The Best and Worst of American Unions
Waldman, Steven
THE BEST & THE WORST OF AMERICAN UNIONS by Steven Waldman The words of Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor, have often been cited to summarize everything that is...
...Just as featherbedding increases the cost of construction, the shakedown has been factored into the price of doing business...
...The migrant workers, growers, and Campbell's announced a three-way pact in February 1986 in which the growers agreed to give limited medical insurance, a paid holiday, and an increase in wages from an average of $3.95 an hour to $4.50 for workers on mechanized farms...
...To improve the union's image, for example, he has virtually abandoned his customary black shirt and white tie in favor of business suits...
...International Longshoremen's Association—The mafia may rob pensions, break kneecaps, and murder critics, but according to the President's Commission on Organized Crime, the mob "continues to display an adaptability to technological innovation on the waterfront...
...American Federation of Teachers—Most education reform is a potential threat to teachers...
...It's because of unions...
...Tivo years later, the city began requiring contractors to employ one minority trainee for every four journeyman members...
...When demands by blacks for membership increased, the union simply restricted its total size...
...When the state Commission on Human Rights and the state Supreme Court ordered Local 28 to admit some blacks, the union refused...
...The turning point came in the fall of 1985 when Campbell's officials, after prodding from the churches and the commission, took an unprecedented step...
...The company still refused to invest significantly in new equipment...
...The contract bargained with the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc...
...I told them, if you think you're going to put it up in a week you're crazy," Andy Raubeson, president of the SRO Housing Corporation, told union leaders...
...The Justice Department is even planning the drastic step of trying to place the international union in trusteeship—a move the Reagan administration was less eager to make when it needed the union's political support...
...the vice chair of the Federation is on the City Planning Commission...
...THE BEST & THE WORST OF AMERICAN UNIONS by Steven Waldman The words of Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor, have often been cited to summarize everything that is wrong with unions: "What does labor want...
...New York City local 6A representing cement workers last year gained the distinction of being the first AFLCIO union to be placed in court trusteeship because of thorough mafia infiltration...
...In 1981, the Teamsters general executive board appointed Presser a national vice president and in 1982 made him president...
...Angelo Fosco, the longtime national president, has appointed several "special international representatives?' While they have not yet negotiated groundbreaking trade agreements, the quality of the appointments is undisputed: Al Pilotto distinguished himself as Chicago territorial boss of La Cosa Nostra, while Matthew Trupiano gained similar experience in St...
...After all, if concessions are needed and you don't want to stick it to future workers, then current union members will have to take deeper pay cuts...
...Heinz company settled with FLOC in April...
...But diversification has its troubling side too: the Teamsters now represent the Flint, Michigan police department and are organizing others...
...He concluded that growers were not budging because they were in no position to...
...It sells out the union's future, in the form of the new hires, the younger workers!' Teamsters rank and file are also ripped off when their dues go to pay for the lavish salaries of union officials...
...The experimentation has taken many forms—a wages-for-power swap at an airline, a union-run supermarket in Philadelphia, a reduction of work rules at an auto plant in California, a union-built homeless shelter in Los Angeles...
...Seniority arrangements, for all their benefits, have always lowered the status and opportunities of new workers...
...The raid party included not just rank and file, but two local presidents, one vicepresident, two secretary-treasurers, three organizers, and at least ten business agents...
...The removal of discriminatory barriers along with improvements in wages, benefits, and work schedules have helped transform the "fly girl" job into a career...
...The New York building trades unions, by comparison, recently stalled an effort to build permanent housing for the homeless because, for cost reasons, it would have used prefabricated materials, which require less labor than housing built from scratch, although more than that not built at all...
...Recognizing that bad teachers affect both educational quality and morale, AFT officials in Toledo helped devise a system in which teachers could be fired if both the principal and a peer review committee agreed they were incompetent...
...You had these little nuns get up at stockholders' meetings saying I have one share and you're a dirty so and so," says John Dunlop, secretary of labor in the Ford administration, who was involved in the FLOC battle...
...This shows that if someone announces a closing you just don't have to sit back and take it," says Tom Medeiros, a member of the union...
...Another worker, from another union, must also be present to push the button when people, instead of materials, are going up the elevator...
...For example, the federal government placed the Central States Pension Fund—also known as the mafia bank—in trusteeship after the Teamsters spent millions from retirement benefits on mafia-related loans to Las Vegas casinos...
