Workplace Blog

MRZine: Labor day poses hard questions

It’s impossible to celebrate Labor Day 2005 without asking some hard questions: How organized is “organized” labor? How much of a movement is the labor “movement”? The last six weeks have torn away whatever shreds of clothing the emperor might have been wearing. We can deny the crisis no longer.

From Jon Flanders in MRZine:

The cold split that just occurred in the AFL-CIO has opened up a new page for US labor.

As Bill Fletcher has observed in several excellent articles on the issue, the “debate” leading up to the split took place far over the heads of the members of the unions who pay the salaries of the leaders.

Now those of of us on the ground of labor — the activists on the shop floor, the people who do the Jimmy Higgins work of unions, as officers of locals or active members, the people who show up on picket line rallies and labor events — are confronted with a bizarre scenario.

Helping America Get the Labor Movement It Wants

By: Art Shostak

What do we want from Labor? And why? In the aftermath of the August breakup, the Gallup Organization asked us what we thought would happen next, and what we wished might happen. We expect the split will weaken Labor, but as 58% of us hold a positive opinion about the
nations’ largest social movement, we do not want any further loss in Labor’s strength. Quite the contrary! A plurality (38%) actually wish Labor’s influence in American life would soon increase.

Why? It is not rocket science. Average Americans understand that in the nation’s City Halls, State Capitals, and Congress it is Organized Labor that especially speaks for working class folk. When exploited workers (new immigrants, undocumented folk, high school dropouts) desperately need a defender, Organized Labor steps forward. When jobs are threatened with a wage-cut race to the bottom, Labor leads the response. When fierce competition tempts employers to cut corners in safety matters, Labor blows the whistle. When employers need the cooperation of knowledgeable experienced employees, Organized Labor can facilitate it. When something goes terribly wrong at work, a Shop Steward bests the Personnel Department every time in assuring a fair hearing for an accused worker. In short, when the nation’s non-union workers wonder what high-quality wages and fringes might really resemble, and what a written guarantee of adult treatment at work might help assure, the sagest of them look enviously at unionized workplaces.

Given the strategic value of Organized Labor, how might it avoid the weakening the public expects, and achieve instead the renewal the public prefers? Four changes would seem required. First, unions in both the AFL-CIO and the Coalition for Change must resist the temptation to maul and raid one another, as only anti-unionists finally profit from such retrograde and tasteless misbehavior.
Unorganized workers are put off by such antics, and dues-payers don’t think much better of it. The paltry gains possible in the transfer of one’s unions’ ex-members to another never covers (often hidden) expenses, and leaves wounds behind that fester for decades.

Second, considerable power must be allocated back from union headquarters to union locals. Across the spectrum of unions power has been increasingly concentrated at the top, a power grab abetted
by low morale in the trenches. Unless and until local unions are helped to remake themselves into vibrant and consequential organizations no substantial renewal of Labor is possible, since it is in the local that rank-and-filers “live” their unionism, or, slough it off. As the best organizers have always been the organized, no gains in numbers are likely without the emergence of grass-roots unionists newly energized by their empowered locals.

Third, there must be more value offered in exchange for dues dollars. In recent years past members could enjoy low-cost vacations at union-operated resorts (as in the Poconos), live in outstanding
subsidized city apartments (downtown Philadelphia), expect first-rate care at union-operated health facilities, and retire to first-class projects in the Golden South. For a variety of reasons (only some of
which pass muster), these and other like benefits are now only memories (or nearly so). Along with new timely options, such as subsidizing the purchase and use of computers, many of these benefits
should be renewed. Likewise, storefront centers devoted to teaching English to newcomers, and others set aside for senior citizens, belong in an array of new goods and services for the rank-and-file.

Finally, every possible creative effort should be made to build an “electronic community” out of a local. Members should be asked to share their e-mail addresses with the local’s web master (a volunteer), and the local should create a web site so inviting, so rewarding, as to earn almost daily visits from an appreciative membership. Labor must brand itself as modern, progressive, and technologically adept. Working class men and women increasingly use the Internet at home, and one of their regular surfing way stations should be their local union, which, in turn, diplomatically pushes out to the members material likely to strengthen their attachment to the Labor Movement.

These four changes are affordable, doable, and available for initiation later today, if not sooner. They beckon both to unions that remain within the AFL-CIO and those now aligned in the Coalition for Change. Indeed, the American Labor Movement would be better off if the two rival organizations competed to outdo the other in advancing on these fronts. Let them try and outdo one another at avoiding raids, empowering locals, expanding services, and upgrading their “electronic communities.” In this way Labor might gain the influence many Americans tell Gallup they want it to have.

