Another Terrifying Labor Statistic
The Center for Economic and Policy Research has released a report that finds that one in five union activists can expect to be fired during an organizing campaign under George Bush’s watch. Overall, a pro-union worker had a 1.4 percent chance of being illegally fired for his sympathies in 2005. An organizer’s gut reaction to authors John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer’s paper might well be, “Oh, great, just what my organizing committee needs to hear!” The fact is that workers already know that organizing is risky (and organizers don’t suger-coat the risk).
Combined with threatened and actual plant closures, terminations and employer animus are the greatest reasons why half of all union representation elections lose and so many more campaigns never even come to election as activists are fired as a chilling example to their coworkers not to step out of line. The report’s numbers are based on cases where the National Labor Relations Board found a termination to be illegally motivated by anti-union animus and ordered that the employee be reinstated with back pay. This remedy is hardly punitive, since the boss is not fined or jailed for willfully violating the law, and, indeed, the back-pay that he must make up are the wages he would have paid anyway minus any other wages that the employee earned from other employers in the meantime, which at an average of $2,749 per fired worker is a huge discount if the firing successfully discourages the rest of the workers from pursuing their organizing campaign.
The authors utilize NLRB data for their report, which ignores a world of activity beyond an increasingly archaic and anti-union process. Public sector employees, who are governed by state laws, are far less likely to face termination for their union activism, a fact that Kate Bronfenbrenner and Tom Juravitch cited in an earlier paper as a reason for the higher win percentage for unions in public versus private sector campaigns. And many innovative unions are bypassing the NLRB election procedure for pressure campaigns leading to card check recognition. Union activists are probably less likely to be terminated during such a campaign, but it’s impossible to gather numbers. Instead, the authors estimate the number of workers organized through such procedures and add them to the universe of their study, which produces a very conservative figure for the likelihood of a pro-union worker to be fired.
Schmitt and Zipperer perhaps should have ignored these cases entirely and focused on the NLRB process. What their paper would be then is yet another convincing argument that the National Labor Relations Act is broken; that, on the whole, it serves management’s interests and provides a legal roadmap for a campaign of terror to beat back most union organizing campaigns, and, as such, is in desperate need of reform or repeal.
Labor law reform is on the agenda, with the Democrats newly in control of Congress, although mostly as a wedge issue for the coming presidential contest since Bush is likely to veto anything that the Congress passes on labor (save, perhaps, for a narrow tweaking in response to Kentucky River). The prospect of a Democratic presidency coupled with the Democratic Congress, absent a groundswell of political pressure, should not inspire too much optimism. After all, labor law reform was on the agenda the last time the Democrats controlled Washington (and the situation was, in some ways, worse – a worker was more likely to be fired for union activity during the Reagan years), but two years of studies and commissions produced nothing.
Rise of the Loompa Proletariat
In the movie “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” Willy Wonka employs in his factory Oompa Loompas, strange little orange men who seemingly work for free. The Oompa Loompas, who sing while they work, seem to be charged with much manual labor.
They mix the chocolate and other confections, carry out Wonka’s orders, manually power his personal yacht and otherwise do his bidding-all at the beck and call of his whistle. After seeing just one minute of the movie with the Oompa Loompas on the screen, one obsesses about this work arangement. Are these Oompa Loompas slaves, or indentured servants? Are they salaried employees? Is this some Stalinist work camp?
Wonka answers this question himself early on when several visitors on a tour of his factory raise these troubling issues. The Oompa Loompas, he explains, come from a far off place called “Lumpaland,” where, because of their diminutive size, they were in constant danger of being gobbled up by assorted “fierce creatures.” And so, in what he would have us believe was an altruistic gesture, he “freed” them from their native land and had them brought to his factory in the “greatest of secrecy,” where they could live in “peace and safety”…and become his new source of labor.
Were the pint-sized immigrants scabs? It is explained earlier in the movie that years ago Wonka had fired all of his employees, charging them with industrial espionage; trading secrets with his chief competitor, Slugworth, Inc. Wonka closed his doors and ceased production. Three years later, the factory began production again, but, mysteriously to the public, without hiring workers and without opening its doors. At this point, it seems clear that Wonka brought in the Oompa Loompas to solve his labor problems, and kept his doors closed to keep nosy government investigators out in order to keep his little sweat shop running.
