Unions Struggling Against the Odds

Decent wages,

Jobs for all,

Grow from in

The union hall.

merica is a land of only slightly fettered capitalism. In deference, the media offer daily business news and market reports to please advertisers, investors and their own executives. But such reports grant only the shortest shrift to workers in general and unions in particular. Indeed, many newspapers and television networks suffer labor problems of their own, which they generally are loathe to publicize.

Consequently, the constant struggle by workers to gain union status, and the parallel struggle by established unions to safeguard their steadily eroding legal rights, generally are fought in unpublicized private desperation. Mostly, it is only when a strike intrudes on someone’s comfort that worker rights make it onto the news pages at all. Or when a major newsworthy corporation or institution suddenly finds itself embarrassed by its presumptuous behavior.

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In our state, Yale and its associated hospital fill that bill. Though they are world leaders in education and health, both institutions practice medieval labor policies. Understandably preferring to pay generous fees to its own lawyers rather than to instructors, janitors, nurses, cafeteria aides and other basic workers, Yale has increasingly become an icon of the modern anti-union crusade.

This is OK. As a uniquely high-profile villain, Yale’s horror stories rush into print in a profusion that publishers would rarely allow for corporations. Thus, we readers have gained an invaluable window into that relentless implacable war between workers and owners. Since there is no Labor Section in the press, we would otherwise remain largely ignorant of many abuses.

Empowering this trend toward decay of workers’ rights is the White House. Six years of the current administration have generated several horrific appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). This anti-union control of the NLRB and the U.S. Labor Department has understandably discouraged workers’ use of their normal appeal processes. At the state level, many Republican labor departments are equally dismissive.

One consequence of this lack of reasonable recourse to either bureaucracy or the media has been a growing labor militancy. Understanding full well that they’re operating on their own now, more workers are resorting to strikes and boycotts.

This has the added benefit of attracting otherwise rare press attention. Picket lines, however, are hard to maintain during cold weather and economic hardship. Nor are many average citizens ready to join boycotts.

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But what many abused workers are willing to do is join unions. Recognizing their opportunity, nearly half the AFL-CIO has broken away in an attempt to organize lower-level service workers, a reprise of the drive to organize manufacturing workers 100 years ago.

Nowadays of course, every literate American realizes that the 800-pound gorilla in the labor/management debate is outsourcing, both domestic and foreign, which has decimated that manufacturing employment. And in addition to the gorilla, there are various annoying chimps, orangutans, and mandrills to fight against, too. One is the redefining of all but the lowest-level workers as "supervisors." This denies them the legal right to a union.

Industry and government alike are awash in this gimmick of calling everyone a supervisor, and one of the major practitioners is aircraft engine maker Pratt & Whitney. Appeals by its workers to the NLRB are greeted with a snicker.

Ironically, desperate unions have also taken to supporting illegal aliens, seeking to swell their dues-paying ranks. Unfortunately, this practice also undercuts the wages of their own traditional members. And so for low-paid workers, it is now nighttime in America, with no rosy-fingered dawn on the horizon.

William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk, Conn.