The Big Lie about unions

Somewhere over the past few decades, Americans became something new: followers. They became, as an earlier generation put it with disdain, "easily led." Keeping them that way requires a successful propaganda offensive in the case of the Big Three automakers. You see, it's all the union's fault. It's all the workers' faults. Just keep repeating that, over and over. Who knows what might happen if you failed to believe. Belief in the god "free markets" has been shaken by the incompetence of the Bush administration -- and by the inevitable consequence of law-of-the-jungle capitalism: the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression. Who knows what might happen if working Americans were suddenly not so easily led.

They might follow the example of 240 workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, who staged a sit-in after Bank of America cut off credit to the company -- and the company, in the way of today's America, laid off the workers without even a severance. They occupied the factory until the bosses and the bank capitulated. The action was hailed as a new sign of backbone, but there was a critical difference between these workers and most average Americans. A difference between them and the 35,000 employees that BofA itself is cutting. They were members of a union.

This was a lesson that working Americans from the 1880s into the 1930s learned through bloodshed. Unions were repeatedly suppressed by police, state militias and even federal troops doing the bidding of the robber barons. But as conditions deteriorated in the 1930s, rank-and-file workers began staging strikes and sit-ins on an unprecedented scale -- and finally the truncheons and bullets of management (literally) couldn't stop them. Although the patrician FDR personally didn't care for organized labor, his New Deal finally empowered unions with rights for collective bargaining. Labor became an essential counterweight to the excesses of big money, part, with regulation and other strong institutions, of the delicate balance of the pluralistic society that built the strong America of the latter 20th century.

Enjoy a 40-hour week? An eight-hour-day? Saturdays and Sundays off? Health-care benefits? Workers comp if you're injured on the job? The fact that your nine-year-old child doesn't have to work long days in a sweat shop? Thank unions. Even if you were never a member, you benefited because, first, union efforts changed the law; then, even non-union employers had to adopt these practices to compete, and finally because it became a standard of American decency held by most, from capitalist baron to line worker. It created the greatest middle class in history.

It has taken 25 years of complacency, bipartisan greed and hard work by the reactionary right to undo these achievements. This all happened in a country of such affluence -- created by this delicate pluralistic balance -- that few people noticed. First they came for the electronics workers. Then the air traffic controllers. Then the steelworkers. But that was always somebody else. You were told by the talk-radio Goebbelses that these were "buggywhip maker losers" who needed to stop whining. You were told that everything you had you made on your own, with no debt to history or to others. Guess what: Now they're coming for you, baby.

Now we're seeing history repeat itself in the nastiest of ways. But the monied interests that have come to control the country have to keep you distracted. So nevermind that the bailed-out financial executives got $1.6 billion in bonuses in 2007 -- and now taxpayers have no idea how their $700 billion in "rescue" money is being used, aside from fresh bonuses and to buy competing banks. Nevermind that your benefits are being cut, including the company match to the risky 401(k) you were given in exchange for a real pension. Nevermind that income inequality has reached its highest disparity since the eve of the Great Crash. No, no...look over here at those greedy autoworkers. Watch our brave Southern senators -- with foreign automakers heavily subsidized in their states -- fight these commie union members...

In reality, unions are no more corrupt or prone to abuse of power than any institution. That's why that balance of power among capital, labor, regulation, etc., achieved from the 1940s through the 1970s was so important. It worked to keep everybody honest. But so much propaganda has been thrown out about the United Auto Workers it's hard to know where to begin to get at the truth. For example, union wages are similar to those paid by the Japanese transplants. And those "outrageous" pensions and health benefits to retired workers? They were won through decades of negotiation. The reactionaries always hold to the sanctity of a contract -- unless it involves working people.

In fact, the world auto industry is in trouble, with mighty Toyota expecting its first loss in 70 years. The American bridge loans leave much to be desired if they don't become a bridge to higher fuel economy, green technology and building transportation systems besides the auto. But most of the Big Three's sins are management's fault (e.g., even now, labor accounts for 10 percent of a car's cost, while management/supervisory overhead is 20 percent) -- especially after the UAW began its retreat in the late 1980s.

It's important to remember that the UAW worked with General Motors to set up Saturn, which was supposed to be the "new kind of car company" that broke Detroit's old bad habits. It was management that gradually starved Saturn of resources and set it up to fail. When GM closed the Frigidaire plant in suburban Dayton -- as our manufacturing base was just beginning to be carved up -- it was the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers that led the conversion of the factory to build GM vehicles (now GM is closing that plant, throwing the 1,000 workers that remain out of jobs).

It was management that focused on the short-term profits of trucks and SUVs, despite their environmental damage, low gas mileage and overall unsustainability. Those vehicles, which most set up Detroit for this fall, are especially popular with the indoctrinated, easily led working American who gets so angry at union workers. He gets so damned mad that the union worker gets more than the $9 a hour he makes -- and gets the health care and pension he can't get in our "ownership society."

Were he not so easily led, it would occur him to...join a union.

