New Problems for the Unions
Marquart, Frank
At the outset a word should be said about the present climate of opinion in relation to trade unions. It has become the fashion, not only among reactionaries but also among liberals, to...
...who serve as a source of hope and identification for many persons outside the labor movement...
...After an agreement embodying efficiency adjustments has been negotiated, it must be "sold" to the workers at a membership meeting...
...As far as the old timers are concerned, our union made its greatest mark and achieved the deep respect of the membership in the old days by the aggressive fight on in-plant problems and especially speed-up...
...The professed ideals of trade unionism will disappear through ignorance or become transformed to make them compatible with the value system of the apathetic—or local union power will increasingly depend upon the formal structure of authority and the appointed or elected officials who exercise that authority from points of power which may be even more distant to the rank and file than the local union...
...Democracy means above all the diffusion of power, and therefore is a threat to the existence of any power elite...
...Union Tradition and Membership Apathy," by Bernard Karsh, in Power in Industrial Relations, Industrial Relations Research Association series.] The problem posed by Karsh represents one of the main crises in the labor movement...
...Studies have been made to learn what happens to workers who, after years in non-automated plants, were transferred to automated plants...
...Though the vast majority of the unions have neither been called before this committee nor implicated by its findings, the impression is widely held that labor leaders are mostly power-hungry crooks...
...And if we realize this, then we might be more inclined toward the kind of social action which will try to counter and modify this process—which is, perhaps, "inevitable" only as we acquiesce in it...
...AFL-CIO President Meany has said that the rank-and-file holds the key to stamping out racketeering...
...Indeed there is no evidence that the union leadership is even aware of this problem...
...by 1957 long-term contracts amounted to 81 per cent...
...Not only is this true in respect to the larger social and humane goals of a kind that could vitally affect the life of the worker, though they have seldom been seriously considered by the unions...
...For obvious reasons, "efficiency adjustments" which lead to speedup are not popular with the men in the shop...
...Benson gives a forthright account of what happened in the Chicago Lodge 113 of the International Association of Machinists when a group of active union members attempted to clean up financial irregularities and introduce a measure of genuine democracy in the affairs of the Lodge...
...When this happened to Studebaker, the UAW negotiated below-pattern agreements, although the company was not thereby saved from financial disaster...
...Hand-in-hand with the long-term contracts go fringe benefits or "the package" which the employer must give as the union's price for the long-term contract...
...Some writers place the blame on "bureaucratically-motivated leaders...
...But in the garment industry employment fluctuates so violently that, like the Red Queen in Wonderland, the union must run faster and faster to remain in the same place...
...it runs counter to the relationships symbolized by management's prerogatives...
...But isn't the new technology which is revolutionizing the work process in the factory also having...
...Today too the enlarged jurisdiction and huge membership of the IBT (International Brotherhood of Teamsters) open the door to the emergence of a general labor union if those heading the organization feel that goal to be desirable...
...In garment, as in steel, the employer is in business to maximize profits on invested capital...
...They also become aware of the separation between themselves and the union officialdom and so they look upon their officers as a group distinct and apart from themselves, "they" instead of "we...
...In his Automobile Workers and the American Dream, Ely Chinoy describes how the steady mechanization of production increasingly widens the gap between management and labor and steadily narrows the range of opportunity open to most manual workers...
...They used to be friendlier...
...Isn't the root problem to be located in the social relations of the production process itself...
...possible alternative job opportunities for workers who would be displaced if the plant should close...
...While steel prices rose four times as fast as living costs, there was practically no rise in the price of women's clothing...
...Then when dealing with smaller companies the union adjusts the pattern according to the financial position of the firms...
...Over here it's altogether different, just push, push, push all the time...
...and almost as evident that if we continue to be without a socialist movement, we may also end up without a labor movement...
...From the available evidence it would appear that in the coming period the unions, especially those in the big mass production industries, will be encountering more and more problems that they cannot solve...
...Who will take the initiative— or, as workers in the shop would say, "Who will stick their necks out"—in the struggle to awaken democratic activity in the ranks...
...But in the automated plant, work stations were individually isolated and the worker had to keep his mind steadily fixed on his work or run the risk of damaging thousands of dollars worth of equipment...
...the improvements it gains occur within a job-oriented framework...
