How to Restore Unions? (Expertise Sought)

[snot]

As anyone knows who's read posts by the more economically-knowledgeable DU'er's, during the last several decades, workers' incomes have plummeted – esp. considering how many more hours are being worked per household – relative not just to those of their corporate masters but also to the real cost of living.

Our corp. masters are never going to pay us more unless they have to, and they'll never have to unless we organize.

(Theoretically, we could get our congress critters to pass laws that would make our corp. masters pay us better, except that our congress critters are also owned by our corp. masters.)

Do any of you know a lot more than I about union law and the history of unions? If so, could you please start filling the rest of us in?

What factors led to the decline of unions? (I'm guessing corruption, changes in the law, collusion by media owners to discredit unions, etc.?)

What would it take to revive them?

What would it take not only to revive them but to help ensure they won't again succumb to the same problems/attacks once times get better?

Edited to add: among other things, it's obvious the economy can't really recover until workers make enough to start buying again.

[FreakinDJ]

1. Education education education

Most people don't know where the dis-information stops and the truth about unions begins

[leftstreet]

2. Well, first you need jobs

If you're talking about traditional labor unions

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. Globalized trade has eliminated any leverage that unions once had

over employers. Union troubles = Offshoring

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Only because Unions refuse to internationalize

serious.

One example. Imagine if you will the Teamsters organizing with their counterparts in Canada AND Mexico...

And yes, I have raised this issue in union halls both here and in Mexico... and I always get the WTF, you are kidding me?

No, I am not. They have gone international, time the unions fully get it... the unions have to do that too. Imagine this, a strike that stops all deliveries in NORTH AMERICA.

[MannyGoldstein]

9. Impose High Tariffs On Goods & Services From Microwage Countries

The only thing that will bring back the middle class in the US.

[krawhitham]

18. BINGO

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Education, here are some things the Unions got Americans, and Muricans don't know

You should start here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States

But some of the things Unions got.

Forty hour week

Over-time pay

safe conditions at work

Medical care

Retirement funds

You know things like that.

And how you get this point. EDUCATION.

Realize, at one time workers marched to the sound of songs, against billy clubs, machine guns and police lines. No, Guthrie did not have it wrong when he said that.

[Mind_your_head]

5. The truth probably IS that we don't manufacture/produce much here in the US anymore

(that's the NWO goal, btw).

I'm all for unions, but it is a "non-starter" in this current environment.

[Hannah Bell]

11. you'd be surprised. For example, the US is still the 3rd-largest steel producing country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_production_by_country

Just with 90% fewer workers.

[Greyhound]

6. Unions came about because conditions were horrible,

because it was so bad that taking the risk was worth it. Because a few really devoted, possibly crazy, people pushed and fought to make it happen. They literally put their lives on the line to make it happen.

And don't forget that many, perhaps most, workers did not want to join.

If you haven't, give http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104427/">Hoffa a view. It's not on Hulu anymore, but you can get it through bittorrent.

[KakistocracyHater]

8. use Walmart's technique of spotting potential leaders & instead of firing

them you ask them to help out. There is alot of data on the stuff, but mostly it's from a Scrooge point-of-view. Take it & use it for our benefit.

[Hannah Bell]

10. starting post-ww2:

1. taft-hartley loyalty oath/red scare purges
2. afl-cio corporate unionism, non-strike policy & non-support of wildcat strikes in the 70s
3. corp/gov't attacks on labor activists in 70s, e.g. cointelpro-type stuff:

One of agent-provocateur Joe Burton's main targets was the United Electrical Workers Union (UE). The FBI falsified records to get Burton into UE Tampa Local 1201 soon after its successful 1973 organizing drive upset the Westinghouse Corporation's plan to develop a chain of non-union plants in the South. Burton's attacks on genuine activists repeatedly disrupted UE meetings. His ultra-left proclamations in the union's name antagonized newly organized workers and gave credibility to the company's red-baiting. Burton also helped the FBI move against the United Farm Workers and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

In the mid-1970s, the FBI was instrumental in covering up the murder of labor activist Karen Silkwood and the theft of her files documenting the radioactive contamination of workers at the Kerr McGee nuclear fuel plant near Oklahoma City. Silkwood, elected to the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers local bargaining committee, had amassed proof that the company was falsifying safety reports to hide widespread exposure to dangerous levels of highly carcinogenic plutonium.... Key to the smear campaign were articles and testimony by Jacque Srouji, a Tennessee journalist secretly in the employ of the FBI, who later confessed to having served in a long string of 1960s COINTELPRO operations.

