Labor retools

Union membership may be down, but new tactics and new targets are revitalizing the workers' movement

By Dan Clawson, 8/31/2003

IN 1994, TIME MAGAZINE called labor unions "toothless dinosaurs on the way to becoming fossils." And many would argue that it has only been downhill since then.

Today, only 13.2 percent of the American work force belongs to a union. In the private sector, the figure is below 9 percent, the lowest since the 1920s. Strikes have almost disappeared: Every year in the 1970s saw more strikes than any year since.

All too often, unions lack the clout to win basic gains for their members. For instance, at the University of Massachusetts, where I work, the governor and legislature have completely disregarded signed agreements promising pay increases -- something they'd never dare try with General Motors or Fleet Bank. Meanwhile, union leaders haven't always been above their own version of corporate malfeasance: Earlier this year, it was reported that some of the directors of the union-owned insurance company Ullico -- most of them current or former union presidents -- had engaged in what looked a lot like insider trading.

Still, this Labor Day there's good reason to believe that labor is on the verge of a surprising resurgence -- even as it redefines itself in the process. Unions are a powerful and increasingly diverse force. Their 16 million members include more blacks than the NAACP, more Latinos than the League of United Latin American Citizens, and more women than NOW. Though puny in comparison with the resources of corporations, unions' $7 billion a year in revenue dwarfs that of any other progressive organization. With dues averaging about 1 percent of wages, unions don't depend on foundations or wealthy patrons. And labor's political clout remains legendary -- enough so that Republicans keep proposing legal changes intended to cripple its political activities.

. . .

Although rumors of labor's demise are greatly exaggerated, the labor movement of the future may bear little resemblance to its predecessors. Today's unions are addressing issues far beyond the factory floor, and dissolving the very distinction between the workplace and the larger community.

Consider a few recent examples:

Under union pressure, city councils have passed living-wage ordinances in 109 cities or counties, including Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, San Antonio, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, with many more efforts under way. More than 75 percent of these campaigns succeed -- a far higher rate than for union organizing campaigns. Under these ordinances, municipal workers and those contracting with the city are guaranteed a wage high enough that a full-time worker can support a family of four at the poverty level. That means at least $8.84 an hour with benefits, far higher than the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour.

More than 10,000 graduate students -- people with college degrees, most on the way to getting doctorates -- have joined unions, ranging from the American Federation of Teachers to the Communication Workers of America to the United Auto Workers (UAW). There are so many graduate students in the UAW that one popular T-shirt renames the union the United Academic Workers. The UAW represents student workers in the University of California system and at New York University, as well as at the University of Massachusetts.

When the AFL-CIO started a Union Summer program, thousands of college students signed up to work long hours at low pay.Though their organizing didn't lead to many immediate gains, some of those students later sparked the potent anti-sweatshop movement. When they returned to their campuses, they launched sit-ins and demonstrations to force their schools to sign pledges that their college-logo goods would be sweat-free.

In 1999, in labor's largest victory since 1942, 74,000 mostly minimum-wage home-care workers in Los Angeles voted to join the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Last year, in the state of Washington, another 26,000 home-care workers unionized.

As part of their protracted struggle with management, Verizon workers last month lined up thousands of customers who would be willing to switch carriers if the company wouldn't negotiate a fair contract.Verizon's unions have repeatedly caught the company by surprise. In 2000, they mounted a highly effective strike, winning the right to organize new workers and a limit on forced overtime.

In Stamford, Conn., a coalition of unions representing low-wage service workers branched out beyond wage increases and other traditional union issues to lead the battle against the privatization of public housing. The union understood that in a high-priced area such as southern Connecticut, it was crucial to protect its members' ability to live near their jobs. Though the AFL-CIO pledged $50 million in matching funds for new public housing, the state has so far failed to ante up its share. Still, the unions and residents won what may be the toughest ordinance of its kind in the country: It requires that any demolished public housing be replaced by the same number of equally affordable units.

In the wake of Enron's collapse, the AFL-CIO legal department helped the company's (nonunion) workers win back at least a fraction of their devastated pensions. The $39 million that labor helped win is far less than the workers deserve, but far more than they would have received otherwise. Similarly, nearly 10,000 "permatemps" at Microsoft sued the company to get benefits and won a $97 million settlement. Though WashTech (a local of the Communication Workers of America) hasn't yet collected from the software giant, it has continued to expand and is now protesting the offshoring of high-tech jobs.

This September, the AFL-CIO is helping to organize a cross-country "Freedom Ride" to support immigrant worker rights -- legalization of undocumented workers, family reunification, faster citizenship. The ride reflects a dramatic reversal of labor's longstanding suspicion of immigrant workers. Unions have recognized that if immigrant workers do not have full legal rights, then employers will prefer immigrants precisely because they will be less able to form unions and thus easier to exploit. Although no one knows the exact number, perhaps 1 million immigrant workers, documented and undocumented, belong to unions today.

. . .

These campaigns are not what we traditionally think of unions doing. They don't typically involve old-line industrial or craft workers, and many of them use new tactics to pursue new issues.

But historically, labor has made its greatest gains in sudden fits and starts, when new approaches were put to use. From 1933 to 1945 unions saw their membership increase fivefold, thanks to new federal legislation guaranteeing the right to organize and militant tactics such as factory takeovers. Additionally, unions were shifting from a craft union model -- with skilled workers organized into separate unions across different workplaces according to craft -- to an industrial model, with all the workers at one site, skilled and unskilled, together in the same union.

Today, the labor movement must learn to act without government support. In particular, the National Labor Relations Board's enforcement of the laws against firing workers who try to form a union is increasingly lax. In one out of four union organizing campaigns, a worker is fired -- and this adds up to some 10,000 workers a year. Even if the NLRB finds against an employer in such a case, any penalty can be delayed for up to three years.

And then it's just a slap on the wrist: The employer must give workers their job back, plus back pay, minus anything they earned in the meantime. Imagine if bank robbers could delay penalties for three years, then give back the money and walk away scot-free.

Given such realities, it may seem crazy to predict a new burst of union growth. But pessimistic conclusions can be just as off the mark. In 1932, the president of the American Economics Association said, "I see no reason to believe that American trade unionism will . . . become in the next decade a more potent social influence." Those who are counting labor out today may be proved as spectacularly wrong.

Dan Clawson, a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is the author of "The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements."

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