The
War On Working Americans Part I
By Stephen Lendman
27 August, 2007
Countercurrents.org
As
Labor Day approaches, what better time to assess the state of working
America. It's under assault and weakened by decades of eroding rights
in the richest country in the world once regarded as a model democratic
state. It's pure nonsense in a nation always dedicated to wealth and
power, but don't try finding that discussed in the mainstream. Today,
it's truer than ever making the struggle for equity and justice all
the harder. That's what ordinary working people now face making beating
those odds formidable at the least.
In a globalized world, the
law of supply and demand is in play with lots more workers around everywhere
than enough jobs for them. It keeps corporate costs low and profits
high and growing with Business Week (BW) magazine reporting in its April
9 issue "the share of (US) national income going to corporate profits
(compared to labor) is hovering around a 50 year high." BW then
quoted Harvard economist Richard Freeman's research paper saying only
"a global pandemic that kills millions of people" could cause
a labor shortage and elevate worker bargaining power.
There's little in sight,
and the result is a huge reserve army of unemployed or underemployed
working people creating an inevitable race to the bottom in a corporatized
marketplace. It harms workers everywhere, including in developed nations.
They're outsourcing good jobs abroad to lower wage countries and pressuring
workers to do more for less because they've got little bargaining power
to fight back. More on this below.
Organized Labor in
the US - Its Rise and Decline
Organized labor's rise began
modestly and was fragile in the earliest days of the republic. It gained
strength in good economic times, then lost it in downturns like the
depression in 1873. By the 1880s, things were better as the nation underwent
rapid industrialization. With it came rising prosperity and workers
wanting a share of the benefits. They turned to unions for help with
skilled artisans leading the way helping the unskilled as well in their
efforts to organize.
New labor organizations arose,
older ones expanded, and as they did, they grew more active and militant.
It led to the "great uprising of labor" in 1886, including
the landmark Chicago May 4 Haymarket Riot protesting police violence
against strikers the previous day. Its impact was hugely negative at
first. It forced organized labor to regroup and settle in for a long
period of recovery.
This was at a time the incipient
labor movement was over two million and rising beginning with its organizing
efforts launching it in the 1870s. By the 1880s, it had enough strength
to stage huge strikes for better pay and working conditions like the
struggle for an eight hour day that had 80,000 strikers parading peacefully
down Chicago's main Michigan Avenue on May 1, 1886 in what's now regarded
as the first ever May Day Parade.
Workers were helped from
community-based emerging independent political parties sensitive to
their rights. That's unheard of today in an age where no effective political
party stands for working people despite Democrats and Republicans saying
they do. Workers are now on their own. They're left to struggle in a
global marketplace with pathetically little help weak unions can provide.
Earlier in the 19th century,
the first national union arose as workers began asserting their rights.
It was called the National Labor Union (NLU), emerged after the Civil
War, but was short-lived. Next came the Knights of Labor in 1869 with
a mandate to protect all workers including women and blacks after 1883.
They were represented by industry groups rather than trade and skill
level that was common until then. Its goals were high but achievements
few at a time of widespread worker repression in the 1880s. It led to
its decline as a more resilient union emerged the result of disaffection
with the Knights.
It was called the American
Federation of Labor (AFL) and was founded by Samuel Gompers in 1886
to replace its predecessor, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor
Unions. The ill-fated American Railway Union (ARU) followed in 1893,
the largest industrial union of its day for a time, and the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW) that at its peak in the 1920s had 100,000
members.
The Wobblies are still around
102 years after Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs and others founded the
union in 1905 as a commitment to working people in their struggle with
corporate employers. It's motto was "an injury to one is an injury
to all," its goal was revolutionary, and it's still true to its
root ideology today as stated in the current IWW Constitution:
"The working class and
the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so
long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people.....Between
(workers and employers) a struggle must go on until the workers of the
world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production,
abolish the (unfair) wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth....It
is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism....By
organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society
within the shell of the old."
That philosophy under dedicated
men like Haywood, Debs and others set the Wobblies on a collision course
with government and big business that tried to crush it. During WW I
in 1917, it was vicious under Woodrow Wilson's Justice Department (DOJ).
It used the repressive Espionage and Sedition Acts to raid and disrupt
union meeting halls across the country. It's the same tactic used today
against Latino immigrants and Muslims in the concocted "war on
terrorism" and the one against undocumented workers.
In 1917 and later, Wilson's
DOJ acted much the same way arresting 165 Wobbly leaders on the grounds
they hindered the war effort by using their First Amendment right to
speak out against it. They were tried near war's end in 1918, all convicted,
and given long prison terms under a Democrat President thought of reverentially
today. Bill Haywood was luckier. After conviction, he was released on
bail and fled to the Soviet Union where he remained until his death,
but the IWW was never again the same.
