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Labour and Society Programme
DP/119/2000
ISBN 92-9014-627-3
First published 2000
Reinventing the US labour movement, Inventing postindustrial prosperity: A progress report
By
Stephen Herzenberg
Keystone Research Centre
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| Reinventing the US labour movement, Inventing postindustrial prosperity:
A progress report |
 Introduction
1. The US labour movement in crisis
2. An accidentally radical change at the national AFL-CIO
 2.1 Managing change
2.2 Building power
2.3 Reviving the federation at local level: Union Cities
2.4 A new alliance between CLCs, state federations of labour and the national AFL-CIO
2.5 Changing to organize
2.6 Industry committees
3. Restructuring at individual US unions
3.1 Permeability to pragmatic, progressive activists
3.2 A sense of crisis
3.3 Strategic planning and plan implementation
3.4 Keeping up with corporate structure - Union centralization and local autonomy
3.5 Strategic coordination of union activity in different spheres
3.6 Stronger ties to the community
3.7 Strengthening of collective identities based on occupation
3.8 Shifting resources to organizing
3.9 Evolving organizing models
4. Inventing postindustrial unionism
4.1 From industrial to postindustrial organizing
4.2 Inventing the high road
4.3 Labour's moral purpose
4.4 Postindustrial unionism
Acronyms
Bibliography
Introduction
Only 9.5 per cent of private sector workers in the United States now belong to labour unions. In the
labour force as a whole, 14 per cent of workers are members of unions (Hirsch and Macpherson,
1999, pp. 11-12). This paper considers the response of the US labour movement to conditions that
have brought union density down to the level recorded before the New Deal. The underlying issue
is whether the labour movement could rebound in a way that would substantially raise union density
and restore the movement's influence in US politics and society. The paper is premised on the idea
that such a rebound is necessary to reverse the growth of economic inequality and to generate a
higher quality of life for the majority of Americans.(Endnote 1)
In addition to the sources and documents cited, the paper draws on interviews with six top-level
staff members at the labour federation to which most US unions belong (the American Federation
of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations or AFL-CIO); it also draws on interviews with top
elected officers or staff members at three of the largest and healthiest US unions (the American
Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the Communication Workers of America,
and the Service Employees International Union). The paper is also informed by the author's
observations as director of a state-level public policy think tank connected to both the world of
labour and the world of research. This think tank has been an instructive point from which to view
the way in the programme of the "New Voice" administration of the AFL-CIO has been
implemented since John Sweeney became its President in 1995.(Endnote 2)
The body of the paper divides into four sections. The first reviews the decline of the US labour
movement and the second examines changes implemented at the national AFL-CIO under John
Sweeney. The third section analyses restructuring at the three leading US unions and looks at some
common themes in the restructuring efforts of these unions. The final section identifies a series of
overarching challenges and sketches how the labour movement might reposition itself to regain a
more central place in American society.
1. The US labour movement in crisis
The basic dilemma faced by trade unions is the need to simultaneously serve the interests of their
members and be seen to serve the interests of society as a whole. From the 1940s to the 1970s, the
movement solved this dilemma by playing several key roles within the US manufacturing-based
economy. The wage increases negotiated in collective bargaining ensured that purchasing power
kept pace with the economy's capacity to produce, avoiding the kind of underconsumption
problems thought to have caused the Great Depression. Union work rules and grievance procedures
gave protection against arbitrary treatment from autocratic factory supervisors. In the political
sphere, unions were at the centre of a political coalition that counterbalanced corporate power; they
fought for legislation that benefited working people generally, including a higher minimum wage
and social insurance.
In 1945 and again in 1955, unions represented 35 per cent of US workers. From this peak, union
density declined gradually at first as the result of a shift in employment to less unionized industries.
After 1973, density began to fall in virtually every industry, including large-scale manufacturing.
Employers contributed to this trend by investing heavily in avoiding unions. While many other
countries consider that the decision to join a union is for workers to make without interference from
employers, US employers have extensive rights to persuade workers not to join unions. Charges
against employers for illegally violating workers' rights to organize have increased over time.
Unfair labour practice charges against employers increased by 750 per cent from 1957 to 1980,
while the number of union certification elections rose by less than 50 per cent (Weiler, 1983).
Morris (1998) estimated that by the late 1990s one out of every 18 workers involved in an
organizing campaign suffered discrimination for union activity.
In 1977 and 1978, a Congressional proposal to stiffen penalties for employer violations of
worker freedom to organize died in the US Senate. After the election of President Ronald Reagan
in 1980, a deep recession and an overvalued dollar brought a flood of manufactured imports and
further loss of union jobs. A wave of concession bargaining ensued in which unions gave up annual
wage increases that had tied manufacturing workers' wages to the national rate of productivity
growth since the late 1940s. In 1981, the Reagan Administration dismissed and replaced members
of the striking union of air traffic controllers; this was seen as a sign that private employers would
be given further leeway to challenge unions or become "union-free."
Thus by the 1980s, the postwar solution to the unions' basic dilemma had lost its power. Union
density had fallen below a quarter of the workforce. In an economy with rising imports and lagging
productivity growth, union wage increases and work rules were seen as contributing to inflation and
making US products less competitive. As the economy shifted away from manufacturing, some
people saw protection against arbitrary treatment on the job as less essential. And the postwar
social democratic coalition had splintered, in part because of tensions between union members and
the anti-war campaign and the civil rights movement. In its political activity as well as in
bargaining situations, the labour movement was increasingly seen as just another special interest.
In response to these circumstances, some leading unions launched internal strategic planning
exercises in the early 1980s. In 1984 the AFL-CIO as a whole formed a "Committee on the
Evolution of Work" chaired by its Secretary Treasurer Thomas Donahue (AFL-CIO, 1985). In the
labour federation, however, the report issued by the Committee did not generate major new
initiatives. Energies refocused on representing current members, not on organizing new ones.
While the number of workers voting in union representation elections exceeded 500,000 in every
year but one from 1965 to 1979, the number fell to 200,000 in 1988 and 140,000 in 1995 (NLRB,
1998). The number of workers who voted in representation elections won by unions fell from
300,000 in the 1960s to 200,000 for most of the 1970s to 100,000 from 1985-95. Only those unions
which win representation elections can negotiate or sign contracts with the employers. In many
cases, moreover, workers in workplaces that voted for union representation often did not get a first
contract.
After his 1992 election, President Clinton established a Commission on the Future of Labor-Management Relations, chaired by John Dunlop, a pro-labour Republican and former Ford
Administration Secretary of Labor. The prospects that this Commission might broker meaningful
changes in US labour law, however, quickly faded. Employers were in no mood to cut a deal. Nor
were unions interested in trading away prohibitions on employer-sponsored consultative committees
(so-called "company unions") in exchange for potentially ineffective increases in penalties for
employer violations of workers' rights to organize unions. The Republican takeover of the US
Congress in 1994 dashed any lingering hopes that the Dunlop Commission would lead to changes
in the law.
2. An accidentally radical change at the national AFL-CIO
President Clinton's successful campaign in support of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) over the objections of the labour movement, and the Republican takeover of the US
Congress in the 1994 national elections intensified the sense within the labour movement that it was
time for a change. Leaders within affiliates that had continued to grow concluded that their long-term success depended on the movement as a whole regaining power. Islands of relative strength,
such as the public sector and hospitals, would ultimately be swamped if the labour presence
elsewhere in the economy continued its disappearing act.
A critical mass of leading affiliates seeking a change decided to run Sweeney against Kirkland
in the October 1995 AFL-CIO Presidential election. Sweeney, a New York labour leader with an
Irish heritage, was then President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). SEIU is
one of the few unions that has grown in membership since 1980.
Once it became clear to Kirkland that he would lose his bid for re-election, he agreed to step
down in favour of Donahue. By now, however, it was too late for Donahue to be a consensus
candidate. An energetic campaign then took place between Donahue and Sweeney - both originally
from the same SEIU building services' local in New York.(Endnote 3)
Sweeney's victory led to what one top staff person called an "accidentally radical" transition at
the national AFL-CIO. The victory of an outside challenger led to new heads of virtually every
major department within the reorganized AFL-CIO headquarters. According to an AFL-CIO staff
member, a majority of current members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council have also come in since
Sweeney took the reins. This is a consequence of an increase in the number of council seats
approved after Sweeney took office and also of turnover among representatives from the Kirkland
era.
