OUR UNIONS UNDER ATTACK
Gotbaum, Victor
The author is executive director of District Council 37, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL—C10 I n the film Silkwood there is a scene with particular meaning for...
...Portability of capital: manufacturers can open plants anywhere in the world at a fraction of American labor costs...
...It comes after Karen Silkwood has been exposed to radiation at her job and to a new consciousness by her union...
...Labor's greatest gains were achieved in the 1930s when millions of workers could identify with unions as "us" against "them...
...Whether more or less than before, some 20 million workers organized in unions, 16 million in the AFL—CIO, will remain a potent institution for years to come...
...Steel, Chrysler, or New York City, holds trump cards...
...The union movement today does not have this root connection with millions of unorganized workers...
...228 The mindless left slips their pamphlets into union meetings with calls for general strikes to recapture the country...
...Is this a problem for labor alone, or for America...
...She has become motivated to do something about the dangers in the Kerr-McGee plant, and she attempts to document incidents where the company's actions and policies have harmed or threatened workers...
...But as long as there are salaried workers, and as long as America remains a democratic society, we can be confident that the American worker will recognize the unique value of the trade union...
...The growth of unionism in the public sector through the 1960s and early '70s was equally a product of unionism in tune with the mood and needs of a working population...
...Greyhound paid no price, or a very little price, for its insidious attempt to bust its employee union...
...Whether the result of history or of selective treatment in the media and in education, millions of workers hold low, cynical opinions about unions...
...In a dialogue with me for the Public Employee Press, our union's newspaper, Michael Harrington was asked about the future of the labor movement...
...AFSCME and SEIU have recently been voted in by large numbers of public workers...
...That's the essence of a key problem faced by the American labor movement today and, for that matter, by the country...
...We can share this view and still be concerned about undeniable facts...
...And in spite of recessions, givebacks and layoffs, unions continue to do their bread-and-butter business for their millions of members, protecting workers on the job, assuring wages and benefits to workers and their families...
...His answer was sturdy, optimistic...
...In absolute terms, their political impact, their treasuries, their personpower will continue to pack a wallop that will be hard for politicians, companies, or governmental arms to ignore...
...High technology will reduce the number of jobs available...
...The AFL—CIO is paying more attention to the need to organize...
...It's not easy to get people to recognize their own self-interest...
...The company violated the spirit of collective bargaining by combining its either/or offer of cutbacks with nationwide ads to hire scabs...
...And the 400,000 trade unionists who marched into Washington on the first Solidarity Day in 1981 were the first to break the myth about Ronald Reagan's invincibility...
...As steel, auto, and city services decline so does America, not just the individual work forces...
...All the verities of our society are "under attack," have been for years...
...American supremacy has passed, Japan and others can make cars, TV sets, appliances, cameras, and so on better and cheaper than we used to do...
...Publicsector workers continue to choose unionization by the hundreds of thousands...
...The author is executive director of District Council 37, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL—C10 I n the film Silkwood there is a scene with particular meaning for our times...
...Pundits, students, and critics recite the familiar litany of the unions' problems...
...q 229...
...The scene takes place in a company lunchroom where previously we have seen Karen moving easily and comfortably among her close friends and co-workers...
...In a matter of minutes they all walk out on her, leaving her alone in an empty lunchroom...
...Now, however, she is confronting them with a paper and pencil in hand...
...The problems exist...
...BUT THERE ARE HEALTHY INDICATORS, too...
...Givebacks and concessions by beleaguered unions are commonplace, particularly among the previous stalwarts of the American labor movement...
...The leaders of labor do not reflect the dramatic changes in the labor market...
...The schoolteacher is unionized, most schools reflect the quality of life around them: shocking problems in have-not communities, exemplary achievers in Scarsdale High...
...Good friends tell unions we have to find new answers...
...The movement from blue-collar to service, the rising number of women and minority workers, and the growth of publicsector employment are not proportionately evident in labor's upper levels...
...Their success and labor's failure to retaliate appropriately will encourage additional, similar unionbusting efforts...
...In a time of high unemployment, Greyhound deliberately set out to pit desperate poor against its workers, with no conscience or concern for shortand long-term effects...
...Solidarity Day gave courage to till-then-silent Democrats and even Republicans who finally found critical voices...
