Something is horribly wrong with the American labor movement. We know this right? Numbers of union members are down, gross numbers and in relation to the working population. If it weren't for public employees, unions would be some old vestige of the industrial era. (Remind me of this next time I begin ranting about how the political alliance with Democrats has gotten labor nothing). But the movement is broken and there are strong signs that we are headed down the wrong, wrong, where-are-going-again-? road. And, quite frankly, it is up to us to fix it.
How many union conferences/conventions/meetings have you been to where some baby boomer is standing up at a podium lamenting the decline of the labor movement and wondering why the young people of today just don't get it? I have to restrain myself from standing up and pointing out that it was Mr. (let's face facts) Boomer that oversaw the decline of the labor movement. They all but say it..."When I was growing up, my dad and all his friends were in the union. We went to picnics, had bowling leagues, lived in a spirit of brotherhood. Now my children don't know what a union is. The young people today need to realize..." It's like Jesus "Fucking" Christ, who's the weak link there, Charlie? It ain't the kids, it's you. Unless you were on the front lines of organizing the public employees, any work you were doing in the '70s, '80s, and '90s saw negative results. And I'm not just attacking faceless union bosses, my dad was a union guy in the 1980s who lead his union out on strike and it got busted. I love my dad and admire the stand he and his brothers and sisters took, but I'm not turning to him for advice on how to lead a successful strike, either.
And while I'm on the subject of baby boomer men at microphones, when the wail of lament goes up for the labor movement, you may hear the word "traditional" thrown in there. Next time you do, please stand up and let the motherfucker who let that one slip have it. The "traditional" labor movement is, of course, white men doing white manly things. Building cars, mining coal, making steel, driving trucks. That the labor movement exists at all because women have swelled the ranks since the 1970's public employee revolution goes largely un-noted.
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, current ills. My brother, Wobblie, drew our attention to the fine folks at the United Food and Commercial Workers who are trying to organize Tesco, a British company that sells pre-packaged, high-end food stuffs for the SUV crowd. UFCW is employing tactic called corporate campaign. Originally designed to be a tool for striking workers, it is more frequently being deployed as an organizing tool. Very briefly, corporate campaign was a way for labor to put additional pressure on a company when shutting down one or two factories/plants/stores would not be enough to affect the bottom line of your average American monolith. You would use pressure tactics, embarrassing them in the community, encouraging boycotts, putting pressure on their suppliers/business partners to try to get the company to be reasonable. The value of a corporate campaign as a tactic during a bargaining or strike situation can be debated another time. I am advancing the idea that trying to use a corporate campaign as a organizing tactic is idiotic.
Here's what the UFCW is doing. They are handing out flyers in the Scottsdale community, where Tesco is proposing to build some stores, highlighting the fact that in Britain Tesco has gotten into trouble for selling liquor to minors. UFCW is calling on the community to "protect your family" from this evil corporation (I don't have evidence, but I am willing to lay money down that they are also going with protectionistesque language about the fact that Tesco is a foreign company, as this is standard stuff for all of labor). Now this tactic might make some sense if the UFCW was trying to stop a non-union company from moving into a unionized town, but they are not. They are trying to use this tactic to get Tesco to agree to let them "organize" Tesco employees. They are trying to embarrass the company into "neutrality" on unionization. They are screaming, "Tesco is evil! Tesco is evil!" in the hopes that Tesco will be so desperate to get them to stop, that they will agree to a union. In which case, the UFCW will be shouting, "Tesco is great! Tesco is great!" and will immediately begin selling liquor to underage minors (hell, UFCW might even agree to lobby to change the drinking laws, if they are following the SEIU model, but more on that later). As Wobs pointed out, it is tough to see who, exactly, will be buying this argument. Certainly not the conservative suburbanites who would make up the customer base for Tesco.