...I'm going to tell you, I'm not going to let up on these people!' If there's rank and file discontent with Presser it's difficult to tell since his rise to the presidency has rarely been inconvenienced by a democratic election...
...We really believe that no matter whose name was on the plant it is our plant!' Association of Flight Attendants—The first president of what is now the Association of Flight Attendants was fired in the middle of her term in 1946...
...Their white knight turned out to be the village pauper...
...They agreed to negotiate with the migrant workers—people who didn't work for them...
...The President's Commission on Organized Crime estimates that the mob adds about 20 percent to the cost of construction in New York...
...And 23 of the largest cucumber growers in Ohio and Michigan have also signed agreements...
...The commission's report last year pointed out that when modern containerization techniques for unloading greater amounts of cargo were introduced, organized crime immediately moved in to profit from it...
...For example, Jerry Tucker, former assistant director of the UAW and a talented organizer, was fired by the central leadership for challenging the UAW-leadership-backed candidate for the regional directorship...
...A year later another court ruled the low rate was part of a concerted, often elaborate, effort to keep minorities out...
...In addition, they initiated an Employee Assistance Plan that is considered a model by experts in workplace health because it emphasizes teaching flight attendants to refer troubled colleagues to medical treatment or psychological counseling rather than relying on supervisors to do it...
...The first bid came from the Harbour Group tool company, which already owned several tool plants...
...To its discredit, the AFA, along with the other flight attendants unions, in 1982 accepted a two-tier wage system that passes the burden of concessions on to future members...
...The UFCW provides the model for the wrong way to do it...
...Merit pay can be used by principals to punish dissident teachers...
...That local hasn't held a contested election in 17 years...
...More political power to follow selfish agendas...
...When Karl Marx wrote about the army of unemployed suppressing wages he probably had not envisioned a battalion of 21-year-old women yearning to see Hong Kong, but the effect is the same...
...Supreme Court ruled that because of the "egregious" history of discrimination and "patently contumaceous" refusal to abide by court orders, an affirmative action goal of 29 percent was justified...
...Multi-tiered systems are one of the most insidious concessions management has devised and unions accepted...
...Not only has the AFT been consistently ahead of its larger rival, the NEA, it has made educational improvement a top priority and, in some cases, has been down right innovative...
...Most significantly, in emphasizing "professionalism" he has continued to insist teachers should take a series of often useless education courses before they are fully certified...
...The federal NLRB doesn't have jurisdiction over farm workers, a testimony to the power of agribusiness...
...But with UAW president Douglas Fraser's appointment to the Chrysler board in 1980, the union adopted a radical principle: unions can take responsibility for economic growth...
...When Texas passed its comprehensive education reform package in 1984, three teachers' associations opposed it and one supported it— the state affiliate of the AFT...
...The flight attendants are still judged by some rather unusual employment standards...
...Not for leading some disruptive strike that left thousands of untanned vacationers stranded on a runway...
...In 1983, the company announced it was going to jettison the plant, but showed no interest in finding a buyer who would agree not to close it...
...Over the past six years, as wages in supermarkets and meatpacking plants plummeted, his salary nearly doubled to $200,000...
...If things get only slightly better—or if they get worse—all the powers we can exercise at the bargaining table or in the legislative arena will not be enough to stop an angry public from getting even with the public schools...
...Sheet Metal Workers' International Association, Local 28—The building trades have always been—and still are—among the least racially integrated jobs in the country...
...But Shanker is not likely to retreat on most reform issues...
...But drawing .on interviews with academics, unionists, and labor reporters, it is possible to identify the unions exhibiting those qualities that the next labor movement should encourage and those it should purge...
...After years of labor-management relations so bitter that the plant was referred to as "the battleship," introduction of employee control dropped the absentee rate from 20 percent to 2.5 percent today...
...But things have begun to change...
...They have, for example, aggressively lobbied the Federal Aviation Administration to require nonflammable cabin materials, maintain an adequate number of emergency exits, and reduce carry-on luggage, which sometimes falls on people...
...We think [two tier contracts] are abhorrent," says Al Zack, spokesman for the UFCW...
...In some cases management has mellowed...
...Not only could flight attendants not marry then, but they couldn't get pregnant, be older than 32, be black, have improperly manicured fingernails, be even slightly overweight, or have children...
