U.S. labor lessons for next century

With the last Labor Day of the millennium now behind us, this is an appropriate occasion to reflect on the state of working America. The common wisdom is that nearly a decade into a boom things have never been better. Unemployment is low; wages are going up. Nonetheless, labor’s trajectory over the last generation yields reasons for caution in our forecasts.

American workers have taken nearly a decade to regain the wages lost during the last recession. Despite the long boom, nearly 20 percent of American children live in poverty. The ranks of those without medical insurance have increased by 5 million since the Clinton Administration decried our health-care crisis.

If a citizen had fallen asleep during the ’60s and awakened to confront these numbers, he or she would be stunned. Health care for all, adequate day care and a guaranteed annual income were subjects that even some Republicans discussed a generation ago.

The causes of the long term stagnation are complex. One factor does stand out, as both cause and consequence. The labor movement is a less prominent part of both American workplaces and politics. Only about one in 10 private nonfarm workers is in a union.

Throughout the ’60s, wage and benefit gains by major industrial unions redounded to the advantage not only of their members but of many nonunion workers. Staunchly anti-union employers often matched union benefits in an effort to avoid affording unions issues around which to organize. Politically, unions played a major role in enactment of Medicare.

The context in which unions could thrive became more adverse during the ’70s. Vietnam, the so-called Arab Oil Embargo and the inflationary excesses of the era made it difficult for unions to secure further increases in wages and benefits. It is commonplace today for many union leaders to cite growing corporate resistance to unions, commencing in the late ’70s and culminating in Ronald Reagan’s notorious firing of the air traffic controllers, as the major sea change in our politics.

Such a view has more than a grain of truth, and its portrayal of labor as victim provides comfort to a beleaguered labor minority. Nonetheless, the labor movement must bear some responsibility for its present plight. As excellent contemporary studies of labor history by such scholars as Stanley Aronowitz, Kim Moody, Mike Parker and Michael Yates point out, since the late ’40s unions operated under three debilitating assumptions: the task of unions was to deliver benefits to its members rather than to empower them within the union or the corporation, immediate gains were more important than organizing the unorganized, and, finally, the Democratic Party is the sole political vehicle of working class success.

As long ago as the 1950s, dissident elements within such unions as the UAW were concerned about forced overtime, the limited power of union members to participate in job design, product or financial planning. Union leaders often collaborated with management in repressing wildcat strikes over these issues, on the grounds that such issues are peripheral to nuts and bolts unionism or involved an illicit incursion into management’s prerogatives.

This posture proved shortsighted. Even by the ’60s and ’70s the quality of the workplace had become just as important to many workers wages and benefits. The lack of concern with qualitative issues and the unwillingness to move toward broader organizing left organized labor in a poor position to resist union busting efforts. It also deprived labor of the political resources to anticipate or resist the trade initiatives of the last decade, which have deprived much of the nation, including especially Maine, of some of its best manufacturing jobs.

Subservience to the Democratic Party has compounded these problems. Yates cites one telling example. When a mid-90s study of NAFTA confirmed union charges that threats of plant closure would increase under NAFTA, the AFL-CIO cooperated in administration efforts to conceal the study lest it embarrass the administration. Should organized labor be surprised that their loyalty has enabled further efforts to enact corporate sponsored trade treaties?

As labor looks to the next decade, it could take some lessons from an unexpected source, the Christian right. This social movement, essentially powerless and apolitical a generation ago, now holds virtual veto power over a major party. It has stressed grass roots organizing and it has never shied away from ardent advocacy of its principles and even strident criticism of its own favored candidates.

A labor movement willing to embrace democracy, to place its principles at the core of its political activism, and to compromise only at the end of the day, can gain at least as strong a voice in our politics. American workers remain just as concerned about equity in wages, their lack of voice in their workplaces, and workplace intrusions on family life as they did a generation ago. It is time for a vital, democratic labor movement to tap those concerns.

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor. Readers wishing to contact him may e-mail comments to jbuell@acadia.net.