GETTING THE UNIONS INTO SOCIAL PLANNING
Carpenter, Luther
The time has come to bring trade unions into the formulation of economic policy. Democratic socialists have always believed that workers should participate in decision-making and have recognized...
...The first response of many a union is to support "its" industry...
...Geographic location of jobs, though extremely important to workers, is something unions in the U.S...
...Unions have rarely wanted to use their dues to organize the unemployed, because they needed to build strike funds and serve their members...
...Now it has become urgent that unions take a hand in shaping the policies of the mixed economies...
...Would they require an impossible reorganization on the part of unions, or would they impose tasks that unions would not want to take over, even as a way of controlling the insecurities that their members face...
...There is the issue of whether industrialists would also claim formal representation in the Office of Economic Planning...
...They can do this by fastening on to governmental assistance and by developing their local and trades-council organization...
...There are the practical problems to choosing worker representatives, especially with the UAW and the Teamsters outside the AFL—CIO...
...Before the recent tax rebates, George Meany held press conferences to argue that the federal government should run a larger deficit...
...But if the unions did not get a major voice within the planning apparatus, would jobs get to the unemployed...
...How should unions relate to whatever agency takes on the planning of investment...
...But if the unions were to receive public funds for organizing and advising the jobless, they could assist the unemployed and do a more complete job of finding out what jobs are desired...
...The UAW defends the automobile industry, saying that the companies are working on a thin profit margin...
...Unions indeed would be likely to take a practical point of view that would enable planning to focus on real needs...
...The alternative is formal participation...
...In England Harold Wilson's "social contract" shows us the weakness of an arrangement that rigidly separates governmental policy from the unions...
...Meany's Keynesianism is certainly more humane than President Ford's, but it is still a long way from coping with unemployment...
...It is urgent for the economy as a whole, because of the failure of Keynesianism, the institutional instability of the system, and the impossibility of having policies on incomes, productivity, and inflation without the workers' consent...
...we need planning for the workers and the unemployed, and we are unlikely to get it without trade-union participation...
...But there have been problems...
...The worker's industry may come under fire for social costs incurred in production or in the uses of the product, and such social costs may range from pollution to the destruction of the upper atmosphere...
...The first step toward planning investment could have been to take much of the money that would go out as tax rebates and investment credits and use it as publicly controlled investment...
...Such an investment policy would go hand-in-hand with the UAW's proposal for a national energy corporation...
...A situation might arise in which regional unions combined with other interests to promote their regions...
...This idea would become far less trivial if union districts and locals were brought into the process and asked what sorts of jobs their unemployed members really wanted...
...They have preferred to restrict their activities to lobbying and to supporting candidates...
...Growing energy costs may change the whole pattern of the location of industry...
...This kind of boosterism has rarely been useful and usually has centered on seducing companies by offering low taxes and submissive workers...
...If the unemployed workers are drawn from several unions, it may be possible to keep them in their respective unions and create a mixed local with its own stewards...
...It could be a step in the right direction, but it needs some muscle if it is going to indicate that some industries must contract and replacement jobs must be created...
...The Automobile Workers ask the nation to buy more cars, even though that may run against their ultimate self-interest...
...Workers' participation clashed at points with liberal democratic theory, which emphasized political action...
...But strengthening hard-hit regions and providing new employment in order to offset declining industries is not merely regional—it is a national policy that can give national unions more concrete goals for agitation, lobbying, and participation...
...It needs to plan investment, as Michael Harrington has been saying in this magazine...
...It restricts the unions to their traditional role of defending wages and has yielded no new economic thinking...
...Or would they want another kind of factory work, such as converting automobile plants to manufacture buses or modular housing...
...For these reasons, tax rebates and Keynesian deficits cannot be labor's only economic strategy...
...He wanted that deficit to arise primarily out of tax relief, with a greater share going to poorer people...
...For the society as a whole, one benefit would be a clearer picture of the desires of new entrants into the labor force—another that trades councils might provide a way for dissatisfied workers to move from trade to trade...
...But generally, when workers support their industry, they become its clients...
...WHAT WOULD these proposals mean institutionally...
...but unions and trades councils would have to organize the unemployed and find out what kinds of jobs would meet their needs...
...Pan American workers take out advertisements asking for new protective legislation...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS 219...
...Obviously, jobs would have to be planned for and created in fields where there was a real need to be met, but such planning should consider the workers' views...
...Historically, American unions have rarely sought a formal voice within the machinery of government...
...Would they want public-service jobs...
...this may be the case in the sections of Michigan that are dominated by the auto industry...
...Projects should not be limited to construction work and civic amenities, which properly speaking are not investment at all but should include the creation of industries likely to flourish and be socially useful...
...But bringing unions into the formulation of national economic policy could help, if they got a direct voice on what kind of jobs were to be created and where they were to be located...