...These agreements also include incentive pay plans that tie some wages to company profits...
...The ILA probably has the highest ratio of indicted officials to members-115 officials of the 69,000-member union faced charges between 1979 and 1984...
...To stop the spread of these contracts would have required not just the right policy position— in 1985 the UFCW national leadership came out against two-tier contracts—but political courage on the part of union leaders and selflessness from the rank and file...
...Teacher exams can be an arbitrary and demeaning way of judging talent...
...TV and newspaper accounts referred to Campbell's role in maintaining the deplorable conditions...
...In fact, only 10 percent of the union's members are now truckers...
...The union now has both legislative and contractual rights to investigate many health and safety problems without management approval...
...But in 1982, the conglomerate, citing declining profits, demanded a 20 percent wage and benefit cut...
...There are now more than 300 health and safety representatives around the country paid for by the companies but hired by, and answerable to, the UAW...
...The UAW and the auto companies have also set up a $1 billion job bank to retrain and reassign workers who lose their jobs due to new technology, plant consolidation, or other efficiency measures...
...Dunlop chaired a commission that was instrumental in pressuring Campbell's to negotiate...
...The AFT has campaigned for a national teacher exam for new teachers and for starting education earlier...
...If a contract allows you to do certain work at $8 an hour or at $12 an hour, you're not very smart to use the $12-an-hour workers," Eugene Brown, an official at Ralph's Grocery Co...
...We want more school houses, and less jails...
...In a recent article, he offered hope—and a threat...
...The union went on strike and launched a community-wide "Stop Milking Morse" campaign...
...They have been very effective in keeping the safety issues up front," says Patricia Goldman, vice chair of the National Transportation Safety Board...
...In 1984, it negotiated a clause under which the auto companies contribute two to four cents for every hour worked into a huge pool, now totalling $30 million, for research and worker health and safety training...
...Not only was the shelter ready for occupancy in ten days, but the well-connected union leaders were able to cut through reams of paperwork in 72 hours, even receiving an exemption from the distinctly L.A...
...Look at it this way: on average, from 1979 to 1984, a Teamster official was indicted by federal authorities every eight days...
...The same pattern was repeated in Arkansas...
...Fundamentally, it is one with a broad view of both what to demand and how to demand it...
...Local 28 members put down their tools and stopped working in protest...
...The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has made a major contribution toward improving education by viewing these potential problems as hazards that need to be overcome, rather than as justifications for blocking reform...
...Last month we had one of the best orders yet...
...One month after FLOC focused on Philadelphia National, sympathetic depositors threatened to pull $500,000 out of the bank...
...AFT has also pushed hard, along with the NEA, for perhaps the most important reform— higher salaries...
...of Scotland...
...But what earns the federation praise is that it has shown that union political clout can be as noble as it is effective...
...By 1974, only 3 percent of the union's total membership was non-white, even though the available work pool was 29 percent minorities...
...But such reforms notwithstanding, cleaning up the Teamsters is no easy task...
...Representing both meatpacking and retail grocery clerks, the one million-member UFCW is diverse and includes many wise and strong individual unions, most notably Local 1357, which established worker-owned 0 & 0 supermarkets in Philadelphia...
...The local also defiantly ignored city attempts to integrate the construction trades...
...It appealed for another bidder and got one, International Twist Drill Holding Ltd...
...In June, a bankruptcy court sold Morse to Twist Drill...
...Even when they're not flouting the law, the Teamsters leadership serves its members badly...
...The Kroger supermarket chain has workers with five different wages ranging from $6.34 an hour to $10.02...
...Giving schools the power to fire incompetent teachers can undermine the job security of good but feisty ones...
...Last June, the U.S...
...Valasquez founded FLOC in 1967...
...It argued that since Morse still had a reputation for high-quality products, the plant could turn a profit if only an investor would help modernize it...
...Is the Teamsters's reputation really deserved...
...The union again organized a community effort to keep it open, gaining a crucial promise from the mayor to seize the factory under the powers of eminent domain if necessary...
...Moreover, while some unions have negotiated agreements in which the tiers merged after five years, many of the UFCW's allow for permanent castes...
...Ralph's laid off, or demoted, 1,800 high-paid clerks so it could use more lower-paid clerks...
