The Occupy Movement and the Unions

There has been a lot of discussion lately on the possibilities of an alliance between the Occupy movement and organized labor (i.e. the unions).  This sounds great, but what would such an alliance look like?  What are unions willing to do to advance our movement?  Will they want anything from us in return?  If we are going take this thing higher, we need to know what we’re getting into – we need an informed critique of how the union movement has developed, and mostly diminished, in recent years.People on the job have always protested against bad conditions, and often the more spontaneous protests have been the most effective.  In the 1930s, workers won the right to legal representation, collective bargaining rights, and closed shops amidst sit-down strikes and other upheavals, including the four-day San Francisco general strike (part of an 83-day long west coast maritime strike).  Confrontations with police trying to escort strikebreakers were common, and “flying pickets”—in which roving strikers went to different workplaces—were used to spread strikes.  Soon the federal government set up institutions to channel grievances into institutions that it could manage (e.g. the National Labor Relations Board).

In spite of this, worker pressure in and out of the unions led to New Deal reforms that improved the conditions for many working people.  Before World War Two, 20% of US workers were in unions.  During World War Two, as a means to establish “labor peace” for uninterrupted war production, patriotic union leadership (with the support of much of the rank and file) agreed to a “no-strike” accord: unions promised not to strike for the duration of the war in exchange for a government guarantee that they would maintain closed shops (“maintenance of membership”).  The government knew that without the strike weapon, the appeal of the unions would be seriously weakened, and needed to compensate union leadership for this.

But although most workers nominally supported this “no-strike pledge,” millions walked off the job in wildcat strikes during the war, protesting the decline in real wages, speed-ups and other government imposed restrictions.  With few exceptions, unions only reluctantly accepted black people as equal members, leading to strikes and violence at the workplace and beyond.  After the war, pent-up frustration at wartime austerity exploded in a huge strike wave, in which the 1946 Oakland general strike figured prominently.  Local labor councils, just as they had done in 1934, opposed this strike and did their best to end it as quickly as possible.

As strikes persisted in the post-war years, often accompanied by local public support, it became clear to business leaders that more had to be done to reign in a considerable threat to corporate profits. Although President Truman, citing a “rebellion against the government,” did not hesitate to employ federal troops to seize refineries, railroads and mines in order to break up strikes, such measures could obviously not be routinely used. As unions could clearly not be eliminated, the corporate-government goal became one of enlisting unions themselves to discipline the labor force. This new attitude was expressed by Henry Ford II in 1946, when he said that his company had “no desire to ‘break the unions’, or to turn back the clock.”  Instead, he said, “we must look to an improved and increasingly responsible leadership for help in solving the human equation in mass production…Industrial relations [should be conducted with] the same technical skill and determination that the engineer brings to mechanical problems.”

In line with this approach toward the cultivation of “responsible” union leadership, the next measure taken to reign in worker revolt accelerated the bureaucratization of unions that took away most of their punch: the Taft-Hartley Act.  The Taft-Hartley bill was largely written by business representatives. The National Association of Manufacturers, representing 16,500 corporations controlling billions of dollars in assets, boasted that it had spent millions of dollars to get it passed by Congress. In short, the goal of the bill was to restrain mass strikes, ensure management control over production, and to prevent rivalries within unions from leading to excessive demands on management.  Business realized that labor peace could be won only by restraining the rank and file and by strengthening the institutional power of trade unions. The Taft-Hartley law attempted to achieve both of those objectives.

Claiming an interest in redressing “imbalances” in the bargaining positions of labor and management, and in protecting workers themselves from the risky ventures of demagogic and irresponsible labor leaders, the bill came down squarely on the side of management, with provisions that effectively outlawed closed shops, sympathy strikes and exclusively union-run hiring halls (one of the biggest gains of 1934). It mandated the publication of union financial statements, giving employers the ability to gauge the probability and potential duration of strikes by glancing at the amounts available for a strike fund. It placed strict limits on the right to strike at all and allowed companies to sue unions engaged in unauthorized (wildcat) strikes—now considered an “unfair labor practice”—as compensation for lost production.  It also denied National Labor Relations Board protections to supervisors or foremen attempting to unionize, thus driving a wedge between rank-and-file workers and generally sympathetic colleagues in lower management positions. One senator, in testimony on behalf of the bill, noted a “growing solidarity and discipline in unions,” and opposed supervisory unions on the grounds that they would “divide the loyalties of management at the critical point where it is in direct contact with day-to-day production.”

Other provisions of the law prohibited unions from endorsing candidates for public office, imposed mandatory “cooling off” periods (which take away the power of spontaneity of a well-timed strike and give owners time to regroup, find scabs, etc.), banned “jurisdictional” strikes, such as ones conducted in order to protect a union from “raiding” (stealing of membership) by another union, forbade mass picketing (a major means of gaining support from the public and other unions), and granted federal injunctions versus strikes threatening “national paralysis.”   As part of the red scare tactic of blaming labor unrest on “outside agitators,” the law also required union officials to swear they weren’t communist or else lose their bargaining rights.

Organized labor only survived the red scare by becoming increasingly cozy with capitalists and the state.  Although a wave of wildcat strikes in the 60s and 70s loudly rattled the cage, our unions are still subject to laws written by the bosses.   Ronald Reagan’s mass firing of air traffic controllers in 1981 drove this point home brutally.   But instead of fighting to overturn these laws, or defying them, unions have harnessed themselves to the Democratic party, with disastrous effects.

We recognize that there are many well-meaning unionists who realize the trap unions are in but do not dare to struggle outside of them.  They put their faith in Democratic legislators who at least support unions in principle and “hold the line” against the most egregious neo-liberal attacks on labor.  Clearly this strategy has failed, otherwise we would not be here today.  Many unions “supported” the call for the November 2 general strike in Oakland, a strike called by a movement that has explicitly rejected collaboration with politicians, but then immediately after resumed their ritualistic support for Democratic candidates.  When will we break free of the collaborationist, business unionism that has only tightened its grip on a smaller and smaller portion of the working population?

When will the people again start to organize unions, instead of being organized by them?