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The War On
Working Americans
Part 2
Here
By Stephen Lendman
08/29/07 "ICH" -- - 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.
Part 2
Here
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net .
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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