"Collective organization and action were good things." Labor educator Michael D. Yates

Michael D. Yates taught economics and labor relations for three decades at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown and is the author of (among other works) Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate (2007) and Why Unions Matter: 10th Anniversary Edition (2009), both published by Monthly Review Press. He kindly took time to answer some questions about the state of US organized labor. GR: I live in North Carolina, which has the lowest percentage of organized workers in the US. As a recently placed historical marker reminds us, "A strike in 1929 at the Loray Mill... left two dead and spurred opposition to labor unions statewide." Many here associate unions with organized crime, Communist agitation, and violence. Why have unions failed to thrive in the South? MY: Well, unions in the United States have always been presented in much of the media as not quite legitimate and quasi criminal organizations. Outside the American mainstream. You get that even today in the corporate campaign being waged against the Employee Free Choice Act. And the association of unions and communists goes back a long way too. In a country where third parties cannot easily succeed, it is easier to make the connections plausible to the public. In the south, labor's failure has to be tied to the issue of race. A few unions had decent racial policies and managed to do some organizing, such as the United Mine Workers. The left-led unions did make inroads in the south in the 1930s and early 1940s, building interracial unions in agriculture and a few other industries. After the Second World War, the CIO started Operation Dixie to organize the south, an essential thing to do as it would take away the ability of firms to move south to get away from unions. However, those in charge of this operation refused to use the radicals who had had some success in building unions in the south, and they also refused to deal with racism head on. And labor didn't use its political power to pressure state legislatures and the federal government. It could have made alliances with the beginning civil rights movement, but it did not (and the resulting civil rights laws suffered as a result becoming laws that focus on individual grievances rather than laws that protect collective rights as does the National Labor Relations Act. When this effort failed, as it was bound to, the south was lost, to the employers and their political allies. The rest is history. A powerful panoply of repressive labor laws, subsides to businesses, and antiunion propaganda have set up nearly insurmountable barriers to the labor movement. GR: North Carolina's high rate of Latino immigration was likely a major factor in the victorious decade-and-a-half struggle to organize the Smithfield Foods hog processing plant in Tar Heel. You comment that "the influx of immigrants offers the labor movement new and enthusiastic troops for rebirth and revitalization." In what ways? MY: The Latinos who have been migrating to the south are savagely repressed here, by employers and by the legal system, including law enforcement. In addition many of them were repressed in their home countries too. And in their countries of origin, many had experiences with unions and other types of collective organizations. Here they live in communities of similarly situated people, typically men and women from home. All of these factors combine to make it likely that Latino immigrants will gravitate naturally to collective solutions to their problems. They have also build worker centers and community organizations that have fought significant battles against employers and for political reforms, such as prosecutions of employers for slavery and the famous boycotts waged against Taco Bell and other large fast food chains that are major buyers of the tomatoes the immigrant farm workers harvest. In Mississippi, an alliance has been made between Hispanic immigrants and black workers, and this organization has organized workers, prevented firings, enforced contracts, agitated in the state capitol for immigration reform, and so forth. Such organizations have great potential to rejuvenate and in fact reconstruct the labor movement, not just in the south but around the nation. If the most oppressed workers can organize, even if many are undocumented, certainly gives hope that plenty of other workers can organize as well. The leaders of unions and the AFL-CIO and Change to Win ought to embrace all of this and put forth new leaders and new ideas. If they don't, then the new workers should build independent unions and organizations. GR: You find that few unions challenge employers' "relentless assault on the notion that collective organization and action are good things". Why is this? Are there any exceptions to this trend? What about more traditionally radical unions like the Industrial Workers of the World? MY: The IWW is still out there, even doing some organizing. But I don't see it as being the center of labor renewal. Whatever it does will be good, though. The United Electrical Workers is always challenging employers, and it has done a good bit of union-building in the south, including North Carolina (in alliance with Black Workers for Justice). For too long the labor movement embraced the notion of labor-management cooperation, which is no way to build an independent movement of workers. When you cooperate all the time, you get too cozy with your class enemy. Years of cooperation gave rise to an entrenched union bureaucracy, bloated and overpaid, and now so old as to be almost jokes. Then when employers went on the class warpath in the 1970s, unions were stunned. But remarkably Andy Stern and many others are still trying to be good "cooperators." They fear an aroused rank-and-file, one that would unabashedly say that collective organization and action were good things. Ultimately, labor has failed to develop a labor-centered ideology, a way of thinking that could give workers a compass to navigate the world around them. Instead, they claimed to be pragmatists and cooperators. But what message does this send to workers? That employers are half right? And unions half bad? GR: Is the Employee Free Choice Act likely to pass and, if so, what will this mean for the future of union organizing? MY: Although Obama and many Democrats say they support the EFCA, I am skeptical. Labor is strictly a junior partner in the Democratic party. Unions cannot command votes, mainly because they are not willing to take the kinds of collective and militant actions that they would have to take to get the attention of politicians. Instead they will lobby, a big waste of time usually. Meanwhile employers are going all out, and even using the economic collapse to argue that more union workers will just raise wages and cost jobs. And since unions have been brain dead for so long in terms of ideology, how will they win mass public support now that they need it for EFCA. The bill may pass, but it won't surprise me if it does not. If it does it will help unions gain members, and this will help labor politically too. But in my view, EFCA should be part of a wider collective movement to change the whole society. What better time to do this? And even with EFCA, will unions build democratic rank-and-file unions? And even if a union gets certified with authorization cards and even if the first contract is achieved through mandatory arbitration, will the union be situated strongly enough to win the second one? GR: Could you address the perception of some the United Auto Workers is responsible for the collapse of the "Big Three" US automakers? MY: The US auto companies have not faced costs that have increased more rapidly than their rivals. The union has already made many cost cutting concessions so that US company costs were getting closer to those of the foreign transplants. So other things equal, if the US companies could compete a few years ago, they should have been more competitive today. Plus labor costs are about 10% of total car costs, so if the workers cut wages to zero, total costs go down by only 10%. The right-wing propaganda against the union is outrageous, especially from congresspersons like Senator Shelby of Alabama. He is all in favor of all manner of subsidies to the foreign companies that have set up shop in his state, but all of a sudden he is free marketeer when it comes to GM and Chrysler. He is just anti-union and anti-worker. And the money the companies pay out for health care for retired workers represents agreements the companies made in the past. Agreed to. And wages would have been higher had the union to won these benefits. So current workers took lower wages so their parents and other retirees could get health care. I wish the scumbag bankers had been so selfless. The plight of the companies is due to the economic situation and years of horrible managerial decisions. The UAW, on the other hand, did little to fight against these decisions, choosing the cooperative path instead. Why wasn't it in the lead for national health insurance and why didn't it hold GM's feet to the fire to enforce the agreement in which the company said it would support national health insurance? Finally why didn't the union build the kinds of alliances and efforts that would have given it a real shot to organize the southern car transplants? Finally a heavy does of internal democracy would have done the UAW a world of good. Nick Holt works as a legal advocate for poor and low-income people in Charlotte, North Carolina. His website gritsandroses.org