GOP Declares War On Labor
Until the Michigan lame-duck session, Wisconsin was David H. Koch’s most aggressive “shot” in Republican class warfare. But now the lame ducks in Michigan, home to the auto industry and Henry Ford’s proud tradition of ensuring workers were paid enough to buy the products they produced, have been coerced to lay siege to the very heart of labor. Koch’s innocent sounding Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have declared war on labor.
This is union busting taken to a new level. Can Pinkertons be far behind? If so, Koch and company have attacked the heart of the union movement, so if it’s war they want, war they shall get!
If you want a model for revolt against the tyranny of the 1 percenters, you need only look back to the seminal moments of the organized labor movement in the US. Based on that history, if you want to get behind an army worth backing, get behind the unions. They won the last time, and this time President Obama is on their side.
Reagan started an all-out assault on unions beginning with the air traffic controllers. Systematic dismantling of regulations and protections quickly followed. Today, Michigan drives another nail into what Koch and his cronies hope will be the coffin of organized labor—the so-called “right-to-work” movement embraced by half of the states in, ironically, the “union.”
Today, unions are a shadow of their former selves. Teachers’ unions and public employees’ unions are under unrelenting assault—not just by government and corporations, but also at the hands of the rank-and-file citizenry who ought to be supporting unions to the hilt. Citizens are, instead, brainwashed into despising their peers in favor of supporting corporate profits and CEO bonuses.
Solving this problem—pushing back against this Machiavellian assault—begins with understanding how we got here. An absolute MUST READ on this topic is “What’s the Matter with Kansas?,” by Thomas Frank. Laid out in gory detail is the GOP rhetorical coup that captured “Joe Six-pack”, turning unionized workers—a bastion of the Democratic Party—into hard-core Republicans.
This transition started feebly with Nixon during the death-throes of the Vietnam War (“My country right or wrong”), but it began in earnest with Reagan. In “WTMWK,” Frank exposes the near total victory of the GOP in the war of words. They, along with Jerry Fallwell and other leaders from the Christian Fundamentalist Right, have redefined reality to the point that voters will literally vote AGAINST their best interests to support a fictional philosophy constructed by GOP marketers and delivered first with devastating effectiveness by Ronald Reagan.
The GOP’s secret was to substitute “values” language for policy or issues language. In so doing, they completely diverted the conversation from anything substantive to heart-string-plucking concepts of family, patriotism, faith and religion. These tactics prevailed in the recent election and the concepts served as a smoke screen to conceal the GOP’s relentless assault on the New Deal and organized labor. They brilliantly but diabolically have turned us on ourselves…on each other. We argue over same-sex marriage rather than the disintegration of Wall Street regulations. We blame teachers and public employees for the decline of the social contract rather than blaming shrinking budgets and privatization. We eagerly consume blatant propaganda generated by highly concentrated media ownership. They even get us to blame poor and sick individuals for, well, being poor and sick.
The GOP has also declared war—not on America, but on virtually all Americans. Again, if it’s war they want, their actions in Michigan ensure that it’s war they’ll get. Make no mistake. Organized labor is most definitely NOT the Occupy movement. They are, in fact, organized. And many are experienced in battle—real battle. Many are well armed. Many of their grandparents died in the early years of the labor movement, but no amount of force was adequate to oppress them. Many may die in this struggle as well, but rest assured, organized labor will prevail.
President Obama, you said “What they’re really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money.” I hope you mean what you said, and I hope you mean to backup those words—with force if necessary. Legions of Michigan police and National Guard troops may be set upon protesters – and later, strikers – if you don’t back them up. It wouldn’t be the first time federal troops have intervened in similar conflict. We hope you are ready to have the backs of individuals who had your back a month ago.
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Jim, I’m curious to know your thoughts about the lawsuits brought against Boeing by the NLRB and the Justice Department for the offense of building a plant in the Right to Work state of South Carolina. To folks like me, that was seen as a coercive, job-killing and punitive move by the 0bama administration and a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars. I thought it was reasonable for Boeing to want to build another plant in order to stay online in the even that the workers in their Washington State plant went on strike. I thought these government lawsuits served no purpose but to appease their big-labor supporters and to punish Boeing (and the people of South Carolina) by preventing this billion dollar plant from opening.
I don’t know who you’re addressing Cathy but you won’t get an argument from me. I despise unions. They’ve gotten out of control.
As I said, management is to blame for bad management Dale. All the cards are in the hands of management since the PATCO firings by Reagan.
This is NOT union busting. It’s allowing workers to CHOOSE whether they HAVE TO join a union in order to work. Maybe some workers don’t want to be forced to pay dues that will be funneled to a political candidate who doesn’t share their views. Also, Union states that are adjacent to Right to Work states are seeing huge job losses as people flee to where the work is. Why can’t you guys understand that arcane union work rules are a thing of the past. Modern workers know that there are labor laws on the books to protect them and ridiculous union demands are driving many companies out of business because they are making companies less competitive in the real world.
Cathy,
The reason it is union busting is that it makes a “union shop” illegal. A union shop is simple. ANYONE, union member or not, can get a job with the employer, but once that employee has a bargaining unit job, that employee must join the union and pay dues. Refusing to do either, or violating the union rules, including scabbing in the event of a strike, means that the union can force you out of your job.
A simple corollary: citizenship. To secure all rights as a member of USA’s society, you MUST join our “union” and pay “dues.” In other words, you must be a citizen and you must pay taxes. If you don’t, we can throw you out.
