Labor's Diversionary Tactics
A friend of mine recently
took a job organizing with the Service Employees International Union. The SEIU,
you'll recall, is the union that nurtured AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who
won office a year and a half ago on pledges to revitalize--or at least
resuscitate--American labor. There is good reason to take those pledges
seriously: Between 1980 and 1995, a period when most of the labor movement was
submoribund, Sweeney's SEIU launched a series of clever and dogged organizing
campaigns, and nearly doubled its membership. But to reverse its four-decade
decline, the AFL-CIO will need to do more than adopt the SEIU's organizing
wizardry: It must convince the nation at large that organized labor is not
simply a lobby, a New Deal relic, or a clubhouse full of gray-suited men.
Just after she was hired, my
friend attended a retreat of SEIU organizers and rank-and-filers. They spent
the weekend chewing over the tactical innovations that have made the union's
reputation: "card check" campaigns that bypass the National Labor Relations
Board's sclerotic certification process; aggressive scrutiny of employers'
financial profiles; blitzkrieg drives that take on entire sectors at once.
"And
every evening," she reports with a smile, "we all stood in a circle and sang
'The Internationale.' "
Now, the sight, in 1997, of self-respecting American trade
unionists singing a socialist anthem--in however jokey a spirit--would
doubtless set off alarm bells. It's easy to imagine Dick Armey and Trent Lott
nudging each other with told-you-so glee, or Gore and Gephardt averting their
eyes with a shudder. But you'll hear no complaints from me. Like my friend, I'm
somewhere to the left of paleoliberal; I believe that human civilization peaked
in Sweden, circa 1972. I hope my friend and her colleagues have long and
honorable careers tightening labor markets and kicking the shit out of
corporations that bully or cheat their workers.
But I have
to confess: Something about that SEIU retreat sounds depressing. Imagine it: In
the daytime, Jesuitical preparations for long uphill organizing drives. And
then, for uplift and inspiration, a chance to sing "Solidarity Forever" and
other anthems that no normal person under the age of 60 has ever heard. This
is, bear in mind, one of the most vigorous and progressive corners of the labor
movement--and yet it somehow carries the odor of a fading religious sect.
This is John Sweeney's burden. The American
labor movement is alone like no other in the advanced industrial world.
It operates in a crippling legal environment. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and
its ensuing case law have erected absurd barriers to workers' freedom of
association. For the price of a lawyer and a few gnat-size fines, nonunion
employers can comfortably fire workers simply because they seek to organize.
(In Canada, the country whose economy is most similar to ours, organizing
workers are better protected from dismissal--and per capita union membership is
more than twice the U.S. level.)
And where
West European labor movements are well embedded within a broader left, the
American left is populated by romantic individualists whose pulses are not set
racing by the letters "AFL-CIO." Elaine Bernard, the Canadian scholar who
directs Harvard University's Trade Union Program, quips, "I sometimes think
that American radicals will march in solidarity with any country's working
class except their own."
The tactical savvy that Sweeney brings might help stanch
the AFL-CIO's bleeding (it's been losing more than 200,000 members a year). But
tactics alone won't rescue labor from its peculiar weakness and insularity. To
break through that barrier, the AFL-CIO will need to convince a majority of
Americans--or at least a muscular plurality--that solidarity is good for what
ails us. They need to sell the case that our colossal wage inequality is not a
fact of nature; that a progressive labor movement can make our workplaces more
decent and more productive; and that strong unions can leverage gains not only
for their members but for the broader society.
Making
this case won't be easy, but it's unavoidable. Without such a framework, even
the cleverest organizing tactics will come to seem hollow. As Bernard says,
"The labor movement is eternally in danger of becoming a Contracts 'R' Us
operation that only services its existing members. You've got to look in the
mirror every morning and ask yourself: 'What am I organizing for ?' "
If labor were less defensive and insular and
better embedded in a larger reform movement, it might be more motivated to
address its own shortcomings. First--ahem--there is the matter of housekeeping.
God bless the day when no one's Uncle Ed will be able to lean across the
Thanksgiving table and say, "So I hear you're working for the labor movement.
Isn't that America's last bastion of mobsters, racists, and hacks?"
Second, a humbler labor
movement might be less likely to cut shortsighted political deals that undercut
its larger purpose. There was a pathetic scene a few weeks ago in Los Angeles,
home to several respected labor-community initiatives. These alliances have
sweated blood in fights with Republican Mayor Richard Riordan over public
transportation, housing, and health care. But in February the Los Angeles
Central Labor Council voted to endorse Riordan's re-election bid after he
dangled promises of an immense hotel-development project. (The endorsement
vote, which was narrow to begin with, was later rescinded after an outcry.
Riordan won anyway.)
And
there's also a risk that tactical innovations like the SEIU's will come at the
expense of movement-building.
Several weeks ago I spoke with a New York City organizer
about the disastrous newspaper strike in Detroit. This organizer is an alumnus
of the AFL-CIO's much-praised Organizing Institute, which trains both
rank-and-file workers and zealous college students in the latest tactics. He
was full of scorn for labor's plans for a national march on Detroit this June.
"That's the lamest idea imaginable," he said. "Even if 20,000 people show up,
who's going to pay attention? If they want to win a decent contract in Detroit,
what they need is a squad of 50 people who will target the boards of directors
of Gannett and Knight-Ridder. Find out where they live. Jam their fax machines.
Harass them when they go shopping. That's how you defeat corporate
power."
This sort of strategy is very
much in the Organizing Institute's spirit. Its training materials stress
"finding the person who can give you what you want" and making his or her life
hell. The ghost of Max Weber might denounce these frat-boy tactics with a long
sermon about means and ends, but I'm a bit more tolerant. After all, employers
routinely do things just as nasty. (Did you catch the story a few weeks ago
about the Coca-Cola truck driver who was bribed thousands of dollars as part of
an effort to subvert an organizing drive?)
But I'm still uncomfortable.
Isn't there something amiss when a movement based on solidarity and cooperation
trains its organizers to behave as if they were in a Hobbesian world of all
against all? The New York organizer is probably correct: The march on Detroit
won't do much to help win a contract. But without a steady drumbeat of public
engagement--through marches, debates, C-SPAN, the works--the labor movement
will continue to smell of anachronism. So kudos to Sweeney for toning labor's
muscles. Now let's work on the heart and the voice.