They were hammered again
from 1918 - 21 during the infamous Palmer Raids under Wilson Attorney
General Mitchell Palmer. He targeted radical left wing groups like the
Wobblies at the time of the first "Red Scare" after the 1917
Russian Revolution. It launched J. Edgar Hoover's career in the DOJ
Bureau of Investigation's new General Intelligence Division that later
became the FBI in 1935. The IWW is still around, still dedicated to
its founding principles, but it's worldwide membership is only around
2000, mostly in the US.
The AFL fared much better.
It became the largest union in the first half of the 20th century even
after the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)
in 1935 with which it merged in 1955. Today, it's still the country's
largest federation of unions. Its web site claims a membership of around
10 million workers, even after the Service Employees International Union
(SEIU), Teamsters, UNITE-HERE and United Food and Commercial Workers
(UFCW) broke away from the federation in 2005. The United Brotherhood
of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBC) did as well in 2001, and
the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) left in 2006.
They formed a new Change to Win federation in September, 2005 representing
about 5.5 million workers. It likely left AFL-CIO with fewer members
than it claims with its true size closer to 8 million or less.
AFL-CIO's state is a metaphor
for the times. Organized labor today is weak in the face of declining
membership and corporate dominance with workers losing out in a globalized
world. It's fall has been long-term and painful with worker rights hammered
since the 1980s. It's a long way today from when the landmark Wagner
Act passed in 1935 under Franklin Roosevelt. It established the National
Labor Relations Board (NLRB) guaranteeing labor the right to bargain
collectively on equal terms with management for the first time ever,
but it wasn't an act of kindness.
It came at the height of
The Great Depression when those in power feared the worst. FDR and Congress
acted to save capitalism at a time they feared mass worker hostility
might boil over like it did in 1917 Soviet Russia. Like all other worker
victories, this one came through struggle. It was from organizing, pressing
their demands, taking to the streets, going on strike, holding boycotts,
battling police and National Guard forces supporting management against
working people, paying with their blood and lives and finally achieving
results. They got an eight-hour day, a living wage, and on-the-job benefits
because strong unions went head-to-head with management and won. It's
worlds different now with corporate giants in bed with friendly governments,
and Democrats and Republicans vying to see which party can be more accommodative.
From the 19th century forward,
it was never easy for labor from the height of the movement's strength
to the present. Unions were always disadvantaged even at a time of reasonable
labor-management harmony. The passage of the harsh 1947 Taft-Hartley
Labor-Management Relations Act showed how tenuous their position always
was. Harry Truman vetoed the bill but was overridden. He called it a
"slave labor bill" and then hypocritically used it 10 times,
the most ever by any President to this day. The law throttles organized
labor by giving the President power to stop strikes by court-ordered
injunction for 80 days. He can claim the national interest, some other
one, or none at all that's always the same one - to help corporate management
deny workers their rights.
Taft-Hartley is still the
law and was last invoked by GW Bush in the summer of 2002 against 10,500
west coast dock workers "locked out" (not striking) by the
Pacific Maritime Association representing shipping companies and terminal
operators.
Earlier in 2001 and new in
office, Bush showed his anti-labor stripes straightaway. He invoked
the Railway Labor Act blocking a threatened strike by 10,000 mechanics,
cleaners and custodians at Northwest Airlines set for March 12. He acted
again against United Airlines' 15,000 mechanics in December. He also
took management's side in August, 2006 against Northwest's 8700 flight
attendants' planned job action against the bankrupt airline's unfair
demands for huge wage cuts and increases in hours worked. Bill Clinton
was just as unfriendly invoking the Railway Labor Act against American
Airline's pilots and to prevent railroad strikes 13 times.
Laws like these, and Presidents'
willingness to use them, crushed the spirit and letter of the Wagner
Act. They greatly weakened or revoked hard won provisions, and as a
consequence, diminished union clout. Taft-Hartley allows stiff penalties
for union violations but minimal ones for companies. It enacted a list
of "unfair (union) labor practices" prohibiting jurisdictional
strikes (relating to worker job assignments), secondary boycotts (against
firms doing business with others being struck), wildcat strikes, sit-downs,
slow-downs, mass-picketing against scabs brought it, closed shops (in
which employees must join unions), union contributions to federal political
campaigns, and more while legalizing employer interventions aimed at
preventing unionizing drives.
