The Promise and the Peril of Members-Only Unions
Unions have taken some hard hits in recent years, with even greater existential threats on the horizon. Labor must consider alternative forms of organization if they want to survive. But unions should watch out for unintended consequences of those new forms of organizing.
In their report for the Century Foundation, Moshe Marvit and Leigh Anne Schriever highlight case studies in “members-only” organizing, where unions cannot reach majority status for legal certification but maintain a workplace organization made up of a minority of workers that presses issue campaigns against the boss. Charles J. Morris, in his 2005 book The Blue Eagle at Work, reminds us that in its first few years, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) used to certify minority unions as the bargaining agent for that union’s members only, and that such a mechanism still exists (although the modern Board has dodged efforts to get a ruling to respond to Morris’ assertion). Some unions in “right to work” states are contemplating “members-only” certifications as a solution to the “free rider” problem, that workers can choose to opt out of joining (and paying dues to) a union, but the union is still legally compelled to represent them. “You want the contract? Join the union,” goes the simplistic (albeit attractive) logic.
But make no mistake: Non-exclusive representation will also inevitably lead to competitive union situations at workplaces. If a union, for whatever reason, only seeks to represent a portion of a bargaining unit, another organization will come along to recruit the workers who are left out by promising better benefits or an alternative approach to seeking improvements on the job.
This may not be a bad thing. The combination of exclusive representation (in which a workplace either does or does not have a union, and if it does, all employees who have the covered job titles are automatically represented), and agency fee (in which all of those represented employees join the union or at least pay a fee to the union for the bargaining, benefits and grievance services that the union provides) is a uniquely American collective bargaining framework—and a relatively new one, at that. Wall-to-wall certifications were sought by the industrial unions of the CIO to stave off AFL craft unions from coming along and claiming a handful of job titles at a workplace. By the end of the Depression, the CIO’s perspective on union certifications (that bigger is better and that a union should represent all workers in as many job titles as possible across the enterprise) prevailed at the NLRB, partly because the CIO was better than the AFL at working the system and partly because employers generally prefer to deal with one union rather than a multitude of unions.
The concept of agency fee evolved out of World War II when unions were bound by wage freezes and no-strike pledges and were faced with the threat of a wave of membership resignations in protest. It was a concession from the government in exchange for the far greater concessions in wages and power that unions made in the interest of workplace stability and war production.
The important point is that the current American model of union representation is not the natural or inevitable form that unions must take. It was only acceptable to employers in a post-war environment that prized workplace peace, stability and labor-management collaboration in exchange for wages and benefits for workers that kept pace with increased productivity—a far cry from the situation workers and unions face today.
In other countries, competitive unions are the norm. Unions distinguish themselves from each other on the basis of ideology (communist, Trotskyist, Christian democratic, etc.) or party affiliation and compete over their bargaining demands, their ability to turn out members for actions and their ability to “work with” the boss (or not). In Germany, this competition takes the form of proportional representation at the bargaining table (Literally, the number of representatives that any given union has in negotiations is directly proportional to the percentage of workers who voted for it.) In France, the competition can be somewhat hostile, with the first union to take a deal in a round of bargaining potentially opening themselves up to accusations from a rival union of a not-good-enough deal, membership raids and loss of status as workplace leaders.
American unions used to look like this. Take the New York City hotel industry as an example. Labor history buffs may recall a failed 1911-12 city-wide strike by the Industrial Workers of the World (which lost crucial middle-class support when Wobbly organizer Joseph Ettore made the inflammatory proclamation, “It is the unsafest proposition in the world for the capitalists to eat food prepared by members of your union”). But after the strike’s end, a union remained behind in the industry. The independent Amalgamated Food Workers maintained the Wobbly tradition of anarchist direct action in the city’s hotels and fancy restaurants for decades in competition with the “official” HERE locals.
