What could the Future of Organized Labor hold?

What could the Future of Organized Labor hold?

The structure and organization of the labor movement has changed. The tried and true method of organizing labor into unions has not changed in the past several decades. Unions have changed with technology to get their message out, but the message has not changed. The economy of the US has changed. In 1970 about 25% of the US workforce was in manufacturing, which is roughly where it was in 1950. By 2009 it was halved to 11%. The number one industry in 1947 was manufacturing, by 2009 it was number four. Manufacturing and the Finance, Insurance, and Real estate (FIRE) industry have swapped spots with FIRE being the number one industry with 21.4% of the workforce. The FIRE industry is not an industry that is known for unions. Outside of the Government sector, white-collar jobs do not fall under a collective bargaining agreement. Maybe it is time for that to change. Another industry that is just starting to see union involvement in a more public way is the foodservice industry. There are more than 10 million workers in the foodservice industry. Foodservice is a sector with lower-paid workers. In 2019 the number of people working as waiters and waitresses was almost two million, but the average salary was under $18,000 a year. On the other hand, what benefit would organized labor have for these workers? One benefit could be better working conditions, but I am not sure if a substantial increase in pay would be possible. The goal would be to convince the workers that working conditions are worth the fight. Businesses tend to use the argument that union dues are too high and not worth it. In this case, they may have a point. If they need to pay for unions and not receive a raise, they will be paying to possibly get better working conditions. Smaller, more streamlined, collective bargaining units may be better suited to negotiate with these smaller businesses. The two main arguments that unions use are the need to pay dues and that they may oppose restrictions. Collective bargaining incurs a cost, so some level of dues are required.


All eyes are on the Starbucks location in Buffalo that was recently unionized. It will be interesting to see how many details of the contract become publicly available. The first contract that is agreed to with Starbucks may cast the die on what future contracts will be. If Starbucks is able to agree to few concessions, it may not bode well for future unionizing with Starbucks. One of the points that is brought up in Johnson’s article “No longer a tall order: Coffee shops unionize: Breakthrough at Starbucks is latest win for baristas” is, that some of what these workers may want is changes in social policy. If they get this in the contract at the Buffalo Starbucks, and the policy is company-wide, there is one less reason for other locations to unionize. Additionally, if any other concessions are made more wide-spread, it will have the same effect on future unionizing efforts with Starbucks.


Starbucks is not the only national company to face local unionizing efforts. Amazon workers recently voted against unionizing at its plant in Alabama. In Jay Greene's article “Labor board calls for revote on union at Amazon warehouse in Alabama”, he notes that amazon used several tactics that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found illegal. The workers will have a second vote. For Amazon, there is much on the line. The company is using the fallacy that with a union, managers and employees can not communicate. They make it sound like day-to-day activities would need to go through a union rep., or that managers and employees could not have social conversations. If this is how union contracts worked, teachers would never speak to a principal. Some teachers I know may wish for a clause like that in their next contract, but that would be unreasonable. If the unions want to discredit this argument, they need to work harder to show how unrealistic it is. The main issue that the NLRB found was that Amazon had placed a mailbox in a location where they (the NRLB and the union) felt caused intimidation for the workers. The same article mentioned that the amazon facility has frequent employee turnover. So, not only does the union need to convince the workers that may have voted against unionizing in the first vote, but they need to convince the new employees. Without interviewing the employees that left since the last vote, it is difficult to say how they voted in the first election. I would say it is fair to say that if the employees enjoyed the status-quo at amazon, they are not likely to leave.


Unions are making headways into two major national companies. If the union is able to get a favorable result from the second Amazon vote in Alabama, there could be major changes throughout the company’s labor force. And the outcome of the first contact with the workers at the Buffalo Starbucks may set the tone for how unions deal with Starbucks.









References

Finance & Insurance, and Real Estate, Rental & leasing. (n.d.). Datausa.Io. Retrieved December 20, 2021, from https://datausa.io/profile/naics/finance-insurance-and-real-estate-rental-leasing

Greene, J. (2021). Labor board calls for revote on union at Amazon warehouse in Alabama. In The Washington Post (Vol. 18). https://www.proquest.com/docview/2604257316/A984FA3F8F604FE0PQ/41?accountid=8067

Johnson, K. (2021, December 17). No longer a tall order: Coffee shops unionize: Breakthrough at Starbucks is latest win for baristas. Boston Globe. https://www.proquest.com/usnews/docview/2610719129/fulltext/D0A33E46E074413CPQ/1?accountid=8067

Restaurants & Food services. (n.d.). Datausa.Io. Retrieved December 20, 2021, from https://datausa.io/profile/naics/restaurants-food-services

The Economist. (2005, September 29). Industrial metamorphosis. Economist (London, England: 1843). https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2005/09/29/industrial-metamorphosis

