Interesting History Here... 'Lack of Organizing Deters AFL-CIO' - ProgressivePopulist

[WillyT]

Lack of Organizing Deters AFL-CIO
By Bill Johnston - Progressive Populist
Bill Johnston is a retired staff organizer of the United Food and Commercial Workers. He is a member of the National Writers Union (Pacific Northwest Chapter)

<snip>

In 1972 George Meany, the longtime president of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO), was interviewed by Haynes Johnson, Pulitzer Prize winner at the Washington Post, for his book, The Unions.

Union membership had been at 35% of the American workforce in 1955 but was dropping by 1972. Concentrated in the ten largest industrial states, the number of union workers remained weak in the growing South and Southwest. “Some labor leaders see the entire future of unions threatened,” Johnson wrote -- but he found organizing was not a priority concern in the executive offices of the AFL-CIO leadership..

“To me, it doesn't mean a thing,” Meany told him. “I have no concern about it.” Lane Kirkland, the AFL-CIO's secretary, who was to succeed Meany in 1977, was of the same frame of mind. Kirkland added that he didn't care if any more American workers joined unions – that he had no “ideological compulsion to organize them ...”

For 30 years I worked for unions, both in the private and public sectors, and those quotes from Meany and Kirkland go a long way to explain a great deal as to why private-sector union membership is now at only 7% of the American workforce. Also why public employees are in the dire predicament they are in today -- especially in Wisconsin. With few exceptions this lack of interest in organizing was the attitude held by the hierarchy of union leadership that I saw throughout the 30 years I worked on staff -- often as an organizer.

Organized labor still functions on a model developed in the 1890s and used to organize in the 1930s. Over the last 70 years American unions have failed to evolve as organizations.

They have failed to educate their members; failed to educate and reach out to the public; failed to develop a popular culture showing Americans how union collective bargaining moves everyone up the economic ladder; failed to improve the workplace benefits that were basically in place by the late 1950s and finally they have failed to see their membership as the only real power they possess and work to develop that power.

<snip>

Link: http://populist.com/11.6.johnston.html

:kick:

Plus...

Early in December 1971 35 businessmen – all chairmen or presidents of a cross-section of America's largest corporations -- attended a private dinner in New York of what came to be called “the Labor Law Study Group.” The group met to discuss a plan they all agreed on: how to destroy any union economic or political power.

That was 40 years ago.

[blindpig]

1. Ya know what's missing?

Commies, socialists, anarchists.

It ain't no accident, one of the many provisions of Taft-Hartley was the expulsion of Communists from union leadership, the Left provided the most effective fire-eating organizers to be found. Most unions, with the country in the midst of the Red Scare went along. One notable exception was United Electricians (EU), recently noted for leadership at Republic Window. That's what a real union does.

There is no compromising with Capitalists.

[leftstreet]

2. +1 Not many people realize that

December 2002
Power on the docks: Use it or lose it

...

But Taft-Hartley is much more than a strikebreaking weapon. Because it originally required union officials to sign affidavits that they weren’t members of the Communist Party, the law was used by the government and employers—and anti-Communist union leaders—to drive militants out of the unions. Taft-Hartley, which covers private-sector workers, also bans “secondary boycotts”—the solidarity strikes used in the 1930s to build powerful unions. It allows states to pass anti-union “right-to-work” laws that left workers historically weak in the South. The law also permits employers to conduct anti-union campaigns on company time, while forcing unions to respond off the clock. The law further prohibits supervisors from joining unions—which allows employers to classify millions of white-collar workers as “managers” to keep them from organizing. It’s one of the major reasons why union membership has declined from 35 percent of U.S. workers in the 1950s to just 13 percent today.

http://www.isreview.org/issues/26/dockworkers.shtml

:grr:

[blindpig]

4. Only one thing to do...

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DmxPgplMujzQ&sa=X&ei=Pd2ETaD7OZGbtwf6z6zEDA&ved=0CCIQuAIwAQ&usg=AFQjCNFoXKpJ7DXyV5RUhW81YeRvCOyp1w

(She)
Nothing's impossible I have found,
For when my chin is on the ground,
I pick myself up,
Dust myself off,
Start All over again.

Don't lose your confidence if you slip,
Be grateful for a pleasant trip,
And pick yourself up,
Dust yourself off,
Start all over again.

Work like a soul inspired,
Till the battle of the day is won.
You may be sick and tired,
But you'll be a man, my son!

Will you remember the famous men,
Who had to fall to rise again?
So take a deep breath,
Pick yourself up,
Dust yourself off,
Start all over again.

(He)
I'll get some self assurance
If your endurance is great.
I'll learn by easy stages
If you're courageous and wait.

To feel the strength I want to,
I must hang on to your hand,
Maybe by the time I'm fifty
I'll get up and do a nifty.

(Both)
Nothing's impossible I have found,
For when my chin is on the ground,
I pick myself up,
Dust myself off,
Start all over again.

Don't lose your confidence if you slip,
Be grateful for a pleasant trip,
And pick yourself up,
Dust yourself off,
Start all over again.

Work like a soul inspired,
Till the battle of the day is won.
You may be sick and tired,
But you'll be a man, my son!

Will you remember the famous men,
Who had to fall to rise again?
So take a deep breath,
Pick yourself up,
Dust yourself off,
Start all over again.

Am I a sentimental old fool or what? Nonetheless, it is true.

[xchrom]

3. recommend

[Brickbat]

5. The complete and utter decimation of the manufacturing base has a lot to do with it, as well.

[blindpig]

6. I don't think that could have happened had the unions remained ..

strong and radical.

[Brickbat]

7. If they were strong and radical enough to have seats on the board, maybe. Or strong and radical

enough to physically take over the company and make it a worker-owned cooperative, sure. But if a company wants to declare fake bankruptcy and move jobs to China, it's hard to stop it, especially if you're interested in playing by the rules of what's allowed and what isn't.

[blindpig]

9. 'Seats on the board' is a trap.

The company must behave in a capitalists manner, when a downturn comes, and in capitalism it must, guess who gets to announce the layoffs?

Let them go, fuck them. but their plant gets expropriated for the use of the workers.

We don't play by their rules, if we had there wouldn't have been any unions.

[Citizen Worker]

8. On a trip to Boston in 1992 I heard the international treasurer of an industrial Union respond to an

organizer's request to organize a large manufacturing plant in neighboring Salem, New Hampshire, "no, that will just create more work for us."

If the Labor bureaucracy was committed to organizing the institution would have long ago educated the Rank and File about Taft-Hartley and the need to overthrow that odious law but instead Union meetings, if they are even held regularly, have been relegated to nothing more then status meetings. How many active members, how many out of work, reading of names of retired members who have died since the last meeting, prospects for future work, financial report, etc. Very little time is devoted to Good of the Order dialog with the Rank and File. Is it any wonder members choose not to go to these meetings?

Most importantly Labor has long held the belief that the answers to working class problems lies with Washington, D.C., and the democratic party and until this symbiotic relationship is dissolved the plight of working people will continue downward.