fighting for the union

Another adaption from an American article defending unions from the current onslaught.

In the early 1980s Ricardo Levins Morales, an artist and labor activist in Minneapolis designed a bumper sticker with a simple eight-word message, "From the people who brought you the weekend." Ricardo said he often found people "squinting with puzzled looks at the stickers.For people who are not steeped in labor history. It might take a few minutes to figure out what on earth they are talking about" because he added "most people think the weekend has always been here like the weather."

At the end of the 19th century men, women and children often worked 10 to 16 hour days, seven days a week. The weekend, along with the 8-hour day, rest breaks, decent wages and working conditions were gained only over decades, and at great human cost. And the vehicle used to win these advances was the union. US unions have shrunk in size and influence, largely as a result of a withering attack by corporations and Republicans. And with that shrinking influence has come a corresponding decrease in the standard of living of most Americans.

In the decades after the Civil War American industrialization came to America. Railroads criss-crossed the continent. Markets went national and international. Factories swelled to fantastical size. One or two companies dominated their industries. Workers were pushed to their limit and beyond. Sometimes their pent up anger and frustration exploded into huge labor uprisings. And when they did, corporations, governments and courts retaliated.
"In the centers of many American cities are positioned huge armories, grim nineteenth-century edifices of brick or stone," Jeremy Brecher's explains in his classic book, Strike "They are fortresses, complete with massive walls and loopholes for guns. You may have wondered why they are there, but it has probably never occurred to you that they were built to protect America not against invasion from abroad but against popular revolt at home.Their erection was a monument to the Great Upheaval of 1877."

The 1877 general strikes brought work to a standstill in a dozen major cities. In communities across the nation strikers took over authority. In the late 19th century, giant corporations built a private police force to spy on workers and when needed, knock them about. "Businessmen saw the need for greater control over their employees", historian Frank Morn writes, "their solution was to sponsor a private detective system.In February 1855, Allan Pinkerton, after consulting with six midwestern railroads, created such an agency in Chicago." At one point the Pinkerton Detective Agency employed more men than the U.S. Army. And when the Pinkertons were not enough, Governors called in the National Guard, (a tradition Wisconsin Governor Walker recently threatened to revive if public employees become restive.) And when the National Guard was not enough, the army intervened. The general strikes of 1877 were finally put down with the assistance of 10,000 US troops.

Corporations argued, and the courts agreed that unions were interfering with a Constitutionally protected right to contract free of government interference. Employers were free to discourage employees from joining unions. One of the most common methods used was to require employees to sign what became known as "yellow-dog contracts". The employee agreed not to join a union, to quit a union if already a member, and to be fired if they did not comply with the contract. In 1908, the Supreme Court gave its seal of approval to yellow-dog contracts, citing the need to protect the "liberty of contract" no matter how wildly imbalanced the power of the two negotiating parties.

The Great Depression brought mass unemployment, unilateral wage reductions and renewed labor uprisings. In 1935 the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) required employers to bargain "in good faith" and proscribed "unfair labor practices". Most importantly, the Act invested the National Labor Relations Board with powers of enforcement. Between 1935 and 1945 8 million new workers joined unions, tripling overall union membership. Corporations quickly counterattacked. In 1939, Southern Democratic Congressman Howard Smith established a special Committee to Investigate the National Labor Relations Board and held a series of highly publicized hearings designed to vilify the NLRB, making the embryonic NLRB more cautious and politically sensitive. In 1948 theTaft Hartley Act was passed. The Act effectively stripped labor unions of many of their most progressive voices, leaders who viewed labor organizing as a part of a much larger national social movement for justice and equality. The Act outlawed sympathetic strikes, making it illegal for workers to substantively demonstrate their solidarity. And most important of all, the Taft Hartley Act allowed states to enact laws that banned union shops, that is, shops where if a union was voted in all workers had to be part of the union and pay dues. In these states, even if a union were certified by a majority of the workers, the workers did not have to belong to the union or support its work (including a strike fund). Several southern states immediately enacted what they called right to work laws. Today 22 states have such laws. In these states, union density has rarely exceeded 10 percent, even when union membership overall was at its peak in the 1950s. In 1980, Ronald Reagan came to office, and began his war on labor in the summer of 1981, when he fired 13,000 striking air traffic controllers. ( Ironically, the air traffic controllers union had endorsed Reagan for President in 1980.)

Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson described the firings as "an unambiguous signal that employers need feel little or no obligation to their workers, and employers got that message loud and clear -- illegally firing workers who sought to unionize, replacing permanent employees who could collect benefits with temps who could not, shipping factories and jobs abroad."

The combination of a government that gave the green light for corporate union busting and corporations who enthusiastically took advantage of that opportunity, led to a rapid decline in union membership. Today private sector union membership levels are back to 1900 levels, the era of yellow dog contracts and illegal collective bargaining. In 1973, there were almost five times more union members in the private sector than in the public sector. In 2009, for the first time, public sector union membership exceeded that in the private sector. Public sector workers have achieved near parity with private sector workers in pay and benefits.

Since 1980, workers have received a diminishing share of the fruits of their labor. In the last 10 years, while productivity has risen by about 20 percent worker compensation has barely increased. Today, virtually all additional profits gained from productivity improvements go into corporate coffers not into workers' pockets. Wages as a share of national income have fallen precipitously while compensation has fallen more modestly, by about 10 percent. Compensation includes pensions and health benefits. In the last 10 years these have slowly and then with increasing speed, been whittle away. Virtually all private sector pension plans no longer guarantee a worker a secure retirement income. Public sector pensions are the subject of intense attack. In both the private and public sector health benefits are being cut back and workers are being asked to reduce their take home pay by contributing more to their health insurance. While wages and salaries as a percentage of the national income is near its lowest in history, corporate profits are soaring. In 2010, the private sector paid out $5.2 trillion in wages and salaries and earned about $1.7 trillion in profits. And 200 US corporations captured almost a third of those profits. US corporations are currently sitting on over $2 trillion in cash right now.

American workers earn about as much annually as their counterparts in France and Germany and Denmark, but we work almost three months longer. US workers, unlike European workers, are not guaranteed at least some paid vacation. Indeed, about a quarter of US workers in the private sector receive no paid vacation at all. US workers, unlike European workers, are not guaranteed paid sick leave. Indeed, almost half the US private sector workforce has no paid sick days. US workers, unlike European workers, are not guaranteed some form of paid maternity leave.( unions in Europe have also been under attack and for many countries these density levels are much reduced, although in all cases they remain significantly higher than those in the US.)

US unions also have much to answer for. In the late 1800s, US unions abandoned industry wide organizing for crafts-based organizing. Indeed, the struggles between the AFL, representing crafts unions and the CIO, representing industrial unions, were almost as acrimonious at times as the struggles between unions and management.
The unions abundant financial resources have gone almost entirely into the electoral coffers of the Democratic Party rather than into organizing.
Yet for all their flaws, unions remain the single most important defender of the rights and aspirations of workers. The vast majority of us are workers, that is, we earn our living through our labor (in the case of social security or retirees, through past labor). Unions themselves need to overcome their turf battles and begin to practice a solidarity that has been missing for decades.