Labor unions have been in steady
decline in the United States for decades now. They currently
represent only about seven percent of private sector workers, where
once (the late 1950s) that rate was near thirty percent. There are
numerous reasons for this decline; changes in technology have meant
that the same work can be done by fewer workers and that some jobs
have simply ceased to exist. Capital, of course, has never let up in
its fight to weaken and eliminate unions, with their potential
ability to cut into its profits and lessen its freedom to determine
working conditions and terms of employment. Another factor in labor's
decline is its own slide into complacency and despair in what has
seemed for some time an inevitable result of the world-wide shift to
more precarious conditions for the working class. Recent attacks on
organized labor from the American political class seem aimed at
completely eviscerating the legal basis on which labor had gained
power and stability in the twentieth century. Coming on the heels of
decades of relentless anti-union and pro-business propaganda and the
elimination and off-shoring of traditionally union jobs, these
attempts to ban collective bargaining in the public sector with
legislation like Wisconsin Governor Walker's “Budget Repair Bill”
and the private sector through “right to work” laws currently
being proposed in Ohio, Indiana and New Hampshire seem to have the
potential if successful to deal an effective death blow to organized
labor.
What these laws seek to reverse in
essence is a law passed during the height of the Great Depression
called the Wagner Act. The Wagner Act transformed unions in American
Society from organizations with no legal right to do what they were
created to do, to legally sanctioned institutions meant to be nearly
equal partners with capital in determining working conditions, pay
and benefits. The Wagner Act guaranteed that when the majority of
workers in a particular work place voted in favor of union
representation that an election must be held to ratify the union of
the employees' choice as the sole agent to bargain collectively on
their behalf. It also barred intimidation of union activists and
supporters by agents of the company and made it illegal for companies
to hire “replacement workers” or scabs during a strike. It
established the National Labor Relations board to act as arbiter
between union workers and their employers when an impasse such as a
strike or lockout was reached. It also established the legality of
the “closed shop” where all workers in a given workplace which
has chosen union representation are automatically members of the
union, which can deduct dues automatically from their pay. It is
important to understand how these changes fundamentally altered the
role of unions; they greatly strengthened them as actors in the
economy and society. Surprisingly, though I would argue that they
eventually created a situation where the aforementioned complacency
and despair were able to begin to corrode organized labor's more
essential source of strength, the solidarity and militancy of their
rank-and-file membership.
In the century before the great
depression, the industrial revolution necessitated that large numbers
of the population move from agriculture or craft industry (home based
manufacturing requiring great skill on the part of the craftsmen) to
wage labor in factories and mills creating goods through mechanized
assembly-line methods. Many who took these jobs soon became
profoundly disenchanted with the dull nature of the work and the long
hours and low pay in dangerous and unpleasant conditions. A natural
outgrowth of this dissatisfaction was the formations of protean labor
organizations, which tried through work-stoppages and other forms of
protest and petition to secure shorter hours and better pay. Much of
American society was hostile to these organizations from the outset.
Business owners, confident that unions had no legal standing appealed
to the judiciary to force them to relent in their efforts. In the
courts employers tended to bring conspiracy charges against unions
and they generally won. An early example of this tactic was a case
brought against an association of shoe-makers in Philadelphia in the
1820s. The reasoning went that it was all well and good for an
individual shoemaker to demand better pay, but when he joined with
his compatriots to make the same demand he (and all of those
involved) became party to a conspiracy with the potential to harm
society as a whole by forcing employers to act contrary to the
interests they had in their property.
Subsequent court cases such as
Commonwealth V. Hunt, lessened the strength of the conspiracy case against unions, establishing that
a prosecutor must prove actions violating a particular law in order
to establish the existence of a conspiracy. With conspiracy less
likely to hold up in court, the new tool for putting a stop to labor
activism was the injunction. An injunction allows a judge to bar a
person or group of people from taking a particular action. An common
injunction in a labor dispute might be barring striking workers from
blocking the road that managers and replacement workers might use to
gain access to a workplace. Also, though unions were no longer
considered conspiracies, to bar non-union workers from a particular
workplace was seen as a violation of their civil rights. Thus,
collective bargaining was impossible as long as an employer was
willing to use strike-breakers and fire those participating in a
strike. Unsurprisingly, they nearly always were.
Under these conditions, which
persisted with little change until the passage of the Wagner Act,
labor faced an uphill battle in winning any concessions from capital.
