Back to the Future?

U.S. Labor in The New Gilded Age Ruth Milkman

City University of NY Graduate Center and the Murphy Labor Institute

January 2013

In December 2012, Michigan passed a “right to work”

law, joining 23 other U.S. states – mostly in the South.

• State “Right to work” laws, first permitted by the 1947 Taft-Hartley

Act, prohibit “union shop” clauses in labor-management contracts,

which require all union-represented workers to pay union dues.

• Until recently such laws existed mainly in the U.S. South and West,

but in January 2012 Indiana also passed a RTW law, followed by

Michigan - the first states in the American “Rust Belt” to do so.

• Michigan’s and Indiana’s RTW laws follow model legislation crafted

by the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization

funded by the Koch brothers and other corporate interests, which also

drafted the model legislation that led to attacks on public sector

collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana in 2011.

That this took place in Michigan on the 75th anniversary of the 1937

sit-down strike against General Motors – the strike that gave birth

to the United Automobile Workers, signals the end of an era.

• My argument: the New Deal era of legally regulated collective

bargaining has ended (albeit with a few surviving remnants).

The 1935-75 period was an exceptional period, not the norm.

• U.S. labor relations in the 21st century instead have reverted to

those that existed in the first “Gilded Age” a century ago.

• Among other parallels (e.g. soaring inequality and precarity):

• Union density has fallen to pre-1930s levels.

• Strikes have become increasingly rare, and those that do occur are more

often employer than labor-initiated events.

• The 1935 National Labor Relations Act, “labor’s magna carta,” while

still technically in force, is de facto a dead letter.

• Other types of labor regulation (minimum wage laws, those regulating

hours and working conditions, etc.) have also been weakened.

• These trends reflect broader late 20th century processes of third-

wave marketization and deregulation (per Polanyi)

• That transformation has been far more consequential for the U.S.

labor movement than globalization or new technology.

• It has undermined the modes of unionism that were most influential

in the U.S. in the mid-20th century, especially industrial unionism

and the NLRB-centered system.

• The U.S. labor movement today is groping toward a new strategic

repertoire - one that recapitulates many features of the pre-New

Deal AFL (especially the “new unionism” of the 1910s) and of labor

reform groups that existed a century ago.

• Organized labor is still a political “insider” in some contexts,

despite falling density, but as that becomes more and more tenuous,

unions are increasingly playing the “outside game” of confrontation

and disruption, in alliance with other progressive forces.

Union Density in the United States, by Sector, 1973-2010

Source: U.S. Current Population Survey data, available at www.unionstats.com

Historical data are from Freeman 1998

• In 2011, U.S. private sector union density was 6.9%, the lowest level since 1900, when total density (then virtually all in the private sector) was 6.8%.

• In 1934 total density (again nearly all private sector) was 11.5% – roughly the level of total union density today, which was 11.8% in 2011 (including public sector)

• In manufacturing, outsourcing has weakened the industrial unions beyond recognition, with massive declines in membership and huge “givebacks”

• Density has also declined in place-bound sectors, e.g. construction, retail, hopsitality.

• The public sector, with much higher, and until recently stable density, is now under attack.

U.S. Union Membership By Industry Group (2011-12 CPS data)

Education

29%

Public

Administration

15%

Transportation/uti

lities

13%

Health

Care/Social

Services

11%

Manufacturing

10%

Construction

7%

Wholesale/Retail

Trade

6% Other

9%

Average Annual Major Work Stoppages in the USA, by Decade

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

The only other era when U.S. strike levels declined sharply was the 1920s and

early 1930s (Kaufman 1982), a period of employer attacks on unions and sharp

declines in union density – which fell from 17.4% in 1921 to 11.0% in 1933.

The main pillar of union power in the past – the strike – has been virtually abandoned by U.S. unions

• The recent decline in strikes already is twice as long as the earlier one.

• In 2010-12, almost a tenth (90%) of all U.S. work stoppages were lockouts, many of them prolonged.

• Recent strikes – e.g. the five-year Detroit News strike that began in 1995 and the 2004 California supermarket strike – are often employer- provoked. By taking a draconian stance in contract negotiations, unionized employers initiate a strike and use it to extract concessions or to eliminate the union. These strikes are really stealth lockouts.

• Hiring “permanent replacements” for strikers has become common practice in “economic strikes.”

• The result: few existing unions risk going on strike for any length of time; many work “without a contract” for long periods instead.

Declining density and strikes are two leading

symptoms of the decay of the New Deal labor

relations system. Others include:

• Intransigent management opposition blocks new private-sector

union organizing; successful organizing often bypasses NLRB.

