The best and the worst of American unions

Washington Monthly, July-August, 1987 by Steven Waldman

THE BEST & THE WORST OF AMERICAN UNIONS

The words of Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor, have often been cited to summarize everything that is wrong with unions: "What does labor want? More!' More wages even when profits are declining. More benefits even when generous compensation is pricing products out of competition. More work rules that stifle productivity. More political power to follow selfish agendas. Seldom has a man been misquoted so appropriately.

Gompers's actual statement, made in an 1893 speech to the International Labor Congress, revealed a somewhat broader, more enlightened vision of organized labor. "We want more school houses, and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more constant work and less crime,' Gompers said. He appealed for an eight-hour day, improved health and safety, more justice, less greed, and concluded with a somewhat dated but inspirational call for "more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.'

Labor has, in recent years, lived too much by the essence of the abridged quote rather than the loftier one, sometimes because callous management has left it little choice and sometimes because of selfishness. But things have begun to change. In some cases management has mellowed. Just as important, plant closings, concessionary wage agreements, and the rapid rise of union busting firms have forced unions to abandon--often reluctantly--the traditional rules of the labor movement.

The experimentation has taken many forms--a wages-for-power swap at an airline, a union-run supermarket in Philadelphia, a reduction of work rules at an auto plant in California, a union-built homeless shelter in Los Angeles. Unions have also adopted a variety of sophisticated new methods of putting financial pressure on companies beyond setting up pickets outside the closed plant gates.

As unions become more aggressive--strikes were up in 1986 for the first time in a decade--it is critical that their efforts be channeled well. The persistence of corrupt, selfish, shortsighted unions will doom the labor movement.

What is a "good' union? Fundamentally, it is one with a broad view of both what to demand and how to demand it. It is concerned with worker power and conditions and the quality of the product or service. It is effective, clean, non-discriminatory and applies its political muscle not just for itself but for the public good.

Because there are 60,000 union locals in America, some of the most horrendous coexisting in the same national union as some of the most angelic, to definitively select the best and worst is impossible. But drawing on interviews with academics, unionists, and labor reporters, it is possible to identify the unions exhibiting those qualities that the next labor movement should encourage and those it should purge.

The Best

Farm Labor Organizing Committee--Baldemar Valasquez has for the past nine years campaigned with messianic fervor for probably the worst treated workers in America, migrant farmers. But he has succeeded in this difficult area of organizing not just because he preached a compelling gospel, but because he followed the money.

Valasquez founded FLOC in 1967. After years of organizing, it had gained only a few limited agreements with growers in Northern Ohio, and Third World conditions persisted. Pay was often below minimum wage, workers were continuously exposed to pesticides, and most farms had inadequate or nonexistent toilet facilities. He concluded that growers were not budging because they were in no position to. If they raised wages, and therefore tomato prices, the dominant corporate food processors to whom they sold--primarily Campbell's and Libby's--would simply announce they were taking their business to one of the dozens of other growers in Ohio.

So in 1979 FLOC took the unusual step of bypassing the employers by launching a nationwide boycott of Campbell's. Although Campbell's denies the boycotts had any effect on sales, the effort did stain the company's Mmmm-mmm-good image, particularly when the National Council of Churches--an umbrella group representing many Protestant denominations-- and several Catholic bishops threatened to join the boycott.

To broaden its attack, FLOC brought in Ray Rogers, the labor consultant credited with pioneering the modern "corporate campaign' in which unions target the financial lifelines of intransigent companies. FLOC and the churches, joined by unions and progressive groups from around the country, picketed Philadelphia National Bank, one of Campbell's major creditors. One month after FLOC focused on Philadelphia National, sympathetic depositors threatened to pull $500,000 out of the bank. TV and newspaper accounts referred to Campbell's role in maintaining the deplorable conditions. The stain on the company's corporate image grew darker. "You had these little nuns get up at stockholders' meetings saying I have one share and you're a dirty so and so,' says John Dunlop, secretary of labor in the Ford administration, who was involved in the FLOC battle.