Labor Relations
Over the past 8 weeks the class Labor Relations has really opened my eyes to the state of the working people of America. Through the readings and discussion topics through each week I have come to understand that we have a problem. A problem that may not have a solution. And if there is a solution we may be too weak, too afraid or too pigheaded to take advantage of it. America has been cowed into a state of complacency and misdirection by many of our leaders for the past 30 years and it’s only getting worse. We have become so distracted and so quick to vie against one another it seems impossible for the type of cooperation and coordination that is needed to get this problem solved. Throughout this paper I will discuss the formation of the labor movement in the United States, when it started to lose power, where we are at today and what some of the struggles facing unions and working people in the future will be. For America to succeed going forward a new labor movement needs to come into existence. To ensure that the American people really do get a fair chance moving into the future a lot of things will need to be corrected and even that may not be enough.
The early portion of Labor Relations began with Why Unions Matter (Yates, 1998) and a discussion of how the labor movement began in the United States. Much like in England it was a very contentious and sometimes violent time. Workers were angered by their treatment, their wages, the onset of technology taking their jobs and their safety while on the job. “Up until the end of the 1930’s, the formation of a union was mainly a contest of power. Employers were intent on keeping their workplaces union-free, and they took whatever steps were necessary, no matter how ruthless. Acts of anti-union violence were common, and although illegal, were seldom punished. In fact, public authorities were often complicit in corporate violence against working people.” (Yates, 1998) These people fought tooth and nail against huge odds to gain freedoms we take for granted today. Without their struggle and sacrifices this discussion would be very different toady.
Moving into the 1960’s a great example of unionism in the public sector is “Public Employee Unionism: A Neglected Social Movement of the 1960s.” (Shaffer, 2011) Shaffer recounts the struggles of public school teachers and how they were a vital part of the labor movement of the 1960’s. “Thus, teachers – like their counterparts in the civil rights, student, antiwar, and American Indian movements – engaged in a form of civil disobedience to win their demands for union recognition, higher pay, lower class sizes, and more conducive conditions for student learning.” (Shaffer, 2011) This movement was attacked for a supposed attack on children and education by teachers but they stuck to their guns until they got what they wanted. Since then teachers along with other public unions have become reviled as Republicans have systematically worked to demolish this once strong union. I found a lot of parallels to Geoghegan’s chapter on nurses “…it’s a compassionate profession. People who become nurses, they want to give something.” (Geoghegan, 2011) Since the right has begun denigrating teachers, they are often more reviled then respected and he now views nurses as one of the last great hopes for unions gaining strength and being able to make a difference as well “Here’s a nice kind of labor movement: one to storm the commanding heights and show compassion to a dying woman. What better way to throw away one’s life than by doing that?” (Geoghegan, 2011)
Following this time of union strength and solidarity (1940’s – 1970’s), when so many gains were made and battles won against employers who fought vehemently to keep these benefits from their employees, the labor movement began to weaken. Through concerted efforts made by large corporations and politicians who had once been friend to the working class, these gains slowly began to erode away. Unions began to get a bad name, people stopped wanting to be a part of them. And as much as outside influences affected the labor movement, unions themselves were not without blame for their own decline. This lapse in discernible direction from labor leaders and democratic officials alike has led to the interesting concept of the precariat. Outlined in Standings book, The Precariat we see the growth, stemming from “neo-liberal economists sought to create a global market economy based on competitiveness and individualism.” (Standing, 2011) Liberals have long had a desire for globalization that is dead set against the interests of working class Americans. It plays time and again into the hands of corporate interests and buoys republican support against them. Whether it is some desire to aid the entire world in development at the cost of its own people, democratic officials time and again seek to create trade deals that will harm the security and productiveness of its own workers. “A labour market based on precarious labour produces high transaction costs for those on the margins. These costs include the time it takes to apply for benefits if they become unemployed, the lack of income in that period, the time and costs associated with searching for jobs, the time and cost in learning new labour routines, and the time and cost involved in adjusting activities outside jobs to accommodate the demands of new temporary jobs. The total may be substantial by comparison with expected earnings. This creates what could be called a ‘precarity’ trap.” (Shaffer, 2011) Following the financial crisis in 2008, precarity has seen a widespread increase and if things continue as they have the past decade the precariat will see a drastic increase in numbers.
Another interesting concept is put forth in “Is Business Management a Profession.” Here we have a very enlightening message about whether or now business management should be held in the same regard as lawyers and doctors in the area that practitioners should require licensing and very specific training since their decisions and choices can have such a large impact on so many people. “In the case of bad behavior on the part of business executives, the reason that the issue of trust arises is that these individuals are expected to exercise judgment—based upon specialized knowledge and methods of analysis that they alone are thought to possess—in areas in which their decisions affect the wellbeing of others. When the need for such judgment has arisen in other spheres that are vital to the interests of society (such as law and government, military affairs, health, and religion, to consider the classic examples), modern societies have responded by creating the institutions that we know as professions. One way, in turn, of diagnosing the cause of the recent epidemic of business scandals would be to speak of a widespread failure among CEOs and other senior executives (along with board members, auditors, financial analysts, and others) to uphold their professional obligations.” (Khurana, Nohria and Penrice, 2005) Ultimately they decided that business management should not be held to the same stringent licensing procedures as law and medicine, but this was also before the Great Recession of 2008. I do not think business management will ever become a licensed profession due to businesses preferring the least amount of government regulation possible and the freedom that goes along with that. It would probably benefit the American people for a code of ethics to become standard but again it does not seem likely.
