justice Department (DOJ). It used the repressive Espionage and Sedition Acts
to raid and disrupt union meeting halls across the country. It's the same
tactic used today against Latino immigrants and Muslims in the concocted
"war on terrorism" and the one against undocumented workers.
In 1917 and later, Wilson's DOJ acted much the same way arresting 165 Wobbly
leaders on the grounds they hindered the war effort by using their First
Amendment right to speak out against it. They were tried near war's end in
1918, all convicted, and given long prison terms under a Democrat President
thought of reverentially today. Bill Haywood was luckier. After conviction,
he was released on bail and fled to the Soviet Union where he remained until
his death, but the IWW was never again the same.
They were hammered again from 1918 - 21 during the infamous Palmer Raids
under Wilson Attorney General Mitchell Palmer. He targeted radical left wing
groups like the Wobblies at the time of the first "Red Scare" after the 1917
Russian Revolution. It launched J. Edgar Hoover's career in the DOJ Bureau
of Investigation's new General Intelligence Division that later became the
FBI in 1935. The IWW is still around, still dedicated to its founding
principles, but it's worldwide membership is only around 2000, mostly in the
US.
The AFL fared much better. It became the largest union in the first half of
the 20th century even after the founding of the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO) in 1935 with which it merged in 1955. Today, it's still
the country's largest federation of unions. Its web site claims a membership
of around 10 million workers, even after the Service Employees International
Union (SEIU), Teamsters, UNITE-HERE and United Food and Commercial Workers
(UFCW) broke away from the federation in 2005. The United Brotherhood of
Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBC) did as well in 2001, and the
Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) left in 2006. They
formed a new Change to Win federation in September, 2005 representing about
5.5 million workers. It likely left AFL-CIO with fewer members than it
claims with its true size closer to 8 million or less.
AFL-CIO's state is a metaphor for the times. Organized labor today is weak
in the face of declining membership and corporate dominance with workers
losing out in a globalized world. It's fall has been long-term and painful
with worker rights hammered since the 1980s. It's a long way today from when
the landmark Wagner Act passed in 1935 under Franklin Roosevelt. It
established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) guaranteeing labor the
right to bargain collectively on equal terms with management for the first
time ever, but it wasn't an act of kindness.
It came at the height of The Great Depression when those in power feared the
worst. FDR and Congress acted to save capitalism at a time they feared mass
worker hostility might boil over like it did in 1917 Soviet Russia. Like all
other worker victories, this one came through struggle. It was from
organizing, pressing their demands, taking to the streets, going on strike,
holding boycotts, battling police and National Guard forces supporting
management against working people, paying with their blood and lives and
finally achieving results. They got an eight-hour day, a living wage, and
on-the-job benefits because strong unions went head-to-head with management
and won. It's worlds different now with corporate giants in bed with
friendly governments, and Democrats and Republicans vying to see which party
can be more accommodative.
>From the 19th century forward, it was never easy for labor from the height
>of the movement's strength to the present. Unions were always disadvantaged
>even at a time of reasonable labor-management harmony. The passage of the
>harsh 1947 Taft-Hartley Labor-Management Relations Act showed how tenuous
>their position always was. Harry Truman vetoed the bill but was overridden.
>He called it a "slave labor bill" and then hypocritically used it 10 times,
>the most ever by any President to this day. The law throttles organized
>labor by giving the President power to stop strikes by court-ordered
>injunction for 80 days. He can claim the national interest, some other one,
>or none at all that's always the same one - to help corporate management
>deny workers their rights.
Taft-Hartley is still the law and was last invoked by GW Bush in the summer
of 2002 against 10,500 west coast dock workers "locked out" (not striking)
by the Pacific Maritime Association representing shipping companies and
terminal operators.
Earlier in 2001 and new in office, Bush showed his anti-labor stripes
straightaway. He invoked the Railway Labor Act blocking a threatened strike
by 10,000 mechanics, cleaners and custodians at Northwest Airlines set for
March 12. He acted again against United Airlines' 15,000 mechanics in
December. He also took management's side in August, 2006 against Northwest's
8700 flight attendants' planned job action against the bankrupt airline's
unfair demands for huge wage cuts and increases in hours worked. Bill
Clinton was just as unfriendly invoking the Railway Labor Act against
American Airline's pilots and to prevent railroad strikes 13 times.
Laws like these, and Presidents' willingness to use them, crushed the spirit
and letter of the Wagner Act. They greatly weakened or revoked hard won
provisions, and as a consequence, diminished union clout. Taft-Hartley
allows stiff penalties for union violations but minimal ones for companies.