Comments

[Emil Pulsifer]

Mr. Talton is absolutely correct in his representation of the history of labor unions, and of the central role played by union militancy in obtaining the compromises which established the rights of workers since taken for granted. Labor activist and historian Sydney Lens produced an excellent popular overview in "The Labor Wars: From the Molly Maguires to the Sitdown Strikes" (New York: Anchor Books, 1973) -- a book full of well-documented and often surprising labor history.

Excluding the federal sector, less than 10 percent of the American workforce is currently unionized. It is a development that does not bode well for the majority of workers, since only by means of collective bargaining (and action) can they hope to challenge the power and advantages (financial, legal) of corporations, their owners, and their political benefactors.

The current controversy over the Employee Free Choice Act overlooks the fact that in its original conception petition cards were sufficient to establish union representation for the total body of workers. The National Labor Relations Board establised through the "Joy Silk Doctrine" in 1949 that "an employer could lawfully refuse to bargain with a union claiming representative status through possession of authorization cards only if he had a 'good faith doubt' as to the union's majority status."

This was only changed through a court ruling in 1966 which shifted the burden of proof away from the employer, removing the "good faith doubt" provision, creating a de facto method for employers to flout labor law.

Even so, in 1969 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of card check. Chief Justice Earl Warren summed up the majority opinion as follows:

"Almost from the inception of the Act, [395 U.S. 575, 597] then, it was recognized that a union DID NOT HAVE TO BE CERTIFIED AS THE WINNER OF A BOARD ELECTION TO INVOKE A BARGAINING OBLIGATION; it could establish majority status by other means under the unfair labor practice provision of 8 (a) (5) - by showing convincing support, for instance, by a union-called strike or strike vote, OR, AS HERE, BY POSSESSION OF CARDS signed by a majority of the employees authorizing the union to represent them for collective bargaining purposes.

. . . The Board itself has recognized, and continues to do so here, that secret elections are generally the most satisfactory - indeed the preferred - method of ascertaining whether a union has majority support. The acknowledged superiority of the election process, however, does not mean that cards are thereby rendered totally invalid, FOR WHERE AN EMPLOYER ENGAGES IN CONDUCT DISRUPTIVE OF THE ELECTION PROCESS, CARDS MAY BE THE MOST EFFECTIVE - PERHAPS THE ONLY - WAY OF ASSURING EMPLOYEE CHOICE...

That the cards, though admittedly inferior to the election process, can adequately reflect employee sentiment when that process has been impeded, needs no extended discussion, for the employers' contentions cannot withstand close examination.

. . .

It does not follow that because there are some instances of irregularity, the cards can never be used; otherwise, an employer could put off his bargaining obligation indefinitely through continuing interference with elections."

(emphasis added)

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?friend=nytimes&navby=volpage&court=us&vol=395&page=600#600

The Employee Free Choice Act would restore NLRB policy to the Joy Silk Doctrine, requiring employers to demonstrate illegal coercion or fraud in order to challenge the use of petition cards.

[Emil Pulsifer]

Here's an outstanding customer review of Sydney Lens' book "The Labor Wars" at amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0385050887/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

[Tel]

The catchcry of unions is that no worker can negotiate their own pay, they need a union rep to step in and negotiate for them. You will hear them drum it in again and again: "You can't handle it yourself, You need us".

Face it. The unions trained their members to be obedient and helpless, and union propaganda continues to this day discouraging any iota of individuality or initiative. Regardless of whether their loyalty may be to a union Boss or a capitalist Boss, they are followers either way. At least with a capitalist Boss you have the free choice of walking across the street and working for the competitor instead. With a union, you will find that all shops in a given industry have the same union -- no choice means no competition means no service to members.

Unions encourage mediocrity by setting one flat rate of pay across an industry and making it difficult or impossible for an employer to reward outstanding achievement.

There are plenty of good reasons why the auto makers are up against tough times and these reasons rest in the physical world, not in the financial world. Oil is running out, we all understand that supply is limited. Cars have become a luxury item that people bought more of than they needed (I regularly see four car families in lower-middle class suburbia), so going a few years without a car purchase is not difficult. Well-maintained cars last a long time and cars from today are not substantially different (in terms of what they deliver) than cars from 10 years ago, so people will buy a new car out of pride, but when it comes to necessity a second-hand car will do the job.

Also, the business of automotive manufacture is seriously competitive. We have countries like China, Korea, Vietnam, Brazil, etc.
getting into the market. It makes sense that there are going to be lean years in a competitive industry.

A real leader would stop living in the past and start thinking about new industries and new directions in both technology and society. Put down the little red book, and try some broader reading. Let's hope Obama brings a few new ideas to the table.

[Emil Pulsifer]

Collective bargaining is what gives workers the power to demand better wages and conditions. Individual workers can always be fired, but mass action debilitating a plant hits that plant's owners where it counts: in their wallets. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

The most effective kind of collective bargaining requires organizing the workers of an entire industry. It doesn't matter whether the industry is old or new: the dynamics of selling one's labor remain the same: the owner wants it as cheaply as he can get it, and only the threat of disruptions he can't afford will get him to compromise.

