Artwork by Micheal DiMilo
Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots:
Mark Mamerow, Dave S., Mark O., Dennis Curley, and Geoff Carter
Time for balanced reporting. And I’m not sure anyone has actually said the fall of the unions was no fault of the unions….but if they are even thinking it—ya’ll better duck for cover. Though I’ve done no research on these trends (Reagan-Clinton as mentioned) and am actually getting a history lesson here, I do have this gut reaction—based on first person, empirical evidence, of unions abuse of power—back in the day. Something went wrong starting in the late 60s/70s. My anecdotal observations:
- My teenage friends in Kenosha used to brag about the high paying comfy work at “the Motors” (AMC)…mattresses secreted away for nap time…metal goods going out the door in lunch pails…a free for all. Makes some of the looting going on during the George Floyd riots look like less of a crime—at least those folks weren’t collecting a salary and health care while stealing.
- Similar group—but different told me about the boondoggle building the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant: One gent to set up the weld, one to do the weld, a third to grind the weld. All at very steep wages/benefits. All with a ton of down time…waiting on the other time.
- I did a project for a major Midwest Industrial where the morning crossword puzzle break was abused so badly, it was written into the contracts. Young eager beaver apprentices were told not to work…don’t rock the boat…do a puzzle.
- Not a union issue but a similar disease—the gravy job. I’ve done various projects with DOE National Labs. It’s not just that 13 of the 22 people that stagger in for a meaning are totally redundant, superfluous, not to mention sleepy/checked out. It is the kick the can culture of job protection. Indecision, delay, “go back” and check with so and so” and discuss again in 2 weeks…” After a while, one sees that these folks have a vested interest in dragging their feet and thus intentionally make it a “mudder” for all. Simply disgusting.
- Eventually word gets out…companies have no patience for laziness, deceit, and abuse of privilege and voila: A migration to the SEC.
- And I haven’t ventured into the Union chiefs’ connection to organized crime and other ills—which I know next to nothing about.
- Now, there is no doubt in my mind that capitalism, left unbridled, is a venomous beast—and there-in lies the need for regulation (OSHA, EPA, various local storm and sanitary regulations). However, unions lost their rudder somewhere along the line. The ‘Halls”… The International Brotherhood (of Electrical Workers), dutifully training apprentices, etc…still exist but are not the center element they once were.
Segue: The intrinsic, (if not evolutionary dependent), value/role of the emotion of disgust, in humans. Not my idea, but I found this interesting:
NYTimes: How Disgust Explains Everything
-D.
Hey Bots,
No problem, Dave, on the length of posts! As long as you’ve got something to say. It can’t all fit on a bumper sticker.
I won’t argue with you, Dave, on the decline of unions. I worked at union shop steel mill Babcock & Wilcox for two summers in the late 70s. The work ethic was pretty well shot. There are any number of anecdotes I could relate, including the guy telling me not to “kill yourself” on my first day on the job.
And it is pretty clear, for example, that the UAW and GM management walked down the path to bankruptcy together. The union got away with everything it could, and management never had the stones to force reform.
I wouldn’t attribute the collapse of the Labor movement in the US to any one politician or President. This was something that everybody had to work at. (Kind of like when you see some incredibly fat guy and you think to yourself, man it takes some work to stay that big!).
In fact, this is a perfect opportunity to expound upon my Grand Unified Theory (GUT) of union decline in the US. It matters to me, cuz like some of you, my childhood bread was buttered by the union scale earned by my old man. Had we not been raised during the height of the postwar US economic boom, things might have turned out quite differently for all of us. And I would love to see greater economic justice in the current day, meaning a greater sharing of the wealth with workers! But it’s not going to happen via a resurgence of old school US unions.
I think there are two overarching factors that make unions feasible: (1) Lack of competition; and (2) a favorable playing field.
Lack of competition, you say? Isn’t this America, where all our material bounty arises from the sacred well of competition? Sure, economic competition is key in the market economy. But the condition that makes a union possible is the lack of competition. It’s no coincidence that heavy industry is the most likely to be unionized. These are industries with substantial barriers to entry, due to the massive capital investment required to build the factories. Industries like steel, automobiles, shipbuilding, chemicals, and machinery manufacturing are dominated by a small number of major players. I think the economic term is oligopoly. If labor unions can get established within industries such as these, capital (meaning the ownership) doesn’t have the option of shutting down the company and reinvesting in a non-union replacement company or plant. That HAS happened over the long run, but it really didn’t become an option until globalization really kicked in, in the 1980s. Back in the days before globalization, US companies just had to suck it up & deal with the union. What’s more, it made economic sense to pay off the union. The lack of real competition within the industry meant that the companies could raise their prices to afford the higher wages and benefits paid to the workers.
