WORK AND WORKERS IN THE 1980s
Bensman, David
Whether labor unions are good for America is now controversial. A decade ago John Kenneth Galbraith's analysis that unions were a necessary "countervailing power" was widely accepted, but...
...I know my job, ain't no one gonna tell me what to do...
...Laferlita knows that the heart of the small world that is Republic Lodge is in the plant, where stewards represent workers in the daily confrontations with management...
...Discipline THE UNION has less clout when it comes to matters of discipline...
...Somehow Republic Lodge manages without such help...
...When unions do their job, their story goes untold...
...But they agree on a related issue, the nature of the labor movement: the new unions of the 1930s have responded to the challenges thrown up by the ever larger corporations by becoming bureaucratic institutions...
...They fought with police in 1956 on the picket line, and struck again in 1962...
...Steady and unnoticed...
...Each worker was assigned a job with a work description, skill rating, and wage range...
...With the help of Chief Steward Joe D'Anna, Secretary-Treasurer George Bose, and Business Agent Walter Stursberg, Geno cultivates potential leaders...
...They were born in the 1930s, 334 when workers saw unions as their protectors...
...In the morning, on his way to his post as set-up man, Sal notices an oil spill on the floor...
...Postwar growth has been suburban...
...Stewards are supposed to inform their supervisors when leaving their work, but many of them ignore this rule...
...After a man gets his problems off his chest, it's back to work...
...Conversely, if two "sealers" suddenly quit and management cannot replace them right away, the two junior men in the shop in the grade just above "sealer" will be ordered to fill in...
...Keeping an eye open for company attempts to assign "out of classification" work remains one of the steward's key jobs...
...Today the contract only allows the company to assign an employee to work outside his job in emergencies and for limited periods...
...When you walk through the plant, past young men riveting metal sheets together, past women threading colored wires, past older craftsmen operating lathes and drill rigs, the factory looks like a gigantic workshop where thousands of artisans work at their own pace...
...In such a large, technologically sophisticated plant as Fairchild Republic, workers do hundreds of tasks requiring varied talents, training, and experience...
...supervisors no longer harass men so much...
...At Republic, unlike in most American factories, a worker is not required to stay late, as long as management can find someone else to do it...
...335...
...Each is a company employee, assigned to a specific job...
...During the union's first 12 years such pressures created havoc...
...Aside from the younger workers' proneness to absenteeism, there is clearly a "generation gap" at Republic Lodge...
...Indecent remarks," the first time, are cause for reprimand, the second time for three days off without pay, and cause for discharge the third time...
...under the code's due process clause, a worker can be disciplined only if the evidence against him is corroborated, and workers almost never testify against each other...
...But over the years, as the union's power has grown, such fears have diminished...
...The older men entered the work force during the Korean War, when the union was new...
...For two months Lodge members picketed while company and union waged public-relations campaigns in the press...
...The rub is that stewards are free to interrupt their work for union business at any time...
...Today Sal fills out an official form requesting that a wall be put up to keep out the cold...
...Union and company committees had to meet two full days every week to resolve grievances...
...In this matter the union is relatively powerless...
...The two sides locked horns...
...Toward day's end, Sal and Salaam tour their shops, finding out who has been asked to work overtime, and who has agreed...
...Whenever a problem arises between supervisors and workers, the steward can leave his workpost in order to take it up...
...if he informed me of what the union did and I described it publicly, other managers would be so angered by the Lodge's power that they would demand scrapping the Plan...
...James is angry...
...Consequently, Republic Lodge has fought for and won the right to regulate how the company deploys its work force...
...And since many live at home with their parents, they can afford to stay out when the job gets to them...
...Union and corporate officials now have developed an understanding of what various jobs entail...
...The one whom the foreman considers the better worker may earn 30 percent more than his colleague, though neither may know for sure...
...Newlyweds, matrons, and grandmothers, suburban housewives black and white meet and gossip at games sponsored by chapters of the Knights of Columbus, Temple Beth Torah, and the American Cancer Society...
...To miners in the bleak mountains of West Virginia, unions clearly made a difference...