2.1 Managing change
The AFL-CIO spans all industries. It was formed in 1955 by the merger of the craft-dominated AFL
and the industrial union CIO. It is the only labour federation of any significance in the United
States. Individual national unions (or "international" unions, to use the term common in the United
States) affiliate with the AFL-CIO at their own discretion. The AFL-CIO is thus structurally a weak
federation that derives its power from that of the affiliated unions.
To his tenure at the head of the AFL-CIO, Sweeney brought two critical interrelated traditions
from his management of the Service Employees International Union.(Endnote 4) The first was a tradition of
hiring committed progressive staff members and allowing them to formulate innovative
organizational strategies. While hiring staff remains a political balancing act at the national AFL-CIO, Sweeney's top two assistants and several other high-level staff members came over from
SEIU. Several others were hired from the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers' Union
(since merged with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union), which had developed a
reputation for effective organizing against difficult odds in southern textiles plants. In attracting
staff to Washington, the Federation benefited initially from a perception that Sweeney's
administration was the place to be - the nerve centre for an overdue attempt to revitalize the labour
movement.
The second tradition brought over from SEIU is the use of strategic planning and other
organizational development tools (such as membership surveys and focus groups) to develop
organizational consensus around change. One of Sweeney's assistants asked: "How can any
organization that is democratic build a consensus around change? How can it not find itself behind
the pace of change, when the pace of change is so rapid at certain points in time?" Strategic
planning has now become a basic tool of organizational management within the AFL-CIO as well
as leading affiliates. Planning not only generates new ideas, but is also a vehicle for generating
support for the strategies that emerge, the outlines of which may be clear at the outset.
We have tried to... help organizations do strategic planning in a formal way to develop a clear
mission statement, goals, and clearly defined objectives. The value of that is important in terms
of the public strategy and direction we develop. The more important value is the political
consensus that you build using that process by engaging all the stakeholders in the
organization...
The approach to managing change at the AFL-CIO today is grounded in the experience of
Sweeney's top management team when it came together to lead the SEIU. In the early 1980s, a
network of activists in top staff positions in Washington-based unions, including Sweeney's top
assistants, was struggling with the problem of unions' and looked "high and low for people in
academia who thought about this." But most academics and consultants were unfamiliar with
unions and unions were also reluctant to open up to outsiders.
With the help of a "pragmatic, low-key" labour educator, Wayne State's Hal Stack, who "got
along with our leadership well," SEIU established a "Committee on the Future." Over several
years, the committee polled SEIU members and conducted worksite visits. Out of this process, the
SEIU reorganized into five industry divisions: building services (primarily janitorial workers),
health care, public sector, manufacturing, and office work. Within these divisions, workers had
common experiences that could serve as a basis for debate and decision-making about union
strategy. Within industry divisions natural leaders emerged more readily. These leaders were able
to gather people around them and project a "vision" for the union; they were not representing a
clique bound together by personal ties and loyalty.
Within the AFL-CIO, Sweeney has less power than he did as SEIU President to combine with
persuasion and strategic planning in developing consensus. For example, Sweeney has little
influence over the careers of affiliate officers, only a small amount of patronage in the form of
AFL-CIO staff positions, and he cannot put affiliates in receivership. "You can get cooperation
from affiliates through leadership or by moral suasion or by the brilliance of your arguments, but
there's not a lot more you can do." In addition, since the Federation spans all organized industries
and occupations, no common experience is as readily available as that which sustains a common
purpose within the industry divisions of SEIU. According to one source, the federation has been
a place where unions protect their turf, not a place to define a common vision. To convey the
difficulty of generating labour movement consensus, another staff member compared the AFL-CIO
to the United Nations. "A lot of what John Sweeney did in his first two years was sell the notion
of a common destiny and the need to have a unity of focus and unity of purpose." This involves a
battle against "a general belief that there wasn't really anything could be done. The normal
formulation was that anything that could be done wasn't worth doing. Anything we can
accomplish, won't change anything."
To jump start the political and the planning process, the AFL-CIO created a "Committee 2000,"
chaired by Sweeney, and consisting of 20 of the most powerful Executive Council members. With
the support of Committee 2000, Sweeney and his staff have also reorganized and sought to make
more effective use of other committees of the Executive Council.(Endnote 5) In SEIU, Sweeney's
management team had often relied on committees as a more effective forum than the large and
diverse Executive Board. Unlike SEIU's Executive Board, however, the full Executive Council is
less inclined to trust the decisions of its committees. On major issues such as politics, organizing
or AFL-CIO structure, getting consensus support at the Executive Council requires a painstaking
process of vetting ideas with each member of the Council and with the staff of individual affiliates
who deal with each subject.
One tool used by Committee 2000 to generate support for change has been a series of "union
density exercises." AFL-CIO staff divided the US economy into "sectors" overlapping the
jurisdictions of major unions (e.g., health care, hospitality, construction, durable manufacturing,
education, etc.). By sector, AFL-CIO staff calculated total employment, union density, and the
number of union and non-union workers at various points in time. They also documented the
number of workers organized each year. Projections into the future showed that employment
expansion would continue to be concentrated in sectors and geographical areas where union density
is low. The union density exercises made an irrefutable case that business as usual would mean
continued union density decline, in most sectors to below levels that enable unions to influence
industry-wide standards, in some cases close to zero. The analysis also showed that huge numbers
of non-union workers exist in every major sector of the US economy. There is no truth to the claim
that manufacturing unions must organize public and service sector workers because there's no one
left in their core jurisdiction to organize. Forced to confront reality at a gathering of their peers,
many union leaders felt embarrassed. Generating such discomfort was one tactic for getting beyond
business as usual.
2.2 Building power
A central message of the Sweeney administration is that, while the AFL-CIO headquarters in
Washington had focused on "wielding power," the challenge now is to "build power." A major
concern is to do this quickly, leveraging labour's current resources and economic and political
power before they dwindle further.
As part of the effort to build power, the AFL-CIO has reorganized its internal departments and
sought to coordinate different departments more effectively. All AFL-CIO field staff around the
country are now part of the Field Mobilization Department (formerly Field Services). In the past,
separate field operations dealt with Field Services and with election activity, the latter within the
AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education (COPE).
The AFL-CIO created a Corporate Affairs Department within national headquarters. The work
of the Department is premised on the idea that bargaining alone is not enough, given current levels
of union density and the imbalance of power between labour and management. Unions have to try
to change corporate behaviour by exercising influence wherever they can - via sourcing
arrangements that link union and non-union companies, in financial markets, through the use of
union pension monies, in the regulatory sphere, in politics. Through such interventions, the
Department seeks to make it harder for corporations to pursue low-wage (or "low road") strategies
and make it easier for them to pursue higher-wage (or "high road") strategies that develop and
utilize workers' capacities.
The activities of the Corporate Affairs Department include strategic analysis of corporations and
industries. The analysis may be used in devising organizing plans or to find leverage points with
particular corporations in the context of bargaining or organizing. The Corporate Affairs
Department also oversees the activities of two independent, non-profit organizations supported by
outside foundations and government funds in addition to dues dollars.
