Labor Pains: The Unions Regroup

...The 1980s will be for office workers what the 1930s were for factory workers," says Karen Nussbaum, head of "9 to 5," the national organization of women office workers...

...When the walkout ended, one could almost hear a collective sigh of relief from international union executives...

...But domestic union leaders' protectionist proclivitiestinged with racism and jingoism—damage efforts to build international solidarity...

...In trucking, auto, and meatpacking, locals voted— by overwhelming margins—to reject concessions recommended by their leaders...

...Ephlin and his allies are straightforward about their view that the adversarial approach is obsolete...

...The all-out management offensive has taken a terrible toll of a labor movement already crippled by recession and unemployment...

...The AFL-CIO's computer- equipped Houston Organizing Project, a coordinated effort of twenty-nine unions, enlisted only 7,500 new members in its first twenty months...

...Rather than grant concessions or advocate protectionism and an industrial policy, the labor movement must rally behind demands for a shorter workweek, control over new technology, limits to overtime, and other measures that can have an immediate impact on jobs...

...I said, 'What did Mondale do for Greyhound?'" How did the labor movement get into such a state...

...Union members' resistance to concessions has grown steadily over the past year...

...Typical of this new breed is Scott Molloy, who represents 500 bus drivers and mechanics employed by the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority...

...We're changing the labor relations system and the relationship that's existed for forty years," said Donald Ephlin, a United Auto Workers vice president who negotiated the 1982 concessions contract with Ford...

...A labor party—embracing unions, the old guard accepted it...

...Many unions, however, including those in the steel, auto, and telephone industries, have embraced quality-of-worklife programs wholeheartedly...

...Many hoped that concessions, by allowing a company to remain in business, could give unions a chance to live and fight another day...

...The labor movement, its militant traditions rusty from lack of use, was left with no way even to defend its members' income when the pie shrank—much less meet the greater challenges posed by the new era...

...The United Electrical Workers (known for telling employers, "We don't always win, but we always fight") is the most prominent exception among the international unions...

...And in several instances, local leaders who pushed givebacks were voted out of office...

...But in the United States, absolute opposition has been the exception, not the rule...

...To cope with such business restructuring, unions must begin to coordinate bargaining and build organizational links among locals within a conglomerate...

...In addition, left-leaning unionists are gradually entering the ranks of the local leadership...

...buy up other businesses instead of investing in existing ones, and eliminate the social safety net...

...Younger activists who are assuming leadership positions and older members who want the unions to remain true to their principles are questioning the policies of the union hierarchy...

...We can't let this be another PATCO," was the sentiment...

...it Defending minority and women workers: Too often, the labor leadership is on the wrong side of this issue...

...It's hard to describe the feeling—to run a slate on a completely progressive platform and sweep all the offices," says Paul Roose, who was recently elected president of the Oakland Letter Carriers' local...

...1! Quality-of-worklifeprograms: These ostensibly benevolent employer initiatives are subtly eroding the ideology of unionism...

...Only a few—the United Electrical Workers and some Canadian unions, for example—oppose them...

...The union leadership doesn't dare pick its own candidate, write its own program, or start its own party...

...Mazzocchi says his campaign has been positively received—but not by the top leaders, who remain firmly committed to the Democratic Party, even as it moves to the right and openly woos business support...

...We need longterm organizing for this idea...

...A few years ago, when he was chief steward at his local, Molloy led a wildcat strike over seniority rights...

...It picks the most electable from among someone else's choices and piggybacks on someone else's program...

...Local union leaders and ad hoc committees set up picket lines, held rallies, and raised money...

...But paradoxically, it has engendered a healthy debate within the movement over what direction organized labor should take...

...spur a favorable industrial policy...

...Some, radicalized by the movements of the 1960s, became union members more than a decade ago...

...The divergent responses to concessions within the labor movement are telling...

...The complacency of labor leaders, confronted with a hostile business community, was nowhere more apparent than in the 1983 Greyhound Bus Line walkout...

...The Federation's leadership is incapable of understanding that its potential for future membership growth is with racial minorities and women—that is, the least favored in the work force," says Herbert Hill, a former labor director of the NAACP...

...The effort helped the strikers gain extensive television coverage...

...And large sections of the labor leadership support governments in the Third World that are hostile to unions...

...Workers could count on reaping greater material rewards year after year, even if they were losing control over the workplace day after day...

...For example, Lewie Anderson, head of the meatpacking division of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, says his membership accepted a four-year pay freeze to "lessen the destabilizing wage gap" between unionized workers and those at the new, nonunion companies, and to give his union an opportunity to organize and raise wages at the independents...

...American unions have bought the idea that "you can't stop progress...

...Management consultants encourage a "we're-all-in-this-together" outlook so that workers identify with the company's interests...

...The contradiction between "cooperating on the shop floor while we're being mugged at the plant gate"—as the Machinists Union once put it—is becoming increasingly difficult to swallow...

...Since new technology, like concessions, will help their employers be tnore competitive, far be it from the unions to throw a shoe in the works...