The Oompa Loompas certainly seem to be property. In fact, one of the guests on the tour of the plant, bratty Veruca Salt, demands that her father buy her one. He complies and actually haggles with Wonka to purchase one of the little orange men. But Willy Wonka strangely refuses! Is this mere greed, a desire to keep all the hard working Oompa Loompas to himself? The answer comes shortly when Wonka takes his guests to his top secret laboratory. On the door is a large sign, clearly stating, “Top Secret: No Unauthorized Oompa Loompas Allowed Inside.” Behind the door toil dozens of Oompa Loompas. Clearly not your average slaves, they’re actually busy mixing and inventing new candies! These Oompa Loompas are skilled artisans, setting their own hours and work loads.
Evil slave-driver?
How is it that Wonka trusts the Oompa Loompas with such trade secrets as the formula of the “Everlasting Gobstopper,” but fired his human workers out of mistrust. Wonka openly fears that Slugworth will learn his secret formulas. Either international patent and copyright laws don’t exist here, or they don’t apply to these candies. (A third possibility that Wonka never thought to patent his creations seems too far-fetched.) In any event, the result is clear: in order to maintain the massive rent on his products, the kind of rent that makes new products and marketing schemes t.v. news and causes panics in candy stores when the supply “Scrum Diddlyumptious” bars has run out, Wonka must rely on secrecy. He shows that he will go to any length to
maintain secrecy. He has already displaced hundreds of factory workers.
He uses fear and intimidation on his guests on the tour, as well as the general public. And yet he trusts the Oompa Loompas with his trade secrets.
Abused worker?
This was doubtless part of his arrangement with the Oompa Loompas when
he brought them to work for him. Freedom from fierce creatures in exchange for labor. Labor in exchange for housing. And since the Oompa Loompas remain within the Wonka factory and on the Wonka property at all times, there was no way they could trade secrets with the enemy. Wonka, a true capitalist, had fully exploited the immigrant workers!
Or had he? There is a clear dichotomy between the unskilled Oompa Loompas who mix the candy, power Wonka’s yacht and otherwise toil away, and the skilled artisan Oompa Loompas who invent the candy, set their own hours and have the run of the place. These Oompa Loompas are clearly the intellectual superiors of the unskilled variety. Surely, they must appreciate their own situation. They hold in their minds and hands the very information that could ruin Wonka. If they were displeased with the pay or treatment they got from him, they could easily find work elsewhere. Slugworth would, in Wonka’s own words, “give his false teeth” to learn Wonka’s trade secrets, as well as double the pay and benefits of the Oompa Loompas who could be the key to a greater market share.
It would seem that these Oompa Loompas had come to appreciate their fortunate situation and made a deal with Wonka, a little “partnership between labor and capital if you will. And all they had to do was sell out their brother workers, the unskilled Oompa Loompas to achieve it. So, the skilled Oompa Loompas got the best pay, hours, and, one would assume, choice lodging, while the unskilled variety got the shaft.
And yet, they seem so happy. They actually sing while they work. They sing, in fact, about how great it is to work for Wonka and how everyone should be like the “Oompa Loompa doopity doo.” (Okay, they’re not the best songwriters in the world.) This is what gave the impression at first that Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory was a Stalinist work camp, that the workers believe their exploitation to be freedom. The Oompa Loompa’s songs could be characterized as agit-prop.
It isn’t Stalinist propaganda, but something very similar. The workers are singing about labor’s goals being the same as management’s. That’s how Wonka and the skilled Oompa Loompas got them to go along with the
agreement! You’re job security depends on the success of this company, they must have been told. Sacrifices had to be made for profits. After all, if the company made no profits, the Oompa Loompas would be out of a job, and thrown back to Lumpaland. Now that’s motivation!
There seems to be one thing missing from this whole scenario. I used the term “brother worker” intentionally. All the Oompa Loompas we see in the film are males. Discounting the possibility that Oompa Loompas are radically different from us anatomically, there must be female Oompa Loompas. Where are they? It may be safe to assume that this is the final part of the arrangement between Wonka and the Oompa Loompa overseers. It is, by this point, clear that they are salaried workers, paid, albeit unequally, in food, shelter, clothing and protection. These payments for their work is not only for them, but their families. Wonka only puts the adult males to work. The women and children do not have to work.
Now, let’s put on our econimist hats and put this little arrangement into perspective. From the little we see of the world outside the Factory, using Charlie (who doesn’t seem to have a last name) and his family as an example of the typical family, women and children had to work as well. Charlie has a paper route, and his mother took in laundry. These two incomes had to provide for six people: Charlie, his mother, and four bedridden grandparents. (All four in the same bed. Kinky.) There is no father evident in this family. He presumably had to leave town when Wonka closed his factory and the job market soured. But, assuming that the father was in the picture three years prior and worked at the Wonka factory, his earnings would not have to provide for seven people alone. That burden was shared with his wife and son. So, previously, Wonka was paying his human workers enough money necessary to produce and reproduce just themselves for another day of labor.