...He told a Teamsters meeting in Cleveland: "I could have imagined a lot of stronger, tougher guys going there, and tough truck drivers, but I was looking through the pictures, and you know who was in the front line of a real wild fight with state highway patrolmen and police there...
...One of the "clean" ones, the current president, Jackie Presser, is currently under indictment for putting mob-tied "ghost employees" on the payroll of his Cleveland local...
...Presser's union career began when his father, a national Teamsters official, appointed him secretary-treasurer of local 507 in Cleveland...
...Established originally at Campbell's request to set up anti-poverty programs, not collective bargaining agreements, it soon began acting as a private National Labor Relations Board...
...Although Campbell's denies the boycotts had any effect on sales, the effort did stain the company's Mmmm-mmmgood image, particularly when the National Council of Churches—an umbrella group representing many Protestant denominations— and several Catholic bishops threatened to join the boycott...
...more constant work and less crime," Gompers said...
...the average tenure today is ten years and climbing...
...The union then refused to abide by the scores when minorities received "unfair tutoring" and passed in unreasonably high numbers...
...The stain on the company's corporate image grew darker...
...The nicest work, if you can get it, is the job of master mechanic, who gets overtime pay—sometimes in six figures—as long as another member of his union is doing overtime, even if the master mechanic is home in bed...
...United Airlines dismissed her for getting married...
...No example has been set by William Wynn, UFCW president...
...After 13 weeks, Gulf and Western dropped the concession demands, but only hired back 375 employees, roughly half the workforce...
...Moreover, the union's outreach effort has tended to take the form of stealing workers from other unions rather than organizing the non-unionized...
...More wages even when profits are declining...
...If the power of incumbency weren't enough to assure his election, the dominance of delegates from mob-dominated locals made him a formidable candidate...
...People feel like they're listened to...
...All of the current ones, of course, were white...
...All new apprentices had to be sponsored for membership by current ones...
...There's no question the operating engineers have more featherbedding positions than any other New York City construction union in the city," says James McNamara, a construction expert in the city's office of employment...
...The commission included Douglas Fraser, former president of the United Auto Workers, a prominent Catholic leader, an Agriculture Department official under two Republican administrations, and the president of one of the Midwest's largest agribusinesses...
...Such a job pays about $50,000 a year in wages and benefits...
...Another area in which the UAW has forged ahead is in protecting workers' health and safety...
...Within a few years, you have employees working side by side, doing the same job, with virtually the same experience, getting paid dramatically different wages: a perfect recipe for low morale and division in the workforce...
...Granted, in many cases local unions had to make concessions because of intense competition from non-union chains, but they didn't have to agree to two-tier contracts...
...More benefits even when generous compensation is pricing products out of competition...
...He appealed for an eight-hour day, improved health and safety, more justice, less greed, and concluded with a somewhat dated but inspirational call for "more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright:' Labor has, in recent years, lived too much by the essence of the abridged quote rather than the loftier one, sometimes because callous management has left it little choice and sometimes because of selfishness...
...Albert Shanker, the AFT president, has the flexibility to take bolder positions than the NEA's leadership in part because he is an autocrat, but there are still issues he has held back on...
...While this type of Employee Assistance Plan is unique among unions, it is typical of the AFA's insistence that flight attendants be treated with sensitivity rather than as sex objects who are there mostly to lure businessmen aboard...
...The 225 indictments ranged from racketeering, arson, and aggravated assault to extortion, bribery, and pension fund embezzlement...
...The union again hijacked the financial dealings...
...When the accountants at Gulf and Western calculated that selling to someone who would keep the plant open was more lucrative than letting the city name its price, they quickly found a private investor, James Lambert, who made the promise...
...more books and less arsenals...
...But he has succeeded in this difficult area of organizing not just because he preached a compelling gospel, but because he followed the money...
...Over the past 15 years, FLOC has also persuaded about 80 percent of growers to install toilet facilities...
...Over the next 22 years, various courts held the local in contempt of court orders and civil rights laws, but the union discovered other ways to keep out blacks...
...Presser has made a valiant effort to change...
...One of the most hopeful events occurred in 1985 when Linda Gregg, a forklift operator from Denver and a member of the TDU policy board, was elected secretary-treasurer of the Denver local...
...It is concerned with worker power and conditions and the quality of the product or service...