One of these organizations, the Working for America Institute (WFAI), coordinates labour's
participation in efforts to strengthen the US skill development infrastructure and to promote work
reorganization and industrial modernization consistent with a high road economic development
path. The predecessor of the WFAI, a Human Resources Development Institute founded in the late
1960s, operated fairly independently of the core activities of the Federation. Reinventing HRDI
as the WFAI illustrates the attempt to address skillbuilding and work organization as part of an
overall AFL-CIO strategy to change the way American firms do business. At present, the WFAI
provides technical support to a growing number of efforts across the United States to build multi-employer labour-management training partnerships.(Endnote 6) The WFAI also fosters the creation of a "high
road network" that brings together labour leaders and researchers engaged at the grass roots with
efforts to transform the development path of regional industries. Support for training partnerships
is premised on the idea that individual firms, acting alone, underinvest in general skills because they
cannot capture all the benefits of their investment. In addition, increased career mobility across
firms creates a need for more inter-firm labour market coordination and transparency. Labour-management training partnerships can help solve coordination and underinvestment problems. By
providing employers with critical skills and relieving them of some responsibility for employment
security, partnerships could also lessen employer antagonism to unions. The high road network
could help meet the long-term need for a critical mass of leaders who see the "high road" as a real
institutional alternative, not just a catch phrase.
The second non-profit organization linked with the Corporate Affairs Department is the Center
for Working Capital (CWC), which intervenes in financial markets to change corporate behaviour.
The pension funds, employee stock ownership plans, and savings plans of unionized workers
amount to over $7 trillion, about a quarter of the net worth of publicly traded US corporations. The
Center for Working Capital seeks to ensure that this money works to raise living standards, not
lower them. The Center conducts training for pension fund trustees and uses pension funds to
support shareholder activism to influence corporate management. Another strategy that is under
consideration, drawing on experience in Quebec, is the establishment of regional "solidarity funds"
that would invest workers' financial resources directly in high road strategies.
2.3 Reviving the federation at local level: Union Cities
Another major initiative of the New Voice Administration has been to energize central labour
councils (CLCs). There are approximately 600 CLCs, which are the most local body of the AFL-CIO.(Endnote 7) CLCs are funded through a per-member tax from unions in their geographic jurisdiction.
The decision of area unions to affiliate with the local CLC is separate from the decision of the state-level and national structures to affiliate with state federations of labour and the national AFL-CIO.
(Thus, for example, the major trucking union, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, is an affiliate
of the national AFL-CIO but not of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO. The Teamsters are affiliates of
some Pennsylvania CLCs but not others.) On average, AFL-CIO affiliates pay per-member fees
to CLCs on about 55 per cent of their membership. CLCs are constitutionally mandated to provide
support for each union in organizing and bargaining, as well as to work collectively on politics.
Dating back to the 1890s American Federation of Labour, CLCs have had only a single vote
within the AFL or AFL-CIO structure, while national unions have the same number of votes as they
have (paying) members. In addition, CLCs were often moribund in the decades after 1945. Power
in that prosperous era lay with the industrial unions and bargaining with major manufacturing firms
was centralized at national level.
By the early 1990s, however, central labour councils in such places as Atlanta, Cincinnati,
Ithaca, Milwaukee, San Jose, Seattle, had begun to reinvent themselves in response to labour's
decline. CLCs in these cities sought to rebuild the power of the local labour movement rather than
just serve affiliated local unions and endorse political candidates. Activist CLCs built alliances
between community and labour groups to protect both union and non-union workers. They sought
funding from foundations (e.g. to create labour market intermediary organizations that provide
training, career counseling, and job matching to workers), used ties with community and religious
groups to pressure employers not to violate workers' organizing rights, and conditioned support for
local political candidates on concrete commitments that facilitate organizing.(Endnote 8) In 1994, before
Sweeney's election, a group of activist councils met in Las Vegas. The experience of these councils
suggested that CLCs might be a possible breeding ground for a new generation of activists (Ness,
1998). While CLCs had often been dominated by "old boy networks," CLCs' low profile might
make it easier for a new, more demographically diverse generation to rise to leadership than it
would be within individual affiliates. CLCs might also provide an arena for "acting locally" that
would give the labour movement a more direct connection to the daily lives and concerns of its
members and the community.
Economic research also suggests that metropolitan areas and regional economies are critical
venues for the overall effort to "block the low road" and "pave the high road." According to this
research, much of it rooted in analyses of manufacturing, egalitarian growth depends on creating
a web of local and regional institutions. In non-mobile service industries, too, metropolitan and
regional institutions - area-wide unions, training institutions, portable credentials and career ladders
- appear essential to promoting good jobs and high quality and service (Herzenberg, Alic and Wial
1998, especially Chapter 7). As of the mid-1990s, however, no regional political actor had emerged
to develop a blueprint for the high road in local economies and start implementing the blueprint.
Labour, and other elements of the more progressive half of the US political spectrum, had remained
in a defensive posture. According to Bruce Colburn, President of the Milwaukee CLC, "We knew
what we were opposed to in this economy, but we didn't always know what we were for" (Eimer,
1999, p. 73). University of Wisconsin Professor Joel Rogers argued that CLCs were natural
vehicles for promoting the political alliances and institutional interventions in the economy
necessary to reverse the growth of inequality (Rogers, 1994).
In January 1996, the Sweeney administration created a labour council advisory committee "with
the goal of persuading an ambivalent labor movement of the potential for expanding union power
through the councils" (Ness, 1998, p. 82). In June 1996, the first national meeting of CLCs in
Denver provided an opportunity for an open-ended discussion - with "not too many talking heads"
-- of "what CLCs should be doing," informed by a presentation on what some of the most dynamics
CLCs were already doing.(Endnote 9) In the wake of the meeting, the AFL-CIO announced the "Union Cities"
programme.
To become a Union City, CLCs must engage in strategic planning. AFL-CIO field mobilization
staff help facilitate these planning sessions, often with the help of area labour educators. Central
labour councils must then pledge to pursue eight strategies for rebuilding the labour movement:
recruit half the local unions in their community into the Changing to Organize programme and
develop local organizing plans; recruit at least one per cent of union members for "street heat"
mobilization in support of organizing and first contract campaigns; organize grass roots lobbying
and political action committees; organize the community in support of high road economic
development; sponsor "common sense economics" programmes to educate a majority of area unions
about why working families have experienced economic decline; generate support from local
authorities and political candidates for the "right to organize"; work to make CLCs mirror the
diversity of area union members; and reach an annual membership growth rate of 3 per cent by the
year 2000.
As of early 1999, 150 central labour councils in areas with 8 million union members had become
Union Cities. Efforts to create a "network" of effective CLCs and CLC activists have included a
newsletter on Union Cities and four regional CLC meetings in May and June 1999.
Union Cities generated frustration among some local activists. They saw the new national
leadership as outlining grand plans for labour movement revival without providing resources or
technical assistance for implementation (Ness, 1998 and author's observations in Pennsylvania).
Efforts to expand the reach of central labour councils sometimes overstretched local leaders and
unions who already bore the burden of activity not directly linked to individual unions' self-interest.
Many CLCs that have gained Union City designation have done so in name only, because of the
political influence of area leaders, not because they have really begun to implement the eight
strategies.
Even so, pressure and encouragement from the national level have expanded openings for local
union leaders and activists who want to use CLCs to transcend divisions between unions, raise the
level of mobilization, and begin building CLCs into new centres of economic and political power
within regional economies. The demand from CLCs for resources and support itself reflects their
expanding ambitions. According to the Director of the AFL-CIO Field Mobilization Department:
We're finding a need for what we're calling a second generation. The first generation was to
get the overall strategy to build the labour movement in a community, and we had to go
through each part of this to try to generate some ownership of the process locally. Once you
get there, and the local labour movement passes the Union Cities resolution and puts a plan
together, as they start moving it, a whole new set of question come up. We need to be able to
provide support tackle these pieces...It's not like there are any easy answers.
2.4 A new alliance between CLCs, state federations of labour
and the national AFL-CIO
Following up on Union Cities, the AFL-CIO Committee 2000 has been studying how it can
generate more support for CLCs, including from state federations of labour. State federations have
been more active than CLCs since the Second World War, partly because US states have major
responsibilities for funding and regulation in important policy areas (e.g., taxation, education, child
care, welfare, unemployment insurance, employment and training, economic development
subsidies, regional "land-use" planning, transportation, and infrastructure spending). Nonetheless,
outside the building and construction trades, regional and state policy and institutions were
considered as of secondary importance from the 1940s to the 1990s. Most state federations
continued to focus on "wielding" power, while declining union density reduced their influence. In
addition, coordination between the three levels of the AFL-CIO has been limited. As well as
individual unions affiliating separately with the local, state, and national federation, no formal line
of authority exists from the national to state federations or from the state federation to CLCs.