In time, they were joined in competition by the Communist-affiliated Food Workers Industrial Union. The unions called competing general strikes every few years, and the HERE locals would occasionally swoop in and sign a sweetheart deal with a few employers. This dynamic continued until the Depression-plagued hotel industry, desperate for labor peace, signed an industry-wide neutrality agreement in 1938 with the merged unions, the still-powerful NY Hotel Trades Council.
The NLRB was designed in response to competitive union situations like the 1930s New York hotel industry. But rapid wins by unions and employers’ desire for labor peace quickly made exclusive representation the norm. This earlier era of minority union certifications was a forgotten relic until Morris’ book. But this alternative model is getting dusted off—and not just by the radical left.
Following the devastating NLRB election loss at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tenn., plant in early 2014, the United Auto Workers have petitioned for recognition as a non-exclusive, “members only” union. Hot on their heels, an independent union, the “American Council of Employees,” has contested for turf in the plant. ACE is a part of a long history of non-union “unions” in the South: organizations that appear to offer all of the accouterments of representation without any risk of conflict with the boss. I’d call them a company union, but I suspect that VW is aghast at this unforeseen development.
If labor cedes exclusivity, we can expect more independents like ACE to fill the void. We should also expect the Horseshoers and Hod Carriers and the whole cottage industry of corrupt unions that were long ago thrown out of the AFL-CIO for unprincipled raiding to troll around for disgruntled dues payers. And nobody should be surprised if Koch brothers-funded, States Policy Network affiliates like Michigan’s Mackinac Center shop around the legal and member benefits services of new, explicitly anti-union “unions.”
Still, there is some promise in the idea of what would have ordinarily been opposition caucuses having an immediate go at the boss. An opposition caucus is essentially a slate of rank-and-file members who run for union office against the incumbent leadership on a “change” platform. Some opposition caucuses come and go in a single election cycle; others become an ongoing internal political opposition to union leadership. Most are failures. Stanley Aronowitz provides a useful history of rank-and-file union reform efforts in the fourth chapter of his recent book, The Death and Life of American Labor. He argues that successful opposition caucuses are limited by the scope of bargaining and the drudgery of contract bargaining and grievance handling that necessarily blunts their edge and limits their vision. (And that’s just the examples of labor renewal, like the Chicago Teachers Union and TWU Local 100, that are celebrated.)
Most opposition caucuses never transcend their opposition status and are often viewed by leaders and rank-and-filers alike as unhelpful distractions. In the context of wall-to-wall exclusive representation, unity behind leadership’s bargaining demands is often seen as essential. Members are loathe to highlight divisions within the union on the eve of bargaining—particularly if the election results will be less than decisive. Forced to contest for total power, many opposition efforts can leave the union more divided and vulnerable.
The story of the 2012 Chicago teachers strike—which began as a radical book club that then morphed into an organized caucus that won a clean sweep leadership election, then over 90 percent of members to authorize a strike and turned out all members for the win—has become the stuff of recent legend in part because it is so far outside the norm. Teachers union locals’ leadership tend to turn over more frequently than other international unions. But the result of most contested elections is usually a divided executive board, a leader with the public support of only half the members (or less, in low turnout elections) and an employer that sees those divisions and is ready to pounce. If pluralism was tolerated at the workplace; however, dissidents would be freed up to seek out a militant minority of co-workers and focus their fire on the boss instead of union leadership.
In his book, Stanley Aronowitz goes so far as to advocate that labor abandon “contract unionism” altogether. I’m not ready to go all the way with Stanley on that point. As an organizer, my experience has been that workers still really want to have a contract. But members-only unions and non-exclusive representation could open the door to a hardy band of labor radicals to experiment with his prescription for a new workers movement. Rather than press forward with competing demands on wages and working conditions, an alternative union could demand a voice in the production process, the employer’s business model, its products and its prices and leave it to another union to consolidate any wins in a contract.
