Who Works for the Workers?

September 2, 2016 10:13 AM

Who Works for the Workers? — Gabriel Winant on the future of the American labor movement

Alas, poor unions: no matter how strong the left-of-center consensus that we need them again, we can’t seem to bring them back. Surely, it’s their fault; as a recent forum in the Nation asked, “Does labor deserve its own downfall?” The movement’s long, sad decline must in some way be a comeuppance. Pick your poison: racism and sexism, retrograde valorization of toil and hostility to environmental protection, bureaucratic complacency, institutional rigidity, top-down authoritarianism, political tepidity, toxic organizational culture, history of corruption — need we continue?

These criticisms are not altogether wrong. But they tend to forget the fundamental order of things. It’s the power of the boss that makes for a sorry labor movement, and the political economy of the past five decades has made for a strong boss. Labor markets are slack and layoffs endemic, which keeps wages stagnant, costs low, and shareholders happy. Wage theft is common and largely goes unrectified; health and safety standards are unenforced. A byzantine nest of subcontracts and corporate shells often separates the workers from the profits, so that whatever subentity is the employer always appears in the red. Labor law’s teeth have been worn down to the gum: to take concerted action these days is to invite near-certain employer retaliation with little chance of remedy. And when the boss inevitably tells workers they should be grateful for what they have and warns them that plenty of people would be happy to take their jobs, the workers have no trouble picturing these people. They are their nieces, cousins, and neighbors, stuck in part-time jobs or out of work. The workers feel isolated and discouraged, the organizers wring their hands, and wages and conditions keep deteriorating.

Union opponents think this quiescence means workers don’t want to fight. Romantic union supporters, perhaps including the people at the conference, tend to think that workers are ready for a struggle but held back by conservative middle-class leadership. Neither account fully contemplates the idea that the struggle between labor and capital might more simply reflect the balance of power. The union movement’s problem, in other words, isn’t that workers don’t want to fight; it’s that they don’t want to lose.

posted by tonycpsu (10 comments total)

One thing Gabriel Winant leaves out in mentioning one of the Red Scares, Eugene Debs, etc., is the fact that these efforts systematically attempted to purge any hints of progressivism from the labor movement. So of course you're left with the less desirable elements taking over the movement (racism, bigotry, anti-environmentalism, etc.).

The wealth of the nation decided it was better to be dead than red. So they killed the unions, and are killing the country itself.

Until we stop it.
posted by anarch at 10:36 AM on September 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

This is a really good article! It resonates with my experience as a union member.

This was the great significance of the Supreme Court case Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, in which labor won reprieve by the death of Antonin Scalia. In 2014 the court had struck down the agency fee for homecare workers, who are paid by Medicaid but, Justice Samuel Alito argued, should be considered the employees of individual clients. In this argument, Alito appeared to invite a challenge to the underlying legal basis of mandatory dues for all public-sector employees. The good people at National Right to Work found a group of plaintiffs who wanted to sue the California Teachers Association to get out of paying dues, and things looked quite bad until Scalia died. Had the court found for the plaintiff, the entire public sector could have gone right-to-work — potentially strangling public employee unions more or less all at once. Now the suit has failed, and public-sector unions have a moment of respite. It’s rare to catch a break; we should use it.

This is really important and important about the election. If Trump wins and we get a Republican court, unions are going down, $15 is going down, any kind of work organizing is going down. My local was braced for cuts...by which we meant, going from 2 organizers for the entire university to one. I don't understand why people who advocate for labor don't get how bad this election could be - if you think we're going to lose unions but get something better because revolution, you're not thinking about how the court will be used against any kind of worker organizing.

And to add: My union got $15 for all in our last contract. When the union came in, there had been people who had been temps for twenty years. With the union, you can't do that - if you need a person long-term, you have to hire them and give them benefits. My union has had defeats and it is not a perfect organization, but my working conditions are light-years ahead of the conditions of equivalent workers in non-union places.
posted by Frowner at 10:39 AM on September 2, 2016 [21 favorites]

And where unions lift people up the most is the service work - if you work at the university and you sweep floors or make sandwiches, you don't make $8/hour on contingent schedules, you're full time and you make $15. Our union is, in its small way, building immigrant and low-income community wealth, and that means breathing space and political power.

Many people think that unions are full of old white men who make $70,000 a year standing by an assembly line. Public sector/healthcare/etc unions are full of women, many immigrants and many women of color, who make a living wage and are treated something approaching fairly instead of being subject to unchecked racism.
posted by Frowner at 10:42 AM on September 2, 2016 [24 favorites]

Until such time as joining a union can't result in reduced opportunity for advancement, reduction of privileges, and probable unemployment, it's a lost cause. Right now, at least in the more technical fields, it's a dead issue here. That's not going to change until the unions break management/executive resistance, and right now I don't even see that as something being worked towards.
posted by Blackanvil at 10:54 AM on September 2, 2016

Many people think that unions are full of old white men who make $70,000 a year standing by an assembly line.

i'm an old white man and union member and i damn well don't get to just stand by an assembly line and i'm not making 70k either

unions don't have very good options these days - i think it's part of that freedom of choice thing, where they give you a lot of lousy options and you have the freedom to choose between them

yay freedom
posted by pyramid termite at 1:02 PM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

(I should say that several of my favorite relatives are old white men, although I don't think any of them have ever cleared 70,000/year, and that honestly I have no real objection to old white assembly line workers making plenty of money as long as they practice good solidarity. In fact, I would prefer that older workers, white or otherwise, make good money - both because one day I too will be old and because I would like everyone to be able to afford to live decently. In short, I don't mean to fall into generation warfare rhetoric.)
posted by Frowner at 1:20 PM on September 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

Just an anecdotal example: these days, as a musician, in a large city, I am happy to make fifty bucks for a night's work. Obviously, I have a day job.

But back in the 70's, in a small Indiana city you've never hear of, I routinely made $50 a night, 2-5 nights a week. My rent was $90 a month. Minimum wage was $2.35. Club owners had to bow to the union's demands if they wanted live music.

I also worked in a hellish factory job making cardboard boxes in Indiana. They had been located in Ohio, but the union protested their conditions (like losing arms), so they moved across the border to Indiana where they could hire temps to do their terrible work.

I could go on and on, but unions protect workers from the profiteers; it's basic math. Now the club owners pocket that extra money. Not much to them, but a lot to musicians.
posted by kozad at 7:39 PM on September 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

I live by an old U.A.W hall that's now a pot shop.
posted by clavdivs at 9:28 PM on September 2, 2016

Much as they did to liberalism in general, the right's propaganda war against unions has been stunningly successful. That they've successfully convinced the very people who would benefit most from a union that unions=lazy, unamerican, greedy, rich, can't be fired evar, is really impressive. I'm not sure what can be done to effectively turn it around.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:34 PM on September 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure what can be done to effectively turn it around.

A decade ago I would have said a mother of a recession and a few months eating cat food.

But it seems that ship has sailed.
posted by Talez at 4:09 PM on September 4, 2016