...Many observers have commented that the Yugoslav factory committees invested in economically safe enterprises, not in untried, utopian ventures...
...Such investment should go to projects in hard-hit areas...
...An industry may decline for technological reasons, or for political reasons, such as the loss of governmental orders or of favored tax status...
...The quality of the consultation with the unemployed through their locals and districts would be all-important...
...On a local or regional level, little new formal organization is required...
...The Office of Economic Planning they propose sounds essentially like an instrument for indicative planning...
...Nationally, the institutional requirements are not as clear...
...THUS FAR, my argument is that unions need to escape dependence on their industries in order to create new jobs for their workers in a rapidly changing economy...
...Democratic socialists have always believed that workers should participate in decision-making and have recognized the trade unions as the legitimate representatives of the workers...
...A worker's job is at the mercy of the health of "his" industry and "his" company...
...Nor can a democratic socialist ignore the fear that formal participation would suck the unions deeper into our flawed system...
...Both France and England had regional development plans in the 1960s...
...One can only say that we already have socialism for the rich, and soon we will have planning for the rich...
...many Keynesians feel we need a bigger deficit...
...Two obvious sources of new industries are energy-related projects (new energy sources and less wasteful ways of performing existing tasks), and funding new patents...
...American unions would not even have the leverage that British unions possess as part of the Labour party...
...On the other hand, unions now need an institutional voice because the forces that affect jobs, wages, and the quality of work are becoming increasingly political and beyond the control of any individual union...
...If unions were only to act locally, and were only to reach for the funds that are now available, the results would be dangerous to the unions and limit them in their usefulness to the jobless...
...It is a trickle-down theory...
...218 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS At best, this Keynesianism would restore conditions existing before the depression...
...The threat of struggles over membership could be reduced if unions used local trades councils to organize new plants, and if they were backed by a new "7A...
...it also encountered the resistance of capital and the state...
...It is no use talking of trade-union participation in purely theoretical or moral terms...
...Occasionally a union may expand its role within the industry, initiating industrial reorganization or technological change...
...Formal participation smacks of cooptation, even of corporatism...
...As Michel Crozier says in The Stalled Society, those who want the workers to participate must make it worth their while...
...At this moment, American trade unions are pursuing Keynesian economic strategies...
...Workers would want viable industries rather than makeshift jobs that would be politically vulnerable...
...One of the dangers is that of regional rivalries within a union...
...There are some formidable objections...
...A tax cut helps the least-hit areas and industries first: they will receive more money from tax refunds, because they paid the higher taxes, and demand for their products is likely to pick up first...
...It would be a significant step ahead from Keynesianism, along lines that Woodcock and others have started to develop...
...In the past, the creation of new industries has posed problems of jurisdiction and lack of resources for the unions...
...On the present basis, the Auto Workers have no alternative to plugging their prodCOMMENTS AND OPINIONS 217 uct...
...The federal government has made polite noises about giving grants to hard-hit areas for publicservice jobs...
...These problems can deter unions from demanding a new role, or they can be resolved in a manner that gives unions reasons to participate...
...Long-range structural changes in the economy are even more ominous...
...During the last depression, garment workers encouraged amalgamations that strengthened firms, and in the 1950s the miners favored the modernization of their industry...
...It is questionable whether these problems would be met by the ideas reportedly being discussed by the Initiative Committee for National Economic Planning, led by Leonard Woodcock and Wassily Leontief...
...Only a couple of years ago, Automobile Workers were so dissatisfied with their work as to demand "30 and out...
...If a preponderance of the jobless in an area are organized in one single union, there is no real problem...
...Representation on this level might well not seem to be participation at all, when seen from below...
...Even without canceling these concessions there is room for creating a federal investment fund...
...The paradox of workers desperately trying to save jobs they don't like is built into unionism, as long as it only represents workers in negotiations with their own industries...
...have found nearly impossible to affect...
...Following the Yugoslav example, unions might ask for the option of investing their pension funds in especially promising ventures...
...Increases in demand may never reach all the unemployed automobile workers— not to speak of jobless black teen-agers...
...Unions must obtain for their members the control over variables that still are beyond their control...
...A smaller automobile industry would be more stable and might provide jobs for a longer time...
...It would be to the unions' advantage to perform this task, for it would avert the danger of having outside their ranks large numbers of unemployed workers who might become scabs or be organized by nonunion forces...
...Recent European policies show how the location of jobs can be controlled...
...it does not seem likely to be able to create new industries to replace declining ones...
...We could expect these industries to reach full capacity ahead of the hard-hit industries, and to continue their price inflation while depression continues elsewhere...
...At the very least, unions should be consulted to see that new investment fits the skills and desires of the jobless...
...Their needs might be better served by running down the industry to half its size and by providing alternate jobs...
Vol. 22 • July 1975 • No. 3