...The "pattern" signifies the changes in wages and fringes negotiated by the union with one of the large companies...
...Amalgamations of related crafts take place when mechanization of craft operations and inter-craft mobility require an extension of jurisdiction to cover the newly-created jobs...
...Relations between workers and supervision also became more strained in the automated plant...
...Moreover top-level union officials have developed a growing distaste for the aggravations that inevitably arise during negotiations...
...But are they insurmountable...
...The steward has become a referral agent...
...The nature and structure of a union are in part shaped by the kind of market in which it operates, so that where firms are predominantly small, the union may even be forced to act as a stabilizing f orce.* By their very nature unions participate in the management control system...
...The contract is a document formally institutionalizing the mechanisms (grievance procedure, etc...
...When veteran unionists express nostalgia for the early formative days of their union, they are thinking not so much about strike militancy or other values cherished by radicals, but about the degree of initiative and participation that workers could then exercise on the job and in the local union meetings...
...Emphasis added.] No one has ever described the problem more graphically...
...Yet the fact that there does exist a crisis in the American labor movement makes imperative an honest evaluation of recent developments, in which one tries to avoid being influenced by the illogic of anti-unionism or the publicity of the labor officials...
...Voice o/ Local 212, UAW, June 1959.] The intensity with which the steel workers recently responded to a similar problem—an intensity that could not be evoked by wage problems —shows that for many American workers their conditions of work, far from being an abstraction dreamed up by sociologists, constitute a major problem...
...Anyone writing critically or honestly about the unions runs the risk of seeming to encourage these misconceptions...
...Why this difference...
...This multi-industrial expansion will become accelerated by product innovations— new raw materials, new manufacturing processes and new gadgets —which tend to upset jurisdictional boundaries...
...The horizon of the trade unions does not extend beyond this assumption...
...His political support is drawn from a region of the union or he is on the international staff, dependent on the top leaders...
...It will come about mainly as a result of market structures in which the union operates and the efforts by some of the leaders to achieve greater centralization—efforts which do not meet serious resistance by the rank and file...
...Actually the most important reason is that they are better insulated from rank and file pressure...
...But it does not change the social nature of the work process itself...
...Perhaps the whole range of problems that I have been trying to present here can, for the sake of dramatic effect, be reduced to one: It seems certain that in the coming years there will be in the U.S...
...Collective bargaining, with all of its paraphernalia, does not come vitally to grips with the problem posed by Blum...
...It purchased two buildings in the garment district and is renting the space to millinery makers 'at moderate rentals.' " (New York Times, June 1, 1959) on the management control systems of both management and the national unions...
...Gus Tyler, in A New Philosophy of Labor, has this to say: Idealism flourishes most readily in "unstable" industrial situations, the kind of conflict that calls forth inspired leaders, who in turn ignite great masses of rank and filers to stand up and fight...
...and they will of course be highly centralized...
...When some of the fringe benefits—especially the escalator clause and the improvement factor—were first embodied in contracts of large unions, many writers accepted at face value the unions' claim that the improvement factor is the means by which workers receive their fair share of the fruits of technological innovations and higher productivity...
...The present crisis of the American labor movement results from factors such as these: • the impact of automation • the decentralization of factory operations in mass productionindustries • the changing composition of the labor force • the "pockets of permanent depression" in Michigan, Kentucky and other areas • the eventual collapse of organization drives not only in the South but also in northern industrial regions • the impact of economic cycles on collective bargaining innovations • and the loss of elan and idealism in the ranks...
...In these units, therefore, the dominant consideration was the individual firm's financial condition, and the union normally was quite willing to make substantial concessions upon a clear showing of financial difficulty...
...who may even seem, as once they did, models of a more selfless and devoted life than can usually be provided by our commercial society...
...Business unionists are candid when they bluntly admit that "our union is in business to sell labor...
...Employers and economists generally consider international officers to be more reasonable and responsible than local officers...
...In recent years some of the larger auto firms were faced with financial crisis, due to unfavorable competitive conditions...
...In the garment industry three-fourths of the shops have fewer than fifty workers...
...It is this creative ferment that stability makes unlikely, if not impossible...
...5-7, 1957...
...Here, for example, is an auto worker writing in his union paper about the speedup: * "The term 'stability' crops up again and again in personal interviews conducted with industrial relations directors...