Running from one employer to another trying to beg crumbs isn't a "choice", and I'd rather bargain collectively and get paid better.

Worker solidarity, the basis for collective bargaining, does sometimes require conformity: the difference is that conformity to the demands of an employer is for the sake of the employer, whereas conformity to the needs of the union is for the sake of the individual workers, each of whom has a common stake.

I don't know about a "little red book" but I do know that unions under radical leadership obtained most of the gains. To the extent that the idealists were weeded out and replaced with mobsters, accomodationists, opportunists, and social climbers, the unions suffered.

The lack of a coherent, parallel political movement also hastened the decline of unions, as changes to labor law, trade law, and tax law -- in short the framework of laws governing employer behavior and the movement of capital -- undermined the rights of workers.

[Emil Pulsifer]

Tel wrote:

"Face it. The unions trained their members to be obedient and helpless, and union propaganda continues to this day discouraging any iota of individuality or initiative."

At first glance, this seems to suggest that Tel's logic is a combination of half-truths and cliches, his worldview a compound of misconceptions deriving from a history of our nation as written from the perspective of an ideologue funded by some right-wing foundation.

Can Tel support his assertions about "union propaganda" of this sort by providing hyperlinks to actual union website pages? Or is he relying on second-hand, out of context, misrepresented "quotes" culled from Heritage Foundation reports or Reader's Digest pieces based on them?

With respect to his suggestion that union bosses are just as bad as capitalist bosses, and that union shops = no competition = no services for union members, this is immediately refuted by U.S. Labor Department statistics proving that unionized workers earn, on average, $200 a week more than their non-unionized counterparts.

No doubt Tel will insist that this is not a "service" but merely a fact, and that those who attempt to connect this fact to organized labor rather than sheer coincidence, statistical manipulation, or something else, are guilty of obvious left-wing bias.

As for Tel's suggestion that workers being paid inadequately should attempt to negotiate (as unaffiliated individuals) their own asking price, or else look elsewhere for employment, as a hardworking business manager, I concur in every respect.

I am often approached by workers seeking a sliver of profits in the form of increased wages. In bad times, I tell them that we must all make sacrifices. In good times, I tell them that we can scarcely compete globally if we are paying our workers ever increasing wages while our competitors are hiring Chinese or moving their factories to Mexico or Vietnam. Either way, they don't get a raise; and for controlling labor costs I get a well-deserved bonus.

"If you think you can get paid more, why don't you look elsewhere for a job?" I ask rhetorically, knowing that 98 percent of them can't afford to quit without firm prospects elsewhere, and that they are unlikely to be paid more starting as a new employee for another company, no matter how competent they are.

Occasionally, I'll interview former employees of other companies, who quit their job and applied to my firm (among others) in the misguided hope of higher pay.

"Pay for positions like yours is pretty much standardized, whether in union or non-union shops," is how I begin my typical speech. Of course, I gloss over the fact that a considerable pay differential exists between the two. After all, I'm paid to keep labor costs in check, not to encourage rabble-rousers.

"And frankly, we don't have that many positions open," I continue. "Really, the whole industry is the same at this time," I usually add, lowering expectations further. "Times are hard" or "We're in a new, highly competitive environment" is the next line of the catechism. (Naturally, I neglect to point out that this new, competitive environment has been engineered by a relatively small number of oligarchs, and on their behalf.)

Then I flip the pages of their resume in a desultory, critical manner, and ask them why they quit their former job. If they respond "I wanted more money" I usually reply with a simple but highly suggestive "Hmmm..." as I flip the resume pages even more impatiently, suggesting thereby both skepticism and irritation.

"Of course," I continue, "as a new employee you won't be getting the kind of salary given to our longstanding, loyal employees. That wouldn't be fair to them. But after a time, if you do a good job, your salary will rise, and opportunities with us are wide open." (I never mention that their lack of tenure puts their necks first on the chopping block when the next series of reductions occurs.)

By this time, having exhausted their savings, and having heard exactly the same lines at other employers -- whose managers are, after all, trained from the same playbook -- the applicant is usually looking uncertain and making stereotyped, supplicatory noises.

"Of course, of course," they typically say, nodding like mechanical sheep.

Eventually I deliver the coup de grace: "Well, I'll be in touch", negligently tossing the resume on top of a large pile of papers. (I find that uncertainty is an excellent bargaining tool when seeking to reduce unreasonable salary demands.)

By this time I am usually thinking about the stock-options I'll get as a reward for cost saving, or maybe the appreciative grins I'll get from my fellow managers over a leisurely lunch at the new bistro, as I reenact the interview for comic effect. "We're in a new, highly competitive environment," I say, trying to keep a straight face while sipping from the $60.00 bottle of wine my expense account pays for.

[Jen]

Yes. Yes. Yes. I get so tired of people who blame unions when unions are the only reason we workers have any of the benefits we enjoy today. I wish union representation was available in my line of work.