Category: school

I’m back in New York after ten days in Amherst, for the summer residency of the ULA Labor Studies program at UMass. The program is fantastic. The campus is beautiful. The curriculum is vital. The faculty is brilliant. The student body is awesome.

The community of students is really the reason to enroll in this program. It’s a great mix of union staffers, elected officers and rank-and-filers (many of whom are having their tuition paid for by their employers!). THis is exactly what I wanted: the opportunity to step away from my work twice a year and see the forest from the trees; to make the connections between public sector and private, the building trades and the service sector, globalization and our CLCs and global federations.

Just one example of why I’m glad I met all these people these last two weeks: the Machinists in the program were great guys (and gals). We’re talking about seasoned activists who organized dozens of shops and negotiated their first contracts. No nonsense, take-no-prisoners, been-there-done-that kinda guys who understandably must bristle at Andy Stern and arrogant little whiteboy technocrats in suits (like me!) who come along and say that everything must change. What a waste that we’ve argued ourselves into these corners instead of working together to figure out the way forward.

My take on The Split? At least it’s finally fucking happening. No more agonizing over what-ifs. No more waiting for the other shoe to drop. No more hiring freezes. Just do it and move on, already.

SEIU is out, but that’s no surprise. Teamsters are out, but that’s not a huge surprise given their history of moving in and out of the federation. UFCW is poised to quit, and that’s a shock. That’s America’s neighborhood union, and generally pretty cautious and conservative. Unite Here is keeping mum, and my gut tells me they’re staying put.

The federation is fundamentally weakened. The previously announced staff and department cuts are definite now, and likely to be deepened. With two of their major affiliates out of the AFL-CIO, the building trades might walk out the door, too.

Meanwhile, many of the affiliated national unions within SEIU and the Teamsters (like NAGE) are mulling their own splits, to go back into the federation. Additionally, the Central Labor Councils and state feds are surely gearing up for civil wars as locals of the renegade international unions either secede and take their per capita dues with them, or else fight to stay inside the local bodies only to watch loyal locals of the loyal IUs secede in order to avoid associating with such disloyal elements.

In his infinite wisdom, John Sweeney pushed through a resolution increasing the per capita dues to Central Labor Councils while demanding that non-AFL-CIO unions be refused membership into the CLCs, so that loyal unions are taxed at a higher rate in order to keep the CLCs financially viable while the house of labor demolishes itself (I’m sure that my old boss is crossing his fingers for a Unite-Here disaffiliation so he can avoid paying per-cap to the NYC CLC).

What is so wrong with allowing unity where we can achieve it? Wasn’t the big problem (according to the NUP one year ago) the lack of central authority and vision at the federation level? So why split and defund the fed and allow every union to go in its own direction?

And didn’t the CWA (and others) agree with the NUP that the lack of collaboration at the local level hurt Labor? So why force this split on our Central Labor Councils and force the duplication of efforts of two separate labor councils in each region?

Are Change to Win even bothering with creating a new federation? Are they simply letting he renegade international unions pocket the per-cap dues that would have gone to the AFL-CIO, the CLCs and the state feds and just letting every union do its own thing — the central criticism that sparked this whole debate in the first place.

We have enough enemies. Wal-Mart, Wholefoods, JetBlue, Cintas, Marriott, FedEx. Can we focus on those bastards instead of organizing against each other? What’s so painful about a principled agreement to go our own ways for awhile, but to unite where we can and avoid raiding or undercutting each other?

I was very excited to receive in the mail this week all of the books and syllabi for my first courses at the U-Mass Labor Studies program. I’m taking Labor Law, with Harris Freeman, and Labor Research, with Tom Juravich. I decided to start lightly with “Ravenswood: The Steelworkers’ Victory and the Revival of American Labor,” which Juravich co-wrote with Kate Bronfenbrenner, and which is included in the syllabus for the Labor Research course mostly, I assume, to add color to the discussion.

Ravenswood was an early 90’s lock-out at an aluminum processing plant of which I had never previously heard. Juravich and Bronfenbrenner argue that this little-remembered labor struggle presaged the revitalization of the labor movement experienced later in the decade, and represented the first time that American unions successfully combined a labor action with a corporate campaign, boycotts and international solidarity; a recipe for what they differentiate from mere corporate campaigns as a “strategic campaign.”

Located in West Virginia, the Ravenswood plant had been a part of the Kaiser Aluminum corporation until leveraged buy-outs, asset spin-offs, restructuring and other corporate shell games in the 1980’s produced an independent Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation, seemingly owned by a former plant manager with a chip on his shoulder and a clear agenda of union-busting. The new owners combined jobs, forced overtime and cut back on safety regulation, resulting in several deaths inside the plant. When the contract came up for renewal, management proposed austerity cuts and stalled the negotiations, while spending millions on new security and scab recruitment. When the contract expired, management rejected the union’s offer to continue working under the terms of the old contract pending a new agreement, and instead locked out 1700 union workers.

The workers at USWA Local 5668 held strong, but it was several months before the Steelworkers’ international union got directly involved in the campaign, which ultimately lasted two years. International Vice President George Becker personally took over the campaign and directed his legal staff salvage the local’s paper-thin and sure-to-be-rejected unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB.

Juravich and Bronfenbrenner narrate the book as an interesting chronological story that anyone could enjoy, but any union staffer reading the early chapters is keeping mental score of all of management’s ULPs – including surveillance and retaliation for union activity, refusal to bargain over health and safety (a mandatory subject of bargaining), general surface bargaining, unilateral implementation of a final offer and an illegal lock-out – knowing that management’s goof-ups mean that the workers have a right to get their jobs back with massive back-pay!

USWA’s intervention in 5668’s ULP case is presented as a bit of great luck, when, in fact, the question should be asked, “Where the heck were they earlier?” Fifteen years later, any union that’s serious about winning has a sophisticated program of cataloguing grievances and management activities in order to identify multiple violations of federal labor law that will protect and enhance the union’s own activities.

Elsewhere, the USWA is more inventive in pressing the campaign of the workers’ lock-out. They create an “end-users” campaign that focuses on the beverage companies who utilize aluminum cans from the Ravenwood plant and, carefully skirting the ban on secondary boycotts, pick away at Ravenswood’s significant customers, one by one. They press health and safety issues at the plant with OSHA. They join environmental coalitions in highlighting the plant’s pollution.

The Steelworkers also press a corporate campaign against Marc Rich, the billionaire investor, on the lam from the U.S. for tax evasion and illegal arms sales to Iran, who, through shadow entities is the true owner of Ravenswood. With much assistance from the international federations (global umbrella groups of international unions – mostly European and North American – that are slowly becoming labor’s answer to the trans-national corporation) engage in demonstrations and lobbying that bring unfavorable press to Rich at his Swiss hideout and sink several lucrative financial deals.

Ultimately, the pressure works. Rich ousts the management team at Ravenswood. All of the locked-out workers get their jobs back. Pay and pensions increase. The plant remains open.

George Becker goes on to become President of the USWA. Richard Trumka, who directed his union’s (the Mineworkers) support becomes Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO. Many of the tactics used at Ravenswood have become ubiquitous in the labor movement. They’re not always successful, but a strategic campaign, focused on leverage and soft spots, combined with a united workforce is more often successful than not.

Of course, then again, management has gotten a lot more sophisticated in the last fifteen years and rookie mistakes as the initial Ravenswood management team made are fewer and farther between.