...I'm getting mine and he's getting his...
...If so, how unstable need they become...
...Of this amount, he said, $1,000,000 consisted of direct aid to business...
...The sole prerogative principle signifies that the workers are divorced from the decisive control over the system of production...
...Professor Bernard Karsh has discussed this problem with insight: How many of the new entrants into factory employment will develop the attitudes and ideals characteristic of trade union tradition...
...For instance, it is true to say that labor's organizational drives, except in a few areas, have virtually ground to a halt...
...Old-time unionists like to recall how workers would pack union membership meetings years ago...
...Can anyone say with assurance that some "spontaneous combustion" won't take place among Southern textile workers in rebellion against substandard pay and sweatshop conditions...
...The union movement of the future will be but a pale image of the present one, let alone of the new unionism of the middle and later 1930's unless ways can be found to reach the large proportion of members presently described as apathetic, who operate with a value system which is a departure from the intended or original values of the trade union movement...
...by which the agreement is worked out in daily practice...
...These are workers who see the union not as an abstract ideal, but through the cash-nexus of the union shop, the check-off and the pay off...
...They feel that frequent contract negotiations consume too much time and interrupt important administrative duties, such as servicing locals, organizing political action, etc...
...And to some extent any union which wishes to service the immediate needs of its members, no matter what ideology its leaders profess, must function within the limits of the status quo...
...And while the average steel wage when Raskin wrote was 86 cents above the level of factory earnings as a whole, the average in the women's dress industry was 47 cents below the factory level...
...Instead of the picket line, you have the conference table...
...The reason of course is that the union is not concerned about the indirect effects of below-pattern agreements on the general standards of the industry...
...but it is something of a question whether we shall continue to have a vital, democratic and idealistic labor movement...
...a complex of trade unions, stronger or weaker, more honest or corrupt, larger or smaller than in the past...
...Some writers adduce "convincing" reasons to support the theory that most of these workers can never be organized...
...Granted that the obstacles barring the way to organizing the unorganized are tremendous...
...instead of rank-and-file involvement in social disputes, you have the professional presentation before the arbitrator...
...Blum's question points to the very crux of what is lacking in the perspective of the trade unions today—a perspective shared by all union leaders, including those who deem themselves "architects of the future...
...Clearly adjustments of this kind permit flexibility in holding down labor costs, while the contract itself reflects a pattern agreement...
...Hence the apathy which has now reached the proportions of a crisis so severe that it worries even some of the leaders who have helped bring it into...
...A few I shall comment on...
...But within the framework of this social relationship the union serves as the workers' bargaining agent, negotiating the terms by which the workers adjust to and perhaps modify the production process controlled by management...
...Let there come a major shift in technology that affects jobs (see B. J. Widick's article in the current DISSENT) and even the most powerful and progressive trade union is rendered virtually helpless...
...Whether with a dictatorial or benevolent intent, whether from a crude contempt for the ranks or a kindly feeling that it knows better, the leadership of the trade unions increasingly appropriates to itself crucial powers...
...The AFL-CIO leaders run bureaucratized organizations and had neither the capacity nor the desire to appeal to the ranks to stage internal revolts within their unions...
...Changes of consumer preferences frequently upset price ranges in the garment industry...
...Consequently workers could find some time to talk with each other and had some control over their pace of work...
...William A. Faunce, in his study, "Automation in the Automobile Industry" (Michigan State University) quotes a worker as saying: We have 100 men in the [automated] department and we have five fore men...
...the concessions the union would have to make in order to give the company a reasonable chance to recover...
...The very success of the unions makes clearer and clearer what the limits of their possibilities are, so long as they function as part of the job-control system and accept the status quo...
...It took a long time to abandon such habits and to teach them "proper grievance procedure...
...Only a year or two before the CIO upsurge in Detroit, Akron and Toledo during the early thirties, some leaders argued that mass production workers could never be organized...
...The big question facing the unions today is this: How, in an era of highlyinstitutionalized collective bargaining procedures, when top union officials can channel major grievances to an arbitrator and thus escape the need of answering to the rank and file—how can idealism and membership involvement be revived...
...They'll die of a heart attack yet...