Thompson, D. (2012, January 26). Where did all the workers go? 60 years of economic change in 1 graph. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/where-did-all-the-workers-go-60-years-of-economic-change-in-1-graph/252018/

WeGotEd [WeGotEd]. (2011, June 15). Target Stores Anti-Union Propaganda. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j3ZNUxqo9M

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Early Organized Labor

At the turn of the century (19th to 20th) the labor question was a quest to suppress workers rights. Those that wanted labor to run smoothly and do what they are told wanted to keep labor from impeding production. The idea of having to negotiate with workers was a foreign concept to them. Organized labor was not codified in Federal law until 1932 with the “Norris-La Guardia Act”(The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2016) and in 1935 with the “National Labor Relations Act'' (National Labor Relations Act, n.d.). Prior to these court cases could not agree if unions were legal or illegal conspiracies (Primm, 1910). With shaky legal grounds, unions were more of a temporary entity. They generally arose from the specific need at a specific time and at the conclusion many would go dormant or dissolve all together. So times it was when labor and unions were successful in achieving desired change. When this happened there was little need for the resources to continue to be used. But more often it was when a labor dispute ended unfavorably for labor. In these cases the union was seen as ineffective at best or detrimental at worst.


The rise of mechanization and automation had an effect on labor. In some cases the automation made the need for skilled (higher paid) lessen. Other times the increase in production caused the skilled labor to work harder, and not at the previous leisurely pace. It is not to say that skilled labor had not previously worked hard, but compared to the new level they needed to work, the previous pace was leisurely. This could be that an intermediate task the worker needed to do on a product without automation may have taken several more minutes to complete, and after actomation they need to keep up with automation.


Another obstacle to unions was the lack of coordination. At times different unions had different competing goals. Or different businesses would interact differently with organized labor. This disorganization among organized labor gave business a tool to use against the unions. As still happens businesses use propaganda to discourage organized labor. A failed strike of one company in one industry could reverberate through the workforce better than a successful strike. Part of this was the inevitable passing of blame. Every failure is exposed, even if that failure was not a root cause of the overall failure; every failure tends to need a scapegoat. With these failures becoming somewhat public businesses and other elements that wanted to discourage organized labor could promote the failures. In many ways this was successful because the businesses and their allies generally had greater resources and at times were more organized.



Strikes that occurred during the time of early organized labor happened with no (almost no) government help and many resulted with direct conflict with the government. The Homestead strike of 1892 was one such strike (Labor Wars in the US, n.d.). The National Guard of Pennsylvania became involved when the conflict between the stickers and the Pinkerton’s that were hired to suppress the strikers became violent. This is a running theme in early American strikes. Without the legal protections or a legal framework to address their grievances violence became the answer. As with most of history (or current events for that matter) one needs to look at several different perspectives to try to get to the details. In sudden violent clashes different eye witnesses will have different perspectives. They will both have a physical perspective based on where they were during the event, and they may have a biased perspective based on what side of the conflict they relate to. And it is not to say that some are lying. They very well believe that the record of their account is accurate.


Even with the current protections that organized labor has today many companies can still excerpt much strength. Looking at news reports today you see big companies resisting union formation within their companies. They use legal consulting firms to straddle the line of illegal intimidation. Even if they are fined for illegal acts it is a slap on the wrist to larger companies (Union busting: Last week tonight with John Oliver (HBO),2021). And even workers voting in a union does not mean that the company has to be in a hurry to agree on an initial contract. It is rare that contract negotiations escalate to the level of binding arbitration. Many that do escalate because previous contracts had the requirements stated in it.







References:

Infiltrated Labor Unions. (2015, May 26). Justice.Gov. https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ocgs/infiltrated-labor-unions


Job Automation: What the 1920s can tell us about the 2020s. (2018, June 29). K2university.Com. https://k2university.com/job-automation-what-the-1920s-can-tell-us-about-the-2020s/


Murolo, P., & Chitty, A. B. (2018). From the folks who brought you the weekend: A short, illustrated history of labor in the United States. New Press.



https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/labor_problem/default


https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1886/07/the-labor-question/522606/


https://muse.jhu.edu/article/50929/summary


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https://web.archive.org/web/20150123211142/http://www.lovkoandking.com/commonwealth-v-hunt.html

Labor wars in the U.s. (n.d.). Pbs.Org. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/theminewars-labor-wars-us/
 

National Labor Relations Act. (n.d.). Nlrb.Gov. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://www.nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-materials/national-labor-relations-act
 

Primm, C. J. (1910). Labor Unions and the Anti-Trust Law: A Review of Decisions. The University of Chicago Press Journals, 18(2), 129–138. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1829777.pdf
 

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. (2016). Norris–La Guardia Act. In Encyclopedia Britannica.
 

Union busting: Last week tonight with John Oliver (HBO). (2021, November 14). Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk8dUXRpoy8