At its October 1999 convention, the national AFL-CIO ratified a resolution outlining a "New
Alliance" between CLCs, state federations, and the national AFL-CIO. A central component of
the New Alliance will be a process of strategic planning and the development of two-year budget
cycles aligned with the two-year legislative cycle in US states. Additional training and education
will be made available to state and CLC staff. National unions will be asked to guarantee per capita
funding to "qualifying" state and local bodies whose strategic plans have been approved by the
national AFL-CIO. (Lazarovici 1999).
2.5 Changing to organize
Historically, individual unions have jealously guarded their control over organizing, ceding no
significant role in this area to the national AFL-CIO. The New Voice Administration came to
power on a platform that stressed the need to "Change to Organize." It immediately established a
new AFL-CIO Organizing Department by bringing in house the quasi-independent Organizing
Institute (OI) established in 1989. The new administration also committed itself to devoting 30 per
cent of its resources to organizing by the year 2000 and urged its affiliates to do the same (AFL-CIO, 1997, p. 2.)
The federation's role in organizing is still evolving. The least controversial aspects of its role
are its efforts at recruiting and training organizers. While the Organizing Institute emphasized
recruiting and training college students, the Organizing Department trains more rank-and-file
members of affiliates. A particular emphasis now is training lead organizers.
The federation subsidizes individual campaigns using an organizing fund. Through the services
of its Corporate Affairs Department, the AFL-CIO conducts strategic analysis of industries to
identify potential organizing targets and individual employers from which affiliates are seeking
recognition.
The AFL-CIO has also initiated a campaign to persuade the public to see workers' freedom to
choose a union as a basic democratic and civil right. The campaign initially phrased the challenge
as the "right to organize." Focus groups indicated that "freedom to choose a voice at work" would
have a wider public appeal.
In 1998, more workers voted in union certification elections and unions organized more new
members than at any point since the 1970s. Nonetheless, new organizing has not yet been rapid
enough to overcome the loss of union members as a consequence of the rapid pace of economic
restructuring.
2.6 Industry committees
A large number of US unions divide the low level of union density that exists in many industries
(although in many cases one union has substantially more members than others). In health care,
for example, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is the dominant union but large
numbers of other unions have some members. The "conglomerate" tendency of US unions has
increased because unions with declining memberships in their primary industry have often
organized new members wherever and whenever they could (Piore, 1994, pp. 520-522).
Sweeney's successor as SEIU President, Andrew Stern, has argued that unions need to merge
and form new alliances to keep up with dynamic shifts in corporate organization and industry
boundaries (Stern, 1998). A complicating factor is that high levels of density within local and
regional markets are important in many non-mobile service industries. The same union need not
necessarily represent workers in different regional markets, although there may be economies of
scale if it does.
In one major industry, health care, the AFL-CIO has formed a committee of its executive
council. The federation provides neutral ground to address sectoral issues of mutual interest, such
as public policy, the strategies and vulnerabilities of industry players that may negotiate with unions
in different markets, or joint organizing. Just as industry divisions proved effective within SEIU,
industry committees could become a vehicle for cooperation across unions, possibly laying the
foundations for mergers or membership exchanges that will bring the organization of the labour
movement into better conformity with the economy. Even so, the political challenges of such
restructuring should not be underestimated. At the October 1999 AFL-CIO convention, after the
presentation of union density trends by sector, delegates ratified a resolution which stated that no
union has exclusive jurisdiction over any sector.
3. Restructuring at individual US unions
This section outlines some common themes in the responses made by leading AFL-CIO affiliates
to the pressure of the 1990s. It relies heavily on the experience of three leading unions: the
Communications Workers of America (CWA), the SEIU, and the American Federation of State,
County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Top elected leaders or staff members of these
unions were interviewed in April or May 1999. The unions are all based in service industries and
are considered atypically effective. Their experience tells us something about approaches that are
likely to become more widespread in the future if the US labour movement is to rebound.
The CWA represents over 600,000 workers, mostly in the telecommunications industry. The
SEIU represents over 1.3 million workers, primarily in the health care, janitorial and public sectors.
AFSCME represents about 2 million public sector workers.
3.1 Permeability to pragmatic, progressive activists
While the division between the unions and the ideological left that emerged after the Second World
War is well known, this division does not appear important at national level within the CWA,
AFSCME or SEIU. Whether as union leaders or staff members, left activists have been central
partners in strategy development in these three unions. The non-bureaucratic "mission" and critical
worldview of these individuals may have helped bring basic questions - "what is to be done?"-
quickly to the surface in the 1980 and 1990s. In the wake of the labour movement's sense of crisis
and the loss of Soviet control of Eastern Europe, there are indications within some more
conservative unions, including the building trades, of a new permeability to progressive activists.
3.2 A sense of crisis
At national level, all three of these unions share a sense that "business as usual" is not enough and
that the labour movement may be in danger of extinction. For SEIU, this sense goes back to the
early years of the Reagan era; it intensified during the 1980s when the janitorial industry was
substantially deunionized in strong union cities such as Los Angeles and Pittsburgh. For CWA, the
breakup of the telephone monopoly, AT&T, in 1984, ushered in a new era that threatened its
survival. For AFSCME, which continued to grow rapidly in the 1980s, the 1994 election created
a sense of urgency. After that election, in which the Republican Party won a Congressional
majority, AFSCME:
"...made a major decision to reevaluate its organizational strategy. We were provoked to do
that by the [Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives Newt] Gingrich victory
in 1994...We are in this precarious moment in the history of the United States when it can go
either way. Easily it can go downhill. What happened in 1994 could be the beginning of a 40-year rule by a Gingrich and his acolytes. Thank God we are awake and recognizing this."
The leadership role that AFSCME President Gerald McEntee played in the transition from
Kirkland to Sweeney was one direct consequence of AFSCME's view that the labour movement
is in danger of extinction.
For CWA and SEIU, despite a range of activities launched to turn the tide, recent union density
trends reinforce the sense of crisis. For example, while the CWA has done what Batt, Katz and
Keefe (1999) call "a masterful job broadening its vision and strategies," it has still suffered
membership decline. At AT&T alone, membership fell from 117,000 to about 40,000 in 1996,
according to the CWA research department. In its traditional core industry, telephone services, the
union has maintained significant representation among residential service providers but has been
unable to organize anti-union employers in the cable, cellular, internet service provider, and long-distance sectors. Union density among technical workers in the telecommunications industry has
fallen from 68 per cent in 1983 to 52 per cent in 1996; among clerical and sales workers, it has
fallen from 63 per cent to 35 per cent (Batt, Katz and Keefe, 1999). For SEIU, union density in the
janitorial and health care industries remains at 10-12 per cent nationally. Only in a few
geographical markets does the union possess sufficient density to set area-wide wage and benefit
standards.
3.3 Strategic planning and plan implementation
All these unions engage in formal processes of internal strategic planning. In SEIU, planning and
internal reorganization began in the 1980s when "Sweeney took this very decentralized AFL-style
organization and led a change process to bring more coordination and centralization." The
reorganization into industry divisions in the 1980s was one result. Most recently, over a four-year
period beginning in 1992, the SEIU Committee on the Future produced a series of five reports (on
the state of the world, the state of the economy, leaders' views of the union, members' views of the
union, and recommendations for the future) designed to outline the next set of strategic directions
for the union. The recommendations highlighted the need to build "industry power" by raising the
union's density in particular labour markets within SEIU's major industries. Organizing priorities
over the next several years will be geared to raising industry power.
Within AFSCME, the planning launched after the 1994 elections has identified two new
organizing strategies to complement the union's main strategy for the past four decades (which was
to work relentlessly to pass state laws establishing workers' right to organize and bargain
collectively and then to organize as many workers as possible immediately thereafter). The new
strategies are to systematically organize public sector workers who have remained outside the union
although they are protected by existing state bargaining laws; and to organize private-sector
providers that compete with public sector workers.