It enacted a list of "unfair (union) labor practices" prohibiting
jurisdictional strikes (relating to worker job assignments), secondary
boycotts (against firms doing business with others being struck), wildcat
strikes, sit-downs, slow-downs, mass-picketing against scabs brought it,
closed shops (in which employees must join unions), union contributions to
federal political campaigns, and more while legalizing employer
interventions aimed at preventing unionizing drives.
It began a process of gradual erosion of union power to bargain
collectively. That's their weapon now weakened because of devious employer
tactics. They can illegally fire union sympathizers (thousands each year)
and get away with only minor wrist slap fines after years of expensive
litigation to prove wrongdoing. Further, employers can fire workers for any
lawful reason like incompetence or no stated reason at all. Even the right
to strike is neutralized with employers able to hire replacements or
threaten to ship jobs offshore. With government on their side, they're
empowered to fire union workers and legally replace them with lower-paid
scabs or Latino immigrants.
The Reagan administration marked the beginning of the current trend in its
first year. He was contemptuous of organized labor while hypocritically
saying "I support unions and the rights of workers to organize and bargain
collectively." He showed it in August, 1981 by firing 11,000 striking PATCO
air traffic controllers, jailing its leaders, fining the union millions of
dollars, and effectively busting it in service to the monied interests
backing him. It was a shot across organized labor's bow and a clear message
to business and industry of what to expect from a friendly Republican
President. Nothing changed since under Democrat or Republican
administrations with workers unable to match the power and influence of
capital. The toll ever since has been devastating.
Union membership has been in steady decline from its post-war high of 34.7%
in the 1950s. It held fairly constant through most of the 1970s at around
24% where it stood in 1979. At the end of the Reagan era, it was down to
16.8% and is currently around 12% overall with about 36% of government
workers unionized but only 7.4% of them in the private sector. It's the
lowest it's been since the beginning of the mass unionization struggles of
the 1930s and in the private sector in over 100 years. It's because of
Democrat and Republican antipathy to organized labor and corporate threats
to close plants and outsource jobs. It's forced workers to take pay cuts and
fewer benefits that are dropping to where they'll be none, and they'll be on
their own to live or die by market-based rules rigged against them.
George Bush supports corporate interests aiming to crush unions so they have
free reign to treat workers any way they wish or go find other work. In the
wake of 9/11, he took on public sector unions straightaway. He denied
170,000 new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees their civil
service protection and right to bargain collectively. Those affected
included Transportation Security Administration (TSA) newly federalized
airport screeners. They lost their right to unionize in the name of national
security that could as easily been for any reason or none at all. But this
was just for starters. Bush also wants federal positions contracted out to
private companies. That jeopardizes 850,000 federal employees likely to get
lower pay, fewer benefits, loss of other unionized rights, and many of them
ending up out of work.
Overall, organized workers always get higher wages and greater benefits,
which explains why strong unions are vital. The evidence comes from David
Sirota in his his 2006 book, "Hostile Takeover." He showed:
-- 89% of union members have employer-paid health care coverage compared to
67% for nonunion members; as fewer companies now provide it, those numbers
are lower; in addition, companies continue making employees pay a greater
share of the cost of coverage;
-- employers pay a larger share of union member health care premiums than
nonunion members get (but the percentage is falling);
-- over two-thirds of union members have short-term disability insurance
compared to about one-third for nonunion workers;
-- union members get about 26% more vacation time and 14% more total paid
leave than nonunion workers; and
-- Economic Policy Institute (EPI) data show union influence gets high
school graduating members about 8.8% more pay than nonunion workers.
Greater worker clout under unions is why management wants to destroy them.
It's to deny working people their right to organize, earn more and get
greater benefits corporations don't want to provide. It's happening in the
gilded age of George Bush, and a recent example came in a ruling late last
year when his administration's NLRB ruled 3-2 against registered nurses'
right to union membership if they perform certain minimal supervisory
duties.
It was in a case where United Auto Workers (UAW) were trying to organize
nurses at a Taylor, Michigan-based hospital. US labor law doesn't guarantee
supervisors the right to organize making the NLRB ruling hugely important
for up to eight million workers in other trades. It may potentially deny
their right henceforth to qualify for union representation if employers want
to use this ruling to add enough supervisory responsibilities to employees'
job descriptions to throw them into a union-exempt category.
Bush further ended the Clinton administration's regulation requiring federal
agencies vet companies' compliance with the law when awarding federal
contracts. He also issued harsh anti-union, anti-worker executive orders
(EOs) as well as a tsunami of other repressive ones. He barred automatic
union-recognition agreements on federally funded construction projects,
abolished labor-management cooperation partnerships aimed at improving
productivity and working conditions, and mandated contractors henceforth
must inform employees they no longer had to join a union without having to
tell them it's their legal right.