And what if those contracts continue to contain “no strike” clauses, which prohibit a broad array of job actions during the terms of the agreement? Well, it’s hard to imagine how they survive such a shake-up in the labor relations framework. If contracts are for members only, couldn’t workers drop membership in one organization to take part in the slow down or work-to-rule action of another? What obligation would a non-exclusive representative have to police the behavior of all employees at the workplace?
If this sounds like chaos, good! The current legal assault on unions deserves nothing less as a response. Exclusive representation allows employers to only deal with one set of organizing tactics and one set of narrow demands. Agency fee allows unions to make unpopular concessions, like unions did during World War II, agreeing to wage freezes for reasons of patriotism or the supposed good of the company, without the threat of an immediate loss in dues revenue. This is a framework that works for employers and that curbed an earlier era of labor militancy. “Labor peace” is actually enshrined in the 1978 decision that the Friedrichs Vs. CTA Supreme Court case seeks to overturn in order to throw the entire public sector into “right to work” chaos.
I’m skeptical that Alito has the fifth vote that he needs to overturn four decades of court precedent. But if I’m wrong, and the Supreme Court votes to gut public sector unions, then the only appropriate response is to show them what the absence of labor peace looks like. And if the billionaire class is so hungry to kill all unions that they would hand us back the tools that we surrendered long ago…well, it behooves us to study our history to remember how we once used those tools.
Prez, Smart Satire Or Has the 2016 Election Sunk That Low?
I can’t tell if Prez is a smart satire, or if American politics are so dumb that the 2016 campaign trail can be so effortlessly lampooned by a comic book. The limited series reboot of an obscure 1970’s title began publishing in June. Its first four issues have uncannily predicted a number of summer’s political lowlights. Penned by Mark Russell, the DC book details the rise of a 19-year-old fry cook from Oregon, Beth Ross, to become the first teen president of the United States, through a combination of botched legislative manipulation, viral social media and voter revulsion against politics as usual.
In 2036, the media are dominated by the 24-second news cycle and embedded corporate sponsorships. Crossfire-style talking head debate shows feature real time thumbs-up/thumbs-down viewer polls with “winners” thusly declared. Voter turnout in actual elections got so embarrassingly low that the law was changed to count tweets and Likes as actual votes. Corporate interests have enshrined the logic of the Citizen’s United decision into a “Corporate Citizenship” constitutional amendment that had the side-effect of eradicating age requirements for political office. CEO’s wear hologromatic likenesses of their corporate logos when standing in for their corporations’ personhood. Corporations, declares the big yellow smiley-faced CEO, “aren’t players in this game. We are the game.”
Unfortunately for them, the game does require likeable personalities to win votes. But the most likeable – and most beholden – of the potential candidates are sidelined by scandals caused by their youthful indiscretions having been self-documented on Vine and Grindr. The two very boring candidates representing – eh, whatever respective parties they’re representing – run a humiliating gauntlet of Youtube talk shows, pranks and physical endurance tests.
It is here that our hero rises to the occasion…by cleaning the grill at her job for a training video. Her hair gets caught in the deep fryer, and her yokel co-workers post the video on Youtube. “Corndog girl” becomes a viral sensation. The “Anonymous” hacker collective (Glad those guys kept the band together) enter Beth “Corndog Girl” Ross into the presidential race. She trends and surges and…wins Ohio (Good to know the voters of Ohio 21 years hence have retained the sense of humor that gave us two terms of Jon Kasich as governor). The Electoral College is deadlocked and the election gets thrown to the House.
In the House, things go haywire as states trade their delegations’ votes for pork barrel promises (Colorado gets a naval base! Everyone gets a NASA!) and switch their votes to Ross to extract more goodies…except everyone miscounted and she accidentally wins a majority of the states, at which point she is promptly whisked away to prevent her immediate assassination.