Within SEIU, the most recent strategic plan, completed after Andrew Stern succeeded Sweeney,
has led to a major internal reorganization. According to Stern,
"We went through the whole headquarters and asked ourselves the question how would we
change from...a smorgasbord union, in which locals got to choose which foods they ate, to a
union structure that maximizes our ability to implement the Committee of the Future report.
Rather than asking whether people were doing good work, which everybody was, we asked
ourselves, which functions matched the mission of the union and therefore should be
maintained or expanded?"
Seven SEIU departments were eliminated. The health and safety department has declined from
22 staff members to two. One hundred and forty out of 350 national union staff members now have
different assignments.
Based on observations of restructuring within US unions generally, one AFL-CIO staff member
observed a generational process at play. The four or five union leaders associated with the most
rapid and dramatic internal restructuring tend to be younger; they were rising through the ranks in
the difficult climate of the late 1970s and 1980s. Older leaders whose careers began during the
years of postwar prosperity have had more difficulty coming to terms with the change in the
economic and political climate. They may also have stronger ties to local leaders and staff members
who perceive reorganization as threatening.
3.4 Keeping up with corporate structure - Union centralization
and local autonomy
In the major industries where they represent workers, both CWA (Communications Workers of
America) and SEIU confront dramatic changes in industry structure and business organization. For
CWA, the definition of the industry which employs most of its members is in flux, with
telecommunications (including wireless telephony) now converging with publishing, computing
and entertainment into "information services" (CWA, no date, p. 2). Within the amorphous
information services sector, firms are constantly merging and forming alliances in an effort to
position themselves for the future. In health care, self-contained and independently managed
hospitals are giving way to regional health care networks which link physicians' offices, hospitals,
outpatient clinics and ancillary services. In janitorial services, building owners now routinely
contract out to specialized cleaning services, which may be small local firms, national companies
or international corporations.
As a result of corporate restructuring, unions often find that "the union structures don't match
up with the employer's structures." In some cases, their traditional bargaining partner now has little
authority. In one illustration, the President of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) (one
of the US television networks) recently excused himself from bargaining with CWA President
Morton Bahr so that he could telephone Michael Eisner, CEO of the Disney Corporation. Since
Disney now owns ABC, the ABC President no longer has the power to conclude a final agreement.
According to SEIU President Stern,
The person that is bargaining nursing home contracts in Pennsylvania is dealing with the same
companies that are in California. The head of George Washington Hospital (in Washington,
D.C.) now reports to a guy in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, because he's part of a hospital
chain. All of a sudden, hospitals are a thing of the past, now you deal with health care systems.
You no longer deal exclusively with non-profit you deal with for-profits. So people have had
to figure out how to maintain and control their density with an understanding of what is
happening in the industry.
In today's economic climate, neither the centralized industrial union tradition nor the
decentralized craft union tradition fits with industry and corporate structure. Both these traditions
meshed with forms of business organization based on independent firms - industrial unions fit with
vertically integrated giants, craft unions with small local firms. Now corporations are trying to
network forms of organization that stand between the hierarchical, vertically integrated firm and
independent businesses that operate at arms length (Herzenberg, Alic and Wial, 1998, particularly
Chapter 6). Through networks firms hope to achieve the coordination possible through vertical
integration with the entrepreneurial flexibility of independent business units. Unions need
structures capable of tracking and responding to changing business networks.
3.5 Strategic coordination of union activity in different spheres
Another common theme in more successful unions is the strategic coordination of politics,
bargaining and organizing. The need for such coordination and the potential benefits have grown
as a result of corporate restructuring: more complex interconnections among corporations create
the potential for unions to exercise leverage at a widening array of levels and venues. In the past,
industrial unions tended to exercise strategic coordination only to win strikes. To rebuild power,
according to Stern, they need to use their connections, financial resources and political leverage in
organizing and increasing density. At CWA, strategic coordination has deep roots that go all the
way back to the last large-scale organizing of the AT&T telephone monopoly, Bell, in the 1950s
(Nissen and Rosen, 1999). A 1960s CWA internal educational programme labeled bargaining and
representation, organizing, and community/political action the union's "triple threat." In the next
two decades, CWA participation in national and state regulatory arenas helped sustain awareness
of the connection between political action and union leverage in bargaining. CWA now refers to
the "triple threat" as the "CWA triangle" and emphasizes that "if you break down one side, the
other two will collapse."
Consistent with the philosophy of the triangle, the CWA has been perhaps the most active union
practitioner of "bargaining to organize" - negotiating contractual clauses that prevent employers
from fully exercising their extensive right under US. labour law to campaign against unionization.
The most common contractual clauses require employers to remain neutral in union certification
elections, to expedite such elections, or to grant union recognition when more than 50 to 60 per cent
of bargaining unit members sign union cards.
3.6 Stronger ties to the community
US labour unions and community-based organizations (e.g., religious organizations, minority
groups, and organizations that help members of low-income communities to find housing, and jobs,
or access social services) are often suspicious of one another. Labour sees community groups as
adding little to the unions' own efforts and seeking resources without offering credit. Unions are
perceived as wanting to control joint efforts and expecting community groups to rally round labour
in disputes with employers. More fundamentally, unions are seen as being narrowly self-interested.
Some urban minority organizations are suspicious because craft unions are perceived to have kept
minorities out of high-paying construction jobs in the past.
Both CWA and SEIU have invested in efforts to strengthen labour and community ties. The
CWA helped found "Jobs with Justice", a national network of metropolitan chapters that bring the
labour, religious, minority, and academic communities into coalition to protect workers' rights to
organize. CWA and SEIU have also formed coalitions with consumer organizations in fights in the
state regulatory or legislative arena. For example, in a ten-year campaign in California, a coalition
with consumers was critical to the passage of state legislation that facilitates the formation of
county-wide unions of home health workers who are employed by many different small provider
organizations but whose services are paid for by the state. (The legislation accomplishes this by
allowing counties to establish a county-wide authority that will bargain with a union of home health
workers on behalf of all employers if a majority of workers vote for representation.) In Los
Angeles County, the California law led to the organization of 75,000 home care workers. Unions
have also supported community-based organizations in efforts to establish "living-wage" ordinances
that require contractors to local government and corporate recipients of public subsidies to pay a
living wage well above the minimum wage.
3.7 Strengthening of collective identities based on occupation
Both SEIU and CWA have strengthened their internal structures for promoting union-wide links
among workers within particular occupations. In CWA, a high proportion of the membership falls
into two major occupational groups, clerical workers (operators, customer service and, increasingly,
sales workers) and ("outside") crafts. A third group, computer programmers and software
specialists ("inside crafts") has grown recently, although many members of this group have been
classified as outside the bargaining unit. CWA has strengthened its occupational network of
customer service and sales workers by organizing annual conferences which bring together 200-300
members of these groups from different companies (Batt, Katz and Keefe, 1999). These gatherings
focus on developing coordinated bargaining agendas and contract language as well as discussing
workplace issues and mobilization strategies. This internal organizing has helped build a network
of local leaders in customer service and sales that cuts across local unions and individual employers.
Through this network, the union has sought to develop the professional identify of customer service
workers, building on the historic commitment of telephone workers to public service during the
regulated period. Internal networking within occupations has helped generate organizational
consensus on the need to invest heavily in organizing low-wage non-union competitors that employ
workers in similar job categories. Members readily see that huge wage and benefit differences
between union and non-union competitors may be unsustainable.
At SEIU, networks of activists and leaders within occupational groups are fostered by meetings
within the five divisions. In the health care division, industry meetings are supplemented by
national and regional meetings of nurse councils. In conjunction with the "Dignity Campaign," a
national nursing home organizing effort, the SEIU regularly brings non-professional health care
workers, primarily nurses' aides and licensed practical nurses (LPNs) together.
Multi-local meetings on an occupational and industry basis do not take place regularly at
AFSCME. For example, even though the federation represents hundreds of thousands of clerical
workers who face common pressures as a result of technological change, the expansion of
temporary work and privatization, these workers do not regularly come together across employers
and local unions. Such contact could promote more effective representation and lay the
groundwork for future organizing in the private office worker labour market.
3.8 Shifting resources to organizing
The SEIU, CWA, and AFSCME have all recently shifted resources to organizing. In SEIU, the
Committee on the Future outlined a three-year plan under which locals would spend 10, 15 then 20
per cent of resources on organizing, with matching funds available from the national union. SEIU
nationally "now spends well over 50 per cent of our resources on growth." CWA allocates 10 per
cent of its resources to organizing and a 1997 Constitutional Amendment encourages locals to do
the same. This arguably underestimates the importance of organizing in CWA, given the tight link
between CWA organizing and bargaining and political activity, and given the union's reliance on
cost-effective member organizers. In AFSCME, 20 district councils are now in the process of
forming organizing departments.
3.9 Evolving organizing models
With more investment in organizing has come more effort to distill lessons about how to organize
cost-effectively. This learning process is more advanced in CWA and SEIU because they refocused
on organizing before most other unions.
From countering employers to empowering workers. Over the past quarter century, organizing
by US unions has been shaped by employer opposition to the labour movement. One top official
perceived both "models" of organizing - the blitz model and one-on-one organizing - as responses
to employers' vigorous campaigns against unionization. They have both:
"...been invented to try tactically to overcome what the employer does. They presume the
employers will beat your brains in. You're either trying to rush quickly before they can get to
the workers. Or you're building deeply so that when the employer gets to you there are enough
roots that you don't get swept out...They are not models, per se, of trying to persuade
workers."
During organizing campaigns, the reality of intense employer opposition tends to reinforce the
adversarial orientation of many US unions. Organizing experience, however, is leading unions to
question the effectiveness of campaigns that revolve too exclusively around the negative theme of
what is wrong with the boss.
At SEIU, for example, the union now perceives its traditional organizing campaigns as aimed
at the one-third of the workforce that is pro-union when the campaign begins.
"The first 30 per cent tend to be more aggressive, more class struggle, more angry at the boss.
The next 30 per cent, using just broad terms, they're not looking for conflict, they're not
looking for hostility, they're looking for a voice. But it's not angry. In health care, our theme
among nurses is now 'working together works.'...For many of our class-struggle organizers,
it's an enormous challenge because we're so used to being in conflict with the employer. But
we don't attack the employer, we inform people about pay practices or whatever. We've polled
it, focus grouped it, before and after elections. It's what the swing voters want to hear. It's not
what the organizers want to say, it's not what the first people that come to you want, but it's
what wins elections."
CWA leaders also see their union as having moved away from the "grievance model" of
organizing that dominated its efforts in the public sector in the 1984 to 1992 period.
"You assume the workers have grievances and you appeal to them on the basis of those
grievances...With that kind of approach, you tend to appeal to the people in any workplace that
actually have some real difficult grievances. But then there's the other 90 per cent that don't
have any personal type of grievance, that just want income security, they want job security,
they want a voice on the job..."
Organizing "voiced from the inside out." While it may have originated as a tactic to help
withstand employer opposition, expanding the workers' role in leading their own organizing
campaign has evolved at CWA into a way of ensuring that the campaign responds to those workers'
concerns. CWA refers to its organizing as "voiced from the inside out," meaning that workers in
the workplace being organized have to lead the campaign. The union describes its philosophy as
to "stick with people as long as it takes - it's not about winning an election for us, it's about
relationships."
The CWA establishes an organizing committee in the workplace and helps take the message out
to the rest of the workforce. Internal organizing committees are now encouraged to develop their
own mission statement. According to CWA organizing director Larry Cohen:
"The organization, the life of it, emanates from the workplace where people are working
together to solve problems...The American Airlines campaign and the US Airways campaign,
the inside leaders were very talented, very committed, and had lots of energy. Then our role
becomes a secondary role of supporting them to achieve their goal of building a union, versus
those workers supporting our goal of enlarging our organization..."
CWA, in essence, provides organizational development support for emerging unions in non-union workplaces, helping them plan their own campaign.
"We have come to realize that organizing depends on the systems workers use when building
their unions and we share with them what we think are the best systems. One big thing for us
is one-on-one personal contact so that workers are not just relying on materials or impersonal
media communications, but that they actually have these discussions with folks about what
really matters to them...It's got to be built on one-on-one communication with people."
Reliance on member organizers. CWA, particularly, relies heavily on member organizers in its
organizing efforts. Contract provisions allow members time off for union business and the union
pays them lost wages. The union has only 12 full-time organizers nationally in its nine districts
(Nissen and Rosen, 1999, p. 81). The skills of member organizers are developed in regional district
organizing networks through formal training, mentoring by district organizers, experience,
newsletters that share stories and lessons learned from campaigns, and annual retreats. The
organizing network in one district grew from 26 to 62 organizers between 1990 and 1997. The
three-day retreat in the district draws about 20-25 people per year, virtually all of them member
organizers, for discussions structured around case studies. Industry segments also receive in-depth
analysis. On the last day, participants develop an organizing plan for the district for the next year,
with targets specified and discussion of how the network can support particular campaigns. The
organizing plan is distributed to all locals. The district organizing network thus serves, according
to a District 4 Organizing Plan, as a "vehicle for mutual support, exchange of ideas and recognition"
(Nissen and Rosen, 1999, p. 77)
At SEIU, "member mobilizers" have played an important part in campaigns for new union
contracts with employers that are already organized (Sciacchitano, 1998). At AFSCME, member
organizers have been used to augment full-time staff in child-care organizing efforts in
Philadelphia.
Over the longer term, the development of hundreds of member organizers may be the only way
to turn the tide and start to organize new members by the thousands. CWA sees reliance on
member organizers as economical. At Indiana University, for example, the CWA organized 1,800
clerical and technical workers using a staff of three part-time organizers - telephone operators - and
eight days a month from a district organizer (Nissen and Rosen, 1999). The campaign cost CWA
$250,000 or $138.88 per member organized. This compares with the standard US rule-of-thumb
that organizing costs $1,000 for each new union member. Sciacchitano, however, cites an SEIU
staff member who found training and developing workers to assume additional responsibilities more
time-consuming initially than having staff perform those functions (Sciacchitano, 1998). Clearly,
the investment necessary to develop member organizers will vary according to the educational
background and workplace responsibilities of workers.
Occupational organizing. Several of those interviewed identified "occupational organizing" as
a distinct approach. One success that those inside and outside CWA characterized as based on
occupational organizing was the unionization of 10,000 call centre workers at US Airways. CWA
saw its success with these workers as a direct outgrowth of what the union knew about this kind of
work from its representation of operators and customer service representatives in AT&T and
regional phone companies. According to CWA organizing director Larry Cohen:
"The reason we won was that we have 150,000 customer service people in the union who do
similar work in call centers in a variety of industries...Where people are plowing through
screen after screen of very detailed information. Of 150 people on a plane, they've got 100
different fares...That job is much like the calling center at Bell Atlantic where there's a million
ways you can configure your communication set-up...People interfacing with technology and
customers...The job can vary tremendously but it's always about that...Problem-solving and
finding the right information for people."
The tone of the US Airways campaign relied heavily on appealing to the professional identity
of the agents. It focused on the need to improve customer service, rather than attacking the
company per se (Batt, Katz and Keefe, 1999). Twenty-five full-time member organizers staffed the
campaign. In the wake of the US Airways effort, the CWA is now aiming for a certification
election among 15,000 mostly customer service workers at American Airlines.
For CWA, organizing around the concerns of particular occupational groups is pivotal to its
plans to increase density in the telecommunications industry. Mergers and acquisitions have
brought large numbers of non-union customer service and technical workers into AT&T and
Regional Bell Operating Company subsidiaries. These subsidiaries are often covered by "neutrality
clauses" achieved through CWA's bargaining-to-organize efforts. Such clauses limit managers'
freedom to use the full scope allowed by US law to convince workers not to vote union in a
certification election. Using the access to non-union workers and the protection of these neutrality
clauses, organizing outreach can be supported by CWA members in the same occupation.