Just the way Ronald Reagan busted PATCO, George Bush tipped his hand
straightaway in office. He's a company man and union-hater, so henceforth
it's been open season on workers and their rights under his administration.
His policies range from:
-- a one-sided support for management;
-- stripping workers of their right to unionize;
-- cutting pay raises for 1.8 million federal workers on the pretext of a
"national emergency;"
-- denying millions overtime pay;
-- appointing anti-union officials;
-- scheming to weaken (and then end) retirement security by replacing Social
Security with risky private accounts managed by Wall Street sharks that so
far has gotten nowhere because of public opposition to it;
-- weakening environmental regulations and protections; and more in an
endless war on workers in service to corporate interests that elected and
own him.
The failed "immigration reform" legislation was, in fact, a Trojan Horse.
It's down but not dead and remains a thinly veiled scheme targeting all
workers. It's a dagger aimed straight at organized labor in a plan to create
a workplace of unempowered serfs, a "bracero America," including US citizens
having few or no benefits and no security. If this legislation ever becomes
law, workers will be at the mercy of business to hire and fire them at will.
Another anti-labor tool is the repressive Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arm. It conducts
paramilitary border and workplace assaults on undocumented Latino workers as
part of a larger agenda to disenfranchise all working Americans and deny
them the right to bargain collectively with management through unions. By
targeting undocumented workers first, the eventual aim is to create a large
exploitable disposable reserve army worker pool; strip all workers of their
rights; empower employers to offer low wage, low or no benefit jobs; and
pretty much be able to operate as they please.
The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) - Some Hope for Worker Rights Now Denied
EFCA was introduced to "amend the (landmark pro-labor) National Labor
Relations Act (passed in 1935)" that's been systematically dismembered piece
by piece ever since. Its aim was to "establish an efficient system to enable
employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for
mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts,
and for other purposes." On June 26, Senate Republicans blocked labor's top
legislative priority by preventing the bill's supporters from getting the 60
votes needed to end debate and bring it to a vote.
For now the bill is dead, but if it ever passes, it will change federal law
on worker rights. They'll henceforth be able to organize by signing cards
authorizing union representation, penalize employers violating worker rights
to do it, and establish new mediation and arbitration processes for
first-contract disputes. It might also end or slow down the firing,
demoting, laying off, or suspending without pay of over 20,000 US workers
annually because of their union activities.
The bill was introduced in the 108th and 109th Republican-controlled
Congresses but failed to pass. It was introduced again in the 110th Congress
on February 5, 2007, got 233 co-sponsors by month's end, and passed in the
House March 1, 2007 for the first time. On March 2, it was placed on the
Senate calendar where leading Democrats expected it to pass despite
Republican opposition. They were wrong.
That's bad news for a bill that would have won back some worker rights after
decades of losing them. It's backed by over five dozen organizations
including the NAACP, United for a Fair Economy, Jobs with Justice and
numerous other civil, human and labor rights groups. The US Chamber of
Commerce and other organizations joined with big business against the bill.
They oppose all worker rights, and their lobbying paid off. They claimed the
bill allowed them the right to organize before employers can explain why
doing it is not in their best interest. Ignored is that union workers always
have more rights that include higher pay, greater benefits and added job
security. That's bad for business and why corporate giants fought to kill
the bill.
They have a powerful ally in the White House making their job a lot easier.
In a mid-February speech before a business lobby group, Dick Cheney
announced George Bush would veto EFCA legislation if it passed on his watch.
He assured those attending this administration will keep its anti-labor
record unblemished on something polls show 77% of working Americans want but
won't get as long as George Bush is in office.
Global Unionization - Another Potential Ray of Hope
In April editions of The American Prospect, the Washington Post and ZNet,
Harold Meyerson wrote about "a radical new direction for the globalized
economy" in his article titled "Unions Gone Global." He noted the United
Steel Workers (USW) here are negotiating a merger with two of Britain's
largest unions to create "the first genuinely multinational trade union"
that with about three million members will be the world's largest. Meyerson
reported the goal, as USW's Gerald Fernandez put it, is "to fight financial
globalization (by) fight(ing) it globally....by building a global union (in
this case a) federation of metal, mining, and general workers."
The partners in this one stated a commitment to "fund human rights and union
rights in parts of Africa and Colombia" where more unionists are killed
annually than anywhere else, and the country gets billions in US aid each
year to help out. They also plan a global effort "to protect employees'
retirement benefits" from corporate predators wanting to end them. For now,
there's no way to know if the idea behind the merger will spread, whether
workers here and abroad will benefit from it, or even if the USW and their
British partners will follow through effectively on their committed aims to
help win back what unionized workers have been losing for years.
_______
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson