Recent reports have delivered more bad news to U.S. labor unions and their supporters. After holding relatively steady, with slight declines but some pick-ups in different regions, the numbers for 2012 tell a depressingly familiar story. Membership in labor unions is down, nationally, regionally, and in Indiana. For the Hoosier state, the numbers are alarming. The number of workers in unions in Indiana dropped by 20% last year, continuing a downward cycle that had reversed briefly in 2011. Union membership in Indiana had actually risen, from 279,000 to 302,000 from 2010 to 2011, in spite of the assault on union rights. However, after the passage of RTW in 2012, membership resumed its downward spiral. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership in Indiana has fallen by 22% since 2001, and 2012’s numbers accelerate the decline.
Shortly after the numbers were released, state AFL-CIO President Nancy Guyott issued a statement saying that RTW was not the only reason for the decline. While she is no doubt correct, as job loss, technology and productivity changes, and fierce anti-union drives by corporations continue to take their toll, the overall anti-union atmosphere, in Indiana and regionally, has surely contributed to the loss. In the aftermath of the release of the new numbers, pundits, union officers and supporters and anti-unionists have speculated about why the decline has seemed to accelerate. The reasons are many, and complex, but most people who know something about the issue agree that some combination of manufacturing job loss, technology and productivity gains, anti-union activism, and shifting public opinion towards unions have contributed greatly to the decline. Rather than jump on this bandwagon, I would like to discuss the general trend in public opinion, and a couple of things workers and their supporters can do, if not to reverse the trend, then to improve conditions for US workers in spite of it.
As an educator and activist, I am continually frustrated by hearing similar refrains from people on all points of the ideological spectrum regarding unions. The most common are: unions are no longer necessary; and unions are just another competing “business” for worker’s wages, and at best, discourage innovation and growth, and at worst, destroy US firm competitiveness. While both refrains reflect some fundamental misunderstandings regarding the history of organized labor, the conditions of current labor law, and the role of unions in daily workplace operations, it is important for current union leaders, organizers and advocates to recognize the role that unions themselves have played in encouraging these misconceptions, and to move toward correction.
The great debate in organized labor for well over a century now is what role should unions play regarding their members, non-members, employers, and the economy in general. To simplify, the question is framed as the debate between the “pure unionism” of Samuel Gompers and the movement unionism of Eugene V. Debs, both figures giants of the 19th and early 20th Century struggle between labor and capital in the US. For Debs, unions were vehicles of systemic change, operating as both shop floor representatives of workers interests and as the vanguard of the larger movement to demand systemic change to benefit all working people. For Gompers, unions were mainly workplace organizations that represented the more narrow interests of mainly skilled and semi-skilled workers, steadily increasing wage and benefit packages, while, in Gompers’ famous dictum, “rewarding our friends and punishing our enemies” in the political arena. Again, not to over-simplify, but in the post-WWII, post-NLRA era of union ascension in the US, it was Gompers view that dominated the most powerful factions of American labor, exemplified by such figures as AFL-CIO President George Meany, whose flirtations with the American anti-labor right reflected the narrow view that “what was good for General Motors was good” for American workers. While it is true that labor activists, progressive unions, and grassroots organizers were at the forefront of many social movement struggles in the post-war period, from civil rights to the anti-war movement, US unions in general moved away from the social movement model.
The result of that movement away from unions as vehicles of social change has had profound effects on both American workers and on public opinion. As unions concentrated more energy into winning better contracts for members, they focused less on systemic struggle, and the plight of all working people. In moving away from systemic struggle, many unions, at both the national and local level, sacrificed vital connections to sectors of the larger community. Those sectors, including the undocumented, the working poor, and oppressed minority groups, were potential allies. As the thirty-year assault on labor rights has accelerated, and labor unions have fought back against new, restrictive laws, they often find that they are, if not fighting alone, fighting with limited support from those who are not members or family of members. The very strength of labor unions to protect their members has also put up walls of separation between the organizations themselves, and those who should be allies in struggle.
There is a way to reverse this trend, and many have long realized the need for stronger alliances. As union membership continues to decline, a resurgence of membership, at least in the short term, may not be possible. Instead, it may be time to focus more resources on two fronts: fully commit national and local resources to both the struggles for civil and human rights, and to the struggles for minority forms of workplace solidarity that are emerging in the service sector.
First, unions need to be at the forefront, and not just supporters, of the struggle for civil and human rights, both here and abroad. Such social movement unionism should not be afraid to confront capitalism’s inequities and to call them by name. The great fear of being labeled a socialist, red, or commie that has consistently limited calls for systemic action, must be overcome. Labor unions and labor organizations of all kinds, must take not an active role, but a lead role in direct action campaigns that demand full equality for people of color, indigenous peoples, immigrants, and for all sexual orientations. Labor movement leaders from all sectors must be clear that discrimination in their unions is as unacceptable as it is in society at large.
Second, it is clear that current labor law and the hostile environment created by corporations has rendered NLRA-type organizing nearly obsolete. Until changes can be made politically, all possible resources must be utilized to support workers who are forming non-majority solidarity organizations to defend their rights and battle for better conditions. We can even go one step further, and demand that existing labor organizations take the lead in breaking down all barriers between the struggles of those in trades and who are employed in jobs that provide a living wage, and all other segments of the social justice struggle.
In our current situation, there is no worker and other. As many have pointed out, labor unions spent many decades protecting their members, and that resulted in two things: good deals for those on the inside, but a long, slow withdrawal from everyone else. When the current assault on unions picked up pace, many in the social justice community did not see it as their fight, and unions were left to fight, if not alone, than with limited mass firepower. The only way to break this down is to eliminate the walls that separate and recognize that today’s worker is tomorrows unemployment figure.
The walls that separate union worker from non-union worker, fully employed from under-employed, student from graduate, identity politics from class struggle need to come down. We are all precarious now. There is no more inside and outside.