A former AFL-CIO organizing director offered nursing as an example ripe for more organizing
on an occupational basis. In places such as Texas where organizing all occupational groups in
hospitals or health care networks would be difficult, nurses show a tremendous interest in having
stronger associations. This interest stems from the expansion in the United States of managed
health care insurance and for-profit hospitals, as well as a decline in fear of losing jobs at particular
facilities.
"The nurses have very strong concerns about their profession, the for-profit nature of their
industry, about legislation that is being developed. They are tired of waiting for someone to
come and help. They are doing it on their own."
The interviewee believed that a union could organize 127,000 registered nurses in Texas quite
inexpensively and that the resulting association would soon be financially self-sufficient. One
bottleneck in organizing these nurses is a shortage of trained and experienced organizers and lead
organizers.
Organizing workers in non-standard employment relationships. Occupational organizing is seen
as a potential approach to representing US workers who are not strongly attached to a particular
employer - e.g. those who work for temporary agencies or have short-term contracts. According
to the AFL-CIO organizing director:
"The high-tech and contingent workforce area. These folks are not in vertical relationships,
with a boss that they are having trouble with, but in more lateral relationships. But they still
need an organization to speak for them...The largest employer in America is a temp agency
now. So we have to figure out how to organize this segment, what the glue is and I think that
that is a different structure in terms of organization and collective bargaining...But it is not
either-or and it is not all going to be one kind of organization and representation very soon.
Not in my lifetime."
The CWA has led efforts by US unions to represent workers in non-standard employment
arrangements. For example, CWA has established pilot "Employment Centers" in Los Angeles,
Cleveland and Seattle that perform some of the functions of hiring halls in the construction model
of US trade unionism. The Centers provide portable benefits, placement in temporary assignments
covered by a collective bargaining agreement (the employer on record may be a
telecommunications firm or a temporary agency that acts as an intermediary between the
Employment Center and the telecommunications firm), and training.
(Endnote 10)
In July 1998 CWA chartered the creation of a new local union - the Washington Alliance of
Temporary Workers or Wash Tech - by Microsoft temporary workers in Seattle, Washington, the
home base of the Microsoft Corporation. About one-third of Microsoft's 6,100 workers are temps
and one- third of these have been on the job for more than a year. Wash Tech's goals include: (1)
giving workers' a voice in any policy decisions, public or corporate, that directly affect high-tech
temps; (2) extending sick pay, holiday pay and medical care to all full-time workers in the industry,
regardless of their employment status; and (3) educating workers about their legal rights to
organize, negotiate contracts, and share employment information. Wash Tech is currently trying
to form a workers' cooperative through which workers could contract out their own labour. In June
1999, Wash Tech petitioned four temp agencies for bargaining recognition on behalf of 18
Microsoft contractors. In January 1999, in response to workers' requests, Wash Tech began
offering one-month classes on topics such as Java script, web development, database design, digital
design and illustration, and career planning.
4. Inventing postindustrial unionism
One AFL-CIO staff member, speaking about unions adapting to new conditions, said "it's not so
much the specifics of the change, it's how on earth they ever get to the point of making the change."
In fact, however, the specifics of the change - a vision of how unions fit into the new economy -
are part of generating a willingness to change. The difficulties created for unions by the lack of
such a vision manifest themselves in various ways.
4.1 From industrial to postindustrial organizing
Changes in business and work organization resulting from the shift away from a local craft-based
economy, towards a national mass-production economy required a change in the dominant form of
trade unionism. The same is true today, with the shift to a global, service-dominated economy. And
just as the transition from craft to industrial union organizing was difficult for craft unions - with
industrial unions, for the most part, created anew, along with their own federation (the Congress
of Industrial Organizations) - the transition to post-industrial organizing has proved wrenching for
a labour movement dominated by industrial unions.
Even in the last few years, much of the internal labour movement debate about organizing does
not rise above campaign tactics. According to former AFL-CIO organizing director Kirk Adams,
"We do a lot of planning in this town and very often assume the workers want to have a union.
I think generally a lot of workers do want to have a union ...But as to why they want to have
a union, that's not ordinarily discussed...We talk a lot about the employer but we don't talk that
much about the worker..."
In the absence of any explicit debate about why workers might associate collectively in today's
economy, traditional ideas from the industrial union era continue to have great sway. The most
obvious illustration is the idea that hatred of the boss should be the main organizational glue. In
some quarters, even to question the universal appeal of organizing "against the boss" is now seen
as failing a loyalty test: it is misinterpreted as a retreat from the idea that organizing is about
increasing workers' power. However, organizing is still about gaining the collective power to
achieve positive transformation in a particular job, industry, or occupation, even if the focus shifts
away from the "bad boss".(Endnote 11) A more subtle but related hangover from the industrial union era is
the restricted notion of what unions do. Only a few organizers conceive of what they are doing as
part of an effort to transform social relations at work - to increase "worker control." When the
language of the high road is adopted it is generally a slogan rather than an expression of a belief that
the organization of production could be transformed in ways that benefit customers and society as
well as workers.
Especially at CWA, some organizing is now being planned and conducted in ways that expand
workers' opportunity to shape their own vision of unionism and then to work with others to find
the leverage necessary to realize that vision. In these "best practice" cases, organizer networks
include internal committees, member-organizers in similar work settings, experienced full-time
organizers, and union staff who can bring outside leverage to bear.(Endnote 12)
The basic challenge for the AFL-CIO is to create an expanding learning network of organizers
who have a deep understanding of workers and the nature of work today. This implies a heavier
reliance on organizers employed in the occupations and industries being organized. It also suggests
a need to reevaluate the wisdom of having organizers move from industry to industry and
occupation to occupation. Such movement may be acceptable if organizers are marketing generic
"defense against management" services, but not if the goal is to transcend this and move towards
more occupational models. It may also be important to eliminate the hard line that often separates
organizers from those who negotiate contracts and oversee the use of union power once it is
established. Only if organizers know how unionism will lead to a change in the day-to-day
experience of work will they be able to convey the possibilities to new recruits.
There are many ways the AFL-CIO could seek to create the necessary learning network. As
with the network of high road practitioners fostered by the Working for America Institute, a priority
should be to encourage more contacts among organizers whose perceptions and approaches are not
shaped by the past. At present, these individuals appear isolated, which is not a recipe for creativity
or success. This interaction might also lead to more dialogue about what workers want, and to a
reflection on the lessons of recent organizing successes and failures. The AFL-CIO may ultimately
need to reinvent its training curricula for organizers and lead organizers, creating, perhaps, a "New
Union Organizing Institute" as a successor to the "Organizer Institute" first targeted at college
students who would participate in blitz campaigns.
4.2 Inventing the high road
A related challenge for labour today is building the technical capacity in regional economies and
labour markets to help pave the high road and block the low road. Implementing the high road
requires major changes in public policy and networks of new institutions, many of them operating
above the level of the individual firm (e.g. multi-employer unions, labour market intermediaries that
serve multiple employers, institutionalized political alliances between high road employers, unions
and consumers). Creating the necessary institutions is outside the experience of most American
trade unionists, who were confined to a reactive role within individual companies for most of the
time since the Second World War. Especially outside the building and construction trades, most
US unionists do not have the habits of thought that would lead them to analyse sectoral
development; neither do they have the habits of action that would lead them to organize so as to
shift business strategy from the low to the high road.(Endnote 13)
One place to look for support in building the high road is the public sector. Here, unions
confront the extreme free market orientation of even "liberal" US economists and policy-makers.
The liberal neoclassical paradigm of virtually all economists in the Clinton Administration has no
place for the self-conscious construction of institutions designed to push industrial development in
more innovative, high-quality directions.(Endnote 14)
The US labour movement already uses some of its political leverage to free up public resources
for technical assistance and institution building that support the high road - the best illustration of
this being the Working for America Institute. Additional resources might be released with a
strategic focus on that goal, at both state and local level. Some financial support should be sought
for institutionally oriented research and graduate training programmes that recognize the role of
labour organizations and other institutions in industrial development. The labour movement also
needs to fight at all levels of government - including within the next national Democratic
Presidential Administration - so that economic decision-making is not dominated by neoclassical
economists whose insidious influence on policy is impossible to overestimate. (Winning this fight
is emphatically not just a matter of influencing the next appointment of Secretary of Labor.)