In 1979, government operatives played key roles in the massacre of communist labor organizers during a multi-racial anti-Klan march in Greensboro, North Carolina. Heading the KKK/Nazi death squad was Ed Dawson, a long-time paid FBI/police informer in the Klan. Leading the local American Nazi Party branch into Dawson's "United Racist Front" was U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms undercover agent Bemard Butkovich. Though their controlling agencies were fully warned of the Front's murderous plans, they did nothing to protect the demonstrators. Instead, the police gave Dawson a copy of the march route and withdrew as his caravan moved in for the kill. Dawson's sharpshooters carefully picked off key cadre of the Communist Workers Party (CWP), including the president and president-elect of two Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union locals, an organizer at a third local mill, and a leader of AFSCME's organizing drive at a nearby medical center. In the aftermath, the FBI attempted to cover up the government's role and to put the blame on the CWP...

At the turn of the decade, the Bureau joined with Naval Intelligence and the San Diego Police to neutralize a militant multi-racial union at the shipyards of the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, a major U.S. naval contractor. The Bureau paid Ramon Barton to infiltrate Iron workers Local 627 when it elected leftist officers and began to publicly protest dangerous working conditions. After an explosion from a gas leak killed two workers, Barton lured three others into helping him build a bomb and transport it in his van, where they were arrested. Though the workers entrapped by Barton were not union officials and were acquitted of most charges by a San Diego jury, the Ironworkers International used their trial as a pretext for placing the local in trusteeship and expelling its elected officers...

excerpted from the book War at Home
by Brian Glick: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Third_World_US/COINTELPRO70s_WAH.html.

4. union involvement in rackets & other corruption
5. anti-union PR campaign spearheaded through non-profit think tanks
6. dramatic increases in legal immigration quotas starting approximately mid-70s (deliberate response to wave of labor activism 60s-70s).
7. "in-shoring," i.e. moving auto production out of michigan (with its developed & politically saavy labor cadres) to southern right-to-work states...
8. disappearance of communist boogeyman = no incentive to demonstrate superiority of capitalism/keep citizens loyal via high wages & living standards...


& more. there are some people here much more knowledgeable.

i think the problem with reviving unions is the scale of corporate activity is more global; shut down a plant here, no problem, they can increase production in timbucktoo.

a new model is required to match the scale of globo-corp operations.

[1]

12. how about.... the reasons a union would benefit a company?

instead of trying to force a union down a companie's throat, how about reasons a union could benefit a company?

i know y'all know more about this than i do.

but i'll try...

- an apprenticeship program that will benefit not only the workers, but the company in the long run...
- a steady and loyal workforce that will keep the company strong.
- a partnership between worker and company.

you see what i mean? it not about labor and management fighting each other. its about labor and management working together.

am i wrong?

can anyone else add to the list?

[Hannah Bell]

15. & they still haven't figured it out in 200 years.

"ya see, mr. ceo, it's all about working *together*".

[1]

24. what? am i naive? is this really all about shoving the union down their throats?

we can't reach common ground?

[Hannah Bell]

25. um, there's this fundamental contradiction......

[napoleon_in_rags]

13. I was thinking about this earlier to day, my take:

Basically, unions were ABLE to form because of the exploitation of human labor, combined with the necessity of LOCAL human labor. Globalization and the outsourcing of manufacturing basically undermined labor. The cost of it has been throwing our country into debt to China.

Anyway, I was talking to some AFL-CIO people a few years ago, and they were talking about doing outreach on a bunch of things like gay rights etc. The Teamsters were not down so they split at that time. I think the AFL-CIO was correct in their belief that labor needs to be redefined for the 21st century, but they were wrong in their methods. What appeals to me is not gays/progressive social causes plus labor, but rather science plus labor. An extremely science based labor movement, willing to move past doctrine and redefine labor for the 21st century. Such a movement needs to be "pro-human": focused on the human potential, and workers rights as a method to unleash the human potential. In short, it needs to be thinking about crafting a labor movement which has not earned the right to slack off, but has earned the time develop greater skills than a greedy corporate master allows. It needs to be crafting a new workers union, who competes on global economies and wins...Not by raw production of plastic crap, but by being smarter, more targeted, more far seeing. And all this through an embrace of science and belief in the human potential.

[Hannah Bell]

16. it might help if afl-cio supported international unionism.

"As the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation (FMPR – Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico) prepares to strike against a virulently anti-labor governor, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), braving draconian no-strike legislation (Law 45), unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and the Change to Win (CTW) federation are outrageously lining up with the bosses.