Given the population density of this area and its presumed saturation of the job market, the existence of a labor union is doubtful, and the wages doubtlessly depressed, so Wonka could easily pay his workers that little. Let’s use as the sum of the wages paid ten Wonka dollars per worker per day. This labor afforded Wonka a commanding share of the chocolate market, however, it was beginning to cost him his rent. So Wonka downsized his entire workforce.
Now, with the Oompa Loompas employed as labor, Wonka had to pay enough money to produce and reproduce each Oompa Loompa and his family.
Assuming a typical Oompa Loompa family of husband, wife and 2.3 children, and assuming that an Oompa Loompa, being half the size of a human worker needs only half the food, shelter and clothing, Wonka would be paying each Oompa Loompa 21 and a half Wonka dollars per day, or, its equivalent in food, shelter and clothing. This is also assuming that Wonka employed an equivalent number of Oompa Loompas as humans. For this increase of $11.50W per worker per day, Wonka gets serious increases in productivity.
For the human worker, Wonka got ten hours work for $10W pay. This is
assuming that Wonka is a fairly liberal employer in a rather Dickensian
atmosphere. Given that the Oompa Loompa worker lives where he works, and also given that the Oompa Loompa sees a personal stake in the success of the company, he obviously works harder and longer than the human worker. At this point, any speculation as to the amount of the increase in productivity would go way beyond merely bordering on absurdity, but sufficed to say, it would be substantial. And it would give Wonka a permanent edge over competitor Slugworth, whose human workers could never keep up.
The other edge it would give Wonka is the aforementioned rent. With workers that can not only be counted on to create new candies but to keep the formulas for said candies top secret, Wonka can retain his huge market share and status as a popular icon of confectionery capitalism, and leave Slugworth permanently in a distant second. The benefits to Wonka are obvious.
For the Oompa Loompas, they get the leave a country where they would have died. For the Oompa Loompas in charge, it means freedom, respect and the necessities of life for them and their families. The unskilled Oompa Loompas are duped into believing that this labor is gratitude and payment for their very lives and the lives of their families. With that artificial outlook, it’s easy to see why they would be so happy. Maybe Oompa Loompa ignorance is bliss.
[This article originally appeared in Vol. 6, issue #11 (April 1998) of Lumpen.]
The Little League Thief Who Was Never a Leader
The recent charges against former president of the NYC Central Labor Council, Brian McLaughlin, are incredibly disappointing. While most of his alleged embezzlement is not connected to his role as head of the local labor federation, the shocking abuse of power as an elected Assemblyman and community leader is a real black eye for the movement. (I mean, we simply do not need to be represented by the cartoonish villainy of a man who would steal $95,000 from a little league.)
The tabloids, of course, are touting this as a story of a corrupt union boss, the president of the most powerful labor body in the city. The sad truth is that Brian McLaughlin was a weak leader, totally beholden to the building trades who pursued the lowest common denominator agenda that couldn’t unite the various union locals that make up the council to support each other’s strikes and contract fights, or even support the same candidates. This weakness was my greatest complaint about McLaughlin up until now, but I always thought that at least he was honest. But, now, it turns out he’s not even that, and I would be lying if this didn’t shake my faith – if only a little – in a movement that allows itself to be “led” by such men.
The leaders of the Central Labor Council are responsibly talking about more oversight of the body’s officials, which is good. It’s discouraging to read that the lesson drawn by Dennis Hughes, the president of the state federation, is that no labor leader should also hold elected political office. The argument that one “can’t serve two masters” has been made by right-wingers who have been targeting McLaughlin for years. Of course it’s bullshit that the same is never said of corporate lawyers and lobbyists who hold office. Labor leaders, as representatives of the people, should ideally be represented in the halls of Congress, the Assembly and City Hall…ideally as members of a real Labor Party.
Finally, the news that Ed Ott is likely to remain as McLaughlin’s successor is reason for some celebration. I’ve known and worked with Ed for years. He’s one of the sharpest minds in our little movement. What I’ve always appreciated about Ed is his ability, when presented with a dilemma, to lay out the correct stand that the Labor Council should take, the pragmatic position that the council could take and then the lowest common denominator position that the Council would take. My hope is that with Ed finally at the helm, the CLC might finally opt more often to take the idealistic stands, rather than the past of least resistance.
Union Busting 102 at Pace University: Professors as Temps
I am continuing to guest blog at DMIblog, writing about unionization, academia and Kentucky River, and giving Pace University a black eye. This is my second post, which appears there. Please direct comments to that site.