...And NUMMI's product, the Chevrolet Nova, has received good reviews...
...For several years we had mentioned the tar problem," says Michael Silverstein, assistant director of occupational health and safety...
...Nobody thinks we died and went to heaven, but when we have a problem we talk it over and we solve it," says Gus Tilly, vice president of the local...
...The Best Farm Labor Organizing Committee—Baldemar Valasquez has for the past nine years campaigned with messianic fervor for probably the worst treated workers in America, migrant farmers...
...By 1982, several court orders later, the minority membership was up to 10.8 percent, but the union was again found in contempt of civil rights laws because it continued to seek whites from sister locals, had restricted use of the apprenticeship program through which blacks were supposed to enter the trade, and refused to publicize membership opportunities...
...was "well, besides the Teamsters, there's . . . ." On no other point was there so much agreement...
...The secretarytreasurer of our joint council, Bill Evans, who's had two heart attacks . . . . Bill, I want to tell you, you're a hell of a guy to take it on yourself . . . . I'm going to tell you something...
...In 1967, flight attendants stayed a year or two...
...The lesson for other unions...
...For about a hundred years Morse was the name in cutting tools...
...That was possible only because Campbell's agreed to purchase a fixed portion of growers' crops, a guarantee that allowed them to increase wages without fear the giant processor would take its business elsewhere...
...from 1983 to 1986, according to the Bureau of National Affairs, it negotiated 107 two-tier contracts, 30 percent of all such contracts...
...While society pays for the featherbedding and corruption through higher rents and building costs, the workers suffer when organized crime negotiates sweetheart deals, allows health and safety standards to be ignored, or raids union pension funds...
...The history of asbestos workers shows that company health officers know who signs their paychecks...
...United Food and Commercial Workers—All wage concessions are not created equal...
...On a national level, the UAW health and safety staff not only sets policy but sponsors detailed epidemiological studies to pinpoint problems...
...Since 1981, 26 teachers have been singled out under the program...
...What is a "good" union...
...Seldom has a man been misquoted so appropriately...
...Los Angeles County Labor Federation—The labor "bosses" of Los Angeles seem to have city hall in their pockets...
...auction block...
...Pay was often below minimum wage, workers were continuously exposed to pesticides, and most farms had inadequate or nonexistent toilet facilities...
...the union has also made a major contribution to the disintegration of New York's ports...
...But the fact is that in elections people are going to vote their own self-interest...
...Twist Drill has promised not only to keep the plant open but to make multi-million dollar modernization investments...
...The wages for the lower-paid handpickers are still being negotiated...
...The speed with which ships must be unloaded historically lent itself nicely to extortion plans as well as legitimate union organizing...
...In addition, the union has allowed industry-wide bargaining to disintegrate, in some cases setting off "whipsawing," when a company has used the concessionary agreement of one local to justify concessions from other locals...
...Most airlines have weight requirements which, though less strict than in earlier years, are extreme compared to most other service-oriented jobs...
...There are more than 100 union leaders in the Teamsters who earn more than $100,000, according to TDU...
...In addition to aiding the homeless, the Federation has helped restore a firedamaged hospice for battered women and worked with the Los Angeles archdiocese on other community projects...
...While not known for featherbedding, the Laborers union, which represents the people who clear off construction sites, is considered one of the most corrupt unions in the country...
...There are, of course, honest, effective locals within the Teamsters—many of them work in areas not traditionally associated with the union, such as government sector employees...
...Moreover, flight attendants have not fared well since deregulation...
...So in 1979 FLOC took the unusual step of bypassing the employers by launching a nationwide boycott of Campbell's...
...Each can do nothing else...
...more learning and less vice...
...Nor would we want to...
...But while they have slipped on wages in the past few years, they have excelled in other areas...
...But even if we could fool the public we cannot fool ourselves...
...The next year a court found it discriminatory and ordered various affirmative action measures taken...
...In the end it is we who must serve as the protectors of our students and our profession" United Auto Workers—One might have expected it from a hippie-turned-entrepreneur or from desperate workers faced with an immediate plant shut-down...
...UFCW supermarket workers began switching to two-tiers in the late seventies...
...In exchange for agreeing to containerization, the ILA negotiated an agreement under which members were paid a guaranteed annual income of roughly .$32,000 whether they worked or not...
...Not surprisingly, the national Teamsters board overturned the results and ordered a new election...