...Let's get on a wartime footing at every level," said William Bywater, president of the International Union of Electrical Workers, in a plea to American consumers to stop buying Japanese products...

...There is also the effort, led by former Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Vice President Tony Mazzocchi, to open a discussion about a national labor party...

...Not suprisingly, then, when the leadership seeks rank-and-file support for such initiatives as the Mondale Presidential campaign, workers respond with little enthusiasm...

...But by 1983, most management negotiators had taken off their velvet gloves, demanding heavy givebacks and ceasing to pretend they had something to offer in return...

...The Canadian Labour Congress, that country's equivalent of the AFL-CIO, adopted a "no concessions" policy in 1982, recognizing that the entire movement is only as strong as the weakest union contract...

...Today they are winning elections...

...And we are, indeed, in a new era...

...But the rank and file would give a different answer: concessions...

...In Toledo, Ohio, for example, some shop floor union representatives initiated a solidarity committee which raised $5,000 for the the Greyhound drivers there...

...II Organizing the unorganized: Labor not only needs to strengthen its position among traditional bases, it must also establish a strong presence in the rapidly expanding service sector...

...In exchange for concessions, employers at first spoke of improving the "quality of worklife" or granting workers more say in corporate decisions...

...At a Boston meeting called to discuss concessions, one union member said, "Our International was pushing us to take a onehalf wage cut—$10 an hour...

...But top labor leaders, after calling for a Greyhound boycott, sat back and, in some cases, even hindered strike efforts...

...H International solidarity: To maintain wages at home, unions must help raise pay abroad...

...The economic crisis is not just a blip in the business cycle...

...I've got members who haven't been to a union meeting in ten years who are down on the picket line every night," said Scott Molloy, president of the city bus drivers' union in Providence, Rhode Island...

...But even in such concession- prone unions as the UAW and the Teamsters, givebacks have come under challenge from rankand- file groupings: Locals Opposed to Concessions narrowly lost a fight to defeat concessions to General Motors in 1982, and Teamsters for a Democratic Union rallied truckers in 1983 against a move to gut the Master Freight Agreement Though concessions bargaining is the most obvious threat to the labor movement, it is by no means the only one...

...Labor faces some stiff challenges: If Conglomeration: As more and more corporations diversify, individual, single-industry unions wield less and less clout...

...In Cleveland, the Central Labor Council refused to endorse an ad hoc support committee because it had not followed proper protocol...

...Yet many unionists don't even know what companies their parent corporation owns, much less whether the subsidiaries are unionized...

...In many cities, there was a spontaneous burst of activity from rank-and-filers and local officials in other unions to support the Greyhound workers...

...it is a result of long-term trends that undermine profitability...

...The alliance has endured, and the senior citizens' organizations still support the bus drivers...

...The basic commitment of the AFL-CIO remains to the diminishing number of white male workers...

...Molloy combines a belief in building alliances with a commitment to labor militancy...

...The AFL-CIO now assigns some staff to coordinated bargaining, but its official procedure for bringing unions together is so mired in protocol that cooperation remains rare...

...They're all looking for someone to pull their chestnuts out of the fire," he says...

...Although such a farsighted union strategy is a distant goal, there are notable stirrings among the rank and file and the lower-level leadership...

...Labor Pains: The Unions Regroup Hard times rally the rank and file BY JANE SLAUGHTER If you asked Lane Kirkland to cite the most important recent development in the labor movement, he would undoubtedly point to the AFL-CIO's pre-primary endorsement of a Democratic Presidential candidate...

...Many leaders seem to accede to the employers' demands almost gladly, hailing a new era of worker-management cooperation...

...Basically, we're asking for something that we're not entitled to...

...And, with few exceptions, blacks and women hold only token positions in the upper reaches of the union hierarchy...

...Wilson eventually received a 22 per cent wage cut from its employees, and the Food and Commercial Workers accepted Wilson's wage as the industry standard...

...This debate is one vital sign that labor is not as moribund as it appears...

...His local faces negotiations at the end of this year, and he says his members will take direct action on the job if management even proposes concessions...

...of the early Depression—who made it happen...

...We're in a war...

...Today, it is clear that concessions are not a product of economic doldrums but a strategy—a game plan that employers intend to follow as long as they can get away with it...

...And last year he was organizing support for fellow Amalgamated Transit Union members during the Greyhound strike...

...In lobbying campaigns, it must push for new Federal employment programs—and not just traditional public works to rebuild our railroads, bridges, sewers, and highways, but also public child care and even public steel production...

...Union locals have set up strike support coalitions so they will not to be caught off guard next time there is a walkout similar to Greyhound's...

...Concession bargaining entered the vocabulary of the labor movement in 1979 at the Chrysler Corporation and quickly spread to businesses in almost every industry...

...Labor's approach to the candidates is the same as its approach to the employers: It waits for the crumbs to fall...

...When he became a bus driver some twelve years ago, Molloy helped organize a coalition to lobby for free rides for the elderly...