Breaking the union shop is union busting. If the union can organize and negotiate, but it’s still every person for him/herself, then there is no union.
I don’t understand this concept of “bargaining unit job”. Suppose I just want to show up, do my work and go home. You’re saying you can force me out of my job because of some union rules that you are imposing on me even though I don’t want to join your union? In case you haven’t noticed, there are a myriad number of laws on the books that protect workers’ rights. Most Americans don’t belong to a union but they receive job protections because of these laws. What you are saying amounts to nothing more than FORCED unionism and more and more states are rejecting that.
This is what the people in Michigan wanted. Mazel Tov! It’s hilarious to hear folks ranting about Reagan and the greedy 1% yet they never talk about the greedy public employee unions who are bankrupting large municipalities like mine (NYC). Workers should have the right to free association. If they choose to join a union, they can. This Act does not end labor unions in Michigan. It merely ends FORCED unionism. What’s so hard to understand about that? Ridiculous work rules make it very expensive to live in NYC. I can’t afford to go to a Broadway show because the tickets are astronomically expensive. Do you want to know why? You need one union worker to unload trucks at the curb. You need another union worker to take the stuff into the theater. You need another union worker to hoist the ropes. You need another union worker to flick a switch. One union worker to do only hammering. One union worker to run cables. Etc. It’s a great job if you can get it but you can’t because these jobs are tightly controlled by nepotism.
Cathy you make some great points. I’m not a big supporter of unions quite frankly, for the reasons you’ve outlined. I do believe that they can serve a purpose but only under tightly controlled conditions. Too many of them hold their own employees hostage to the leadership.
Cathy,
My response to you is the same as my response to AnonymousNot.
If unions have taken advantage of incompetent, lazy management, then management is to blame. In NY, many public employee unions do NOT have the right to strike! Strike is not the only tool, but compared with trade unions and others, it’s clear that public employees have too-generous contracts largely due to gutless politicians and managers.
In some cases unions have garnered so much power that workers and employers are actually hampered by outdated and antiquated work actions. I’m not certain that “right to work” is a bad thing in those cases.
AnonymousNot
You make a good, valid point. I have been on both sides…in union leadership and later as department head in a Viacom subsidiary, CEO, COO and CFO of 5 other companies. I also worked at the NYS Dept. of Health.
In MANY cases, what appear to be egregious union abuses are actually management failings and/or laziness. The most outrageous case I encountered was in the NYS Dept. of Health where a woman was told by her managers to come into work and read a book all day. She was denied a phone, computer, desk and so on…and she was ostracized to floating about to find free space to spend her time. Her only job was to show up and fill out her time sheet. By management accounts, she was incompetent to the point that it was better that she do nothing rather than be allowed to do anything.
Upon learning this, I read the collective bargaining agreement. (I have directly negotiated three CBAs while at Viacom.) The agreement gave management all the authority they needed to fire this woman. All it took was guts, determination and a bit of work to document the employee’s failings…and she’d be out of there. And yet, the managers preferred to let her slide and bury the problem under the rug… to the tune of about $55,000 per year in wages and benefits.
This is not the union’s fault. Frankly, it wasn’t the employee’s fault. Management was inept and lazy. Managers were untrained…promoted, as they say, to their highest level of incompetence based on skills not as managers but as, say, program directors. This, of course, is a failing of senior management…whether career public servants or political appointees.
A strong case can be made that some of the most outrageous provisions in any CBA were enabled by incompetent, lazy management. The heart and soul of any CBA is genuine compensation fairness and reasonable protections from danger and megalomaniacal and incompetent managers. Beginning with that premise and honoring it, any management team can negotiate a reasonable CBA that does not overpay or over-empower employees or the union. It takes balls and determination to do this, but if management is fair, over-reaching union negotiators will NOT have the backing of their members, and they will not be able to call a strike. When put to a vote, the CBA will pass…again, if it’s fair without being “overly generous”.
But US corporations often took the same easy path as the managers at the health department. Deferring hard decisions, caving to unreasonable demands, and kicking the can down the road. In good times, they failed to remember that bad times are coming.
I don’t blindly defend unions, but when it’s all said and done, negotiating a CBA is a bit like a game of poker or chicken. Negotiators on BOTH sides need to recognize that giving up too much now will cost you dearly later. Never forget that MANAGEMENT willingly signed every one of those contracts that contain outrageous provisions. In the face of truly unreasonable demands and negotiating tactics, management must be willing to take a strike and, likewise, the union must be willing to go on strike. In other words, if you are being bullied, you must stand up for yourself. If you don’t, the bullying will not only continue, it will increase.
So, if you trace the negotiating history of some of the most outrageous union-benefiting clauses in any contract, I guarantee you that you’ll find that the principal culprits for those clauses were incompetent, lazy executives. And the union leadership, like naughty children, took advantage of that incompetence.
If managers are the parents and the employees are the children, who do you blame when the children are running roughshod over the parents?
I was a negotiating committeman. Watching inept HR people who had no clue how to enforce work rules was a real eye opener. Somehow the union got blamed for managements stupidity and laziness over the years.
Excellent analysis! I was surprised to learn that right-to-work states are in the majority in the U.S.
The politicians are following Wisconsin’s lead. Scott Walker and his crowd got away with busting unions, despite a failed recall election, so now republicans leaders are following suit. Good article.