January 28 Week In Review

Week In Review

January 28 2013

by Bill Onasch

Dense Top–Sieve Below

I don’t blame the hard working professionals belonging to AFGE but nearly all news these days from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is bad. This past week an annual report on union membership revealed union density–the unionized share of the workforce, now standing at 11.3 percent–is the lowest in ninety-seven years. Since there were few public sector unions in 1916, it’s safe to conclude that the present 6.6 percent density in the private sector is the lowest since anybody has kept track.

In many respects density is a more telling indicator of union health than the total number of union members. Membership rolls can fluctuate due to market cycles largely beyond control of traditional collective bargaining.

Other factors have long been in play that affect both measures.

* Since Bill Clinton drove through NAFTA in 1993, later followed up by the China trade deal, unionized employers in North America have offshored the work of millions.

* Conversely, capital from outside the USA opened “transplants” here–rapidly winning market share in auto, rubber, and other industries while remaining mostly nonunion.

* And, of course, technology has greatly reduced the number of jobs in manufacturing even as the USA remains an industrial powerhouse, and the same goes in rail and longshore despite an explosion of global trade.

Unions can, and once did adjust to a changing composition of the workforce. One of America’s biggest unions retains the archaic name of Teamsters. Except for UPS deliveries on Mackinac Island–where motorized vehicles are banned–no members of this union any longer hold reins of horse-drawn wagons. The Teamsters made the adjustment to motorized trucks. Later, prodded by organizing successes of the Minnesota leadership that emerged after the 1934 Minneapolis strikes, the IBT expanded beyond their traditional base of elite driver-salesmen to embrace the entire trucking and warehouse industry, inside and out. In recent years they also attracted two major rail unions to merge in to their ranks and even have contracts here and there in manufacturing, printing and public sector jobs.

But this union, which also suffered from decades of extensive Mob domination, failed to meet the eventual challenge of deregulation of trucking begun in the Carter administration. The majority of big rigs you pass on the highway today don’t have a Teamster member at the wheel. Work once done union is now parceled out to often super-exploited independent contractors or small, unorganized outfits that are usually vassals of bigger ones. Outside of UPS, the core of the various regional master freight agreements has shrunk to barely critical mass. Even the great Logistics Belt in the historic union stronghold of suburban Chicago remains mostly unorganized with only a valiant effort by the small UE causing any grief for the warehouse bosses fronting for corporate giants such as Walmart.

The Teamsters are, of course, not the only once mighty union to have lost clout. The UAW was as shortsighted as Big Three management in initially ignoring the inroads made by Japanese car companies in to the North American market. After a couple of ill-conceived organizing defeats at transplants they mostly depended on patriotic appeals to Buy American to save jobs. Their failure to organize the Big Three’s competition led them in to partnership with the bosses to make UAW workers more “competitive.” This was pushed to the extreme in the Obama administration dictated bankruptcy at GM and Chrysler.

Unions did register substantial growth in the public sector in the postwar period and these have become the majority of organized labor today. But the bipartisan austerity drive has slashed hundreds of thousands of these jobs at every level of government, many more have been privatized , and anti-union legislation in such union bastions as Michigan and Wisconsin have dealt further grievous blows. In just the past year, 234,000 public sector union members were lost; density declined from 37 percent to 35.9.

Overall, as the total U.S. workforce grew by 2.4 million last year union membership declined by 400,000. Total union membership now stands at 14.3 million–less than the membership involved in the merger of the AFL with the CIO fifty-eight years ago.

There are some exceptions to this gloom. National Nurses United grew through some solid organizatizing victories. Some of those, along with success by other unions in organizing immigrant workers, contributed to a modest improvement in California union density.

On the national level, there is only one positive aspect to this latest report–despite the beating our unions have taken, workers are still substantially better off being in a union. Union members ha median weekly earnings of 943 dollars last year (about 49,000 annually), compared with 742 (about 38,600 annually), for comparable nonunion workers. That’s the main reason why employers still hate them and a major reason why we should still cherish them.