In a situation where real competition exists, and there are not such large barriers to entry into the industry, unions are always going to have a much harder time getting established. For example, consider the idea of a janitors’ union. Any janitorial company that gets unionized is going to simply go out of business. It doesn’t take much capital to start up a new janitorial business. And this phenomenon — the movement of capital to the non-union alternative–isn’t really sinister or particularly “greedy”. It’s an iron law that investment dollars are going to flow where they can earn more.
I think this bodes ill for the new unions at the Starbucks stores in Buffalo, NY, that were recently organized. Starbucks is just going to close those stores. They’ll sell coffee somewhere else. Customers of Starbucks aren’t going to pay a premium to be served by union employees.
Another example would be the long term care/nursing home industry. Jeebus, if any workers could use a union, it would be the CNAs, who toil for such low pay and benefits for backbreaking, dirty, low status, yet critical work. Do they have much chance? Nope. Any successful union campaign at a nursing home will be followed quickly by the closing of that home, and the subsequent re-opening of a non-union home under “different” ownership.
The other major necessary factor in the organization and maintenance of unions over time is a favorable playing field, in terms of laws and regulations. There were many epic strikes and labor battles in the early part of the 1900s, but Big Labor wasn’t really able to get comfortable until the New Deal laws, favorable to unions, were passed. That’s when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was instituted, and unions actually got an ally within the government.
This is where politics does enter in. Since the 80s (the Reagan administration), the regulations and laws which support unions have been gradually chipped away. The rules for organizing are much stricter now. And, additionally, labor protections passed into law, which apply to ALL workers, have undermined the unions’ argument for existence. You’ve seen the bumper sticker: “Like your weekend? Thank the Labor movement.” True enough. But I don’t have to thank them anymore.
I never fully realized the importance of the law—of the level playing field—until Scott Walker’s Act 10 changed the environment with one stroke of the pen. He destroyed the power of the government service unions. Why would anyone pay union dues to a union that has zero power, by law?
There you have it. Between globalization and a hostile political environment, I don’t see unions coming back. I do see economic inequality (aka, the rich getting richer & richer & richer) as a major problem. In fact, the concentration of wealth at the top not only distorts the political system, but the rich folks got so much cash that they are making dumbass investment decisions. How do you think we got the housing bubble of the Great Recession? Because investors were willing to issue a mortgage to anybody who could fog a mirror.
-Mark
Ah, this makes me misty for the days of my youth, sitting in a musty lecture hall at UW-Madison, scribbling notes in my American Labor History course notebook.
I would say you’ve nailed the Labor situation Mark. Economics and politics have changed to the extent that significant gains for organized labor in the private sector are unlikely if not impossible.
Lefties and socialists will typically insist that the best and possibly only way for the working class to advance its interests is to organize the workforce and strike. This seems like a hopeless strategy and is ahistoric besides. The only times in history when labor made major gains is when they abandoned leftist politics and made peace with capital and the state. I come from a labor family and there was plenty of union talk at night, but it was strictly about contract issues, nothing that would be considered left-oriented today.
It seems we now have three threads for Geoff to untangle: Old Joe, labor, and fortress mentality.
MO
Unions Shmoonyuns??
Alright fellow dadbots, I’d just like to chime in and say that despite the oversteps and abuses of unions and union members as aptly described by Dave, unions and the labor movement have had a positive impact.
C’mon, you guys must have read the travails of the starving Okies in The Grapes of Wrath and seen those grim black & white photos of 5-year-olds slaving away in the monocle and top-hat factories of the Monopoly guy. Things looked pretty dismal for workers back in the day.
Dorothea Lange , Public domain, via Wikimedia Common
Lewis W. Hine for the National Child Labor Committee, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Thanks in large part to labor unions, child labor laws were enacted, giving kids the chance to go to public schools — an opportunity which, as Geoff can attest to, the little rascals all greatly appreciate.
Seriously though, thanks in large part to the labor movement and unions, yes, working stiffs did get the chance to enjoy weekends off. Unions also paved the way to an 8-hour workday, higher wages, safer working conditions, overtime pay, compensation for workers injured on the job, even pensions.