...Worst International Brotherhood of Teamsters—By far the most common response when I asked, "What are the worst unions...
...In the seventies, for example, corrupt local union officials got kickbacks for working with Eugene Boffa, a mafia associate who employed Teamster truck drivers and warehousemen...
...intense airline competition has put many flight attendants in the same position as steel workers: accept concessions or lose jobs...
...Between 1980 and 1987 the average teacher salary, in constant dollars, jumped from $21,673 to $25,240, in part because of teachers union lobbying...
...After years of organizing, it had gained only a few limited agreements with growers in Northern Ohio, and Third World conditions persisted...
...The local representing the Morse Tool Cutting Plant in New Bedford, Massachussetts has shown that unions can help save jobs in even the gloomiest cases, if they are savvy, persistent, and resourceful...
...We traded the new hires to preserve things for our existing people...
...For example, Local 14 of the Operating Engineers in New York demands that one person, a hoistman, be responsible solely for pushing the button that operates cargo elevators...
...of the labor movement...
...Since 1983, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), a reform group within the union, has led a successful campaign to reject three contracts, including one in 1983 that set up a dramatically lower wage for new employees...
...Unfortunately, the union has also led in the creation of two-tier wage contracts...
...The unions have been lucky to hold on to what they have...
...The second time Gregg swept the entire TDU slate in with her...
...It administered entrance exams that tested knowledge of classical music, Shakespeare and, in one case, asked which president was assassinated by Leon F Czolgosz (it was McKinley...
...During labor shortages, rather than take on new blacks, Local 28 recalled retired workers, who brought doctors' notes attesting to their fitness, or went to other unions...
...Contractors go along with both practices to buy labor peace and avoid costly delays...
...He wasn't "democratically" elected until last June at the quinquennial national convention...
...If they raised wages, and therefore tomato prices, the dominant corporate food processors to whom they sold—primarily Campbell's and Libby's—would simply announce they were taking their business to one of the dozens of other growers in Ohio...
...Grievances went from thousands to dozens...
...ordinance requiring the shelter to have a parking lot...
...A two-tier contract "not only cuts the wage bill for the employer, it divides the work force," TDU literature argued...
...they were the only union to support Reagan twice and one of the first groups to receive a presidential courtesy call in 1981...
...In 1968, Gulf and Western bought the company, and operated it profitably into the eighties...
...Though their hearts might not be in it, the New Yorkers might consider that the Los Angeles approach has a pragmatic side to it...
...Organized crime also profits from sweetheart deals in which mob-tied union officials allow companies to pay lower wages or benefits for kickbacks...
...By 1964, there was still not a single black worker in the union...
...As Bill Luddy, spokesman for the Federation, said, "If you have a favorite charity and you find out the union built a new wing for it, then the next time you go into a store that's non-union, you might think about it !' United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, Local 277—The traditional union answer to a plant closing has been to curse the darkness instead of seeking the light...
...In one case, according to the President's Commission, a union official helped the mob siphon hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Laborers dental plan...
...The union took a wage freeze and gave up three weeks vacation to help out the new boss...
...But they had never done anything until we came with concrete mortality studies ." The UAW is not without its serious defects...
...To help Twist Drill, the union gained promises of city and state aid, discussed the possibility of more wage concessions, and organized rallies featuring kilt-clad bagpipe players...
...Quality is up...
...One of the worst examples is New York City's Local 28, which has shown unparalleled creativity during its long history of keeping out blacks...
...Ironically, these contracts may backfire against the senior members who endorsed them since management now has a great incentive to squeeze out better-paid workers and hire in at the "Bscale...
...The Toledo, Ohio, affiliate has even instituted a program to weed out incompetent teachers, perhaps the trickiest reform for teachers or any other unions...
...In January, Lambert, who had financed the purchase mostly through debt, declared bankruptcy—the union claims he didn't invest in modernization either—and put the plant on the Jackie Presser has made a valiant effort to change...
...Most important, about 300 union workers spent a week constructing the shelter on a vacant city lot...
...Just a few bad apples...
...The precedent set, the H.J...
...Blacks are now employed, as are men and some slightly Rubenesque women...
...Jackie Presser was touched...
...In early 1974, the city tried to assign six minority trainees to sheetmetal contractors working on city projects...