...And since they find it's onerous to work on the "cycle," they find it hard to believe things used to be worse...
...What is Equality...
...Pete Gentile, a young, bearded and babyfaced union activist who came to Republic right from a local high school, estimates that a third of Republic's employees have work-attendance problems...
...But stewards are not ordinary workers...
...Sal Bancheri, who has worked at Republic for 27 years, through four layoffs and two strikes, described his typical day as steward in a machine shop...
...Then, 60 days later, Mundy Peale fired Bates and signed a contract with Republic Lodge...
...But how are "jobs" defined...
...company supervisors felt pressured to be tough...
...When corporate officers read the inflated figures, their anger mushrooms...
...Workers are subject to "reprimand and final notice" if they are tardy five times within a 30-day period or absent three working days per month for three consecutive months...
...But the more time they put in the more they hate the "push," and so they find ways to rebel...
...The plant is so huge and its ceilings are so high that workers, machines, and even the skeletons of jet fighter planes, the A-10s, look like toys, and everything moves in slow motion...
...The older union leaders reinforce this lesson by seeking out younger workers, conferring with them, advising them...
...Labor and management reached an accommodation after the TaftHartley bill was passed, and the collectivebargaining system was collectivized...
...Nevertheless, peace does not prevail at Republic...
...Second, there was the "51-49" rule under which workers could be ordered to work outside their normal assignment up to 49 percent of the time...
...Stewards—the Heart of the Union REPUBLIC MANAGERS resent the stewards' power...
...Sal Bancheri has seen significant improvements during his 27 years with Republic...
...In Appalachia, where I'd traveled, that was no problem...
...Its glass- and steel-facaded headquarters, neighboring the European-American Bank and Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith's offices on Route 110 in Suffolk County's com330 mercial heartland, seems to symbolize unionism's absorption into the mainstream...
...But today Salaam encourages James to talk about the fight he had with his wife last night, or his child's bout with the mumps...
...In the campaign to organize Republic Lodge in 1950, union leaders made job classification a major issue...
...Driving past the new office buildings, shopping malls, and industrial plants now lining the Expressway where forests had grown a few years before, I told myself, this is industrial America today...
...But I didn't want to write that story • At first glance, Republic Lodge 1987 of the International Association of Machinists (which has 800,000 members and belongs to the AFL– CIO) represents business unionism perfectly...
...333 To Wayne Bates, a company personnel man, the union demands were unthinkable...
...Pete Elliot, another young steward, disagrees...
...overseas investment and new technology pose real threats...
...Is Republic Lodge a model union...
...There are 60 stewards at Republic, elected by their shopmates to three-year terms...
...Young men in particular have discipline problems, Pete told me, because they're "a new breed," unwilling to put up with the company's authority...
...But he was bitten by the union bug...
...Negotiators adopted the "Harvester Plan," a system of grievance-handling pioneered by International Harvester and the United Automobile Workers...
...Experience in union politics, in dealing with foremen, providing services, cannot easily be replaced...
...but the Lodge has a strong sense of independence, preferring to run its own affairs...
...To solve these problems, Lodge officials demanded that the number of job classifications be reduced and the 51-49 rule be eliminated...
...Clearly, to work as a "structural assembler" does not prepare one to operate a milling machine...
...wages have risen from average to good...
...But it is effective, struggling daily to protect its members...
...But on Long Island...
...As supervisors and stewards learned to handle open negotiations, fewer disputes passed on to upper levels...
...Although the matter of seniority seems simple, its workings are complicated...
...But Pete Gentile's peers are less clear about unionism...
...Foremen feel the same, for failure to complete their charts subjects them to ridicule, chastisement, even dismissal...
...Driving east on the Long Island Expressway one wintry morning, I pondered my assignment: to describe how local unions influence their members' lives...
...The generation gap threatens to leave the Lodge with a leadership vacuum when the oldtimers retire...
...Institutional politics compounded the problem...
...Whenever a crisis developed in production, foremen shifted workers from task to task and job to job...
...Damn...
...Laferlita is a fitting representative of his well-paid membership...