• Between 1950 and 1990 the number of workers fired during

organizing campaigns grew nine-fold, alongside legal forms of

“union avoidance.”

• Labor law reform is not politically feasible, even under Obama.

• Unions and collective bargaining have been demonized by the

political Right, which constantly attacks their legitimacy

• Those attacks have affected public attitudes toward unions, which

are increasingly negative, especially among Republicans.

These developments are tied to the rise since the mid-1970s of

market fundamentalism, featuring deregulation, privatization

and the dismantling of the (minimalist) U.S. welfare system.

Among the results:

• Massive growth in inequality, at levels not seen since before the

“Great Compression” that began with the New Deal – what

Krugman and others call the “new Gilded Age”

• Growing economic insecurity and precarious employment

• Massive growth in the ranks of “independent contractors” (many

of them misclassified) unprotected by NLRA or other basic laws.

• Erosion of basic labor standards (minimum wage, overtime pay,

health and safety, etc.) – declining enforcement and coverage

Minimum Wage Violations by Gender, Nativity and Legal Status

(data from New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, 2008)

This perspective helps explain why some U.S. unions

have fared better than others in recent years.

• Biggest decline has involved the old CIO unions – once the vital

center of the U.S. labor movement.

• Their post-1970s decline is not due to internal flaws or errors, but

external structural shifts:

• Industrial unions were the ones most directly affected by

globalization and outsourcing, decimating membership and

giving employers greatly enhanced power.

• Because they formed alongside the NLRB-centered labor

relations order, which was structured with them in mind, they

have little experience with non-NLRB strategies.

The private-sector unions that have weathered the

new era best are former AFL affiliates, which

historically had a broader strategic repertoire. • For these unions, the NLRB system was always a poor fit; many

were originally occupational (rather than industrial) unions.

• The original “Change to Win” unions (except UFW): SEIU,

UNITE HERE, Teamsters, Laborers, and Carpenters – pioneered

non-NLRB organizing, drawing on a longer historical tradition.

• These unions also were the leaders in organizing low-wage

workers and immigrants in recent years.

• They are also more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity and gender

– despite their AFL roots – than most other private-sector unions.

• They predominated among “revitalized” unions of the 1990s.

The 21st Century Demography of U.S. Union Membership (2010 data)

• But Change to Win did not live up to expectations. • Some CTW unions have returned to the AFL-CIO fold.

• Others have been distracted by internal factionalism.

• Meanwhile, union density has continued its relentless fall, even in

place-bound sectors with recent organizing victories.

• Hope for structural change and/or labor law reform

under the Obama administration has not materialized.

• With new organizing on a significant scale blocked off,

both CTW and the AFL-CIO are groping for new

strategies. Both have: • built alliances with worker centers and CBOs

• supported the immigrant rights movement

• experimented with new forms of worker political mobilization

(Working America, Fight for a Fair Economy)

• supported the Occupy Wall Street movement

1. Worker centers – about 150-200 in the U.S. –

organize and advocate for workers in:

• precarious, casualized occupations like day labor and

domestic work, where traditional unionism is impractical

• sectors where establishment size is small and that unions

have abandoned, like restaurants, garment-making

• sectors where workers are nominally self-employed like

taxi driving and street vending

• Some organize along ethnic lines (e.g. KIWA, Min

Kwon, PWC, Chinese Staff).

• Others recruit middle strata/white collar workers (e.g.

Freelancers’ Union – huge organization of >150,000)

• Typically focus on wage theft and other legal violations.

• As Fine (2007 BJIR) showed, the culture and structure of worker

centers differ greatly from those of traditional unions, and initially

worker centers and unions were mutually suspicious of each other.

• Over time, however, they have increasingly converged in their

approaches to low-wage workers (mimetic isomorphism).

• Many worker centers – which tend to be tiny NGOs with scarce

resources – as they try to grow and win gains beyond existing

minimum standards, are becoming more open to union models

• Unions, increasingly humbled and appreciating the strategic and

tactical creativity of the centers and their greater legitimacy

(relative to unions) in the public eye, have adopted some of their

approaches, e.g. staging “public dramas” calling attention to the

plight of low-wage workers. E.g. car wash workers.

Car Wash workers, including many undocumented immigrants,

have recently won unionization campaigns in L.A. and NYC

• In the past few years, more and more direct alliances between

unions and worker centers.

