Labor's troubles
Mort, Jo-Ann
When they passed legislation mandating their own compliance with federal labor laws in the first hundred days of the congressional term, Republican leaders already knew that in the next hundred...
...Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers...
...Situations like these will proliferate as Congress dismantles the Wagner Act and all federal protection for workers...
...These arrangements have been popping up in various settings...
...Leading academics serving on the Dunlop Commission such as Paul Weiler and Richard Freeman (both of Harvard) exemplify a new breed of otherwise liberal-minded scholars who dismiss the ability of the union movement to force a Welcome Aboard We are happy to welcome to our editorial board George Packer and Ann Snitow, both of whom have written for Dissent for several years...
...The fight over 8(a)2 is part of a debate over labor-management cooperation and proposals for experiments in new forms of work organization where workers and management sit down together to either discuss or implement changes in the workplace...
...But voice, in a business-dominated climate, offers workers virtually no power...
...This was tried by about a dozen unions just a year or so ago...
...George is the author of The Village of Waiting, a memoir about Africa, and The Half Man, a novel set in Southeast Asia...
...workplace is the case of Fieldcrest Cannon Mills towel manufacturers in North Carolina...
...There was no thought given to the Democrats losing control of Congress, nor was there an acknowledgment of the erosion of support for labor among Democrats...
...Bridgestone/ Firestone is not the only company in which Japanese owners use this country as if it were the third world, taking advantage of a less unionized, less regulated environment...
...The irony is that even under dire circumstances, union organizing is experiencing a rebirth...
...The union lost by five votes...
...After management's legal maneuvers delayed the union election for six months, and after the CEO declared "war"—he pounded his fist on a table before his employees and threatened to uproot the publisher's San Francisco base—the election was held...
...One of labor's top priorities—legislation to outlaw replacement workers in strikes—lost in the Senate because of Democratic defections...
...Yet, as the campaign progressed, the company isolated hundreds of pro-union workers from the rest of the workforce...
...But when the "associates" struck during contract talks in July 1994, management moved to permanently replace all of them—something that is illegal in Japan, but condoned, even applauded, by U.S...
...Emancipation from the illusion that Democratic control of Washington would deliver for the unions may free up the labor movement...
...The owners had declared the workers "associates," as in Japan...
...Four of them are being challenged...
...The process could drag on interminably...
...One approach is civil disobedience to protest the lack of workers' democratic rights in the workplace...
...workers had the muscle of blue-collar workers in Germany combined with the substantial labor and social standards mandated by the German government and the European Union, these added mechanisms could easily strengthen union activities, as works councils do in Germany...
...When the 1991 union campaign began, the company had just initiated wage cuts, work force reductions and a 30 percent reduction in workers' pensions...
...Their goal is to "free up" corporate resources by a total repeal of federal regulatory mandates...
...It's surprising that neither the media nor Democratic party officials called them on this...
...feminism...
...But all is not lost...
...Just as the Republicans were introducing their legislative agenda this past January, a presidential commission under the auspices of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and Labor Secretary Robert Reich reported its own recommendations on changes in federal labor laws...
...Yet except for a National Labor Relations Board that is one of the fairest in decades (no small item), organized labor wasn't doing well legislatively even before the Republican takeover...
...The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers, the Communications Workers of America, the Steelworkers, and the United Auto Workers are among the unions that have embarked on these ventures...
...There was an employee council in place to deal with employees' concerns, the type of council advocated by those who want to repeal 8(a)2...
...Last year, the AFL-CIO's Committee on the Evolution of Work took a position supporting labormanagement cooperation when a union is a partner...
...Also typical of the U.S...
...While labor was unequivocally safer with Democrats in charge of Congress, there simply is no longer agreement among Democrats to support labor's agenda...
...Several unions have been in the forefront of these efforts to work jointly with management to raise standards and productivity...
...Since 1974, seven thousand workers, who form the largest industrial unit of nonunion workers in North America, have tried to unionize three times under the banner of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union...
...As corporations test their power under the Republicans, it's likely that more workers will need union representation...
...But it's impossible to imagine a scenario where truly productive workplace innovation can occur unless workers have the legal right to negotiate the basic workplace issues normally dealt with in collective bargaining...
...The notion that workers can gain an authentic voice in the workplace through the kindness of enlightened management in today's U.S...
...Workers were tired of low pay and no pay for overtime...
...But the publishing employees, frustrated by their lack of power and the inability to take legal recourse, approached the Communications Workers of America to help them organize...
...Only unions can block employer domination of work "teams...
...The union lost the latest election in 1991 by only two hundred votes...