I wish I could say that this is simply a misguided tactic limited to one small union campaign, but it is not. Corporate campaign is a major organizing tactic and too often it is the main organizing tactic used on a campaign. Rather than talking with workers to build a movement inside a corporation, labor is talking with managers. In fact, as the name implies, corporate campaign is not about workers at all; it is about corporations and unions. It is not about making worker's lives better, it is about getting a union at a company. Sure, it's possible that a union will automatically lead to a better conditions for workers, but not at all necessarily. Especially if the union's every existence was dependent about an "agreement" between labor and management.
This is the same tactic that the UFCW is using "against" WalMart, with their WakeUpWalMart campaign. The whole message of this campaign is that WalMart is evil. Evil, evil, evil. Now we can all probably agree that WalMart is evil, but we might not be doing it for the same reasons that WakeUpWalMart is doing it. You see, rather than stake out any kind of coherent ideological position, like say that WalMart is evil because they force their suppliers to continually shrink costs by squeezing their own labor, thereby causing a downward slide for everyone not named Walton,. Instead, UFCW and WakeUpWalMart slam WalMart for everything they can, including for not living up to the founding wisdom of Sam Walton and for making our communities less safe. Not to say that some of their information isn't spot on, it is, but accusing WalMart of being "morally corrupt" and a burden to our communities would seem to indicate that all WalMart's everywhere should be destroyed. Which, of course, is not what the UFCW wants. They just want to be able to unionize these workers. WakeUpWalMart is merely an attempt to pressure WalMart into allowing unions. The moment WalMart agrees to allow unions, is the moment that WakeUp WalMart comes down and "we" no longer care about business practices, the wisdom of Sam Walton, the safety of our communities, who WalMart gives money to, and or the tax burden on our communities. In fact, the moment UFCW is into WalMart would be the moment I would be expected to head down there and start enjoying amazing savings on cheap-ass goods and services.
And that leads us to my favoritest union of them all, SEIU. You've read about their latest tactics in organizing home care workers, so I won't reiterate, but it is easy to see how the tactics of UFCW so easily blend in with those of SEIU. Not surprisingly, these two unions have joined together to "revolutionize" labor in America. Obviously, so people very dedicated to the labor movement disagree with me, but from what I can see, SEIU, UFCW, and, if I may smear with the same brush, Change to Win seem way more focused on growing unions, than on improving the lives of workers. Everything I read about these guys is about putting pressure on corporations in order to get them to agree to allow unions. About unions and management working together. About the need to increase shareholder value. As you all know, I am far from a communist, but Jesus "Fucking" Christ, as soon as a labor leader starts talking about unions having to look out for shareholders, shouldn't we be driving this man out of our movement? What part of that is okay?
With a cursory knowledge of labor history, it seems to me that Andy Stern and his minions are trying to lead labor right back to the time when the labor movement was at its largest, but when it began to fall apart. Maybe I've been reading too much Ellroy, but it seems to me that the labor movement fell apart when it started to be about unions (and there size) and not about the workers. Jesus, I'm starting to sound like a anti-union sumbitch, so let me stop here and save my "let's save the labor movement" post (hint, it involves the "organizing model!") for later.
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12 comments:
I don't want to defend this particular campaign, but I think a blanket indictment of corporate pressure campaigns is too strong a position to take. Better to insist that where they exist they, first, are part of a larger campaign with an organizing focus; and, second, that the criticisms articulated by the campaign bear a rational relationship to the organizing drive.
(crap, meeting starting, must stop commenting on blogs)
as somebody presently working a comprehensive campaign, i'd say that your 'coporate campaign = not organizing' dualism is exactly as sloppy as it is polemically effective. does my doing research make me 'against' my organizer colleagues? some of the latter definitely think so, but i'd beg to differ.