• AFL-CIO has official partnerships with

• The National Day Laborer Organizing Network

• Interfaith Worker Justice (which has several affiliates)

• National Domestic Workers Alliance

• National Alliance of Guestworkers

• Other worker center-like organizations have ties to or were

incubated by individual unions – examples include:

• Restaurant Opportunities Center

• Retail Action Project – actions during Fashion Week

• Our Walmart – Black Friday 2012 one-day strike

• In Sept. 2011, the AFL-CIO issued a national charter to

the Taxi Workers Alliance Organizing Committee – in a

direct parallel to the pre-CIO era, when the AFL regularly

chartered Federal Labor Unions. (Cobble 1997)

• The NY Taxi Workers Alliance has about 15,000

members and engages in demonstration strikes as well as

informal but substantive negotiations with the NYC Taxi

and Limousine Commission. It has won a series of raises

for drivers as well as protective regulations, and most

recently a health care fund. Its members are

“independent contractors” and thus not covered by

NLRA, but it functions very much like a union.

• Similar alliances of taxi workers exist or are in formation

around the U.S.

October 2011, Bhairavi Desai, Richard Trumka and others celebrating the TWA charter.

• NYC’s Domestic Workers United (and now the national Domestic

Workers Alliance) illustrates the movement in the other direction.

• Beginning as a worker center with an anti-union animus, in 2010 DWU

won the NY State Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights with strong

support from organized labor.

• DWU is now exploring collective bargaining models for its members.

• DWA’s “Caring Across Generations” campaign links improvements in

the pay and benefits of immigrant caregivers to the interests of the

elderly and disabled, in alliance with the immigrant rights movement.

• Worker centers are often staffed by highly educated young professionals, and are in many respects similar to the settlement houses and social reform organizations of the Progressive era (e.g. WTUL).

• The “new unionism” of the 1910s, which involved an earlier wave of working-class immigrants to the U.S., has many features in common with the immigrant unionizing efforts of the late 20th and early 21st century.

• Unlike well-paid public sector and industrial workers who have become widely stigmatized as unfairly benefitting from unionism in enjoying pay and benefits that most U.S. workers lack, worker centers and unions organizing low-wage immigrants have the moral high ground.

2. Organized labor now explicitly supports the immigrant rights

movement, overcoming previous divisions over the issue and

lobbying for comprehensive immigration reform (CIR).

• The soon-to-be CTW unions developed effective organizing

campaigns among low-wage immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s,

which in turn led to the 2000 shift in the official AFL-CIO policy on

immigration, abandoning exclusionary approaches.

• The massive 2006 immigrant rights marches cemented the

commitment of both CTW and AFL-CIO to support CIR.

• The immigrant rights movement is itself (in part) a labor movement,

seeking economic advancement for its constituents.

• The growth of Latino political clout has also been a product of the

labor-immigrant rights alliance, benefitting both partners.

3. New forms of organization for political mobilization

• Working America – created by the AFL-CIO in 2003 –

seeks to mobilize working people, whether or not they are

union members, in political campaigns for labor-friendly

candidates. It claims to have about 3 million members,

mostly white. Unclear future given 2010 Citizens United

decision but has a strong track record and has done some

pilot experiments encouraging worksite issues.

• Fight for a Fair Economy – created by SEIU in 2010 –

canvassing in communities of color in 17 cities, also for

political purposes but with some talk of community

organizing efforts over broader issues as well.

Rich Trumka in Zuccotti Park

• Many unions as well as the AFL-CIO’s leadership embraced the

Occupy movement, which succeeded in bringing the issue of

inequality into the national political conversation, something labor

had long tried but failed to do. Although Occupy has fragmented, it

has energized many rank and file unionists; and some of the new

activists it created have now become involved in labor organizing.

• Labor’s explicit support for Occupy is the best evidence to date of

its increasing tilt from the inside to the outside game.

• In NYC, Occupy helped unionize “Hot and Crusty” restaurant

chain (immigrant workers); also supported the Teamsters’

strike at Sotheby’s and probably helped secure its success

• Late 2012 fast food strikes in NYC also involved some former

Occupiers (and FFE as well) and Occupy-like tactics

• As labor moves increasingly toward the outside game, it

increasingly resembles its counterpart of a century ago, with

a broad strategic repertoire that includes boycotts, living

wage campaigns, alliances with a wide range of community-

based organizations, social reformers, as well as

intellectuals and even radicals (like OWS).

• If we abandon the idea that, in the absence of a wider social

transformation opposing market fundamentalism, union

density can be restored to mid-20th century levels, a future

for a different kind of labor movement, one more like that of

a century ago, seems plausible.

Predictions can be hazardous…

• “American trade unionism is slowly being limited in influence by changes which destroy the basis on which it is erected… I see no reason to believe that American trade unionism will… become in the next decade a more potent social influence.”

• -- Professor George Barnett, 1932 presidential address to the American Economic Association

• “It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government”

• --George Meany, AFL-CIO President, 1962