It began a process of gradual
erosion of union power to bargain collectively. That's their weapon
now weakened because of devious employer tactics. They can illegally
fire union sympathizers (thousands each year) and get away with only
minor wrist slap fines after years of expensive litigation to prove
wrongdoing. Further, employers can fire workers for any lawful reason
like incompetence or no stated reason at all. Even the right to strike
is neutralized with employers able to hire replacements or threaten
to ship jobs offshore. With government on their side, they're empowered
to fire union workers and legally replace them with lower-paid scabs
or Latino immigrants.
The Reagan administration
marked the beginning of the current trend in its first year. He was
contemptuous of organized labor while hypocritically saying "I
support unions and the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively."
He showed it in August, 1981 by firing 11,000 striking PATCO air traffic
controllers, jailing its leaders, fining the union millions of dollars,
and effectively busting it in service to the monied interests backing
him. It was a shot across organized labor's bow and a clear message
to business and industry of what to expect from a friendly Republican
President. Nothing changed since under Democrat or Republican administrations
with workers unable to match the power and influence of capital. The
toll ever since has been devastating.
Union membership has been
in steady decline from its post-war high of 34.7% in the 1950s. It held
fairly constant through most of the 1970s at around 24% where it stood
in 1979. At the end of the Reagan era, it was down to 16.8% and is currently
around 12% overall with about 36% of government workers unionized but
only 7.4% of them in the private sector. It's the lowest it's been since
the beginning of the mass unionization struggles of the 1930s and in
the private sector in over 100 years. It's because of Democrat and Republican
antipathy to organized labor and corporate threats to close plants and
outsource jobs. It's forced workers to take pay cuts and fewer benefits
that are dropping to where they'll be none, and they'll be on their
own to live or die by market-based rules rigged against them.
George Bush supports corporate
interests aiming to crush unions so they have free reign to treat workers
any way they wish or go find other work. In the wake of 9/11, he took
on public sector unions straightaway. He denied 170,000 new Department
of Homeland Security (DHS) employees their civil service protection
and right to bargain collectively. Those affected included Transportation
Security Administration (TSA) newly federalized airport screeners. They
lost their right to unionize in the name of national security that could
as easily been for any reason or none at all. But this was just for
starters. Bush also wants federal positions contracted out to private
companies. That jeopardizes 850,000 federal employees likely to get
lower pay, fewer benefits, loss of other unionized rights, and many
of them ending up out of work.
Overall, organized workers
always get higher wages and greater benefits, which explains why strong
unions are vital. The evidence comes from David Sirota in his his 2006
book, "Hostile Takeover." He showed:
-- 89% of union members have
employer-paid health care coverage compared to 67% for nonunion members;
as fewer companies now provide it, those numbers are lower; in addition,
companies continue making employees pay a greater share of the cost
of coverage;
-- employers pay a larger
share of union member health care premiums than nonunion members get
(but the percentage is falling);
-- over two-thirds of union
members have short-term disability insurance compared to about one-third
for nonunion workers;
-- union members get about
26% more vacation time and 14% more total paid leave than nonunion workers;
and
-- Economic Policy Institute
(EPI) data show union influence gets high school graduating members
about 8.8% more pay than nonunion workers.
Greater worker clout under
unions is why management wants to destroy them. It's to deny working
people their right to organize, earn more and get greater benefits corporations
don't want to provide. It's happening in the gilded age of George Bush,
and a recent example came in a ruling late last year when his administration's
NLRB ruled 3-2 against registered nurses' right to union membership
if they perform certain minimal supervisory duties.
It was in a case where United
Auto Workers (UAW) were trying to organize nurses at a Taylor, Michigan-based
hospital. US labor law doesn't guarantee supervisors the right to organize
making the NLRB ruling hugely important for up to eight million workers
in other trades. It may potentially deny their right henceforth to qualify
for union representation if employers want to use this ruling to add
enough supervisory responsibilities to employees' job descriptions to
throw them into a union-exempt category.
Bush further ended the Clinton
administration's regulation requiring federal agencies vet companies'
compliance with the law when awarding federal contracts. He also issued
harsh anti-union, anti-worker executive orders (EOs) as well as a tsunami
of other repressive ones. He barred automatic union-recognition agreements
on federally funded construction projects, abolished labor-management
cooperation partnerships aimed at improving productivity and working
conditions, and mandated contractors henceforth must inform employees
they no longer had to join a union without having to tell them it's
their legal right.