...At General Motors' Packard Electric Division in Warren, Ohio, the union membership spurned the leadership-backed "job security proposal" by more than two to one and, shortly thereafter, voted to replace almost the entire bargaining committee with new officers pledged to oppose concessions...

...By and large, unions have acquiesced in this process...

...As long as the economy was growing, the strategy seemed to be successful (at least for the already organized...

...Employers have responded with a multifaceted strategy for rescuing themselves: Move to cheap labor areas...

...Today, the concept of a labor party has far more If the labor movement is to turn itself around credence among the new progressive local leaders in this decade, the people who are schooling themthan it does at the top, just as industrial unionism selves now, in the hard, dreary days of the midwas supported by radical union activists long before 1980s, will be the ones to make it happen...

...Labor has to have its own strategy, based on the needs of working people, for this period of protracted economic crisis...

...In Boston, after the state labor federation took over responsibility for strike activities, picketing lapsed and the buses resumed operation...

...And with the January 1984 comparable- worth decision in the state of Washington, unionists are optimistic that pay equity is a winnable demand, one with the potential to rally the spirits of unionized women and attract many more into labor's ranks...

...Other leaders, and much of the rank and file, are less sanguine about concessions but see no alternative...

...The demand for pay equity for women workers is now firmly accepted as a basic tenet of the labor movement...

...The debacle of 1984 will come and go...

...Labor has been strongest when it's been leading others," says Molloy, who has written a history of his own local...

...U New technologies: American business has entered a period of rapid technological change, which is eliminating millions of jobs and downgrading millions more...

...But union drives have yet to take on the needed character of a crusade...

...Steel while profits from its Marathon Oil subsidiary continue to roll in...

...Steel's coal holdings will not ruffle U.S...

...The coalition provided legal and picket-line assistance a nd enlisted the aid of women's organizations...

...There seemed to be no reason to risk biting the corporate hand that fed labor...

...After the settlement, the committee began a second project—aiding the Teamster local's strike against concessions at Vroman Foods, Inc...

...In a November 1983 speech that reflected the conventional wisdom of union leaders, UAW Vice President Stephen Yokich said his union would "maintain [the UAW's] more than thirty-five-year commitment not to resist the introduction of new technology...

...When the CIO finally minorities, women, senior citizens, peace activists, exploded onto the scene in the late 1930s, it was and environmentalists—is required if labor is to play those activists—schooled in the hard, dreary days an independent role in the nation's political life...

...For most of the period since World War II, it assumed that prosperity would continue forever, and tailored its policies accordingly...

...But we'd been down supporting the Greyhound people and we said, 'no way.' Then somebody from the union called me to support Mondale...

...Many locals are now questioning—and in some cases rejecting—quality-of-worklife programs...

...Economic recovery and the renewed profitability of many industries have reduced workers' fears, and the demonstrated inability of concessions to save jobs has convinced many that they have nothing to lose by fighting...

...they built caucuses, put out newsletters, and slowly earned their stripes...

...But little more than a year after the 1982 agreement, Wilson Foods, a unionized concern, went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, claiming burdensome labor costs...

...Thus, Walter Reuther could aptly call the auto factories of the 1950s "gold-plated sweatshops...

...Such efforts could grow into the beginnings of multi-union cooperation against conglomerates...

...The AFL-CIO supported the Boston firefighters, for example, in their Supreme Court challenge to affirmative action...

...For example, a United Mine Workers strike at U.S...

...When a company threatens to close a plant unless the union gives in, few have been willing to call management's bluff...

...Jane Slaughter, the author of "Concessions—And How to Beat Them," is a staff writer for Labor Note...

...weaken the unions...

...Five UAW locals at GM withdrew from them because the company was using the programs to change work rules, had announced a plant closing, and had eliminated jobs...

...And Pete Kelly, who for decades led an isolated opposition effort in the UAW, was elected president of his 3,000-member local in 1983 and subsequently won a seat on the national GM bargaining committee...

...We need new, imaginative tacticscorporate campaigns, working on the community's issues...

...do away with nettlesome safety, environmental, and hiring regulations...

...But there are those who say "hell, no...

...Seldom have they attempted to give workers control over how—or whether—innovations will be introduced...

...Though the recession has eased, the business community continues to press for concessions, dispelling the popular notion that they were meant to provide short-term relief to "truly needy" corporations...

...Opponents of concessions argue that many companies have closed down despite generous givebacks, and that concessions pit worker against worker to see who can work cheapest—surely a dead end for organized labor...

...The whole posture of negotiating is changed," a steel industry executive told The Wall Street Journal in 1982...

...But once the union leadership accepted the notion that labor need not increase its share of corporate profits, it was caught in a trap...

...install new technology...

...In the last few years, the old assumptions, rules, and customs of collective bargaining have been thrown out the window as management rolled back wage gains and watered down work rules established over the past five decades...

...But it must...

...Labor relied on the expanding American economy rather than on the mobilization of its membership...

...And the Women's Organizing Campaign, a similar project in the Washington/Baltimore area, was abandoned in December 1983 after signing up a total of only fifteen employees...