...For example, if plant manager Vinnie Ambrico decides it's necessary to finish assembling a plane right away but there aren't enough grade 25 structural assemblers to do it, the grade 23 assembler with most seniority in the shop under that foreman's jurisdiction will get the job, provided he can do it...
...Stewards felt pressured to prove their militancy...
...Thus when management tried to punish Pete Gentile for alleged insubordination by shifting him to nights, the union appointed Pete to the labor relations committee, blocking his transfer...
...Of course not...
...This makes them convenient targets for such politicians as Ronald Reagan, Edward Koch, and Adlai Stevenson III...
...Under the code worked out by management and union officials, the company "reserves the right to discipline or discharge any employee for just cause...
...The favored riveter also will get as much overtime as he wants, and when there is unpleasant work, sealing doors for example, he will rarely have to do it...
...Foremen carry charts on their clipboards, filling in boxes whenever a worker completes an assignment...
...When he came to Republic Aviation in 1953 after completing his war service, he took a temporary job as an assembler-riveter in the booming war-plant industry...
...Foremen are not supposed to reward "good" workers, although many foremen "try to get away with it...
...Most stewards and most of Republic's workers are men...
...The code covers a multitude of sins...
...The settlement was a tremendous victory for the union...
...No matter how company officials modified classifications, they couldn't adequately categorize what employees did...
...Later, in 1962, after a dozen years of building up the union, they tackled two key problems...
...The plan's informal approach worked...
...Often the steward can get management to pay extra for such work...
...nevertheless, the backlog reached 2,000 by 1962...
...Indeed, one corporate official told me that he could not cooperate with me...
...More than half the work at Republic is done on a "cycle," according to a plan and a rhythm formulated by timestudy engineers...
...the plant and the union are still male-dominated...
...Consequently union and company agree that seniority only gives a worker claim to his own and related jobs, not to every job in the plant...
...And the stewards stand at the center of that conflict...
...Unions make news only when they strike, use violence, or are charged with corruption...
...it symbolized the union's commitment to the young workers...
...You sick or something...
...In another union, say the UAW, a local like Republic would get help from regional and national headquarters...
...Policing job classifications and overtime assignments gets no ink in the national press, nor air time on the networks, and certainly no mention in high-school textbooks...
...Don't count them out...
...he won't tell Salaam, fearing that his supervisor will punish him for raising an alarm...
...At first glance, seniority seems a simple thing...
...And this in turn could bring on a strike...
...Most stewards keep a chart, for the contract specifies that overtime must be offered to workers on an 332 equal basis...
...In 1942, long before unionism came to Farmingdale, Republic Aviation officials began to classify and rate all the jobs in the plant...
...Sometimes Salaam will ask, "Well, what did that foreman say to you...
...He's not working, not even pretending to work...
...These youngsters from Long Island's working-class suburbs entered the plant after Republic had won the A-10 contract...
...But the unionists of Republic Lodge— like unionists throughout America—believe that if the company has the right to reward "good" workers and punish "bad" ones, it is able to speed up work, push down wage rates, turn workers against one another, and weaken the union...
...First, since management identified 1,500 jobs in a work force of 10,000, seniority meant little, for in many jobs the senior worker had precedence over practically no one...
...As contracts became long-term, grievance procedures developed, benefits proliferated, and employmentsecurity agreements became common, national union officers gained greater control over union policy and the locals' actions...
...But appearances deceive...
...For years its political involvements have been limited...
...A decade ago John Kenneth Galbraith's analysis that unions were a necessary "countervailing power" was widely accepted, but recently corporate America has legitimated a new paternalism...
...Eventually the company puts up a screen, a response Sal considers inadequate...
...They don't work on the cycle, and are last in their shop to be laid off or transferred, second in getting a crack at overtime...
...EQUALITY, HOWEVER, is not easy to define in practice...
...Republic Lodge members—all working at Fairchild Republic, a merger they still call Republic—earn, on average, $10.50 per hour and, with overtime plentiful, make nearly $25,000 per year, have two- to five-week paid vacations, medical and dental coverage, and a pension plan...
