State of the Union by Nelson Lichtenstein Rekindling the Movement edited by Lowell Turner, Harry C Katz, & Richard W Hurd
Mattson, Kevin
Solidarity forever? Kevin Mattson It's a cliche, but the personal is political. Two stories from my days living in New Jersey say a lot about American labor. First, attending a union-sponsored...
...and cheap beer...
...With dwindling support from the left, it isn't surprising that labor's fortunes sank: "The 1960s and 1970s were barren of virtually any legislative or ideological payoff for organized labor...
...For instance, there's been no legislation to make organizing more feasible...
...Such activities might be able to pull us out of the gloomy days of 1990s market tri-umphalism...
...But don't get me wrong: I'm no pessimist...
...We had entered a mausoleum...
...Nevertheless, labor was displaced by the "rights revolution" of the last thirty-five years, at least within the private sector...
...Meanwhile, anti-union attacks heated up (remember Reagan and the flight controllers...
...They had janitors stand outside the "glitzy Century City complex adjacent to Beverly Hills" to "draw attention" to the plight of workers (see Ken Loach's recent film, Bread and Roses...
...First, attending a union-sponsored Democratic Party fundraiser, I warned my wife: "You'll see a lot of pinkie rings and cigars and hear a lot of dirty jokes...
...To answer this question, Nelson Licht-enstein has written a history of labor that says little that we didn't know already but provides a nice survey...
...This shows that labor unions have confronted the "new economy...
...and the ramifications from "globalization" put unions on the defensive...
...Unfortunately, Seattle's promises have not been long-lived...
...Campaign organizers targeted employers but also building owners-using shame tactics to prompt action...
...In certain cases, it seems to work...
...A month later, he failed to make his rent and returned to a life of petty crime...
...All of which sounds good, until we get to the problems...
...After the initial push to unionize industrial laborers during the Great Depression (the famous 1935 Wagner Act serving as a "Magna Carta"), unions settled into an "unwritten social compact" with business...
...Unions, though stronger than they are now, were always fighting an uphill battle and failed to organize outside of key industries like steel and auto manufacturing...
...Now, I've got nothing against beer, but I was alarmed by how many of the New Jersey cigar chompers were white and, more important, old...
...Again, this transcends the limits of industrial unionization-where unions negotiate contracts at an individual company-by moving "beyond the boundaries of the bargaining unit" and the limits of "recognition" at one firm...
...But where's the coalition now that the Teamsters are demanding oil drilling in Alaska...
...This seems peculiar though, since he admits that "rights" limit our perspective on socio-economic problems...
...There are plenty of people like my New Jersey student who could use what the pinkie ring set had: a union that provides better pay, benefits, and back-slapping solidarity...
...There are also "living wage" campaigns in major cities...
...Unions have been unable to crack the stranglehold that the Republican Party has had over American politics recently...
...Community organizers from Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) have teamed up with unions to fight for legislation that would establish a "moral economy" through higher wages...
...Strong ties to the Democratic Party provided some political security, and union membership skyrocketed...
...The scenario panned out better than I could imagine-with pinkie rings, cigars, dirty jokes (about Clinton...
...Unfortunately, so much of labor's political activity is reactive, not proactive...
...Charles Hecksch-er explains, "Craft unionism is based much less on strikes and pattern contracts than on controlling labor markets...
...There's much that Lichtenstein and the authors of Rekindling the Movement discuss that provides hope...
...The guy I tutored was a young African American living below the poverty line...
...The nonprofit group Working Today offers "an excellent portable health-care package" and a "financial planning service" for contingent laborers in the "new economy...
...Take politics...
...Some have even thrown off protectionism and started organizing new immigrants rather than griping about immigration...
...He worked at Wal-Mart, which always seemed to give him hours just short of those he needed to qualify for health-care coverage...
...Where was it several years ago during struggles over logging in the Pacific Northwest...
...For instance, some unions have created "learning centers" where they provide job training for displaced workers who are then found jobs that meet certain standards...
...Rights talk seems more conducive to those bashing unions via the easy rhetoric of the "right to work...
...If s hard for Lichtenstein to decide if the postwar years were the glory days or the beginning of the end...
...That is, instead of just having success at a single business, unions are trying to leverage more power across the board...
...Lawyers and politicians targeted racial discrimination rather than socio-economic inequality...
...How did labor get to this point...
...Teacher unions have used "teacher training" and "peer-established workplace performance standards" to upgrade working conditions across entire states...
...For instance, the United Auto Workers (UAW) betrayed African Americans in refusing to seat Mississippi Freedom Party delegates to the 1964 Democratic Party convention and did more than it needed to support the Vietnam War...
...Even temp workers have gotten in on the act...
...Some union coalitions use a "hiring hall" model that ensures basic standards at temp assignments rather than the slavish conditions of temp agencies...
...He argues for expanding on the rights revolution: "Rights consciousness and rights rhetoric...remain powerful weapons available to partisans of working people...
...Of course, there were successes in the public sector-with teachers' unions and union activities that would eventually congeal into the Service Employees International Union (SEIU...
...Today, private-sector union membership is 9 percent, the lowest if s been since just before the Great Depression...
...But those cigar chompers really are a minority, what with union membership at an all-time low...
...Even older unions like the Steelwork-ers have used similar techniques in their campaigns...
...Lichtenstein points out, "Real wages doubled in the United States between 1940 and 1967...
...Nonetheless, Lichtenstein rightfully sees it as tragic that the 1960s' New Left attacked labor...
...Fortunately, Lichtenstein believes in more than just rights...
...The writers included in Rekindling the Movement expound on the newer strategies Lichtenstein favors...
...Kevin Mattson It's a cliche, but the personal is political...
...There's also a tendency to make far too much of the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle...
...Since 1995, a new set of leaders at the AFL-CIO have been active, but the record is mixed...
...We learn how Justice for Janitors (J for J) created a "comprehensive campaign" to help Latino custodians in Los Angeles...
...The compact "never spread much beyond the oli-gopolistically structured core industries, and even there it required a strong union that could equalize labor costs in order to make the pattern hold...
...I wish it weren't so, but I question the lasting impact of Seattle...
...Lichtenstein wants to see labor resuscitate itself...
...Call me a sentimentalist, but we would do better with a more communal language-not one of rights but of solidarity...
...Unions are confronting the realities of the "new economy," namely worker flexibility and capital mobility...
...Two authors in Rekindling the Movement claim, "Seattle may well turn out to be a key step forward for the re-vitalization of the American labor movement...
...There's even been a return to the "craft union" model of organizing that existed prior to the 1930s...
...The next day, I taught my weekly literacy class...
...Things look mixed for labor, as they do for anyone concerned for the future of social justice in America today.in America today...
...Intellectuals like C. Wright Mills and Herbert Marcuse portrayed labor as "little more than a self-aggrandizing interest group...
...During the Clinton years, unions failed to defeat NAFTA but did defeat "fast track...
...There's a New Left hangover here that prompts excitement any time protestors hit the streets...
...But we also need some realism and patience...
...Now, there are many more places to move...
...For good reason, some expressed hope about the Teamsters-Turtles coalition that drew together environmentalists and labor unions...
...They also grew complacent, if not complicit with the worst of the Democratic Party...
...When the CIO failed to organize the American South during the 1940s, capital saw the chance to move their operations and find cheap wages...
...Instead of just fighting isolated struggles with employers, campaign organizers are trying to reach out to the wider community in order to build solidarity with a broad public...
...As a college professor at the University of Virginia, he helped out with labor campaigns organized around the slogan of "Workers Rights Are Civil Rights...
Vol. 129 • June 2002 • No. 11
