In union slang, the Flint Red Cross, was a "hot shop". Hot shops tend to be smaller workplaces, as little as 10 or 12 folks, maybe around 100 or so workers at maximum. To union organizers, a hot shop seems to happen out of thin air, and are seen as workers' reactions to things deeply internal within the employer and its workers. The "hot shop" breakout might happen because the bosses are brutal, or have lost all credibility with with the workers through a longstanding series of lies and broken promises. Sometimes instead, it's the poor wages and maybe a history of wage theft. Often it's a matter of all of the above and then some more too.
A "hot shop" happens when one or two of the workers decide that they've have enough of the boss' s behavior, and they pick up the phone and call a union.
Personally, I didn't like "hot shop" organizing. "Hot shops" meant that the workers had had enough of the bosses; but what the workers were really asking for was to be rescued by the union, which is not the same thing as forming a union.
For instance, when I was leaving Ithaca, NY in 2019, I did a little picketing with the Painters and Allied Trades Union, Local 11 who had organized a rather large non-profit providing housing services to poor people. The Painters organized the workers and got the workers a first contract, and then a second contract.
However, as the second contract expired, a de-certification petition had been filed by a few anti-union members of the bargaining unit (with the bosses' help of course). Management had enough "showing of interest" to get a de-certification election on the board.
Meanwhile, few workers took part in supporting the union; either through internal activity, or walking the picket line (informational picket; not a strike). Local 11's organizers were having a hard time communicating with bargaining unit union members. The union leadership inside the non-profit had lost credibility (through years of being ineffective); and things were pretty bleak.
The problem was this. After organizing and obtaining a couple of contracts, the Painters Union Local 11 figured the workers could take it from there. From Painters Local 11's point of view, workers now had all the necessary tools provided through the contract and labor law, and that would be enough for the workers to run their own show.
The Painters Union was wrong. The tools were not enough. In spite of being a union shop, with recognized stewards and a good grievance procedure, in spite of the union including a large majority of workers within the company itself, the workers within the bargaining unit continued to let the employer govern as if there was no union at all.
By the time the de-certification petition had been filed, the non-profit's management had re-written their job classifications and moved a substantial number of important positions to non-union, outside-the-bargaining unit positions. Stewards and workers never protested, never confronted their bosses, and let the damages mount.
Painters. Local 11 organizers felt terrible. I spent a number of hours walking the picket line with Local 11's organizing director, a real good and dedicated unionist named Travis. Travis felt terrible about what had happened. He need not have felt so guilty. It was an honest mistake. The problem was that Local 11 never figured on the amount of hand holding, and the amount of support, that would be necessary to teach modern non-profit workers from within a union bargaining unit, how to actually becoming a functional and organic union.
I do believe the Painters Union and pro-union workers prevailed in the end. It took a pile of Unfair Labor Practice charges filed by Local 11, and a community campaign aimed at pressuring so called "progressive" members of the non-profit's board (this campaign was run by the Tompkins County Workers' Center and local 11). But there was never any real fight back by the non-profit's union workers.
I remember another "hot shop" I worked on when with I was with OPEIU. It was a small credit union with maybe 12 to 15 workers. On the last night of bargaining, the woman who had made the original call to the union told me, "If I was out of work, I'd cross a picket line to keep my kids fed, and I wouldn't feel bad about it"; I felt like stepping outside and slitting my wrists.
The difference between the Flint Red Cross workers, and "hot shop" workers (and indeed many longer term union workplaces) in my mind comes down to this: The Flint Red Cross workers knew they needed to have a union, and that they needed to act like a union, in order to get what they needed.
I'm stealing a quote here from Ralph Chaplin's, "Solidarity Forever". But Flint Red Cross workers understood Chaplin's opening lines from the start:
"When the union's inspiration through the workers blood shall run
there can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun".
Many union bargaining teams will focus on constructing neat, logical arguments as to why they should have better wages, or better safety conditions, or whatever. Thus, the effort becomes one of convincing the employer, through logical appeals and and moral arguments, to be a better employer.
The problem in modern bargaining comes down to the fact that employers generally don'r care if they're logical, nice or morally responsible. Thus, collective bargaining becomes collective begging, and what's missing is that the union neither tries, or wants to even think about using its inherent power towards achieving what workers need and want.
To my mind, the difference between Flint Red Cross workers and most 1970s through 2020 collective bargaining episodes is simply this: the Flint Red Cross strike happened in Flint!
Flint, simply was a union town and a UAW town. Even in 1993-1994, Flint remained a union town. In truth, by 1993, the UAW had been having its butt kicked for the last decade and a half. By 1993, thousands and thousands of autoworkers had been laid off with no hope of return, the parts subsidiary operations (like "Delco", and "Delphi") were gone to the South or Mexico. Auto workers themselves were working five to six 12 hour shifts per week under break-neck conditions; it was not a happy time for auto workers.