...Managers at Republic believe that the Harvester Plan allows stewards to abuse their freedom and to use union business to avoid work...
...Before Sal reaches his post, a worker walks up, complaining that the doors leading to the loading docks don't close, and the shop is too damn cold...
...He thinks it's because those who are responsible have things to do they consider more important than some cold machinists...
...pay scales are kept secret at Grumman...
...factories have moved and so has the "working class...
...The give-back campaigns of corporate management are taking their toll...
...The only story I could imagine writing was the one told by the American Celebrationists: unions now are business unions, interested only in sharing their firms' prosperity, integrated into the military-industrial complex, bureaucratic at the top, moribund at their roots...
...The years you spend working at your job —not your merit rating—give you priority for promotions and protect you from layoffs, demotions, or transfers to "dirty" jobs or the night shift...
...The plan proved an umbrella in the wind...
...Past the reception area, down a narrow corridor, behind a secretary's office, in a carpeted room with windows on two walls, behind an executive desk Gene Laferlita, Republic Lodge's president and business manager, conducts union affairs...
...Management likes to define it as the equal opportunity that rewards for working well—according to company criteria...
...Why don't you talk to him...
...Sometimes too little time has been allotted, or there's a shortage of parts, or a problem with tools...
...That generation—Joe, Geno, Sal and their fellow workers, the commuters from Brooklyn as well as the potato farmers from Long Island—built up a strong institution from scratch...
...Sal has a pension, dental and medical plans, and severance pay...
...Their daily experience had taught them the need for a union...
...High-skill people charged that the company assigned some of their work to lower-paid employees in order to cut costs...
...And who defines them...
...You can't run an aircraft factory without assigning people to work outside their classification," he told Mundy Peale, the long-time president of Republic Aviation Co...
...Equal treatment is a union principle...
...Under the plan, whenever a problem arose, the worker was to summon his steward...
...Grumman officials argue that incentives are necessary to maintain good work attitudes and profits...
...I ain't taking that shit from him...
...Dressed neatly and conservatively, Mr...
...But all agreed that loss of rank-andfile vitality was the price labor paid for a stable relationship with management...
...And for many foremen, the temptation to speed things up by issuing orders that violate the contract is irresistible...
...Two men working next to each other may once have been high school buddies...
...he expects more out of life than a well-paying job unloading boxes...
...Fair enough...
...It is rooted in the inherent conflict between the company's drive for production and the workers' determination to maintain their dignity...
...Each time a foreman violated the contract, a steward would write a grievance...
...Salaam believes James's problem is simple: he finds it unbearably boring and demeaning to load and unload boxes and carry tools all day long...
...Because the members found these long delays demoralizing, the Lodge's earlier president, Justin Ostro, proposed radical alterations of the labor relations system in 1962...
...But this is not an easy charge to prove...
...To the right of the bingo hall is a reception area where women sitting at switchboards and typewriters buzz visitors into union headquarters...
...But you're always behind...
...Geno Laferlita, who hopes still to be president of the local when the new breed takes over, is aware of the problem...
...Some workers prefer to go home early, or take Saturdays off, while others, with big families, or a motorboat to pay for, take as much overtime as they can get...
...Attendance and the Generation Gap ABSENTEEISM and tardiness are the biggest problems...
...Sal has complained to management about this before but has received no response...
...That damn foreman...
...Disputes festered for months until their origin was forgotten, and arbitrators grew rich on fees paid by the company and union...
...Now that this stability is threatened by plant closings and Our special series "Work and Workers in the 1980s" is edited by William Kornblum and David Bensman...
...At Grumman Aerospace Corporation, Republic's nonunion competitor and neighbor, foremen have wide discretion to reward or punish workers in many ways...
...He believes the young men enjoy their jobs at first...
...But management's resentment is not caused primarily by stewards' occasional abuses or foremen's exaggerations...
...others, such as Clark Kerr and John Dunlap, applauded...
...It is now common for the foreman or the worker to inform the steward that "out of classification" work is needed...
...Nevertheless, the job-classification issue still produces headaches...
...On their own, they've developed skills in administering, negotiating, in handling grievances and arbitration, in educating and training the younger members...