The National Labor Relations Board’s terrible Kentucky River decisions, which this week greatly expanded the definition of “supervisors,” has handed the bosses a powerful new union busting tool. The implications for these decisions go far beyond hospitals and nurses and may eventually deny the right to form a union to all professional employees (perhaps a quarter of the entire workforce in a few short years, according to the NLRB).
The union rights of employees in higher education have been under assault for much longer. Back in 1980, the Supreme Court denied the right to organize to most college professors, ruling that if they sat on advisory and recommendatory committees, and had a say in recruitment, policies and curriculum, then they were de facto management. The decision put an abrupt halt to a modest wave of faculty organizing in the crazy, radical 70’s. Prior to this week’s NLRB decision, many faculty who once might have been considered management were ripe for organizing, with a new crop of CEO-style college presidents (like Pace University’s half-million dollar man, David Caputo, who, rest assured, is the villain of this post as well) imposing a corporate structure on colleges and ramming their policies down the throats of politically weakened faculty (Unfortunately, it would be hard to find any full-time professor who does not exercise “independent judgement” or “responsibly direct” someone, if only the department secretary).
The Academy is a strange medieval institution that has somehow survived into the early 21st century. It’s funny, then, that college CEOs have, as Labor Notes‘ Kim Moody has noted, turned to an equally old system to supplant it: the shape up. Colleges and universities have increasingly replaced full-time tenured faculty with adjunct professors, part-timers who make a fraction of the salary and benefits of full-timers and enjoy none of the free speech and job protections of tenure. Adjuncts account for a third of all faculty at four year institutions and as much as two thirds of the faculty at two year institutions.
Since nobody could argue (with a straight face, at least) that adjuncts have any real power or authority, they have retained the legal right to organize unions, and many have done so. In the New York area alone, the adjuncts at NYU, New School, Marymount among many others have organized in recent years. In 2004, adjuncts at Pace University (who make up a staggering 62% of the faculty) voted to form a union with the American Federation of Teachers and New York State United Teachers. Pace’s union busting advisors initially used some of the legal delay tactics that were eventually deployed against their bus drivers. The cutest bit of their cretinous creativity was arguing that the National Labor Relations Act (which, after all, governs relations between “Employees”, their “Unions” and “Employers”) did not apply to them because NYSUT, a state federation of local unions, was not a “Union”, itself, and that since the adjuncts’ petition was filed in between semesters when they are not teaching and not collecting a paycheck that they were not really “Employees” of the University, which was not, therefore, an “Employer” (which begs the question, what the hell are they doing to fill all that real estate down there at 1 Pace Plaza?).
In the face of their adjuncts’ rebellion, Pace decided to delay at the bargaining table, where dozens of negotiating sessions over the last two years have resulted in no real agreements on job security, compensation for office hours with students or pay increases that begin to approach parity with full-timers. Their goal is to frustrate and discourage the adjuncts, hoping they will abandon their union. “They are certainly not in any rush to come to an agreement,” says John Pawlowski, an adjunct professor of Biology who serves as president of the adjuncts’ union. “The University is resistant to its staff organizing, like any other employer,” says Pawlowski. Once upon a time, the university would have been better than “any other employer,” but, as Pawlowski notes, these days “most of [Pace’s] Board of Trustees come from the business world.”
Just like a corporate board, Pace’s trustees recently formed a presidential compensation committee that concluded that the university simply must receive a huge pay increase in order to stay competitive with executive compensation across academia. When asked exactly whether the members of Pace’s executive compensation experts had any experience in academia, Board member Anneilo Bianco cooly responded, “No, we’re all business people.”
Pace’s CEO, David Caputo, who “reluctantly” accepted a $100,000 raise has been pushing “merit” increases of less than 2.5% for the adjuncts. Since adjuncts don’t sit on committees, or even spend much time on campus outside of their lectures, their “merit” can only be determined by one thing: student evaluation forms. This makes perfect corporate sense if you view students and their parents as customers, degrees as product and teachers as temporary part-time workers. Just like McDonalds polls its customers, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate the friendliness of your server?,” Pace asks how clearly your professor explained material. Surely there’s no connection between a student’s anticipated grade and the rating they give their professor, and, certainly, such a salary policy won’t exacerbate the very real problem of grade inflation. Then again, maybe high grades are the sign of a successful business and happy customers?
That’s why the Union of Adjunct Faculty at Pace, the AFT, NYSUT and our friends in the labor movement will counter Pace’s self-congratulatory centennial celebrations this Friday, October 6th at 2:00 pm to demand that the university finally negotiate in good faith with its employees. What’s at stake is not merely what kind of education Pace will provide in its next hundred years, but the quality of higher education in general.