The most influential reading during Labor Relations, for me, is undoubtedly “Only One Thing Can Save Us” by Thomas Geoghegan. This book really opened my eyes to a lot of the issues that any type of labor movement must surmount if it is to be successful in America. Geoghegan also outlines so many of the problems that beset labor at this time. How both money and influence are arrayed entirely to stop a labor movement from gaining traction and going back to making a positive difference in the lives of men and women as it once did in this country. He frequently puts his hopes in the Democratic Party to arise from their stupor and corporate influence to reunite with working families and shape policy based on what is best for the people of America. I’ve never really been a proponent of third parties, but the more I think about it the more I think we need it. Geoghegan places too much faith in democrats. They are not who they were, the strange romance they have with globalization doesn’t hold a lot of succor for anyone who risks their job being shipped overseas. It has become a party too focused on social issues and not the economic ones that win voters over. Despite my misgivings, “Only One Thing Can Save Us” has really been inspirational to me. Geoghegan fearlessly points out how difficult it will be to make labor truly matter again. But sometimes honesty can be too much, when I read this passage “Then we have to offer something the right wants so badly that it will let through a civil rights act for labor. Well, let’s consider what the right wants. There’s not much labor could give up, since it’s lost everything.” (Geoghegan, 2011) He goes on to speak of hope and chance, of compromise and collaboration and I laud him for it, but the quotation above hit me like a sledgehammer. Without revolution, labor has lost.
The single largest issue I see going forward for any type of labor movement is that many employers of the future will simply not need as many workers. This will be put in place primarily by automation and will come in the form of self-driving vehicles and self-ordering kiosks. I’ve worked in a McDonald’s and Subway, there is very little reason those entire stores couldn’t be automated, at least the food preparation and the meal ordering portion. What does that leave for an actual person to do? Clean the bathrooms, floors and tables. Unload supplies, come in each morning to load ingredients into whatever conveyor belt like application these restaurants will use. That’s it! Even the bookkeeping and accounting could be done automatically. The process has already begun, “Wendy's (WEN) said that self-service ordering kiosks will be made available across its 6,000-plus restaurants in the second half of the year as minimum wage hikes and a tight labor market push up wages.” (Graham, 2016)
And perhaps worse than this is the very real probability that almost all commercial vehicles will no longer require a real life, wage earning person in the very near future. Imagine every semi-truck, every bus, and every taxi cab being an automated vehicle. How many people does that put out of work? The sources I found put the number of semi-truck drivers at 3.5 million (American Trucking Association., 2017), cab drivers at 233,900 (Wikipedia, 2017) and bus drivers at 665,500 (Bureau of Labor and Statistics, 2015). (Get some stats for this)That’s nearly four and a half million jobs that will cease to exist. How is our country going to continue to operate when millions of people who had steady lower middle class incomes are suddenly out of work? This isn’t what the future might be, it is what the future will be. Automotive and technology companies are not spending millions in research to not use self-driving technology. It is coming. And when it hits I do not think anyone knows what to do about it.
As this class comes to an end I wish that I could say I had a good idea what the labor movement needs to do to become relevant again, but I don’t. An adoption of the German model with union representation for only those who choose it would be a good start. It will help unions by freeing them up to only represent the workers who pay dues and choose to be members. Making it a civil right to join a union would be lovely, but people hate unions and not many wind up in factory work because they are great long term planners. S deferred investment is only enticing if you do not have needs that are immediate and pressing. It could extend unions to more white collar venues but these people are so used to not having a union who knows if it would catch on at all. But I will maintain hope, I really have been inspired. I just don’t know what could make a difference. Geoghegan sums the feeling up on his concluding page.
“That was the goal of the civil rights movement: not just to change the law but to change the way the leaders of the Democratic Party talked – indeed, even the way some Republicans of the day talked. Despite all the money in our politics, it is possible to change the cowardly way we now avoid the real challenges of our day.
Maybe it will take a strike, or a series of strikes, or some other kind of disruption; maybe it will happen just because we are embarrassed by our level of inequality. It’s not just income inequality, though that is a part of it. Europeans who visit and go into our workplaces are shocked by the hierarchy, and they are right to be shocked.
We have to change not just our country but the way we live. We have to figure out, in our own time, with a new kind of labor movement, how we can lead a democratic way of life. Unless we do so, you and I are done.
But we’re not done, not yet. We’re going to come back as something new.” (Geoghegan, 2011)