...He stayed in the plant, working at ever more skilled electrical jobs, took night classes at City College, and made his way up the union hierarchy...
...Every morning at 11:00 AM, hundreds of women flock to the Lodge for bingo...
...Salaam Aziz, a young black steward in the stock room, describes a different problem...
...Sometimes "James" will agree to mop up oil, although that's a janitor's job...
...But a company official told me that management's aggravation was exaggerated, and that many foremen, in order to justify their inability to keep up with the work charts, claim their stewards spend more time on union affairs than is the case...
...When a foreman falls behind he walks around the shop, telling his people to pick up the pace, dammit, they're not working fast enough...
...In Sweden or Germany, such local union leaders would spend time with officials and staff experts of their labor confederation and party, and so socialist ideology could provide a common bond connecting plant workers with each other and with the wider world...
...Consequently labor's grass-roots, the local unions, withered...
...they don't understand that their wages and benefits were produced by union struggles...
...Soon the foreman apologizes, and James returns to work...
...his seniority protects him from layoffs and transfers...
...331 On the floor, before the workers in the shop, company and union representatives would try to resolve the problem...
...there's been no ideology to reinforce the value of local electoral action...
...Very few impasses reached arbitrators...
...Workers complain that work on the "cycle" is miserable...
...At 9:30 AM, 45 minutes after work begins, Salaam's supervisor tells him, "James seems to have a problem...
...Many Lodge leaders came from families where the father or an uncle was a labor activist...
...He's always on me...
...Still, there is great talent and strength in the unions...
...Work on the "Cycle" AT FIRST GLANCE, Fairchild Republic's factory in Farmingdale does not seem a stressful environment...
...This in itself was a small act, but in the world of Republic Lodge it was important...
...Though his job requires him to administer an organization with over 3,000 members from his modern headquarters, Mr...
...Today liberals, radicals, conservatives, and reactionaries disagree about labor's role in society...
...Supervisors often order people to work outside their qualification...
...Nevertheless, the union considers regulation of overtime important, because it deprives foremen of a tool for manipulating their workers...
...Some analysts decried this development— one thinks of Sidney Lens and C. Wright Mills...
...or reporting to work under the influence of intoxicants, drugs, or narcotics" are cause for discharge...
...IAM President Wimpisinger's efforts to mobilize the Machinists in a progressive struggle met with initial suspicion, and his attacks on defense spending with skepticism and some hostility...
...But he is not only a businessman...
...he takes out a box of "Speedidry" and spreads some on the floor...
...Whatever the reasons, workers feel constantly harassed...
...It's not hard to understand why a worker's request that a light bulb be replaced or a pool of oil mopped up often goes unheeded...
...after years of school they're ready to work, enjoy making good money...
...Most important here is the matter of seniority...
...The reason the code is so tough, Pete explains, is that many people hate the pressure they work under...
...corporate union-busting, everyone is turning to labor's grass roots, to see whether they managed to survive the long, cold winter...
...While President Reagan charges that union leaders have lost touch with the rank-and-file, liberal academicians describe the absorption of the working class into a suburban majority, and academic radicals decry the integration of unions into the corporate liberal state, the unionists of Republic Lodge carry on their steady work...
...When I realized what the leadership is up to I was impressed, not only with the enormity of the task, but with the resources the union men bring to it...
...Gambling, lottery or bookmaking on company premises...
...This amounts to an effort by Republic Lodge to pass down its traditions, to socialize a new generation into a culture quite different from that of the hostile world outside...
...They've also learned a lot about their company and industry...
...Salaam asks him, "What's the problem, man...
...possession or use of intoxicating liquors, drugs, or narcotics (including marijuana) on company premises...
...James is sitting on his bench, hunched over...
...Finally, after Defense Secretary Robert McNamara warned that the strike was endangering American battle readiness in Southeast Asia, President Kennedy invoked Taft-Hartley, and federal courts imposed an 80-day "cooling-off period...
...James has gone to college for a year...
...If a worker is absent or tardy after receiving final notice, discharge follows...
Vol. 29 • July 1982 • No. 3