...Many professional people, white-collar workers and even union members generalize far too glibly from the findings of the McClellan Committee...
...In the process of displacing this spontaneous initiative by a system of rationalized contract procedures, the unions become more centralized and major labor policies are handed down from the top...
...But such independent collective action by workers is not only difficult to maintain in a highly rationalized and mechanical industry...
...This is seldom possible in mass production industries, where an oversupply of labor often serves to brake collective bargaining gains...
...Just as the workers are alienated from the vital processes of society, so are they alienated from the vital decisions of the union...
...Or consider professional, technical and white-collar workers...
...moreover, employers cut the ground from under the unions by granting occasional concessions to white-collar and professional personnel...
...Although by 1953 the force of the "Second Industrial Revolution" was already so strong as to impel some unions to "...study the new technological developments and their implications for the welfare of the membership for the purpose of developing appropriate policies," only a small percentage of the unions were sufficiently aroused to do anything about the problem at the conference table...
...This is especially true when it is continued over a period of time, when the first generation of fighting leadership dies off, retires, or is removed, and a second generation that knew not genesis comes into power...
...Every intrenched leadership operates on the theory that a little democracy can be a dangerous thing, for there is no telling how far it may spread and whom it may disturb.* Countertrends The changes taking place in industry are contradictory and unpredictable...
...hence unions like UAW are forced to grant direct craft representation in all negotiations...
...A survey conducted among workers in many unionized factories would prove that over the past fifteen years work has become more, rather than less, brutalized...
...instead of the action of the mass, you have the talk of the top bargainer...
...Recently A. H: Raskin contrasted the United Steel Workers of America with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union by comparing what had happened to prices and wages in steel and the women's clothing since World War II...
...In the early days of the UAW there was a degree of genuine industrial democracy which has now just about entirely disappeared...
...But management viewed the improvement factor from another perspective, namely, as a plan of cooperation to improve output...
...For the worker this question is paramount, since, by the very fact of his being a worker, he will be forced to spend a good part of his life on the job...
...Some of these problems are discussed in other articles in this issue and so I shall pass them by...
...For an answer to this question the reader is referred to an article by H. W. Benson in The Pro gressive, May 1959, entitled "Labor's Uncertain Trumpet...
...Perhaps no other union has worked out so many protective contract devices to help workers affected by automation and geographical decentralization...
...These take various forms, including raising production standards, reducing time allowances for wash-up, rest periods, personal needs, etc...
...They think, we are told, in terms of professionalism, not unionism...
...It is also true for a good many problems that have traditionally been union problems...
...No, by a labor movement I mean an association of trade unions—more important, of trade unionists— who, while legitimately concerned to protect the material needs of their members, also have some vision of more than routine service and efficiency...
...WORKERS KNOW that they have no real control over the work process and so, often enough, they hate their work...
...It may well be, as one often hears from union leaders, students of the labor movement and even rank-and-file workers, that this is part of an inevitable process, following upon the rationalization of the work relationship, the increasing complexity of collective bargaining, the centralization of all social relationships in the modern world...
...Perhaps...
...administered prices almost free the steel industry from concern with competitive market conditions...
...In addition to accepting below-pattern wage rates and fringe benefits, the union has another way of adjusting to the needs of large auto concerns facing a crisis...
...In recent years the emphasis has shifted to economic questions and often to the detriment of conditions within the plants . . . we have paid for the economic gains, at least in part, with the deterioration of conditions within the shops...
...In plain words this clause means that the employer has the sole right to determine what is to be produced, how it is to be produced, how much is to be produced, what plants are to be built and where, how much capital is to be invested, what kinds of machinery are to be installed, when workers are to be hired and when they are to be laid off, and how production operations are to be rationalized...
...Since the basic function of any union is bargaining over the job terms of its members, it must at all times consider the fluctuations of the labor market...
...The head-fixing instruments of America's mass media have thereby helped create an image of organized labor as a sinister monopoly and threat...
...It is an elementary principle in labor relations that a union must adjust to the profitability of the industry with which it deals...
...Pattern bargaining...
...How can it be solved...
...Consequently he can afford to take an unpopular stand without fearing reprisals at the next election...
...This is true even in automated factories, despite the fact that the heavy "bull work," dirt, dust and grime have largely been eliminated...