Yet Flint still remembered the 1937 GM sit down strike, when the power of the workers broke GM's power and forced GM to recognize the UAW.
In 1993, there were a few participants of the 1937 strike still around. There were a lot more children of the strikers still around, and even more grandchildren. Everybody in Flint remembered the 37 sit down strike, and people in Flint were still proud of what they did in 1937.
The Flint Red Cross strikers very much remembered the 1937 sit down strike. While many union organizers would describe the Flint Red Cross as a "hot shop"; a spontaneous revolt of the Red Cross workers, it was in truth anything but.
In reality, the Flint Red Cross strike had a history that was 57 years old by 1994. Everything the Flint Red Cross workers did in 1994 was seen through the prism of 1937 Flint. This was where Gary, the management attorney, went all wrong. Gary read Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal, didn't know his local history, the power of culture, and didn't listen to the workers. As a result, Gary deeply believed that the Red Cross workers would never strike, because that's what Forbes said.
On the other hand, the Flint Red Cross workers had the attitude that if it could be done in 1937, it could be done in 1994 as well. This is the power of a history and culture. If you can imagine winning, you probably can win!
Some thoughts on the Amazon organizing drive in Alabama, and the PRO Act
When the Amazon Bessemer election results were released, the fact that struck me the most was that around 2,600 workers never cast a ballot. It may very well be that Amazon was able to "disappear" a lot of workers' ballots, but I can't imagine Amazon made 2,600 ballots disappear.
I don't know what went on in the Bessemer, Amazon warehouse. The union; the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU), filed something like 24 Unfair Labor Practice charges against Amazon, and an NLRB hearing will be held soon to adjudicate the ULPs. Once the hearings are complete and decisions rendered, we'll all know a lot more about what happened in the warehouse, and maybe have a better idea as to what happened to 2,600 ballots.
My theory? The vast majority of the 2,600 missing ballots were simply never cast.
Consider this: Amazon workers are people, just like everybody else. They have things that matter in their lives, and things that don't matter too. My guess is that there were thousands of Amazon workers who just didn't see the union vote as really pertaining to their lives, or didn't see the union vote as important enough to take a stand.
Obviously, the Bessemer warehouse was a very tense place throughout the union organizing drive. Pro-union workers wanted to talk, Amazon made it clear that it didn't want workers to talk at all, on or off the job. Meanwhile, Amazon had the anti-union propaganda machine blaring on a constant 24/7 basis throughout the organizing drive, and bosses was probably watching all their employees.
Unless an Amazon worker is really committed to the union and know's what they want, the atmosphere at work is going to put a real premium on workers' taking a kind of "duck and cover" approach, aimed at surviving the organizing drive. The "duck and cover" approach is amplified to an even greater extent when supervisors query workers on how they will vote in the union election (even though such queries are patently illegal). This "duck and cover" approach was probably the survival philosophy behind a lot of "no union" votes too.
The above is not a judgement or criticism of the workers; it's just the way things are and the way things can go in an organizing drive.
There's no doubt that the Amazon-RWDSU vote was a defeat. The RWSDU made a number of crucial mistakes in their strategic approach to the organizing drive. If you want to know more about the RWDSU, and a pretty long list of strategic and tactical mistakes, you can read union organizer, Jane McAlevey's interview here:
(https://jacobinmag.com/2021/05/amazon-bessemer-union-campaign-rwdsu-jane-mcalevey).
But this article is not about critiquing the RWDSU; it is about something different.
The Bessemer Amazon organizing drive was indeed a defeat; but it was not a loss.
If you take a long range look at the Bessemer organizing drive, it's worth noting that there are now about 1,700 workers who voted "yes" in the union drive. These are the 1,700 odd workers who stood firm, in spite of the pressure from Amazon, it's endless mandatory anti-union meetings, the constant surveillance by supervisors, and always, the threat of being fired.
These 1,700 workers are now tempered and hardened. They've been through the worst and held firm. There's probably another couple of thousand workers who voted "no", or didn't vote at all who will be thinking about the drive for a long time to come.
Additionally, there are workers looking at organizing across Amazon America. They now know what Amazon is likely to throw at them, and will have a much better chance of countering Amazon from what they've learned through the Bessemer organizing drive. All of these factors need to be placed in the "gains" column if one wants an honest assessment of the Bessemer drive and is also looking towards the future.
And then, there's the PRO Act.
