In his November 2003 speech at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, George W. Bush stated: “The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country”. It was a phrase that he has alluded to throughout his presidency. In his almost messianic fixation with the idea of freedom, George Bush has gone so far as to say that freedom is a “gift from God to every man, woman and child.” Yet for all his rhetoric, President Bush has been curiously silent on and absent from the cause of expanding freedom in the American workplace when it involves the protection of the right to join a union and engage in collective bargaining, a statutory right guaranteed in the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
The decline in unionization among private sector workers from a peak of 38% in the mid-1950s is usually considered to be the outcome of several economic and demographic factors which include the decline of manufacturing, rising education among the workforce, the increased number of women workers, union complacency, population shifts and the political reorientation of wage earners borne of the “ownership society”. While the decline of mass manufacturing is certainly a contributing factor as is the anti-union environment existing in Sunbelt “Right to Work” states, there is a much more compelling and substantiated explanation revealed when one goes beyond the accepted rationale of current economic thinking and Chamber of Commerce rhetoric.
In a compelling essay entitled: “The State of the Unions” (NYT 12/07), Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman details the aggressive anti-union campaign launched by business in the mid-1970s to undermine New Deal labor legislation. A far more detailed analysis by Professor Gordon Lafer of the University of Oregon, “Neither Free Nor Fair” (7/07) details the particulars of anti-union tactics as they pertain to the denial of workers’ free speech, subjecting union advocates to economic coercion and intimidation, defamation of union sympathizers, the subverting of the electoral process via delaying tactics and the failure to bargain in good faith in the event that union recognition is achieved. In one half of all the successful election outcomes a collective bargaining agreement was not obtained. Quoting Lafer: “Weak labor laws allow anti-union employers to manipulate the outcome of union elections in a manner that is inherently unfair and undemocratic… Union busting activity in the weeks leading up to a union election resembles practices that our government routinely denounces when performed by rouge regimes abroad.” The lack of effective labor law enforcement on the part of the National Labor Relations Board is another major factor that is often overlooked. A 2005 study by the University of Illinois, Center for Urban Economic Development revealed that 30 percent of employers fire pro-union workers; 49 percent threaten to cease business operations; 82 percent hire union busting consultants and 91 percent subject employees to one-on-one meetings with a supervisors promoting anti-union viewpoints. A 2007 report from The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) came to similar conclusions. The CEPR concluded: “With legal penalties for such actions being so slight, employers can break the law to head off organizing efforts and face almost no real repercussions.” Research by pollster Peter Hart (2006) revealed that 57 million workers expressed a desire to join a union, up from the 42 million as reported in 2002 in The Nation. 57 million workers out of a labor force of slightly over 153 million are by my calculation approximately 37 percent. That number added to the 12 percent that are presently unionized would give you a workforce 49 percent union, a number greater than the percentages of the 1950s and a figure that would refute most of the theories regularly cited as the explanation for the fall off of unionization. It is noteworthy that in the public sector, where anti-union tactics are nearly nonexistent, unionization is near 38 percent and close to 50 percent among culturally conservative police and firefighters. In Western Europe the level of unionization of the private sector workforce is generally at or above 80 percent and this in societies that are subject to much of the same economic and demographics forces that exist in our own.
Labor and its progressive political allies have attempted to redress this inequitable situation through the proposed Employee Free Choice Act that would allow for union recognition based on a majority of employees signing an authorization card and foregoing an election. Current law allows for the foregoing of an election if both the employer and the majority of the workforce so agree. In reality, unions are not asking for anything dramatically different from established law with the exception of foregoing an election outright. This is in effect an emergency measure that is required due to the systematic subversion of national labor laws that have been on the books since 1935. Conservatives see in the card check an abrogation of the basic democratic principle of the secret ballot but they don’t want to acknowledge the very real and vicious campaign to deprive workers of their democratic rights that has been underway since the 1970s and which is a major contributing factor in the decline of unionization in the private sector. While peer pressure in the card check process is real, the need to redress the very serious shortcomings which now beset union efforts to represent workers make it the lesser of two evils. In an environment where workers have no reasonable expectation of having their rights protected there is no other choice. To quote Lafer: “NLRB elections fail to safeguard workers’ right to keep their opinions private; and that, on the contrary, the NLRB system results in workers being forced to revel their political preferences long before they step into the voting booth- thus turning the secret ballot into a mockery of democratic process.”
As the Bush Administration draws to a close amid the persistent political prattle about the sanctity of freedom and our obligation to further it in every corner of the world except our own, why is it we tolerate the subversion of the legally sanctioned right to organize and bargain collectively here at home? The Bush Administration and many Republicans on Capitol Hill made no secret of their opposition to the EFCA. This to me constitutes a glaring flaw within our political society and intellectually degrades our claims to be champions of liberty. If we can’t protect the freedom of our own workers how can we claim any legitimacy in promoting it around the world? How is it we tout the prospect of “Joe the Plumber” owning his contracting company while at the same time we would deprive him of his right to join a union and benefit from collective action? We are presently involved in a military adventure in Iraq, the purpose of which, depending on prevailing political winds, has been defined as a “crusade” for freedom while here at home we allow workers to be “stiffed” out of the gift from the Almighty himself. The economic enfranchisement of 57 million American workers would enhance the freedom of more than twice the population of Iraq. Regrettably, freedom in this world is not on the march but in retreat, and ironically it has a head start in the American workplace. The image of George Bush as a champion of freedom is not laudable but laughable when viewed through the prism of the struggle for worker freedom through unionization on the home front. It is a sham and hypocrisy writ large. With John McCain’s’ stated opposition to the EFCA and unions generally, there is nothing to hope for from a McCain presidency. Working Americans should not let their admiration for McCain’ war record or record of public service cloud their thinking as to just where their own economic best interests lie. The rationale that once justified the idea of workers as Reagan Democrats or that the Republicans would act in the best interests of the workingman has effectively ceased to exist.
Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
November 1, 2008
Member Iron Workers Local # 697
Sunday, November 2, 2008
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