...the charges were prepared under the careful aegis of the administrator, appointed by Hayes, the verdict was handed down by Hayes...
...One can visualize what is likely to happen next: As old members retire, as the new technology changes the composition of the labor force, and new and younger workers come into industry, the old ideals and traditions of the labor movement will become dimmer and dimmer...
...Now they seem to be under a strain...
...The cleanup campaign will eliminate a few crooked leaders and will institute some improved procedures, but the character, leadership, and direction of the present union movement will be little altered...
...who feel that in some sense they are committed to a vision of life...
...In this sense, then, trade unionism contains the seeds of both conflict and cooperation...
...that in the process of adjusting to the management control system, unions, especially those in mass production industries, find themselves pursuing policies which, often unintentionally, help per petuate what industrial sociologists call the "dehumanization of the work process...
...But all too many unions respond dully to such matters...
...and become a vital instrument in the life of the workers by relating them to a community of work and labor, or will it become more and more an agency helping to administer an organization of work which . . . impedes a creative self-expression of the workers...
...And more craft auton omy is granted by industrial unions because of problems resulting from the discrepancy between wage rates in captive and jobbing shops...
...however, in making this move the company must observe the seniority provisions of the contract...
...This divorcement forms the very essence of the social relationship in the work process...
...For instance, a company, if it wishes to, has the right to close down an obsolete plant and transfer its operations to a new plant in another state...
...But grievance machinery does not—nor is it designed to—seriously reconstruct the rationalized, authoritarian system of production in which the worker occupies the status of a "factor of production...
...it pays a price for its acquiescence in things as they are...
...they will be "general" in that they will have jurisdiction over heterogeneous occupations...
...But the processes of social consciousness are not so palpable, at least not until they manifest themselves in overt acts...
...Formulations about the labor movement which made sense in the past could be misleading today...
...This separation between leaders and ranks leads to "stability" of a kind...
...and when this happens, union democracy tends more and more to become "controlled democracy...
...much more so is the fact that it is possible, and necessary, for a sympathetic observer to raise the kind of question with which I end this article...
...Hence, they had no alternative course but to drop the recalcitrant unions and to sacrifice those union officials who had been caught redhanded...
...But one should be wary about making hardandfast forecasts...
...Pattern Bargaining by the United Automobile Workers, by Harold M. Levinson.] Nor is below-pattern bargaining confined to small firms...
...For it is a question whether there will be purpose with the strength, spirit with the flesh...
...Twenty years ago such initiative could have been taken by an intelligent opposition group in a local union...
...Though unions battle the employer for better conditions, they also have a stake in the employer's business and in his market—at least as long as they accept the status quo...
...In addition to the loans and investments, the union spent more than $3,500,000 to block rent increases to millinery manufacturers in New York, which would have forced relocations and dispersal of the industry...
...And the way in which unions differ from one another reflects the differences in the industries in which they operate...
...Disputes over job rates are often disputes over speedup...
...The agreement is the tacit system of adjusting labor-management relations around the job and in response to the pulls and pushes of a changing economic situation...
...Sometimes denied the opportunity and other times not trained or encouraged to develop the habit of initiative and spontaneous selfactivity which is the living content of democracy, workers become not merely passive but cynical about the unions...
...in 1955 the figure was 70 per cent...
...the McClellan disclosures produced no revolts in the ranks...
...The reform movement was suppressed and the leaders were expelled from the union...
...They dislike, especially, the opposition from articulate minorities at local union ratification meetings who take a dim view of some provisions in the new contract...
...International union executives tend to have unlimited tenure except in the case of a major debacle...
...It has become the fashion, not only among reactionaries but also among liberals, to deprecate "big labor" along with "big business" and "big government...
...None of the specific problems I have discussed are necessarily indications of the depth of the crisis in the trade unions today...
...Democracy in the union, like competition in the product market, is universally the object of reverence but is not especially enjoyable to those who must reckon with it...
...In September 1956 the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a report entitled: "Union Adjustment to Technological Change...
...New technology in steel increases productivity, so that fewer workers can turn out a given volume of production...
...One observer puts this matter with realistic precision: The tenure of a local union official may hang by a thread but when he becomes an international representative, he has arrived (unless the international union is badly factionalized...
