New book fails to address problems facing unions

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Hormel strikers hold mass rally SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 1987 13 Unions in Transition: Entering the Second Century, Edited by Seymour Martin Lipset, San Francisco, ICS Press, 1986, 506 pp.

This book consists of essays written by the editor and 17 other authors. Thirteen of the contributors are academics, one a former newspaper reporter, two union leaders, one a union activist, and one a representative of a management organization.

The heavy preponderance of academics is reflected in the nature of the contributions to the book. Approaches to the problems that face American unions as they mark the 100th anniversary of the formation of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) are made largely through the eyes of college professors, and not through the experience of union members.

What comes through is a dark thread of pessimism for the future of unions in the United States. The writers have noticed the decline in union membership and, in most cases, have drawn negative opinions on what the future holds.

Some of the authors even believe that unions, as they have developed over the years, are destined to disappear altogether. More than a few hint that this would be a good thing for the country. But here and there a more optimistic view is held, and there is some hope expressed for a turnaround.

Working-class history ignored Most of the authors, either implicitly or explicitly, assume that workers and employers have much in common. In reality, the interests of these two social classes are fundamentally opposed. As a result, they are in constant struggle with one another over how the surplus produced is to be divided. This is what caused the workers to organize unions in the first place.

Another weakness in virtually all the essays is a neglect of the historical development of the working class.

In the 1820s, it was still illegal for workers to combine to form a union. Nevertheless, toward the end of that decade, some unions appeared on the scene, and the first workers' political parties were organized in about 50 Eastern cities. These parties functioned for several years and won reforms in several places.

The presence of workers' political parties helped the movement to form unions.

However, it was not until the Civil War period of.

In the intervening years important reforms were won. The right to vote-previously confined to owners of property-was extended: Debtors' prisons were abolished. Public education became more available. Taxation was more equitably spread in the population, and an anti-slavery movement was launched.

Some of these changes were due to increased activity within the working class. During the Civil War unions grew. The victory of the North gave an additional impetus to union organizing.

About 50 years after the first unions were formed, there arose a movement for an eight-hour day. The movement took on greater significance in the 1880s. But it took another 50-year period before the eight-hour day was won. At that time, in the 1930s, the CIO and the AFL-then competing organizations-grew with unprecedented speed.

Organizing drives of the 1930s Now another 50-year period has passed, and unions are not growing but declining. This is especially true in basic industries such as steel and auto-where the unions have lost hundreds of thousands of members.

But not everything is on the negative side. Past history is instructive here.

In the early 1930s, the beginning of the worst depression in American history, unions declined in size to about one-half of what they represented in the 1920s.

The year 1934, however, saw three great battles between the workers and the bosses. In the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes, the Toledo Auto-Lite strike, and the general strike in San Francisco, workers overcame earlier defeats and showed that victories were possible.

These events convinced John L. Lewis, head of the coal miners' union, and several other top labor leaders that unless they stepped in and organized workers, more radical elements would. They broke with the traditional policy of the AFL that believed unskilled workers were unfit to become union members.

The Committee for Industrial Organization (later changed to the Congress of Industrial Organization) was formed. Organizers and money were sent into the mass-production industries to form new unions based on the principle that all workers in a workplace should belong to the same union.

Mass-production workers poured into the new unions by the millions, swelling the labor movement to five times its former size. This transformation was looked upon by many as a revolution—at least in part.

The long-range view Anyone who tries to foresee the future of the union movement must look back to the experiences of the 1930s. This is the long-range view.

If it was possible and historically necessary then for semi-skilled and unskilled mass-production workers to be brought into the union movement, why can that process not be extended today to the millions of women, minorities, and youth who are relatively new to the workforce? This is an inevitable step, if the workers' movement is to survive.

There is also a short-range development that lends encouragement. The strike of the meatcutters against the Hormel company at Austin, Minn., is an example of how small but determined detachment of the union movement can struggle for its aims.

The Hormel strikers have given an example of militant struggle that brought support from almost every corner of the union movement-despite opposition from the government and from the top leaders of their international union and the AFL-CIO.

A political arm for labor Among the weaknesses of the present union movement, as some of the contributors to the book note, is the absence of a political arm that represents labor. This is contrasted to a number of countries in Western Europe where large workers' parties exist and reinforce the unions.

However, those who note the absence of By AUSTIN, Minn.—One thousand supporters of the still-striking Hormel meatcutters wound through the streets here on Saturday, March 14. It was clear that these courageous workers have not given up the battle for their jobs and a decent contract.

Organized by the Austin United Support Group, the spirited march and rally drew unionists from across the country, including longshore workers from Los Angeles, autoworkers from Detroit and Pontiac, and mineworkers from West Virginia.

Also marching in solidarity were If this looks like a big order, it is. But there is no other way out.

The new movement that will arise in the next period will take an independent stand in political activity. It will turn its back on the politics of those like AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland, who is busy tying the unions to the Democratic Party.

Unions must fight

Kirkland contributes a chapter to the book. He stresses the importance of the problem of unemployment, but offers no program to deal with it.

For example, it would not have been out of place for Kirkland to say something about spending government money on construction programs"-for much needed housing, schools, medical centers, and transportation-to create jobs. Kirkland is a supporter of U.S. intervention in Nicaragua, however, and that implies that federal money is needed for armaments.

Another contributor, Gus Tyler, assistant president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, places emphasis on the introduction of robots into the manufacturing process, and the danger this implies in eliminating jobs. But while he mentions reductions in working hours, he does so only in an example of robots displacing workers.

Kirkland and Tyler do not propose that unions fight for a shorter work week with no reduction in take-home pay. This is a measure that could create jobs that are needed now—without waiting for robots to throw millions more out of work. Their views seem to be more on the side of what may happen years from now than finding a solution to the problems that already exist.

All in all, the main lesson to be learned from the present situation in the unions is that the conservative bureaucracy that has been imposed upon them must be removed and replaced with fighters who are willing and able to lead the unions in resolving their problems.

meatcutters from Nebraska, Iowa, and Wisconsin.

Jim Guyette, former P-9 president and central strike leader, announced plans to extend the Hormel boycott to company subsidiaries Jenny-O and Dubuque Products. A four-part leaflet series is in preparation to support this effort. It will focus on Hormel's abysmal safety record and its plants in apartheid South Africa.

Fred Dube, representing the African National Congress, extended his organization's support. Other speakers included Cathy Zwarich, representing the TWA strikers; Phil Quik, of Labor Notes; and Pete Radcliff, of the Twin Cities Strike Support Committee.

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entire political set-up, money talks in the