Despite the machinations of classic evil-genius corporate villains like Jeff Bezos and Wally World, the working conditions Unions fought for are still fairly entrenched in the American zeitgeist as measurements of what constitutes a decent job. Whether directly or indirectly they are working standards that we as baby boomers reaped a lot of benefits from. They are standards still worth fighting for.
But are unions still a means to fight the good fight? I have to agree with my fellow bots’ well-reasoned arguments that the sun seems to have set on the unions’ glory days. Unions, unfortunately, became the snot-nosed fat kid on the teeter-totter. The short-lived balance between labor and management got out of whack. No one could move the husky kid; he didn’t play well with others. The other kids complained to Superintendent Reagan, who had some underpaid Mexican day laborers simply remove the teeter-totters. (Really, how often do you see teeter-totters on playgrounds these days) .
As Mark & Mark pointed out, now the shifts in the political, economic, and cultural dynamics of the country have made the teeter-totter balance between unions and management an anachronism. I guess some balance has been restored a bit by the current labor shortage, but will it be enough?
–Dennis
The current situation is driving a labor shortage and increased pay and improved working conditions in some regions and industries. This is driving some business owners crazy who consider a job as a gift that they bestow on an undeserving worker out of a deep well of generosity. Policy makers in DC and New York are hearing this tale of labor crisis loud and clear from their constituents (the business class, not my people). The inflation boogie man is getting tons of press lately too. It will be interesting to see if the Federal Reserve tries to force a recession by raising interest rates significantly this year. That would force workers to be less picky about jobs and maybe knock a dime off a gallon of milk.
Mark O
Mark,
I have a correction to your post. It is unscrupulous and possibly illegal to use the noun “inflation” without one of its required adjectives. Inflation is either “ skyrocketing” or “record”. You will find this documented in Strunk & White’s “Elements of Style”, Nightly and Cable News Appendix.
I’m torn on rate hikes. There are two causes to inflation in operation right now. One is the supply chain issues that are lingering for furniture, cars, machinery, and other durable goods, The other is the spike in demand for products as opposed to services. Both of these are Covid related but show no signs of abating soon. (Additionally, you gotta believe that there is a shit ton of opportunistic price increases going on. I suspect a lot of this is driving up the price of groceries, for example.)
How will rate increases help any of this? Well, it might tamp down the demand for financed purchases, like cars and real estate. Just general demand suppression. Taken too far, it causes damage.
It’s definitely a blunt force instrument. I’m a believer that the Fed does need to reload its quiver now and again. They need to be able to cut rates at some point in the future, and it will be tough to start from zero. So moderate increases are ok by me.
Mark M
Hey guys,
Sorry I’m late to the game. First of all, I have to side with Dennis on the labor unions. They were indispensable to creating a middle class. They’re really a big part of the reason all of us got to go to college.
Granted, in the sixties and seventies, the unions grew way too fat and sassy, were overridden by organized crime, and became too obsessed with their own expansion and self-preservation to remain a counterbalance to management. People—for all the reasons you cited—began to hate them. I know my own teachers’ union was hellbent on protecting the job security of everyone, even the incompetents. But we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Mark, maybe you’re right about Starbucks, but somehow labor demonstrations have managed to get minimum wage up to a—barely—livable level. The recent John Deere workers’ strike succeeded in making the company keep promises made to workers who broke their asses and risked their lives during the pandemic. We still need unions because the Bezos and the Musks and the other billionaires building their own space programs will not share. Amazon workers are abused. Bezos has not and will not do anything about it until he’s forced to. The simple truth is workers need unions because they don’t have anything else.
Yeah, they’ve been guilty of gluttony and abuse, but how are any of these wrongs different from what the corporate mentality is doing every day? And they have the government on their side: corporate tax breaks, revocation and easing of environmental regulations, and tax loopholes big enough to drive John Deere tractors through are only the tip of the iceberg. We need unions to balance those forces.
I’ve been mentoring new teachers in MPS for the past few years. Since Act 10 hamstrung the union, benefits have been cut, wages are down, and other workplace protections have been erased. As a result, teaching in MPS really isn’t a career anymore. It’s a job, a stepping stone to something better, and—as a result of that, talented educators are going elsewhere or not going into education anymore. There’s a huge shortage, which we are also beginning to see in health care.
Companies can afford to pay workers what they’re worth. Why the hell shouldn’t they? And that’s what unions do.
Geoff