(let's put aside the implication that the Justice w/ Janitors campaign - a massive labor victory despite its purple hue - was somehow not important as an exemplar or source of hope.)
and if you're really going to define as 'corporate' any campaign that reaches beyond the shop floor for community support...well, i'd submit that you're writing off most of the major labor victories prior to the NLRB, industrial unions and "Mature Labor Relations" as such.
gotta eat dinner and i've heard you make better versions of this point anyway. god knows i've probably made better rebuttals.
less acerbically:
i think that the post-war boom afforded unions a moment in which they were entrenched enough (thanks everybody, purgings notwithstanding!) that they didn't need to win some sort of public consent/support to win elections and strong contracts.
maybe that was the case before said boom (i don't really think so), but i certainly don't think most unions enjoy that privilege now. if anybody does, it's the white and well-paid trades whose methods you're clearly opposed to. how can labor go "on offense" without interfacing with society at large? do you think that an AFCSME strike would really "shut anything down" and produce Flint-like effects? while it'd be good of us pomo types to do more thinking about what "direct action" actually is in 2007, it certainly has to be more then just sticker days. but let's take your tack, and presume that, yes, a lone work stoppage falling in the woods DOES make a sound. where does that leave us and our organizing? who's us, actually? is labor something worth generalizing about, at this point? it sounds more like a diffuse, nominal conglomeration of industry-specific sects (the AFL-CIO). you yourself have said very compellingly about how nobody should claim a 'radical' mantle lest they address the redistribution of wealth. how can a labor movement gesture toward that - and remember, i think even raising the minimum wage qualifies - if it doesn't concern itself with anything but the target employer. of course, organizing walmart would be a de facto raise in the minimum wage, but you've seemingly rejected any organizing model that doesn't begin and end with face-to-face chats in the breakrooms...of course that's the meat of any campaign, but it's equally obvious that you can't organize a 21st Century Retail Juggernaut on that alone.
so you're against white and tight building trades who protect their own and nobody else, but you think that public employee and service unions fail the 'organizing model' by deploying tactics that don't begin and end at the site of the means of production (very orthodox marxian, btw). you begin by chiding inward-looking, self-interested industrial unions and conclude with a rant against campaigns that look beyond the (potential) bargaining unit. so who's doing things right? just the grads??? well, then you're in the right place, no? and you should be actively trying to spread, i dunno, AGELISM. the labor council, par example, would do well to hear you out on that score. and i'm proud to say you've certainly taught me most of what i think i know on the subject of organizizizing.
anyway, here's the chaser to my question about how labor can go on offense without community allies: WHY would labor ever want to do so? was the memphis sanitation workers' strike a failure because it involved more than contract language and, thus, more than 'organizing?' what 'organizing model' is that?
that last question is in no way rhetorical. in the same way that i hope you'll own up to a bit of hasty (if well-intentioned) whimsy in your caricature of 'corporate campaigns,' i'll absolutely defer to your knowledge of this concept.
politely but firmly,
patrick
My poor communication skill have led us to one of our typically pleasant misunderstanding whereby we use the same phrase to mean to different things.
Your "corporate campaign" seems to focus on building community around the labor movement or an organizing campaign.
My "corporate campaign" focuses on the attempt to embarrass a company into conceding to union demands, whether it be at the bargaining table and/or "allowing" a union to form.
Now, I do support both aspects of "corporate campaign" as entirely appropriate, although, like you, I imagine, I am much more comfortable with trying to build community support, than I am with the "embarrass the company" aspects. I would argue, however, that when either one of these aspects is deployed, then there needs to be some intellectual coherence behind the drive.
In particular, I believe the attempt to embarrass a company into agreeing to allow a union is a intellectually (and morally?) bankrupt strategy, unless the argument is that company X is exploiting labor, therefore there should be a union at company X.
Unfortunately, in too many campaigns the union attempts to use "any and all" ways to embarrass the company into agreeing to "allow" a union.
Now, re-reading my post, I miss the point at which I decry "research." You know as well as I that "research" is the foundation of the GTFF approach to the bargaining table. I would be more skeptical if the research that is done is a pure dirt digging expedition in an attempt to turn-up something that the union can go to the bosses and say, "look, give us a union or we will embarrass you with this."
You may know the JwJ campaign better than I, so correct me if I am wrong, but the heart of that campaign was "these are multi-million dollar corporations that are paying their staff barely above/below minimum wage." That makes sense. The answer to that disgusting situation is a union, collective bargaining, an evening of the power relationship.