...The agreement is a dynamic process by which over the years the employer and the union arrive at a great number of major and minor decisions affecting the job...
...By a labor movement I do not—let me hasten to say—mean a socialist movement, though it seems to me indisputable that the presence of the former owed a great deal to the latter...
...Fringe benefits...
...And except in a few unions, like the International Typographical Workers, which remains, comparatively, a model of trade union democracy, control mechanisms have become so firmly and subtly developed in most unions that any incipient movement for initiative and rank-and-file self-government is soon stamped out...
...The direct aid to business . . . included numerous loans to concerns in New York, Chicago, Baltimore and Massachusetts...
...Collective Bargaining Trends Let me now comment briefly on certain new and important collective bargaining developments which exert a stabilizing influence • "Alex Rose, president of the United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union, reported yesterday that the union had spent more than $6,000,000 to help the headwear industry recover from the recession...
...The men and women who pay the dues were voiceless...
...I think it safe to say that the deferred wage payment pattern, according to which pace-setters in an industry agree to raise wages annually in various forms for periods ranging over three or more years, amounts to a major post-war innovation...
...Over the years institutionalized contract procedures have been strengthened to channel power away from the shop level and into the hands of a centralized union authority...
...Who, if anyone, is to blame for this development...
...Nobody breathing down your neck...
...The social power to make these all-important decisions, which vitally affect the lives of the workers, is vested solely in management...
...Stability is used most often as a synonym for 'labor peace' . . . Coupled with the search for stability is the desire for predictability of labor costs and an opportunity to plan ahead on investment, production, expansion, and other areas depending upon reasonably stable union-management relations...
...But aren't both of these actually effects of a deeper cause...
...The union of course can and does negotiate contract provisions which offer a degree of protection to workers when management exercises its sole rights...
...If, then, we wish to understand the significant trends in American unionism, we must begin with the problems basic to the pattern of agreement...
...In his book, Toward a Democratic Work Process, Professor Fred H. Blum asks: "Will the union succeed in overcoming the limitations of its present operations...
...If the unions do an efficient job as a service agency but rest content within a society which divorces the working people from its vital processes—what urgent reason, truthfully speaking, do the workers then have for participating in the union, what strong appeal can the union make to new members...
...Evaluation of Long-Term Contracts," by Jack Steiber, in New Dimensions of Collective Bargaining, edited by Davey, Kaltenborn, and Ruttenberg...
...The provision is believed [by management] to have 'intangible' or `moral' value, especially in disputes over technological changes and their effects on job rates...
...The worker found himself under constant nervous strain...
...The foremen at the plant have too much to do and too much responsibility and they get tired and cranky...
...Another new dimension in collective bargaining is pattern bargaining, which also entangles the unions unavoidably in the management control system...
...Actually grievance procedure tends to become a contributing factor to the rationalization of production in the factory...
...being...
...Or will unions continue to "mature," to become ever more institutionalized, until they are mere service agencies ruled by a remote officialdom and staffed by experts and professionals...
...For it is the firm conviction of many workers, at least in the mass production industries, that, in return for economic gains on the fringes, they are constantly being forced to work harder...
...The steel industry is dominated by an oligopoly of three powerful companies, which account for 55 per cent of the country's steel output...
...All of this is much more "civilized" than in the early days of struggle, but it all leads to loss of idealism at both top and bottom...
...A sole prerogative clause is contained in almost all union contracts, sometimes spelled out, sometimes implied...
...ment in, any major decisions about, the conditions of production...
...We are informed by this report that in 1953 the Bureau of Labor Statistics examined 1,410 collective bargaining agreements for specific references to technological changes and their effects on workers...
...An ideal condition for any union leader would be one in which the industry under his jurisdiction expanded faster than the available supply of workers, thus creating a sellers' market for the commodity he deals in—labor power...
...But more...
...During the entire 1946-53 period, approximately 40 per cent of the contracts negotiated with firms having fewer than 500 employees were below the pattern...
...The major steel mills employ from 5,000 to 15,000 workers...
...Over the past two decades narrow-based craft unions have taken on broader structural forms...
...that in the course of de fending and improving the conditions of their members, the unions tend to become more conservative in outlook and bureaucratized in structure...
...But in an industry such as auto, dominated by a few corporations, the union engages in pattern bargaining...