While our unions are dissipating, the upper strata of union officialdom remains as dense as a Black Hole. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka was ready to make a refreshing beverage by adding sugar to the present crop of sour lemons .

“What will define the labor movement of the future, however, is not assaults or the changing economy, but how working people come together to respond to them. We enter 2013 with our eyes open and understand that these challenges offer real opportunities for working people to reshape the future.”

He goes on with many more fine, inspiring words. They are the same words he brought with him when he left his post as head of the Miners to win election as an “insurgent” running mate of John Sweeney, ousting the then Old Guard in the AFL-CIO in 1995. But there’s a difference today. Trumka the Miner used his oratory to motivate great class battles in the coal fields, taking on both the operators and their servants in government. Today’s Trumka puts his rhetorical talents to use as the most loyal spin-doctor at the service of the White House and congressional Democrats.

Our unions are not yet dead but they are clearly ailing. We won’t survive many more of brother Trumka’s “opportunities.” To reshape our future we need to reverse the current equation by putting clarity at the top to gain density below.

Will the Real Sierra Club Please Sit Down

Regular readers know I have long had a turbulent association with America’s biggest environmental group, twice leaving the Sierra Club in protest. I’m not quite ready for a third try but I am impressed with a major shift in Club policy. For the first time in its 120 year history, the group that has focused on lobbying, partnering with corporations, and occasional lawsuits, is now getting involved in mass action coalitions. More than that–they are even preparing to participate in nonviolent civil disobedience. The CD will take place at a national protest in Washington February 17, over the Presidents Day Weekend, demanding the President nix the Keystone XL pipeline. While defending their old traditions, executive director Michael Brune says,

“We are watching a global crisis unfold before our eyes, and to stand aside and let it happen -- even though we know how to stop it -- would be unconscionable....time is running out, and there is so much more to do. The stakes are enormous. At this point, we can't afford to lose a single major battle. That's why the Sierra Club's Board of Directors has for the first time endorsed an act of peaceful civil disobedience.”

In Brief...

¶ Shortly after the release of the BLS report a Circuit Court of Appeals ruling declared President Obama’s “recess appointments” of National Labor Relations Board members invalid. Unless reversed on appeal to the Supreme Court, this means there is no functioning NLRB and more than 300 decisions by Obama appointments are vacated. We’ve never been able to count on the NLRB for much but no Board at all means the bosses can violate the few rights we have with impunity.

¶ From AP, “Millions of smokers could be priced out of health insurance because of tobacco penalties in President Barack Obama's health care law, according to experts who are just now teasing out the potential impact of a little-noted provision in the massive legislation.”

¶ With all the media attention given to “Right to Life” demonstrations, choreographed by church hierarchy around the anniversary of Roe v Wade, you would think there was an upsurge in opposition to a woman’s right to choose. In fact public opinion is just the opposite. An NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll shows seventy percent support the historic abortion rights ruling. That’s the highest approval rating since polling on the question began in 1989.

¶ From the AFL-CIO Blog, “About 1.7 million workers in the United States each year are exposed to silica dust and run the risk of developing silicosis, lung cancer and other debilitating diseases. Public health experts estimate that 280 workers die each year from silicosis—and thousands more develop silicosis as a result of workplace exposures. But a proposed workplace standard on silica dust exposure from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been delayed for nearly two years as the Office of Management and Budget reviews the proposed standard. You can help spur action on controlling this deadly workplace hazard by signing a White House ‘We the People’ petition urging the Obama administration to move forward with the silica dust standard.”

¶ From the CBC this morning, “MPs are set to return to the House of Commons today as Idle No More protesters plan to march to Parliament Hill for a world day of action. The protesters are opposed to environmental law changes adopted after the House of Commons and Senate passed Bill C-45.” A recent poll shows more than half of Canadians think change in Federal policy toward First Nations, Inuit and Métis people is urgent. An NDP (labor party) MP has introduced a bill to force the government to respect indigenous rights.

That’s all for this week.