...in Los Angeles, told The Wall Street Journal...
...While an entry-level union job paid $1,314 per month in 1982 it now pays $1,198 a month for 150 to 225 hours of work, a grueling schedule even if you get five hours off to see downtown Toledo...
...In an industry known for preserving remarkably cushy, high-paid jobs, the operating engineers still maintain the most ridiculous assortment...
...And it's not because the jobs are too highly skilled: the percentage of accountants that are black is higher than the percentage of carpenters who are...
...We think they're stupid...
...But maybe you think the most important question is not a little corruption here and there but whether the Teamsters helps its members...
...In other industry plants that have more than 100 rigid job classifications, a few absentees can cripple an assembly line and worker tedium is unrelieved...
...And all construction hiring came through the union...
...Gompers's actual statement, made in an 1893 speech to the International Labor Congress, revealed a somewhat broader, more enlightened vision of organized labor...
...To a great extent this isn't because of racist companies or indifferent government officials...
...One such study, for example, found that employees working with hot tar had a ten times greater incidence of cancer than others at the plant...
...Every big Teamster local union had some connection with organized crime," Roy Williams, a former Teamsters International president, has testified...
...It has endorsed some forms of peer review, a career ladder that adopts elements of merit pay, and special programs to attract talented new teachers...
...Boffa got an extra percentage and the company got lower labor costs...
...Three of the past five Teamsters national presidents have done time...
...In fact, the President's Commission on Organized Crime report, in a chapter on the Teamsters titled "The Most Controlled Union," estimated that the majority of Teamsters members are in locals controlled or influenced by the mob...
...International Union of Operating Engineers and the Laborers International Union of North America—These two unions represent the two ways organized labor has poisoned the construction industry: featherbedding and corruption...
...In New York, the system was paid for in part by an assessment on ship tonnage, a tax that drove many shippers to other ports...
...Electrical workers and the Teamsters also have a high proportion of such jobs on construction sites, he said...
...Harbour wanted to close the plant, take some of the machines, swipe the customer lists and, most important, elope with that prestigious Morse name to use for its own tools...
...The union is allegedly dominated by the Gambino crime family, one of whose former chiefs, Carlo Gambino, once described himself as a "labor relations consultant ." But it's not just mafia control that earns the ILA a spot on the worst list...
...More work rules that stifle productivity...
...Historically, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union has been the most vigilant and sophisticated in protecting worker health hand safety...
...The program also eliminated many job classifications...
...Even those in industries battered by low-wage foreign competition fared better...
...The persistence of corrupt, selfish, shortsighted unions will doom the labor movement...
...It has increasingly exhibited the worst elements of Big Labor thuggishness toward the rank and file...
...The Federation's executive secretary is a close advisor of the mayor and president of the Park and Recreation Commission...
...More...
...To improve the union's image, for example, he has virtually abandoned his customary black shirt and white tie in favor of business suits...
...The Federation's efforts are particularly impressive given the traditional reluctance of construction-related unions to participate in or even allow poverty programs that require volunteer or low wage labor...
...The UFCW has negotiated more such contracts than any other union...
...As a result of law suits and collective bargaining in the sixties and seventies, the age restrictions and marriage bans were lifted and maternity leaves were introduced...
...We made a tradeoff," a local leader explained after one such agreement was made for a grocery chain in the Washington-Baltimore area...
...The threat is effective not just because many of the companies are in shaky financial condition but because each opening for a flight attendant job is met with a flood of applications...
...It is effective, clean, nondiscriminatory and applies its political muscle not just for itself but for the public good...
...To broaden its attack, FLOC brought in Ray Rogers, the labor consultant credited with pioneering the modern "corporate campaign" in which unions target the financial lifelines of intransigent companies...
...15 are no longer teaching in the city...
...Only 32 percent of the contributions to the Central States Joint Board Health and Welfare Trust Fund dental plan went to members' benefits, a rather inefficient administrative cost ratio...
...Despite the odds, the reformist TDU has made some progress, scoring victories in scattered local elections in addition to contract votes...
...Most of these policies have been eliminated or relaxed, in large part through the efforts of the Association of Flight Attendants, the oldest and largest union of flight attendants and the first AFL-CIO union run by women...
...Multi-tiered systems take that to an absurd extreme by imposing the largest burden of wage concessions on new workers...