...In 1948 only 25 per cent of the union contracts surveyed by the Bureau of National Affairs ran for two or more years...
...While the unions can't solve these problems, they can at least adjust their collective bargaining machinery in a way that will offer some measure of protection to workers affected by these changes...
...They cannot solve these problems for the reason explained above —namely, because organized labor, removed from a decisive role in production, is in no position to deal adequately with the dislocations generated by the new technology: areas of critical unemployment, the growing proportion of skilled and technical workers to unskilled and semi-skilled, the haunting fear of unemployment that hovers over factories slated to be replaced by new plants elsewhere...
...If, for example, a major grievance developed in a shop department, the workers at the close of the shift would flock to the union hall and thresh out the problem with their stewards and local officers...
...Social unionists employ more sophisticated rhetoric by relating the goals of their union to "national interests...
...but if so, then we ought to realize what this process does to working people...
...The garment union operates in an industry so competitive that one-fifth of the companies go out of business annually...
...factory affords important protection to workers...
...In this respect craft unions have a strong advantage over industrial unions, since crafts, by fixing the ratio of apprentices to journeymen, can exercise some control over the labor supply...
...And in practice certain union privileges do limit management's "sole prerogatives...
...And as for professional workers, do the faint stirrings toward unionism, which are now taking place among some office workers and engineers (e.g., in Chrysler) hold no significance for the future...
...What could better symbolize the ethical crisis in the labor movement than the fact that the man who acted as head inquisitor to stamp out the heresy of rank-and-file democracy in IAM lodge 113 is not only the international president of the IAM, but also the chairman of the AFL-CIO Ethical Practices Committee...
...Must the labor movement wait until industrial situations again become "unstable...
...In pattern bargaining the union must take into account past relations with the company...
...And to secure the best possible bargain for their members on hours, wages and working conditions is the common denominator of all unions...
...It is as if a social order in which the job interest remains central is regarded as the highest stage of social development to which mankind can aspire...
...Social scientists can explain the impact of technology on the work process in tangible terms...
...A few decades ago a new worker was soon approached by the steward in the shop, who would urge him to join the union and pay dues...
...one must examine the structure of the industry in which the union functions, the market for the industry's products, and the industry's long-range profitability on invested capital...
...However much they may differ in their rhetoric, the leaders of both "business unionism" and "social unionism" proceed from the premise that what John Dewey called "boss-bossed relationships" are inherent in industrial civilization...
...It will be my thesis that collective bargaining is becoming ever more institutionalized and removed from effective control or par ticipation by rank-and-file union members...
...The Relationship Between Structure and Policy in the Teamsters Union, Robert D. Leiter, a paper presented to the Industrial Relations Research Association, Sept...
...The reform was a purely top affair and therefore of restricted scope...
...How, one might ask, will all this affect the worker in relation to his job...
...They never say hello . . . treat you like a machine...
...Before we had 134 men and one foreman and one assistant...
...This is variously attributed to their maturity, greater experience, and better knowledge of the industry...
...These fringes come in the form of deferred payments: wage cost-of-living escalators, improvement factors, pensions, supplemental unemployment benefits, etc...
...others on the "apathetic rank-and-file workers...
...Industrial unionism" in the sense we have known it since the 1930s is thus being displaced by multi-industrial expansion...
...Bert Cochran, in American Labor in Midpassage, Monthly Review Press...
...Now it is of course true that grievance procedure in a unionized '" "Further structural evolution seems destined to complete the process of [occupa tional] integration in a short time...
...the appellants have ultimate recourse to a convention still two years away where Hayes will be in full control...
...Yet both industries have one thing in common—and so do both unions...
...The instrument by which this happens is the union-management agreement—which should not be confused with the contract...
...FIRST, A WORD about the nature of American unionism...
...but thanks to the union's structure, he is not dependent for his job on the votes in the bargaining unit to which the agreement applies...
...Some require more space than I have...
...What the union can achieve for its members will be determined largely by this complex of factors...
...To test this hypothesis, one might begin by exploring the implications of the "sole prerogative principle...
...neither will it stop the decay or retreat...
...And during the same period industrial unions have been forced to allow within their structure greater craft autonomy...
...In this respect the UAW has pioneered...
...One analyst, Jack Steiber, believes that management would not be willing to give up the improvement factor even if the union requested it to do so...