...The Republicans moved swiftly to implement their agenda, which includes repeal of DavisBacon—legislation that for six decades has guaranteed that building-trades wages on federal or federally assisted construction projects cannot fall below the prevailing union rate in an area—an end to federally mandated safety and health regulations and monies for health and safety inspection, elimination of the forty-hour work week to allow for overtime work without compensation, repeal of the minimum wage, and the repeal of a section of the Wagner-era labor regulations called Section 8(a)2, which forbids companies from setting up union-like mechanisms in the workplace that are company dominated and financed...
...The workers were ripe for unionization...
...That appears to be the motivation behind the commission-generated support for a repeal of 8(a)2...
...Labor is in a reactive position against a Republican Congress and a severely weakened Clinton administration...
...change in the economic or political climate of the country...
...She is very active with the Coalition of East-West Women and is currently co-editing a collection of essays about the early days of contemporary U.S...
...Tens of thousands of dollars were spent on anti-union propaganda inside and outside the plant...
...This scenario is repeated at workplaces throughout the country, among blue and white collar workers...
...Ann teaches literature and women's studies at the New School for Social Research...
...Nothing short of a stronger union movement can stem the onslaught, complete with Wild West ethics, to which American workers have been subjected by capital and management...
...business climate was put to the test in the battle between the Japanese owners of Bridgestone/ Firestone and four thousand unionized workers who have been on strike since last July in Decatur, Illinois...
...Much of labor agreed to the commission when it was conceived in 1992...
...That means testing tactics that appeal to union activists in communities far from the Beltway...
...Weiler, Freeman, and others have been flirting with German-style models of works councils and Japanese models of labormanagement cooperation in order to provide a "voice" for American workers in an era of dangerously low unionization...
...HarperCollins in San Francisco, the publishing conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch, recently quashed a campaign for union representation...
...employers...
...They were hoping that the commission would offer a pro-labor, forward looking legislative blueprint for what was then a Democratic Congress and White House...
...If U.S...
...They need only have glanced at the record of officials who preside over the committees that oversee labor law, who range in their union-friendly voting record from a mere 7 percent for Representative Harris Fawell of Illinois (whose subcommittee has jurisdiction over health and pension issues) to a whopping 27 percent for Representative William Goodling of Pennsylvania, chair of the Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee...
...Two years after the ballot, a judge ruled against the company for massive violations of labor law, but the company's appeal is still pending...
...Under the guise of the TEAM Act, the Republicans want to dispose of the 8(a)2 section of the Wagner Act to allow more authority for the corporation and less democracy for the workers...
...This last item was introduced in a bill called the TEAM Act at a kickoff rally in Washington sponsored by the Labor Policy Association (founded in 1939 by CEOs whose aim was the dismemberment of the National Labor Relations Act), the U.S...
...Unions can recapture the nation's imagination by dramatically— and relentlessly—exposing the reality of America's workplaces...
...When they passed legislation mandating their own compliance with federal labor laws in the first hundred days of the congressional term, Republican leaders already knew that in the next hundred they would begin the systematic dismantling of federal labor law...
...Chaired by former labor secretary and Harvard economist John Dunlop, and made up of academics, former government officials, one CEO (Paul Allaire, whose workforce at Xerox is unionized) and one former labor leader (Doug Fraser of the UAW), the commission was mandated to examine new methods of SPRING • 1995 • 179 Right Turn workplace reorganization to encourage productivity and cooperation and to recommend possible changes in labor laws and regulatory mechanisms...
...The truth is that unions have been more willing to take part in these initiatives than have American corporations...
...q 182 • DISSENT...
...By comparing the struggle for workplace democracy with that of SPRING • 1995 • 181 Right Turn the early civil rights movement, unions can also reach out to nonunion workers, to the religious community, and to an entire generation of young workers who know nothing about what unions do, let alone what unions won for previous generations of workers...
...Nor is there unambiguous support among intellectuals or pundits long considered pro-union...
...Soon after the campaign began, a company executive sent a letter to each employee at home saying that "the current feisty, free and open involvement of the entire staff .. . would be most endangered by the success of the CWA petition...
...180 • DISSENT Right Turn Yet while Weiler, Freeman and others use Germany and Japan as their models, the Republican congressional leadership looks to Singapore for ideas...
...Corporate America's bold initiatives offer the labor movement an opportunity to fight back with creativity and vigor...
...When Clinton took office, labor thought it could legislate its way back to a position of relative strength...
...A second letter signed by all company managers stated that "unionization .. . would not serve to promote cooperation and solidarity...
...Supervisors conducted intensive one-on-one meetings with undecided voters and threatened firings...
Vol. 42 • April 1995 • No. 2