Just the way Ronald Reagan
busted PATCO, George Bush tipped his hand straightaway in office. He's
a company man and union-hater, so henceforth it's been open season on
workers and their rights under his administration. His policies range
from:
-- a one-sided support for
management;
-- stripping workers of their
right to unionize;
-- cutting pay raises for
1.8 million federal workers on the pretext of a "national emergency;"
-- denying millions overtime
pay;
-- appointing anti-union
officials;
-- scheming to weaken (and
then end) retirement security by replacing Social Security with risky
private accounts managed by Wall Street sharks that so far has gotten
nowhere because of public opposition to it;
-- weakening environmental
regulations and protections; and more in an endless war on workers in
service to corporate interests that elected and own him.
The failed "immigration
reform" legislation was, in fact, a Trojan Horse. It's down but
not dead and remains a thinly veiled scheme targeting all workers. It's
a dagger aimed straight at organized labor in a plan to create a workplace
of unempowered serfs, a "bracero America," including US citizens
having few or no benefits and no security. If this legislation ever
becomes law, workers will be at the mercy of business to hire and fire
them at will.
Another anti-labor tool is
the repressive Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arm. It conducts paramilitary border and
workplace assaults on undocumented Latino workers as part of a larger
agenda to disenfranchise all working Americans and deny them the right
to bargain collectively with management through unions. By targeting
undocumented workers first, the eventual aim is to create a large exploitable
disposable reserve army worker pool; strip all workers of their rights;
empower employers to offer low wage, low or no benefit jobs; and pretty
much be able to operate as they please.
The Employee Free
Choice Act (EFCA) - Some Hope for Worker Rights Now Denied
EFCA was introduced to "amend
the (landmark pro-labor) National Labor Relations Act (passed in 1935)"
that's been systematically dismembered piece by piece ever since. Its
aim was to "establish an efficient system to enable employees to
form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory
injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and
for other purposes." On June 26, Senate Republicans blocked labor's
top legislative priority by preventing the bill's supporters from getting
the 60 votes needed to end debate and bring it to a vote.
For now the bill is dead,
but if it ever passes, it will change federal law on worker rights.
They'll henceforth be able to organize by signing cards authorizing
union representation, penalize employers violating worker rights to
do it, and establish new mediation and arbitration processes for first-contract
disputes. It might also end or slow down the firing, demoting, laying
off, or suspending without pay of over 20,000 US workers annually because
of their union activities.
The bill was introduced in
the 108th and 109th Republican-controlled Congresses but failed to pass.
It was introduced again in the 110th Congress on February 5, 2007, got
233 co-sponsors by month's end, and passed in the House March 1, 2007
for the first time. On March 2, it was placed on the Senate calendar
where leading Democrats expected it to pass despite Republican opposition.
They were wrong.
That's bad news for a bill
that would have won back some worker rights after decades of losing
them. It's backed by over five dozen organizations including the NAACP,
United for a Fair Economy, Jobs with Justice and numerous other civil,
human and labor rights groups. The US Chamber of Commerce and other
organizations joined with big business against the bill. They oppose
all worker rights, and their lobbying paid off. They claimed the bill
allowed them the right to organize before employers can explain why
doing it is not in their best interest. Ignored is that union workers
always have more rights that include higher pay, greater benefits and
added job security. That's bad for business and why corporate giants
fought to kill the bill.
They have a powerful ally
in the White House making their job a lot easier. In a mid-February
speech before a business lobby group, Dick Cheney announced George Bush
would veto EFCA legislation if it passed on his watch. He assured those
attending this administration will keep its anti-labor record unblemished
on something polls show 77% of working Americans want but won't get
as long as George Bush is in office.
Global Unionization
- Another Potential Ray of Hope
In April editions of The
American Prospect, the Washington Post and ZNet, Harold Meyerson wrote
about "a radical new direction for the globalized economy"
in his article titled "Unions Gone Global." He noted the United
Steel Workers (USW) here are negotiating a merger with two of Britain's
largest unions to create "the first genuinely multinational trade
union" that with about three million members will be the world's
largest. Meyerson reported the goal, as USW's Gerald Fernandez put it,
is "to fight financial globalization (by) fight(ing) it globally....by
building a global union (in this case a) federation of metal, mining,
and general workers."
The partners in this one
stated a commitment to "fund human rights and union rights in parts
of Africa and Colombia" where more unionists are killed annually
than anywhere else, and the country gets billions in US aid each year
to help out. They also plan a global effort "to protect employees'
retirement benefits" from corporate predators wanting to end them.
For now, there's no way to know if the idea behind the merger will spread,
whether workers here and abroad will benefit from it, or even if the
USW and their British partners will follow through effectively on their
committed aims to help win back what unionized workers have been losing
for years.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site
at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information
Hour Saturdays on TheMicroEffect.com at noon US central time.
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