This will come as no surprise to those who know something of the sordid history of the American labor bureaucracy in the U.S.’ Caribbean island colony, and as accomplices of imperialist machinations throughout Latin America (and the rest of the world). But what the labor fakers are preparing is a major betrayal of Puerto Rican workers. A crucial test is shaping up in which all of labor will have to take a stand. Which side are you on?"

http://www.internationalist.org/fmprvslaborcolonialism0802.html

[napoleon_in_rags]

21. An argument can be made that labor is a nationalist force.

Chomsky noted that those countries with strong labor, and socialist-like governments have a strength and stability not seen in small governments that go right. The purpose of right-wing coups throughout latin America was usually to battle against the interest of the people in the nation, and subvert the national will to favor multi-national corporations. The 1973 coupe in Chile is a prime example with moves being made to nationalize resources "owned" by American multi-national corporations triggering the coup. The right wing governments remain open to free trade, or in other words, they allow national resources to be owned by foreign powers. (This fact lies behind the globalist argument that free markets create world peace, because everybody owns a piece of everybody else) So basically, the nation itself, as an entity, is weakened, ownership and control is spread to various foreign powers and market forces.

China is an example of success along the lines of Chomsky's point. The Communist party never went away in China, it just mutated and got more effective. China has a free market but the game is CONSTANTLY rigged in favor of China, in favor of the national interest. Entities trying to direct wealth out of China for personal gain will be shot down, unlike in America. The truth be told, America is looking a lot like one of the coup countries, with its wealth flowing out of it to foreign interests, and attempts to create movements for the national interest of the people getting shot down by local tools of the foreign power.

Anyway, my point with all this is that probably, sadly, an effective move toward the left in America would probably look a little more like China than like a global grass roots movement, it would look like labor working to rig the game in the favor of the American people. That's how China has done it, and they are truly whipping our ass.

[AdHocSolver]

14. The reason that the U.S. economy is collapsing and unions have lost clout is offshoring of jobs.

The corporate cartel trade agreements such as NAFTA, WTO, the World Bank, the IMF, and Most Favored Nation (MFN) Trading Status with countries such as China make it profitable and easy to ship jobs overseas. Until these cartel agreements are dealt with, either eliminated, or rewritten to allow businesses not in the cartels to compete on a level playing field, the U.S. economy will NOT recover from recession/depression, and labor will have no influence on the economy and their incomes and working conditions.

For any economy to be viable, 80 percent of the goods it purchases must be manufactured within its borders by its own citizens. This is the only way in which a country can avoid huge trade deficits and the crushing debt it will incur. Thanks to corporate greed, and the economic ignorance of our government, the U.S. owes trillions of dollars to foreign governments and corporations. Our economy is barely functioning because much of our assets have been sold to foreigners.

China currently holds billions of dollars in U.S. assets. They buy U.S. treasury notes and other paper to prop up our economy because we are a major purchaser of their manufacturing production. However, they will only continue to prop up our country until our middle class becomes broke and can no longer buy their production. To maintain their own economy, the Chinese will start to pay their own people more to build up their own middle class, so that the new Chinese middle class can buy their own production. At that point, where the U.S. is no longer needed to support their economy, and the Chinese middle class is expanding, the Chinese will abandon the U.S., and the current recession will be looked back on in the U.S. as the "golden" age.

The power of the unions in former years came from their ability to successfully stop production of one company out of a few competitors. For example, in the auto industry, a union would target either General Motors, or Ford, or Chrysler, but not all three. While two of the auto companies continued producing and selling cars, the third would have to make a deal with the union or risk losing market share and profits.

With offshoring of jobs so easy with corporate control of trade, the main bargaining chip of the unions, and even nonunion labor, is gone. I am amazed at the fact that labor does not see how easily offshoring has reduced their bargaining power. The union leaders are selling snake oil to their members by promoting EFCA as a means of meaningful reform in the workplace. What good is union membership if the company responds by closing a factory and importing production?

[napoleon_in_rags]

20. Wealth is flowing out of our country, but Republicans are guarding the hose. How do you stop it?

Your assessment above is completely correct. But what do you do? The way I see it, they have this cult of the "successful individual", that will reward any individual who "succeeds", even when his method of success is to direct wealth out of his nation, just so he can fill his cup own a little more. The end result is a country hugely in debt and moving toward bankruptcy, as we now have. But the problem is that these guys that filled their cups by redirecting wealth to China have filled their cups very well; their financial influence is sufficient to make both parties espouse the value of these "free markets", they have control over policy...We know a pro-labor nationalist policy will never happen. The trajectory toward globalism is final, its just the terrain of the modern world. I believe solutions can come, but they won't come at the level of national policy. So the question to me is: How do we move forward with workers rights given those facts???