Art Shostak is a retired Drexel University sociologist and Labor Educator (shostaka@drexel.edu). He taught at the AFL-CIO George Meany Center for Labor Studies from 1975-2000. His books include
CyberUnion: Empowering Labor through Computer Technology (1999).

More than 1,000 people rallied last Wednesday to back graduate students at New York University who want to keep their union, and 78 were arrested in acts of civil disobedience, Crain’s New York Business reported. NYU, which has been the only private university with a TA union, announced last month that it would no longer negotiate with it.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Tell NYU to Stop Union Busting!

Respect Academic Workers and their Freedom to Form Unions!

Join labor leaders, elected officials, faculty, undergraduates, campus staff and the graduate student employees of NYU.

Expose NYU’s attack on collective bargaining and union membership! The Bush Labor Board denied another group of workers the protections of federal labor law. First it was workers at the Dept. of Homeland Security, and then it was airport screeners, now its graduate employees. Who will be next?

These workers have fought for years for union protections. After a hard won battle for recognition and four years with a union contract, NYU is refusing to bargain. Join us on August 31 and demand that NYU respect democracy and the will of its graduate employees to form a union and bargain in good faith. Let’s send a strong message to NYU and every other employer that tramples on the freedom to form unions – that New York is a Union City.

Directions by Subway: Take the Lexington Avenue subway (No. 6 train) to Astor Place Station. Go west on Astor Place to Broadway. Walk south on Broadway to Waverly Place. Walk westward on Waverly Place until you reach Washington Square. OR Take the Broadway subway (N, R or W train) to Eighth Street Station. At Broadway walk south to Waverly Place. Walk westward on Waverly Place until you reach Washington Square. OR Take the Sixth Avenue subway to West Fourth Street-Washington Square Station (A, C, E, B, D, F, or V train). Walk east on West Fourth Street until you reach Washington Square. OR Take the Seventh Avenue subway to Christopher Street-Sheridan Square Station (1, 9 or 2). Walk east on Christopher Street to West Fourth Street. Continue east to Washington Square.

Sponsored by GSOC-UAW, UAW Region 9A, the New York City Central Labor Council, the New York State AFLCIO, and the New York Voice at Work Higher Education Committee–a coalition of unions representing the diverse workers in our state colleges, universities and research foundations. For further information contact Ed Ott at 212-604-9552 or Susan Borenstein at 212-661-1555 Ext. 12. http://www.2110uaw.org/gsoc/index.html

Wednesday, August 31, 2005
12-1pm, Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South (West 4th St. & LaGuardia Place)

—————-

Declaration of Principles For Collective Bargaining in Higher Education

We are higher education workers, joined by community members and elected offi cials, who believe that quality higher education and the right to collective bargaining are essential to building a more just, democratic and equal society. We support all those–teachers, graduate employees, researchers, technicians, support and service staff, construction, and building maintenance workers, whether they do full-time, part-time, temporary, or contract work—who seek to improve their lives and the institutions in which they work through collective bargaining. We are particularly alarmed that access to affordable, quality higher education has diminished and that the right of workers in higher education to unionize and bargain collectively for a living wage has eroded. We have fallen victim to a cost-cutting, corporate model of teaching and learning that denies education’s historic mission to enrich community life, advance social justice, guarantee academic freedom, and provide opportunities for individual fulfi llment.

We believe that all workers at institutions of higher education must have the right to organize and the right to bargain collectively. Freedom of association and the opportunity to act together to advance our lives and secure our futures are fi rmly established public policy and standards of international human rights. The National Labor Relations Board’s recent decision to strip graduate research and teaching assistants of their right to bargain is a striking example of the downward spiral in labor relations.

All higher education employers must remain neutral in unionization efforts and be prohibited from using tuition, tax dollars or research funds to fi ght unionization. Employees should be allowed to form unions through a simple and democratic majority verifi cation card check process. We cannot permit legal maneuvers or our own money to be used to undercut freedom of expression and association. Contracting and procurement by higher education institutions, both public and private, must adhere to human rights, prevailing wage and responsible contractor standards. We cannot permit higher education institutions, guardians of democratic principles and traditions, to circumvent laws that protect prevailing wages, community standards and the right to organize and bargain.

Steady employment in higher education is a precondition to providing quality education and services and to guaranteeing a reasonable quality of life to academic employees. Job instability leads to inconsistency of service to students. “Casualizing” employment has a heavy impact on women, immigrants, and people of color. We cannot accept jobs segregated by race and gender, jobs that carry little security and offer no voice.

We resolve to work together to achieve these principles to ensure quality higher education and the right to collective bargaining.

———————-