Honestly, I don't think workers and unions will get the PRO Act (Protecting the Right to Organize Act), at least not in the foreseeable future. The margins in the Congress are just too thin to get something like the PRO Act voted through. There aren't the numbers in the Senate to overcome an inevitable filibuster., Just to dampen expectations even more, though Joe Manchin has signed onto the PRO Act, I have doubts that he'll set aside the inevitable filibuster in order to pass the PRO Act. He's that kind of guy.
A lot of Leftists, especially Leftists who are for Labor, but not part of Labor, have placed a great deal of hope in the Bessemer Union drive and passage of the PRO Act.
With both these events, the non-Labor Left is looking for a magic bullet; the "Great Pumpkin" event that will change Labor's fortunes on a dime, leading to the organization of millions and millions of workers and entry into a new age of broad sunny uplands.
The problem is that the RWDSU would have needed a divine miracle to win the Bessemer vote, and the PRO Act, in order to pass, will require a miracle as well.
The truth is that workers and unions won't get the PRO Act until bosses and their corporations are willing to accept the PRO Act as an acceptable alternative to the endless chaos of strikes and other worker actions aimed at disrupting industrial production and the global economy. This is how and why The National Labor Relations Act, passed in 1935, and I'm afraid, this is the only recipe that will get us the PRO Act.
I'm seriously suggesting that unions, workers and the Left take the long view when it comes to workers in unions. Consider these facts and comparisons over the long haul of American labor history:
The first mass strike in the United States was the Great Railroad Strike of 1873. It took 60 years from this seminal event to the passage of the NLR Act of 1935.
In that 60 years, there were innumerable coal strikes conducted by workers from the United Mine Workers, Western Federation of Miners, and the IWW. These strikes were brutal. At Blair Mountain, coal miners were bombed by the Army Air Corp. In the eastern Colorado coal fields strike of 1927, striking IWW coal miners were gunned down by National Guard troops and a host of the owners' private security armies.
There were textile workers strikes such as the "Bread and Roses" strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912. The "Bread and Roses" strike is famous throughout the world.
And how about the Homestead Steel strike of the 1892?
Or the Pullman Car strike of 1894. How about the McKees Rock strike of 1909?
Let's not forget the Seattle General Strike of 1919. Or the TUUL (Trade Union Unity League) organizing drives that happened throughout the South in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Or the IWW strikes throughout the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest and the South.
The 1937 Sit-Down strike didn't just happen out of thin air either. The Communist Party: the Socialist Party; the IWW; AJ Muste and a Christian socialist oriented set of labor unions; all were actively organizing auto workers in Detroit and Ohio since at least the mid 1920s, (Note: AJ Muste was a Congregationalist Minister and the leader of the 1931 Toledo, Ohio, Autolite strike).
Preceding events to the 1937 Sit Down strike were the 1931 Autolite strike and the 1932 Hunger March where unemployed auto workers were met with armed resistance from law enforcement resulting in four deaths and a host of injuries.
And of course, Auto workers in Detroit were very aware of what was happening in other industries. For instance, the 1934 ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) strike and Portland, Oregon general strike where the ILWU was able to effectively strike every port on the west coast.
In that long list of strikes above, there are very few victories. The 1934 west coast longshore strike was a victory. To this day, the ILWU controls the labor process at every port on the west coast. The 1937 sit-down strike was a victory too. The roof is in the fact that the UAW exists to this day.
In the above list of strikes, Lawrence, Massachusetts was a half-win. Wages rose but the IWW was not able to build a lasting organization of textile workers. Same goes for the Mckees Rock strike of 1909.
Most everything else listed falls in the category of defeats, if you measure a defeat based on what the workers demanded versus what was achieved.
But none of the listed strikes were losses. In defeat after defeat, every time, workers came back stronger, ranks deeper, resolve greater. Every defeat had the effect of deepening class consciousness across the working class.
So, why would it be different now? As I look at it, we'll be defeated, and defeated again, over and over again, until we win.
A lot of Leftists out there are thinking we're a lot stronger than we really are; thus the crushed and despairing emotions when the struggle of the moment fails.
The key here is to not fixate on the struggle at hand, betting everything we have in the hope that this time, the "Great Pumpkin" will rise. It's really all about momentum, and building momentum is really what labor organizing is all about.
Let's start with where we're at right now. The fact of the matter is that most American unions are weak, and most American workers are weak too. Both would gain a lot if unions and workers' organizations got off the internet and stopped waiting for the next "hot shop" call.
Instead, maybe unions should start setting up permanent store fronts and become a part of the community they're trying to organize? Maybe all of us in the working class movement should start thinking in terms of talking to workers of all stripes every day; more community hot lines; more workers' drop-in centers; more education and accessible discussion of why it matters to be a class-conscious worker and what it will really take to start winning the fight against the bosses? This might be the kind of stuff that builds the kind of momentum necessary in order to win.
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