[AdHocSolver]

28. We must educate the public about real economics so that the public stops playing their game.

All economies are demand driven. Supply side economics is a myth. So-called "free trade" is a corporate fraud. It doesn't exist.

While the cartel agreements such as NAFTA have to be eliminated or rewritten, that isn't going to happen until the public demands this as a priority. This won't happen until the public learns some real-world economics.

The main requirement to starting a positive movement in this direction is to put some power back into the hands of the public. What needs to be done to accomplish this is relatively straight forward, provided we can educate the public to the necessity of the solution, and get them to implement it.

What is the solution to our economic problems? Actually some unions had a slogan back in the 1990's that was exactly what needed to be done. The slogan was "Buy American!"

If every American refused to buy imported merchandise, and only bought items actually made in the U.S.A., that would stem the outflow of assets to foreign countries, reduce the trade deficit, and ensure Americans kept their jobs.

However, "Buy American" is NOT the same as "Buy Union". This is where the union leadership went wrong. It is not important to the U.S. economy as a whole whether or not an item is union made. The importance for the American economy and all American workers is who makes the product and who earns the wages for producing the product.

For example, buying a GM car made in Mexico or Korea is of little benefit to the American economy, whereas buying a Toyota assembled in California or Kentucky by American workers using largely American made parts gives Americans wages and keeps most of the revenue from the sale of the vehicle in the U.S.

If Americans in large numbers refused to buy clothes, shoes, toys, tools, electronics, and the thousands of other products made in foreign countries, and told retailers that Americans want the ability to purchase American-made products, then the retailers would have to stock American-made products.

It is a myth that foreign made products are cheaper. The importers and retailers do not pass their cost savings on to the consumer. Besides many imported goods being of lesser quality (if not downright toxic), the markups on imported goods, that is, the difference between the sale price and the cost of manufacture, is unbelievably high. Buying imported goods does not get you a good deal, it merely ensures high profits for the importer and low wages for the labor that made it. And it means a huge trade deficit and high foreign debt that is destroying the U.S. economy.

[Luminous Animal]

17. Dear snot. There's not many DUers who give

a flying fuck about unions or solidarity or collective action.

The consensus here is that all of the above is passé and it is every woman, man, and child for themselves. In the U.S., we are each a brilliant dying star.

[Juche]

19. Read Krugmans book 'the conscience of a liberal'

In it he talks about how explanations like globalization do not explain the drop in income or union membership by comparing us to Canada. In Canada union membership is about 30% (what is was in the US in the 70s). In Canada it is still 30%, but in the US it is about 12% now. Krugman's explanation is it was movement conservatism allowing corporations to destroy unions, not globalization. He says no other OECD nation has seen the wealth inequality we have seen in the US, the only other nation that came close would be the UK under Thatcher.

SEIU president Stern thinks EFCA would grow unions by 1.5 million members a year for 10 years. I have heard other estimates at 1 million a year. At that rate (assuming 2010 passage) by 2020 the % of workers in a union would be about 21-22% of the workforce, so nearly double what it is now with about 16 million unionized workers.

[donheld]

22. Sometimes I think all unions should be abolished in there current form

Them restart them from the grass roots. Seems like most unions have become too top heavy and part of the problem. They represent themselves but not necessarily us. Am I wrong in that?

[Hannah Bell]

23. zero recs - though i, at least, gave one. but the posts on trolls & cat-gutting made the greatest.

the new unrec system is working well.

a discussion of how the unions were taken down & how they might be rebuilt is just the thing we don't want on the front page of a democratic board.

[mecherosegarden]

26. K&R N/T

[snot]

27. Everyone, thanks so much, this is v. helpful, wish more people had seen it. Questions/comments:

1. There seems to be a common assumption that only manufacturing employees can unionize, but I don't see why any group of workers with common interests and who are not part of senior management shouldn't be able to unionize -- computer programmers, engineers, local managers, artists, etc.

2. I agree 100% that unionization needs to be international. 'Til then, U.S. wages will continue to drop and wages in less developed countries will never rise to what they should be. There needn't be one giant international union, but there must be a meaningful (and non-corrupt) union represention in all countries.

I will check out the resources everyone has mentioned. Meanwhile, if any of you who posted the more informative posts want to do an o.p., send me a msg to rec. it!

Thanks again!