I recently
came across an interesting blog piece by Stewart Acuff called The Future of the American Labor
Movement. One thing I liked about his piece is that he correctly
identified several important areas the labor movement has ignored over the years.
However, like many on the left, he completely misunderstands the relationship
between labor and capital and this leads him to the erroneous belief that the interests
of workers can be saved entirely through political action, while ignoring labor’s
most effective weapon, the strike.
Acuff points
out that the 1935 Wagner Act, which was revised and reborn as the National
Labor Relations Act (NLRA), does not cover large percentages of workers (e.g., public
sector workers, agricultural workers and domestic workers). These latter two
groups comprise many of the lowest wage and most abused workers in the nation. For
those who are covered by NLRA, the law significantly limits their freedom to
form unions, bargain collectively and strike. He argues that the labor movement
needs to fight NLRA-type protections for all workers and start to vigorously
organize the millions of non-unionized workers in the country, while also
fighting for legislative changes that would improve workers’ living standards, including
a higher minimum (living) wage and single payer health plan.
Unfortunately,
Acuff misunderstands the relationship between labor and capital, claiming that
the lack of “real and full freedom to form unions and bargain collectively is
the core of our economic crisis.” The economic crisis is, in reality, a crisis
of capital—the temporary failure to acquire as much profit as desired in the
usual way. To be sure, times are tougher now for the rest of us, but the
economic relations are essentially the same as they have always been. The employing
class owns the means of production and thus controls the conditions of work,
while the workers are dependent on the employers for a job and wages. This
allows employers to pay workers less than the value of their labor and pocket
the difference as profits (i.e., exploitation). When times are tough for
capitalists, they slash wages and jobs and demand more from those who remain, thus
ensuring continued profits over and beyond what they need to live far more
lavishly than their employees.
Unions and
collective bargaining merely allow workers to negotiate their working
conditions and compensation with their bosses, but never to actually challenge
their subservient relationship, let alone demand full autonomy, power or
control over the means of production. Thus, unions and collective bargaining
help perpetuate the continued profit-making by the capitalist class by insuring
that workers stay on the job to be exploited (i.e., paid less than the value of
their labor).
Furthermore,
the right to form unions and bargain collectively, in and of itself, does
little for workers if they cannot mount an effective strike. During collective
bargaining, each side makes proposals, argues its case and they either come to
an agreement or not. The boss can always say “no” and the workers have little
recourse when this happens except to appeal to his compassion or threaten to
harm him. Although there are a number of tactics that have been used by workers
over the years, the strike (and its variants) is the most effective means to
extract concessions from bosses, as it hurts their bottom line. The longer
workers remain off the job, the longer they lose profits.
While union
membership has been on the decline (partly as a result of downsizing, union
busting and outsourcing), unions have also become increasingly reluctant to
engage in strikes and other job actions. Acuff laments how “35 years of
assaults on workers and unions have led to 35 years of stagnant wages,” yet the
unions have done little to resist this. Indeed, by increasingly choosing
political action over direct action, the unions have been complicit in this.
Like many on
the Left, including the leaders of the unions, Acuff has misconstrued the
problem as a political problem: “What does the absence of organizing and
collective bargaining rights say about freedom and democracy in the United
States?” In actuality it says very little about freedom and a lot about the
relationship of democracy to capitalism.
We do, in fact, have the right to form unions, strike and bargain
collectively, but the state has imposed numerous restrictions and limitations
and it has done so legally and democratically and for the benefit of the bosses.
What most on the Left fail to recognize is that despite its definition (rule by
the people), democracy is not the same thing as People Power and does not serve
the economic interests of the masses.
Though Acuff
sounds like a critic of mainstream unionism, his critique suffers from many of
the same faulty premises. While it is true that governments can take away
collective bargaining rights (as they recently did in Wisconsin), organizing is
something that people can and sometimes must do, regardless of rights and laws.
Likewise, before we had a legal right to strike, workers still struck and
risked jail, beatings, deportations and murder. Unfortunately, the major unions
have accepted the rules and laws imposed on them by capital (i.e., they
obediently follow the dictates of NLRA and Taft-Hartley) and even undermine
wildcat initiatives by their members, thus squelching rank and file autonomy
and passion. In Wisconsin, when workers started talking about a General Strike
(which is illegal under the Taft Hartley Act), the major unions sent their
members home from the state house occupation, arguing that the most strategy
was to vote the crooks out of office.
It is true
that wages have been stagnant or declining over the past 40 years and that
working conditions have deteriorated (e.g., longer hours, speedups, increased workloads).
It is also true that the wealth gap has grown rapidly in that period and living
conditions for most of us have declined as a result. In response, the unions have
done virtually nothing to fight to reverse these trends. Rather, they have almost
universally negotiated contracts that merely slowed down the process. Ultimately,
if unions want to increase their membership and status among workers, they will
have to demonstrate that they have the power to make aggressive demands on the
bosses and win them through strikes. Until then, unions will seem like a burden
to many workers that simply take a cut of their already meager wages in
exchange for more status quo.
