The Financial Page State Of The Unions by James Surowiecki January 17, 2011 . In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they’d never done before: they joined a union. Emboldened by the passage of the Wagner Act, which made collective bargaining easier, unions organized industries across the country, remaking the economy. ....... The result is that it's easier to dismiss unions as just another interest group, enjoying perks that most workers cannot get. Even though unions remain the loudest political voice for workers' interests, resentment has replaced solidarity, which helps explain why the bailout of General Motors was almost as unpopular as the bailouts of Wall Street banks. And, at a time when labor is already struggling to organize new workers, this is grim news. In a landmark 1984 study, the economists Richard Freeman and James Medoff showed that there was a strong connection between the public image of unions and how workers voted in union elections: the less popular unions were generally, the harder it was for them to organize. Labor, in other words, may be caught in a vicious cycle, becoming progressively less influential and more unpopular. The Great Depression invigorated the modern American labor movement. The Great Recession has crippled it. ? << .....http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2011/01/17/110117ta_talk_surowi ecki
Comment The American labor movement and the trade union movement are distinct but overlapping social currents and organizational forms. The "Great Depression invigorated the modern American labor movement" ought NOT be understood as growth of the trade union movement. There was massive growth of non-trade union forms of survival organizations of the proletariat, notably the Unemployed Councils, auxiliary organizations of women, various ethnic centered self help and social organizations, etc. The author mentions the passage of the Wagner Act and a 1937 Gallup poll favoring unions, without taking into account events spanning a couple of decades and looking closely at the catalyst accelerating industrial unionism. The National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act was signed into law on July 5, 1935 by Roosevelt. By making unions legal the Wagner Act unleashed the industrial trade union movement. Months after signing the Wagner Act the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organization) was formed or rather on September 10, 1936, the AFL suspended all 10 CIO unions, then the "Committee of Industrial Organization." In 1938, these unions officially formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations as a rival labor federation to the AFL. Seven months after Wagner the first sit down strike took place. Between 1936 - 1939 American workers engaged in 583 sit down strikes of at least one day duration. The point is that the Great Depression crippled and virtually destroyed the new industrial trade union movement and the Wagner Act reinvigorated it. What galvanized the movement of the proletariat at the focal point of industrial unionism was the MARCH 1932 Hunger March in Detroit. This march in turn was the culmination of work amongst the unemployed masses ousted from industry. Considerable differences of opinion and narrative combine with romantic notions of "workers fighting bosses" to conceal facts. When Roosevelt took office 25% of the workforce was unemployed; farmers were in trouble with prices falling by more than half since 1929. Two million were flat out homeless. It was if the devil had the people by the throat. In the fall of 1931 General Motors and Ford led the industry in cutting wages by 10%. Between 1930 and 1932 wages were cut by 5 to 20 percent depending on classification. These cuts and deep unemployment were part of an economic and political continuum running back to the early 1920's and the defeat of the Fisher Body strike in April 1921. By 1922 the union had a paltry 500 members with thousands laid off. The Great Depression in the United States caused large membership drops in some unions and DID NOT INVORGARTE the trade union movement. The Great Depression galvanized the labor movement as this movement existed outside the bound of trade unionism and expressed the survival mode of the proletariat. The Councils of the Unemployed were perhaps the closes thing resembling class organizations of the proletariat. In fact, it was on the basis of the Councils of the unemployed that the critical element of unity was fought out. Something similar but at a much higher level is taking place in real time America. Our future is not yet written and much depends of us. However, the trade union movement as we have experienced it and worked within it is increasingly spent. The trade union movement cannot and will not be reinvigorated on the basis of which it was formed: the industrial union model or during the transition from craft to industrial union form. Nor can the trade union movement be invigorated based simply on the employer- employee relations. Within the unions a new but small voice is emerging demanding that the unions operate as a social cause, against a backdrop of revolution in the means of production. The current "great recession" is not just cyclical crisis of overproduction but occurs against a backdrop of social revolution as outlined by Marx. Auto - General Motors and Chrysler could not be allowed to collapse for profound economic reasons including pensions. A collapse would have also meant overwhelming the government pension board which generally pays 65% of collapsed pension to the individual. Health care would have collapsed for a couple hundred thousand people not receiving disability or Social security. Every state in the Union - country, facing deficit and bankruptcy except South Dakota, with pension funding entering profound crisis and threatened collapse. The question of communist strategy in my mind means determining where an organization - not individual, is going to throw their primary material and social resources. At this writing roughly 20,000 Americans a day sign up and request food stamps or 7.3 million a year. What is brewing is a survival fight of the class. Without the principled struggle to imbue the fighting section of the proletariat with communist consciousness and organizational skills the emerging vanguard of the proletariat will be pulled from its historic path to power. All romantic notions of "workers against bosses" ought to be jettisoned and American history reconceptualized outside narrow trade union and syndicalist ideology. What is the key link in the chain of events capable of pulling the entire chain of events forward? Here is how Lenin posed the question of political insurgency. Surowiecki opens his article with this sentence: "In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they'd never done before: they joined a union." What this means is that auto was converted into war production earning Detroit the name "arsenal of democracy," with government guaranteeing a fat profits to all individual plants and all auto markers. Roosevelt clearly understood America could not enter the war with sharp labor strife or overcome economic crisis without massive war production. In this context and with Wagner in effect, "millions of American workers did something they'd never done before: they joined a union." There of course is more to the story. There is always more to the story. Waistline _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list Marxist-Leninist-List@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list