It must be admitted that it is a lot to ask of the labour movement that it take the lead
intellectually, politically and institutionally in pushing for a high road economic strategy. While
there are many potential allies for such a strategy once it begins to emerge, there are no other
obvious candidates for taking the lead. The statement above is both a recognition of the enormity
of the challenge and a rationale for a new economy labour movement.
4.3 Labour's moral purpose
Another obstacle to trade union progress is the decay of a broader sense of social purpose - the idea
of a mission larger than the self-interest of a particular union or particular officials. If the upper
middle-class income and status of some union leaders and staff may be jeopardized by internal
restructuring, the decline of a larger sense of mission can be particularly paralysing. Why sacrifice
personal prestige and security if no larger purpose will be served? The lack of a consensus social
vision also diminshes labour's ability to attract and retain committed activists and staff who have
the alternative of a more financially rewarding career.
Strategic planning and internal reorganization with the AFL-CIO and leading affiliates have
sought to revive the sense of a larger purpose. One national union leader observed that, within his
union, local officials have begun to accept personal sacrifice once they see internal restructuring
which is consistent with a principled strategic plan. But a broader regeneration of labour's moral
purpose requires a general postindustrial solution to unions' basic dilemma - the need to serve the
interests of their members while simultaneously being seen to serve the interests of society as a
whole. At the moment, institutional self-interest is too transparently the motivation for many labour
actions, large and small. Paradoxically, only transcending the view that labour is just another
special interest, and acting to make the world a better place, can restore labour's power.
4.4 Postindustrial unionism
The challenges above are all symptoms of developments in the 1970s and 1980s that rendered
obsolete the New Deal solution to the unions' basic dilemma. To end unions' current "identity
crisis" within society, and lay the foundation for a substantial increase in membership, unions must,
as they did in the 1930s, take a central role in solving persistent economic and social problems.
Notwithstanding sustained economic prosperity, the United States at the end of the 1990s does have
such problems. They include rising wage inequality, an erosion in big company job ladders that
undercuts advancement for low-wage workers and security for mid-career employees, falling rates
of health care coverage, and an apparent decline in the value of pension benefits for many workers.
In addition, it is widely perceived that the US invests inadequately in human capital development
and that employment instability makes firms less willing to spend money on training (since
employees may soon work for someone else). In conjunction with inadequate investment in
workforce training, many US employers' competitive advantage is based on paying low wages and
benefits rather than raising performance, an approach that retards the growth of living standards.
A potential new economy resolution of US unions' basic dilemma thus lies in their ability to
solve these persistent economic and social problems.(Endnote 15) Adapting the traditions of craft unions, US
multi-employer unions rooted in sectoral and geographical labour markets (child care, elder care,
health care, technical occupations, clerical and administrative occupations) could raise wages at the
low end of the market, in the process discouraging low-wage strategies. They could negotiate with
employers to increase investment in human capital development. They could create multi-employer
career advancement, job matching, and health and pension benefit structures. In professional,
technical, personal service and customer service jobs - now most of the economy - in which critical
knowledge resides within occupational communities, unions could raise performance through
apprenticeship and peer learning approaches. In these ways, unions might recapture public support
as institutions that raise economic performance and create decent jobs - that "add value as well as
values."
A redefinition of unions' place in the economic structure is now the subject of debate at the
national AFL-CIO. According to one top staff member:
"There's no more important issue for us in terms of the long-term viability of union
organization in this country than workforce skills and preparing people for work, present and
future...We organize skill development processes that are critical to your long-term economic
security...People will get involved with unions because they build the training structures that
allow lots of workers in lots of different situations to get skills and to advance...."
In the words of another staff member, the slogan implicit in much union activity in the last two
decades is "things could be worse." A new collective identity based on expanding economic
opportunity for all and honouring workers' commitment to their customers and their craft would
be a more positive and compelling vision.
Some time ago, the US labour movement developed the marketing slogan "America Works Best
When We Say Union Yes", more as an expression of hope and faith than a conviction. The more
the union movement discovers, to its immense relief, that this is actually true, and then makes that
case to the public as a whole, the sooner we can expect to see a revival of the labour movement.
Acronyms
AFL-CIO American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations
AFSCME American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
CLC Central Labor Council
CWA Communications Workers of America
CWC Center for Working Capital
HRDI Human Resources Development Institute
NLRB National Labor Relations Board
SEIU Service Employees International Union
WFAI Working for America Institute
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Endnote 1:
For an extended analysis of the basis for these premises, see Herzenberg, Alic and Wial, 1999a. For shorter
treatments, see Herzenberg, Alic and Wial, 1998 and Herzenberg, Alic and Wial, 1999b.
Endnote 2:
The think tank, the Keystone Research Center, was created in 1996 in Pennsylvania at the initiative of state-level
union officials concerned that progressives were losing the battle of ideas. The Center receives support from the
Pennsylvania AFL-CIO as well as from a half-dozen affiliated labour unions.
Endnote 3:
For Sweeney's own perspective on the events leading up to becoming AFL-CIO President, see Sweeney with
Kusnet 1996, pp. 88-96.
Endnote 4:
For an analysis of SEIU and its ability to respond more effectively than other unions to the pressures of the 1980s
and 1990s, see Piore, 1994.
Endnote 5:
The 1997 Convention expanded the authority of the AFL-CIO President, subject to Executive Council approval, to
create new committees whose members are appointed by the President. See AFL-CIO 1997, p. 95.
Endnote 6:
For examples of such partnerships, see Herzenberg, Alic and Wial 1998a, Chapter 7; and Parker and Rogers, 1996.
Endnote 7:
The AFL-CIO Web Page reports that 614 Central Labour Councils existed as of 1996. The number is slightly
smaller now because of mergers of some councils.
Endnote 8:
For an analysis of some of the activities of "transformative" CLCs and how they differ from "conventional" CLCs,
see Gapasin and Wial 1997. Before becoming a labour educator, Gapasin was secretary treasurer of the South Bay
Labour Council in San Jose, the heart of California's Silicon Valley.
Endnote 9:
Fernando Gapasin facilitated a discussion based on Gapasin and Wial, 1977.
Endnote 10:
This and the next paragraph are based on duRivage 2000.
Endnote 11:
For an illustration of the confused nature of the debate on this issue, see Labour Notes, 1999.
Endnote 12:
Some innovative organizing is more likely to succeed because it is conducted in ways conducive to the
development of what Ganz (1999) calls "strategic capacity." Ganz defines "strategic capacity" as the product of
three factors: "access to salient information," "heuristic processes" (loosely, processes that help people solve
problems creatively - e.g. interaction among individuals with diverse perspectives, brainstorming, telling stories or
reviewing case studies of organizing), and "motivation to learn" (i.e. an intense interest in learning how to organize
more effectively).
Endnote 13:
The number of union leaders and activists comfortable with initiatives to promote the high road and rule out the
low road will grow if unions expand in services such as child care, elder care and health care, and if teachers' unions
reorient themselves more wholeheartedly to taking the lead in promoting educational quality. In human and
educational services, organizing to shift competition in higher quality directions is a natural extension of the
professional identity of union members.
Endnote 14:
Arguably, there has not been a single institutional economist in a high level policy position in either of the two
Clinton Administrations. In the Carter Administration, Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall, one of the most prominent
institutional economists, was isolated within the Cabinet. In the first Clinton Administration, Secretary of Labor
Robert Reich espoused some views shared with institutional economists, but saw himself as a one-man source of
creativity not the leader of a coherent alternative perspective on economic development. Every Chief Economist at
the US Department of Labor since Clinton came to power has been a neoclassical economist.
Endnote 15:
For a longer (but still short) version of the argument in this last section, see Herzenberg, Alic and Wial 1998b.
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