Recessions come to an end, eventually. Usually, the union movement comes out of them battered, with less power and fewer resources than when we went in. Corporations use recessions not only to claw back our earlier victories on wages and working conditions but to weaken our structural ability to fight back when profits are up.
Think of the early 1980s, when the companies not only imposed wage cuts but also duped union members into disorienting labor-management cooperation schemes—remember QWL and team concept? We ended up with fewer stewards and more jointness facilitators. And more plants closed.
New Jersey public sector workers showed that the recession is no time for timidity. Sensing betrayal from Governor Jon Corzine, who they'd rallied to elect, members of CWA 1037 turned out in large numbers to fight the state's proposed 14 furlough days.
The exception to the rule was the Great Depression—labor came out of it far stronger, not only in the size and reach of our unions but in legislation won that made all workers more secure. The difference, of course, was what workers did in response to economic crisis. In 1982 and 1983 workers made many attempts to resist concessions, through voting ‘no,’ even by striking—but just as often, unions bought the employers’ logic and said ‘yes.’ Imagine if, in the 1930s, John L. Lewis had swallowed the company line that organizing basic industry would hurt the fragile economy. This time around, one year after the meltdown, what is labor doing to keep employers from “solving” the recession by pummeling workers?
WHAT’S BEEN DONE
We’ve called on government for more stimulus, for health care reform, for cleaner financial dealings. But constructive as our proposals and our lobbying may be, there’s another boat that we’re missing, mostly. Our corporate foes aren’t depending solely on Washington to address their problems. They’re also busy in the workplace and across the bargaining table: demanding concessions whether they need them or not; downsizing their workforces; imposing furloughs on city and state workers, which hurt both employees and the public; dodging their pension obligations. In other words, employers are once again using a crisis to shift the employers vs. workers power equation yet further to their side. At bailed-out GM and Chrysler, for example, management won a contract that ties workers’ future wages to nonunion companies’—and forbids a strike. Profitable Boeing too asked the Machinists to give up the right to strike three years down the road. Money-making companies, such as UPS, Kroger, and AT&T, are using the downturn as an excuse to put contracts through a wringer. With workers fearful, on-the-job harassment is on the rise, both to squeeze more output from smaller workforces and to drive out older, more expensive workers (a consequence of earlier two-tier contracts). If companies get their way, they’ll have turned crisis to opportunity, as the saying goes.
Unions’ own attempt to tilt the playing field is, of course, the badly needed EFCA. But even if we win a legislative boost to organizing, if we don’t hold our own against the assault on working conditions, job numbers, wages, and benefits, the unions we’ll be recruiting to will be hollower and hollower shells. Thus far labor’s response on this level has been far from collective—each union has been on its own. Feisty Jobs with Justice chapters have been the ones building a cross-union response to the crisis, leading demonstrations against the bailed-out banks that are trying to sink EFCA. In their national “Week of Recovery and Resistance” in late September, they’ll demand recovery measures for people, not banks. Massachusetts JwJ, for example, will march on the Federal Reserve Bank to protest the jobless recovery. Besides JwJ, some unions have set examples too. In the best cases, unions have reached out far beyond their own numbers to garner allies also hurt by the corporations’ self-inflicted recession.
Fighting layoffs.
Faced with layoffs of 6,000 teachers, hundreds of parents and teachers in Los Angeles converged on a school board meeting and refused to leave, risking arrest. Pressuring the district to use its federal stimulus money up front, they jimmied the layoffs down to 2,200, then called for more civil disobedience and protests before and after school. More than 1,000 teachers turned out. Forty protesters sat down at district headquarters and were arrested.
Students at one high school—where classes could balloon to 40-plus—struck against the layoffs and marched to the superintendent’s office. Angry teachers next began a hunger strike and encampments outside threatened schools. “This will be important for the union in the long run,” said United Teachers of Los Angeles Vice President Josh Pechthalt, “to show that we were not willing to go along with cuts without a fight, and to counter the defeatism that would have been fostered.”
In Puerto Rico coalitions including the AFL-CIO, Change to Win, and independent unions held marches of 30,000 in May and 100,000 in June to protest giant public sector layoffs—and threatened a general strike if the governor goes through with his plans.
DRAWING THE LINE
Fighting furloughs. State workers in New Jersey were facing Governor Jon Corzine’s demand for 14 unpaid furlough days in a year—and this from a governor they’d worked to elect. By holding dozens of rallies and recruiting members to dog Corzine’s steps and throw up picket lines everywhere he went, they managed to trim down the furloughs and get some payback in 2010. In the process, they educated the public about public employees’ real conditions. Saying no to concessions.
UFCW grocery workers at Kroger and Supervalu rejected concessions by more than 90 percent this summer. Pennsylvania workers beat back the worst of the demands, which would have robbed wages and health care to pay pensions. Machinists at Boeing took a 57-day strike to turn back health-care cost shifting last fall, during the darkest days of the financial collapse.
Saving pensions.
In an April rally of 13,000, retired auto workers from throughout Ontario called on the government to shore up its Pension Benefits Guarantee Fund. They were joined by the province’s public service union. Taking on the banks. At Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, immigrant workers electrified the labor movement last December with their plant takeover demanding owed severance pay from the Bank of America. They won that—and a buyer for the plant as well. It was the United Electrical Workers’ tactical boldness that won the workers friends everywhere. Linking ‘labor’s issue’ to ‘everyone’s issue’. The North Shore Labor Council near Boston joined with community allies to hold a march against the Bank of America last spring. Their demands: to stop foreclosures in the neighborhood and to pass EFCA, which the bank was lobbying against. The march helped cement a relationship between union members and community organizations, including immigrants.
Thinking long-term. Through the Blue-Green Alliance, the Steelworkers and other unions urge job creation not just to weather the recession but to reshape unsustainable industries and halt global warming. A 22-state Made in America Clean Energy Jobs Tour this month is educating the public. Making it real, USW helped bring a Spanish wind-turbine manufacturer to an abandoned steel mill in Pennsylvania (with a card-check agreement).
Standing up for everyone.
Turning around the charge that unions are a special interest, the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Healthcare fights tirelessly for the simple system that would cover everybody. While some union leaders piped up only to oppose taxing benefits, LCSP activists hammer home the message that unionists want a system that’s fair and affordable for all.
ADD IT UP
These examples, small by themselves, give us a glimpse of what a united labor movement with allies could do. Many unions found that when they asked for help, their issues resonated. What’s key? Each struggle activated rank and file workers’ energy on their own behalf, linked particular workers’ issues with those of the public, and sometimes stepped outside the lines, showing workers unafraid to break the law and risk arrest. Imagine if these principles were put into effect in a coordinated way, movement-wide. The second year of the crisis will be inaugurated at the same time as a new president of the AFL-CIO. The last time American workers were on the ropes, we unionized industry and won unemployment insurance and Social Security. We didn’t do it through tactical timidity and the art of compromise.
By Jane Slaughter