The satire of Prez is awfully broad. Mark Russell dissects the targets of his scorn with a meat cleaver where a scalpel might have sufficed. Patients whose health insurance can guarantee them a hospice bed, but not life-saving treatment, are treated by a labor-saving animatronic “end-of-life- care bear.” The debate over whether food stamps recipients can be trusted to make “responsible” choices results in a federal contract for a Taco Bell stand-in to deliver tacos by drone to the poor. Perhaps this satire needs to be so blunt because it might not take until 2036 for these “solutions” to be debated on Fox News.
The comic has been oddly prescient at times. It’s hard to imagine that the idea of debates being settled via social media was the stuff of science fiction in June. Already, we have seen no less than four mainstream presidential candidates drop out of the race because their debate performance did not attract the attention of the Internet. Not one vote has been cast in a primary and yet four campaigns are over because the Internet yawned!
Russell’s coup de grace, however, came with the third issue of Prez, where the smiley-faced CEO (NOT a stand-in for Wal-Mart as it turns out!) parachutes in to his hellhole of a warehouse to deliver a “rock star” pep talk to his miserable human drones. The publication of this issue eerily coincided with the New York Times’ devastating profile of Jeff Bezos’ time-management sweatshops at Amazon. “Every time a fulfillment comes in a few seconds late,” the smiley-faced CEO hectors his employees, “YOU ARE LITERALLY STEALING THE LIFE FORCE OF OUR CUSTOMERS!” And then of course he’s helicoptered away while that theme song of tone deaf politicians everywhere, “Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World,” plays him out. Of course, Donald Trump was this year’s ignoramus to pump his crowd with Neil Young’s ode to “death and crack babies.” Prez’s Bezos stand-in is, at least, is a lyrics guy. “What’s with that exit music?” he demands of a subordinate. “You ever listen to that song?”
That is either very well anticipated by Russell, or else such a piece of luck that, either way, should be rewarded by your reading this comic. The only real misstep has been the understandable assumption that the political parties of 2036 would strain for “boringness” the way that the Bush and Gore candidacies of 2000 did. Who knew that reality television and Twitter would so radically alter candidates’ performances so quickly? Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders relish their media appearances the way that Randy “The Macho Man” Savage relished his interviews with “Mean” Jean Okerlund before a wrestling match. Political campaigning will never be the same.
Beth Ross only just got inaugurated, which means that Prez is about to face the challenge of moving from criticizing the system to proposing solutions. This is where things can really go off the rails for the series. I, for one, will be disappointed with anything less than an agenda for “FULL COMMUNISM!” But this series is clever, relevant and wholly unexpected from DC Comics. It deserves more attention.
Trump and the Art of the (Union) Deal
The ascendency of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is a joke that both bores and terrifies me, but that is not the subject of this blog post. An article in today’s NY Times, “Donald Trump and the Art of the Public Sector Deal,” provides an interesting insight into his shrewd use of public/private deal-making to build up his real estate empire, but misses an even more interesting story about an early example of Trump’s pragmatism around unions.
Unlike his more ideological counterparts in the business world, or his Koch-funded competitors for the Republican nomination, Trump has treated unions as a cost of doing business – when, that is, those unions have organized and demonstrated the power to make their existence a fact of life.
The Times story tells of how Trump, in 1978, secured a 40-year tax abatement from city and state officials in order to redevelop the “closed, blighted eyesore” that had been the truly grand Commodore Hotel into the shiny glass monstrosity that we now call the Grand Hyatt Hotel. What the story does not mention is that part of the price tag for that tax abatement was a card check neutrality deal with the NY Hotel Trade Council, the union that had represented the workers at the Commodore when it had closed six years earlier. Although not well known, it is probably one of the earliest examples of such a neutrality card-check agreement in the modern era.
But the union just won the card check by the skin of its teeth. It is difficult to reconstruct precisely what happened. It’s possible that the neutrality was quietly subverted by lower ranked managers who conducted a whisper campaign of lies or intimidation. (Early neutrality agreements didn’t build in strong penalties for violations of the agreements.) It’s also possible that, like the workers at the VW plant in Tennessee a portion of the Grand Hyatt workers psyched themselves out that the union could make the hotel less profitable and lead to layoffs. (After all, the previous workers at the Commodore had all lost their jobs.)