...On the first day of the 1983 convention of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), the Brotherhood of Loyal Americans and Strong Teamsters (BLAST) chartered nine buses from around the country, went to the site of the meeting, pushed aside local police, chased the group's members out of the hall, tore down banners, and took over the convention...
...But ten years ago it seemed unlikely that the union fighting hardest for a creative, flexible workplace would be the one that had fought most ferociously for stifling work rules and don'ttellme-about-declining-profits wage increases...
...Teamsters president Jackie Presser nets more than $500,000 from his various union jobs, more than twice as much as the next highest-paid American union leader, Weldon L. Mathis, secretary-treasurer of the Teamsters...
...Unfortunately, while its members probably have higher wages than they would if they weren't in a union, several of the organized crime schemes for involving labor unions have stung workers' wages and pension funds...
...Efforts to force Local 28 to integrate began in 1948, when the New York State Commission Against Discrimination ordered the union to drop its "caucasian only" contract clause...
...UAW's most important innovation was dropping the assumption that OSHA would protect workers or, more importantly, that company doctors would honestly report health and safety problems...
...We should be doing more of that...
...Another top Federation official is chairman of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency...
...One local refused until the end to comply: Local 28...
...The union responded with consultants' studies showing that Gulf and Western had invested little in plant modernization compared to its competitors...
...The AFT affiliate supported it...
...In January 1985 the Federation organized a volunteer effort to construct a 138-bed temporary homeless shelter, arranging for contractors to donate some materials, and purchasing the rest itself...
...Then there is the fellow who turns on the switch for the compressors and pumpmen who turn on pumps...
...The local changed the words, but not its process of selecting apprentices, the first step toward full union membership...
...The union wasn't thrilled with the offer...
...The group was too respectable to be ignored...
...Indeed, over the past few years the UFCW has organized more new members than any other AFL-CIO union...
...If you follow the money," says Valasquez, "you'll get to the people with real financial power...
...For example, Ford's Employee Involvement program, credited with helping the company's dramatic financial turnaround, not only brought workers in on shop-level decisions about production and work conditions, but gave workers the authority to stop assembly lines to cut down defects...
...Boffa would arrange to have corporations fire their workers and hire his at reduced wage or benefit levels...
...NUMMI), the joint General Motors Toyota venture in Fremont, California, created a similar system of small teams, with each worker trained at many tasks...
...Moreover, his hawkish views on foreign policy and his leadership of a racially polarizing New York City teachers strike in 1968 have made some liberals reluctant to join hands with him...
...As unions become more aggressive—strikes were up in 1986 for the first time in a decade—it is critical that their efforts be channeled well...
...FLOC and the churches, joined by unions and progressive groups from around the country, picketed Philadelphia National Bank, one of Campbell's major creditors...
...But occupational health and safety experts around the country agree the UAW is now the leader...
...In Tennessee, the local chapter of the National Education Association (NEA), the nation's largest teachers union, opposed the state's nationally acclaimed education reform...
...They also get paid about $40,000...
...The union got the company to use containers that reduced the tar fumes and dramatically cut the risk...
...Unions have also adopted a variety of sophisticated new methods of putting financial pressure on companies beyond setting up pickets outside the closed plant gates...
...Not to the Sheet Metal Local 400, a predominantly black local, but to the mostly white plumbers, metal workers, and carpenters unions or to sheetmetal workers unions outside of New York City...
...In 1968, the city delayed 26 contracts worth more than $6 million because Local 28 had not supplied city contractors with a single non-white worker...
...That might be a hopeful development since organized crime originally thrived in the Teamsters in large part because truckers have natural leverage—companies depend heavily on getting their goods in a timely manner...
...No union wants to take paycuts, but when they become unavoidable, unions can help construct giveback plans that spread the burden fairly...
...Just as important, plant closings, concessionary wage agreements, and the rapid rise of union busting firms have forced unions to abandon—often reluctantly—the traditional rules Steven Waldman is an editor at The Washington Monthly...
...Nevertheless, Fosco keeps his presidency by regularly informing the membership of his record, and, according to a former union vice president, by threatening to kill his opponents...
...Because there are 60,000 union locals in America, some:of the most horrendous coexisting in the same national union as some of the most angelic, to definitively select the best and worst is impossible...
...Louis...
Vol. 19 • July 1987 • No. 6