The attempts currently being made by conservative politicians to
enact “right-to-work” laws and limit or eliminate collective
bargaining rights for public employees have the potential to
effectively turn the clock back to these pre-Wagner Act Days. I would
argue that it is of the utmost importance to resist these attempts.
However, with the unresponsive nature of America's government at the
present moment, low levels of union membership in the private sector,
and seemingly unprecedented hostility to organized labor in much of
the population, it may be nearly impossible to prevent the success of
much of this anti-union legislation.
At this grim moment for labor it has
become necessary to revive the tactics that allowed labor to maintain
an upward momentum for decades, in spite of the significant obstacles
it faced. Some of the tactics that brought labor success in its
early days began to fade after the passage of the Wagner Act. With
government backing for collective bargaining and procedures in place
to arbitrate intractable disputes that were accepted by both labor
and capital as generally fair and acceptable, a certain routine took
hold in labor relations. With closed shops in effect union officials
tended to become distant and unresponsive to their
membership. Strikes became rarer and rarer for various reasons, and
labor saw less of an incentive for organizing the unorganized and
gaining the support of the general public. Though the Wagner Act was
a crucial victory for labor it also brought about these unintended
negative consequences. This general malaise in labors ranks coupled
with conservative control of the government and a less stable
workforce combined to bring labor to the sad state it finds itself in
today.
Before the Wagner Act dues weren't
automatically collected from every employee at a workplace, they were
voluntarily paid by workers who understood that the union was
attempting to protect them from abuse at the hands of the boss and to
bind them together in solidarity. This made the financial position of
unions more precarious, but it made for union officials who were
responsive to the needs of the rank-and-file. After the United Mine
Workers of America negotiated a 10% pay increase for coal miners in
Pennsylvania in 1901, but failed to get the coal companies to
recognize the union, the companies began to increase the size of
carts which the miners were paid a per-ton amount for filling. (A
“miner's ton” at this time was generally close to 3,000 lbs, and
a miner was paid sixty cents for each “ton” brought to the
surface). The union officials has agreed not to make any more demands
for a year, but the membership, incensed at the dishonesty of the
companies, took it upon themselves to call strikes at individual
mines without official union backing. Many simultaneously stopped
paying their dues to the union. A year later the union called an
industry-wide strike. In the period between the union's threat of a
strike and its outset, dues began pouring back in. When the strike
went into effect at least 140,000 people stopped work. The immensity
of this is more impressive when you consider that it was perfectly
legal for the companies to escort anyone who wanted to continue
working to the mine surrounded by national guardsmen armed with
machine guns. If the strike wasn't successful, many who were active
could expect to find themselves on a black-list that would prevent
them from finding work anywhere in the region. This type of
solidarity seems to have faded in organized labor today, but without
the protections enjoyed by unions in the past it may soon become
absolutely necessary in opposing further attacks by capital.
Another important way that unions
found success in a hostile environment was by winning public support
for their cause. It may have been legal for employers to use strong
arm tactics to prevent unionization and break strikes, but when it
became too obvious that they were doing so it could hurt their
business when potential customers felt that labor's demands were
reasonable and that companies were being abusive in resisting them.
The Industrial Workers of the World, an early industrial union,
was constantly attacked in the press, but were successful in winning
the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1911 because the public was horrified
at the striker's treatment by police (who shot and killed a young,
unarmed female striker), and the suffering of the strikers' children
(most of whom would have worked in the mills with their parents).
Underlying this public support was a rising class consciousness in
the population as a whole that has largely faded today. In the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries most who weren't actually
union members began to feel that they had more in common with the
workers than the bosses. They generally felt that the demands of
workers were entirely reasonable given the immense wealth and power
of the industrial capitalists of the day. Conversely, where many
unions today seem content to remain static, representing workers in
whatever industry they've gained a foothold, the earlier industrial
unions saw it as their goal to organize as many workers as possible.
They were well aware that this could only increase their power in
bargaining for better conditions and pay.
At this crucial moment for the labor
movement, all who are sympathetic to labor's cause and whose personal
quality of life will be affected by its success or failure should
re-dedicate themselves to the core principles that have enabled it to
profoundly improve the lives of the vast majority of Americans;
solidarity with your co-workers and with all working people, the
willingness to fight back with direct action when pushed to make
concessions (whether by the employer or a demoralized union
hierarchy), and a sense of pride in your work and in organizing to
stand up for the dignity of that work, and in the end the dignity of
all who work for a living.