Whatever the case, the union went to the table in a weakened position…which Trump exploited. All hotels represented by the NY Hotel Trades Council are under the terms of the same collective bargaining agreement, and have been since 1939. Trump pushed for concessions, not in wages but in working conditions. He got them in a side agreement, while the hotel nominally signed on to the Industry-Wide Agreement.
But then he did something truly clever. He signed a “Me Too” agreement with the union for the upcoming round of negotiations. A “Me Too” is basically a “pre-signing” of the next contract. It means that an employer agrees in advance to all the terms that its competitors will ultimately settle upon, while securing a no-strike pledge during the contract campaign and beyond. You can see the value of a “Me Too” to a non-ideological employer. But the value is also huge for the union, freeing it to single out particular members of the employers’ bargaining coalition for job actions and pressure.
Trump signed a “Me Too” for every round of negotiations, and after he sold his stake in the hotel the new owners continued to do the same. There actually was a lengthy industry-wide strike in 1985, but the Grand Hyatt Hotel remained open for business.
It wasn’t until the year 2004 that the Hotel Trades Council finally got the Grand Hyatt fully signed on to the Industry-Wide Agreement and won for the workers at the Hyatt the same work rules as the rest of the city, which is, itself, an interesting story but one for another time.
Tuli’s Archives
Gothamist has a pretty incredible story about some newly discovered Bob Dylan lyrics, to a song-never-recorded about Robert Moses. It’s easy to assume that the lyrics sheet is a hoax. But, because, it was discovered in the Tuli Kupferberg files, I’m inclined to regard it as legit.
Tuli was a true American character. He was a member of the musical avant garde jug-band the Fugs, an early progenitor of the Village underground, a leftist and a proto-zinester. I first learned of him when, accompanied by a (paid!) intern, I poured through David McReynolds’ archives to find suitable material for the Socialist Party’s 100th anniversary conference journal.
McReynolds was a long time leader of the SP, a pacifist and student of Bayard Rustin and A.J. Muste, a two-time candidate for President (I managed his second campaign in 2000; his first, in 1980, is purportedly the first time that an openly gay man ran for the office) and a long-time bohemian and Village resident. Before David complains about this post, I use the past tense because I am describing an event from 2001, not because he is dead. He is very much still alive (and blogging!).
David’s archives included many incredible photographic negatives of Socialist Party and War Resisters League events from the prior 40 years, including some of the last “new” pictures of Martin Luther King – from a WRL (or possibly Fellowship of Reconciliation?) – awards dinner in the early 1960’s.
It also included a shot from that same dinner night that I has developed into a 11″ x 14″ print that has adorned the walls of every home I have since called my own, of A.J. Must and Norman Thomas locked in an intense yet casual conversation at that same awards dinner, (I think) with the glass reflection of MLK’s back behind them.
So, what convinces me of the authenticity of these new Dylan lyrics because they were found in Tuli’s archives? Well, many of Tuli’s archives wound up in McReynolds’ archives – most notably a zine called “FUCK GOD!” When we came across that one, McReynolds chuckled and said, “That was pretty controversial back in its day. I don’t know how Tuli got away with that one!”
A few minutes later, I came across Tuli’s sequel to that particular opus, a mimeographed volume entitled, “FUCK GOD IN THE ASS!,” its cover adorned by a crude line drawing of a be-robed man with long grey hair, from behind, spreading his butt cheeks. “Yeah,” I said, “I think this would still be pretty controversial today.”
So, do I think it’s possible that young Bob Dylan threw a lyrics sheet of a song taking the piss out of “master builder” Robert Moses Tuli Kupferberg’s way? Yeah, you betcha.