...The result predicted is fewer and lower-paying jobs for workers and their unions...
...They remain vulnerable to a management line that "the union just wants your dues...
...The employer, whether U.S...
...The union movement is slow and grudging in its response to the challenges of the times...
...Hundreds of thousands of civil servants took their new militancy into vigorous public-sector unions...
...Antiunion consultants have developed a major new industry selling eager management the skills to keep unions from organizing or to decertify existing unions...
...Greyhound was vulnerable to a sharp public-opinion campaign as a company to be shunned, especially by working people and others who make up their ridership...
...Animosity and distrust, bred by generations of exclusiveness, instinctively distance many black, Hispanic, and other minority groups, including women...
...If high unemployment, underemployment, low pay, diminished opportunities for the young, and a reduced middle class become permanent structural conditions, what kind of country will it be...
...One by one, her fellow workers turn away from her...
...So labor is "under attack...
...As the decline spreads to major components of the American economy, as the government misdirects resources and priorities and fails to redesign a new economy for the new period we have entered, we are cementing deficiencies that will affect America for generations...
...She's trying to protect them but they want no part of it...
...Can they recognize what's happening to them, or do they believe their president that we're on the way to an economic recovery and peace through overarming...
...She is asking them to give her their personal experiences so she can document the company's carelessness and lack of concern for their safety...
...The family, church, schools, neighborhoods, political parties, none of the old pillars of American society are what they were...
...If Chrysler and New York City maneuver themselves to the brink of bankruptcy and workers are given a choice of givebacks or layoffs, there's really no choice, either...
...It's troubling, though, that commentators who, gleefully and otherwise, point to labor's problems fail to associate them directly with the problems confronting our entire population...
...Kids have freedom, capabilities, and dangers that make them a different breed than their parents, who were raised a generation ago...
...This is a problem for the growth and spirit of the movement...
...The AFL—CIO position on Mondale has demonstrated and reminded all concerned that labor is a major player in national politics...
...They established a precedent that most certainly is being reviewed in board meetings throughout industry...
...As the awareness grew that public employees were "workers," too, old attitudes paled before urgent needs for money and protection...
...So it should be no surprise that societal changes that are reshaping the country are buffeting the trade unions, too...
...That march snapped congressional Democrats out of the compliant trance they had gone into with Reagan's election...
...LABOR IS "UNDER ATTACK," as we all know...
...Predictions of the future for unions, especially as the economy moves from manufacturing to service and high-tech, are dire...
...LABOR'S RESPONSE was inadequate...
...She's making waves, she's a pain-in-the-ass...
...If U.S...
...What's different for the nation as a whole...
...No question, we could do better...
...In the Southwest, unions are cooperating with each other on organizing drives...
...One, labor can never escape its environment...
...Millions of American unionists have read and heard a constant, clear-cut documentation from their unions of the attitudes and actions of this Administration, from Reaganomics to El Salvador...
...But neither the attack nor the times are so remarkable that I worry about the survival of the American trade union movement...
...The Greyhound strike, PATCO, the Continental Airlines bankruptcy, the serious number of failed elections and decertifications illustrate that the union movement has not yet developed the sophistication and energy to meet the attacks that management lawyers, consultants, and public-relations specialists have learned to mount...
...Look what happened to the work ethic...
...There is no scientific documentation for this, but I feel certain that the labor movement, through its own press and its public and internal actions, has been the single most effective critic of this president...
...The real question is, What are the American people going to do...
...The scene rings very true...
...If Silkwood's co-workers shied away from her attempts to make them take responsibility for themselves, half of them don't vote either, and their spelling would probably make most readers of this magazine wince...
...A common error is to separate these problems as labor's problems and challenge the unions, "What are you going to do about it...
...The decline of smokestack America: steel and autos will never employ as many workers as they once did...
...Jazz masses, activist priests and nuns are not news anymore...
...LIST THE IMMEDIATE DANGERS facing labor...
...The AFL—CIO, too, is starting to catch up to the technology and potential of today's communications...
...A profitable $5 billion conglomerate blackmailed a weak union into a horrible cutback...
...Steel decides there are more profits to be made by closing plants, the union is powerless to prevent the closings...
Vol. 31 • April 1984 • No. 2