...Arthur M. Ross, Trade Union Wage Policy, University of California Press, 1953.] Strucferal Changes As collective bargaining changes in character, so too does the structure of the unions...
...Long-term contracts...
...Especially when business expectations seem bright, long-term contracts appeal more to employers than to unions, partly because management sees in them an aid to stabilizing their labor relations.* Most union leaders also view long-term contracts as a stabilizing factor...
...the value of seniority and other accumulated benefits which depend on the continued business of the company...
...Why then doesn't the national union's officialdom fear political repercussions from the workers affected by such adjustments...
...Twenty years ago, when the CIO was still in its crusading stage, unions in mass production industries played a far more vital role at the shop level than they do today...
...A study of pattern bargaining developments throws some light on the way in which centralized control is exercised by national unions...
...Now the new worker learns about the union through the union shop and the checkoff, which, for all its advantages, weakens contact between the workers and the steward and contributes to inactivity and apathy among union members...
...This diffusion the trade union leadership instinctively resists, even when it is "correct" and sincere in its devotion to the procedures of formal democracy...
...In the old plant, work stations were close to each other and often the jobs did not call for constant attention...
...For the leadership—and, to be candid, for the overwhelming bulk of the membership—it is sufficient that grievance procedure has been established by the union and that the bargaining process improves or at least sustains the material level already achieved...
...The increasing ratio of skilled to unskilled workers in mass production industries gives the skilled workers more bargaining power...
...Paradoxically, it is the very success of American trade unionism during the past few decades, its sizable achievement in improving the conditions of millions of workers, which brings to the forefront of attention these apparently "academic" and "abstract" matters—matters that had previously been the concern only of those socialists and other persons who tried to think beyond the needs of the moment...
...As routine tasks performed by most workers become increasingly rationalized, intelligence and control tend to be concentrated in the hands of technicians and supervisors, while workers will have little opportunity to use independent judgment, exercise responsibility or acquire meaningful skills...
...It is the hotly contested organizing campaign—the picket line, the endless hours of intense emotional involvement in the struggle—that produces great leaders, moving masses, grassroot upheavals, martyrs, and ultimately poems and programs worth the suffering...
...The answer to this question tells us something about the gap between international officials and the workers, and also about the nature of political manipulation in a union...
...But to understand the role of a union one must go beyond rhetoric...
...Also promoting multiindustry unionism are strategic alliances, such as the one between the Teamsters and retail and service industries.* The Work Process It seems likely then that in the period ahead unions will become fewer in number, much larger, and multi-structured...
...the extent to which management inefficiencies contribute to the firm's financial difficulties...
...SOMEWHERE MARTIN BUBER writes that trade unions have no access to the life of society: they are cut off from any direct involve...
...In an industry dominated by small, highly competitive firms, the union becomes a stabilizing force, helping the employers to form associations for the purpose of setting standards of production, prices and wages...
...an impact on office work...
...but can anyone imagine the officialdom of our trade unions encouraging thousands of rank-and-file unionists to take the kind of initiative implied by Meany's words...
...The unions of the future, it begins to seem, will be multi-industrial in that they will exercise jurisdiction over a growing number of occupational groups—a change as great if not yet as dramatic in union structure as the turn to industrial unionism a few decades ago...
...Workers on the job made crucial decisions about production standards, rest periods, fatigue time, personal needs, etc...
...With Chrysler the UAW has made "efficiency adjustments" to exact more physical effort from the workers...
...The leader of the negotiating team who asks the membership to accept the agreement may find himself in an unpopular position...
...A special International trial board was created by President Al Hayes...
...Wages and working conditions are negotiated through multi-employer bargaining...
...It was better on the old job...
...This leads to the characteristic attitude one finds among the teamsters—Hoffa is a scoundrel, perhaps, but "he delivers, doesn't he...
...As we have seen, the contract helps to rationalize the management control system by defining the procedures which must be followed when grievances arise in the factory...
...These agreements represented all industries, including those in which technical change was not an immediate problem...
...But as the years z:^ passed they became conditioned to follow institutionalized procedures and in the process membership spontaneity waned...
...But what chance does an opposition movement have in the big unions today...
Vol. 6 • September 1959 • No. 4