Now the campaign I cited seems to center around, "this corporation is bad because they sell liquor to minors." I fail to see how the answer to this problem is a union. I imagine the public fails to see the connection. I am guessing that many people in that community are saying to themselves that UFCW just want to have these places unionized to collect dues. I imagine they think this because it is hard to connect the UFCW's campaign to concern about workers.
The same goes for the WalMart campaign. UFCW seems to throw everything against the wall in the hope that something sticks. Now we all know that there are some very, very good reasons for anyone who cares about workers to dislike WalMart. I wish that our brothers in the labor movement would stick to these reasons for criticizing WalMart, rather than "warning" WalMart that they are going to damage shareholder value because of unions criticisms or WalMart's failure to live up Sam's ideals.
This is, of course, the same objection to the Big Purple agreements with home care workers. looking at the (alleged) agreements SEIU arrived at with the bosses, then we all have a hard time seeing how these agreements demonstrate that SEIU cares about workers.
Hopefully we can agree that it is hard for a union to simultaneously care about workers and shareholders.
I hope to see some modification/complete refutation of my ideas/assertions on your blog-diddly-og.
i'm just glad we made it through that without getting too rankled. 'must admit that when i first read yr post it seemed almost personal attack-ish.
i hope we can discuss this in the hot tub this weekend, cuz i've made a decision that i'm not going to even allude to the specifics of my job...but, i gotta say that i do think there's something to be said for the 'see what sticks to the wall' approach. to make a really distasteful analogy, think of the UFCW as the iraqi insurgency. there is no way in hell that walmart/USA will ever rationally conclude "shucks, these people're more powerful than us." but, the ufcw/insurgency CAN land context-specific, tiny blows that are (or seem to be) haphazard and incoherent. it's a kind of terror, which works, as a bunch of headless jacobins could doubtless attest.
are any battles really won with coherent ideologies? of course, this is where the dreaded "dissonance" comes in - is it exception or rule? this is where we respectfully diverge, i think.
BUT, we come back together on the shareholder/'partnership'/SEIU strain. we both know (wons too) that the problem with Stern isn't that he TALKS about worker/boss cooperation and shared interests.. the problem is that he MEANS it. i do not think we should deny the thousands of people who have better paying, better-protected jobs because of Stern's evils, though..nor should we doubt the role those people have played in making and taking their own rewards. but we SHOULD lament the shit out of the resultant situation in which workers have as little (or less) say in their locals as they do at their workplaces.
Stern's model is like a neoliberal leninism. he's so assured that ends will justify means that he actually betrays the organizing model with his organizing. what's the use of doubling union density if the resultant "unions" aren't an exemplar of a more radical, more inclusive kind of democracy then that proffered by "the capitalist class?" (i guess i can't say 'capitalist class' w/o quotes these days?)
and where's wobblie and the other AGELISTAS on this?
I'm going to agree with dave here, because I don't think the "fling poo until we get what we want" strategy is defensible. And, if this is UFCW's version of community organizing, I think it's going to backfire, for reasons dave alluded to in his original post, but I didn't see made in his other comment.
The argument being made is that Tesco is bad for the community. The remedy proposed by the UFCW is to get citizens to contact the state ABC to not grant a liquor distribution license to Tesco unless Tesco agrees to neutrality in a union organizing drive.
Now, let's imagine Tesco agrees to a neutrality agreement, and the UFCW drops their ABC lobbying campaign. Does this mean Tesco has changed their behavior with regards to the original charge of selling kids booze? Is the UFCW going to bargain into their contract provisions to prevent Tesco from selling liquor to minors? The answer to both questions is, "probably not." The end result? The UFCW can organize in relative peace, Tesco gets their liquor license, and the good folks of Scottsdale are wondering what the fuck happened to all those people who were concerned about their kids.
That's not good community organizing. It's rank opportunism at best, and personally, I think it's morally sleazy.
