Bring labor back!

[flashl]

Lighting Labor's Fire

The collapse of union membership in America, from its peak at 38 percent in the mid-fifties to 9 percent of the private work force today, is the one big reason for our roaring inequality. It's why the poor and middle class are still being cheated of pensions, healthcare and a fair share of the GDP. Yet we have no chance--for now--of reforming the labor laws that make organizing so difficult. There is little hope, for example, of giving the now toothless Wagner Act some bite, in the form of penalties for illegal unionbusting. Not in this Congress. Or the next. Or probably the next. What, then, is left for the American left? To give up on so many of the issues we care about?

The underlying reason for organized labor's decline is that our labor laws do not let people join unions, freely and fairly, without being fired. Yes, as the Service Employees International Union and others have shown, it is possible to do some organizing "outside" the Wagner Act, ducking the National Labor Relations Board and endless court appeals. But this kind of organizing seems to be only enough to keep labor from disappearing. To bring labor back, some change of law has to occur. Yet change of a good kind seems all but utopian. Even under a Democratic President, House and Senate, it was still easy for antilabor senators to stop a striker-replacement ban in 1993, and to do so with a filibuster that didn't even work up a sweat. And without a labor movement, what's left to us but to snicker at Bush and all the Bush clones to come?

No one, not even labor, seems to have a strategy to bring labor back. And without such a strategy, it is hard to see how the American left, such as it is, can "dream responsibly" of, say, national health insurance, or even of a decent defense of Social Security.

What we need is a new approach to rebuilding the unions--and to labor law reform. There is a hint in Nelson Lichtenstein's recent book, State of the Union, as to what it might be. Lichtenstein argues that in many ways, organized labor missed out on the "rights revolution" of the 1960s and '70s, which won individual workers new protections based on gender and race. True, some unions took advantage of the civil rights movement to organize low-wage African-American hospital and other service workers in a number of cities; and grassroots feminism has certainly contributed to the unionization of women.

A response perhaps to dialog here about bringing unions back to the forefront?

[HereSince1628]

1. Unions only have power when the withdrawl of their labor is meaningful

Most folks fear their jobs will be moved to cheaper locations and so choose not to use the only lever they have against management.

[AndyTiedye]

5. Since That Lever No Longer Has any Leverage, It is Understandable They Don't Use It

If they strike, they really will lose their jobs forever. Some leverage.

[HereSince1628]

6. Exactly, I think you and I are agreeing...

I've also worked under union contracts that denied new hires the same terms as previous hires. Watching the union trade away the protections of new workers you can understand how membership has shrunk. Getting fewer benefits and being placed in a position of greater job insecurity by your union brothers and sisters isn't a great incentive for a new worker to start paying dues.

[fenriswolf]

2. kucinich: to get rid of free trade

[Union Thug]

3. I (obviously) agree. But...

I think that labor is missing a critical, small but hugely influential militant core. Perhaps I was radicalized too long ago to see clearly now, but what turned the tide in labor's struggle was the threat of overwhelming militant action against business interests. The lesson of the '34 teamsters, longshore and auto workers struggles was that a demonstrated willingness to respond in the streets won power at the bargaining table.

Class consciousness was much more prevalent, even among those not part of the militant core. There was no pretending that owners and laborers had anything in common and that they could somehow partner in eachothers' interests. The propaganda machine of the Right during the RayGun era was very successful in spreading the myth of the benevolent CEO class (well, it began earlier than that, but seemed to really blossom in the 80s) and the big lie that everyone, if they only worked harder and longer, could become one of the wealthy (in addition to the absolute co-opting of american christianity). And that, coupled with RayGun's all out assault on organized labor, the missing militant backbone(with the possible exception of the ILWU), led to the mealy-mouthed labor 'movement' of today.

The militants that were part of my father's family and friends believed deeply in the concept of a democratically run work place. They had direction and purpose. Today, too many union workers have no big dream. The perception is that there is nothing left to strive for.

Thankfully, the idea of the democratically run workplace is popping up again in Latin America (and even in Germany - the "strike bike.") I sure hope their struggles re-ignite labor's dream here in the states.

[flashl]

4. Well said. n/t

[SparkyMac]

7. The only way to strengthen Labor is to impose import tariffs n-t

[flashl]

8. that would void the cheap labor savings that multinationals banks on. n/t