Now, this digging dirt approach can work when done properly. Let's say Hospital X, whose nurses are attempting to organize, pays country club memberships for all of their top administrators while nurse-to-patient staffing ratios are abysmally high. The nurses organizing campaign reaches out to the community letting them know about the country club memberships.
Now let's say Hospital X reaches a neutrality agreement with the nurses, and they discontinue their "country club awareness" campaign. Does this mean that Hospital X is going to rescind their administators' country club memberships? Probably not. Is the nurses' union going to bargain for contract provisions (like decreased staffing ratios, better pay, etc.) that will improve the quality of care? You bet your sweet ass they will.
The tactics and goals here are the same. Embarrassing facts about the corporation, community involvement, etc. But in one case, when the union gets what it wants, holding up its end of the bargain with their adversary means screwing the community; in the other, it means being able to further advance towards goals held by both the union and the community.
The corporate campaign/community organizing model can be great when it works to broaden a labor struggle into a broader social struggle. That's why it can be so effective in the human services and education, where both workers and community members have a stake in the quality of services provided. However, digging up dirt and feigning concern that "Corporation X is bad for children, small animals, and national security, unless, of course, the allow us to unionize in which case, we take back all those bad things we said" rings hollow.
Or to use your Iraq analogy - asymmetric guerilla warfare will work well if you have the sympathies of the population. However, once they public sees that a guerilla group really doesn't give a fuck about the larger population, well, things will go south for the insurgents at that point.
All of which to say is that I think dave's larger point is that many union organizers seem to uncritically use a paint-by-numbers corporate campaign approach to union organizing, employing questionable tactics in a context where they are inappropriate.
Oh, and just to be picky about something in dave's comment. SEIU's secret deal involved nursing home workers, not home care workers. Specifically, for-profit nursing homes.
Home care workers, prior to SEIU organizing them, had been paid with public monies but had been categorized as independent contractors (this was the case in Oregon, and in California as well, I believe). Part of SEIU's campaign in Oregon was to create a Home Care Worker Board to serve as an actual employer to with whom to bargain, thus turning home care workers into public employees rather than independent contractors.
That's me going into "this was going to be my dissertation" mode and clarifying terms. But I also think Big Purple deserves a HUGE amount of credit in organizing these workers. Too bad their "innovations" in organizing nursing home workers are more of a sellout.
Ah, disagreeing with the guy who wrote to support you, how academic could we be?
I would like to disagree with Chris and his country club example. I do not think that using country club propaganda to get a union then not giving a rat's f--- once you're in is b.s. Either it is outrageous that executives get free memberships to country clubs while patients suffer or it is not. If you go to the public and say you're outraged, but then don't care as soon as the NLRB certifies (or you ink the first contract or you get fair share), then the message sent to the community and the member is that the union is full of shit and only cares about the union. Worse of course is when the union leaders join that same country club, but we can save that for another day.
I am most sure that Patrick can identify the exact strain of thought I am advancing and who originated it and why it is wrong, but I think what I am arguing is a correlation to my "don't put something on the table that you can't defend" thesis. It's don't advance a moral argument if you don't really care about the outcome.
One or two incidents like this might be alright, but when we advance an entire union movement on the premise that we are morally outraged by the actions of the employers and the community should be as well, but then we say "fuck it" once we get a union (start collecting dues), then I think our movement will fail (more).
I'm going to disagree with you again, dave. The underlying issue with the country club example is the quality of patient care - Hospital X cares more about fat cat administrators than the quality of care it provides for its patients as seen in the atrocious staffing ratios, poor pay, etc. When the union gets in, it will still be working on the larger issue of quality of care. They can go to the community and say "look, we're shifting our focus to making sure that the people who care for you when you're sick are taken care of so that can provide the best possible care." I think there's a big difference there.
So, when I tried to post my entry in the comments, it didn't work -- so I posted my response on my blog. I apologize for hijacking the thread...
P.S. I have really been enjoying this discussion and wish that we could have more of them. Maybe
this could be the opening salvo on the "Solidarity" blog?
Whaddyathink?
Hey -- I see you are getting some love from the folks at Union "Facts".
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