Union Busting; how Reagan damaged today's working classes

Ronald Reagan
There are so many articles about Ronald Reagan's betrayal of the Middle Class. It's much worse in 2008 and will be for a long long time. This one is probably the least fierce of all of them. ---BBB

Class Warrior
By Harold Meyerson - Washington Post
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A21

Ronald Reagan changed America, and -- with all due deference to his dedication to principle, his indomitable spirit, his affability -- not for the better.

Historians will argue how much credit Reagan deserves for the ratcheting down of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. By any measure he surely merits some, even if he spent the better part of his presidency ratcheting the Cold War up.

But however much Reagan helped wind down the Cold War abroad, he absolutely revived class war here at home. Slashing taxes on the rich, refusing to raise the minimum wage and declaring war on unions by firing air traffic controllers during their 1981 strike, Reagan took aim at the New Deal's proudest creation: a secure and decently paid working class. Broadly shared prosperity was out; plutocracy was dug up from the boneyard of bad ideas. The share of the nation's wealth held by the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans rose by 5 percent during Reagan's presidency, while virtually everyone else's declined.

You need look no further than the current recovery to see Reagan's lasting effect on our economy. Corporate profits have been rising handsomely for the past couple of years, at roughly a 30 percent annual rate. But over two years into the recovery, wages are limping along at roughly the rate of inflation, gaining 1 to 2 percent annually. With the percentage of American workers who belong to unions -- 12 percent overall and just 8 percent in the private sector -- having sunk to its lowest level since before FDR, is it any wonder that wages are stuck?

Roughly a quarter of American workers belonged to unions when Reagan took office. When he broke the PATCO strike, it was an unambiguous signal that employers need feel little or no obligation to their workers, and employers got that message loud and clear -- illegally firing workers who sought to unionize, replacing permanent employees who could collect benefits with temps who could not, shipping factories and jobs abroad. Reagan may have preached traditional values, but loyalty was not one of them.

In his efforts to return capitalism to its previously unlamented Hobbesian past, Reagan had plenty of company. His helpmeet Maggie Thatcher made similar changes on her side of the pond. Throughout the advanced capitalist nations, the power of workers weakened as the old industrial economies ceased to expand and global investment began to outrun the constraints of the state. But nowhere was the force of investment stronger and the force of labor weaker than in the United States. The explosion of the trade deficit, no less than the budget deficit, dates to Reagan's morning in America.

Reaganomics reflected the rise of Sunbelt capitalism -- of right-to-work-state businessmen who, unlike their Northern counterparts, had never cottoned at all to unions or regulations. From Reagan's dictum that government is the problem to Tom DeLay's equation of the Environmental Protection Agency with the Gestapo, the idea that there are higher purposes than private profit, or gainful pest extermination, has been banished from modern Republicanism. And though Reaganomics may have begun in the backwaters of American capitalism, it soon spread to Wall Street, which has rewarded our current Reaganaut, George W. Bush, with more money for his campaign than any other sector. Scrap the taxes on dividends, and that musty financial oversight, and watch finance become the political clone of the oil bidness.

By letting business be business in its pre-New Deal mold -- free to speculate and shed longtime employees -- Reagan and his acolytes not only transformed the classic Northeastern capitalists. They also drove from their ranks the Willkie-Eisenhower-Rockefeller-Nixon Republicans who were the traditional GOP's political tribunes. In this the Reaganites succeeded all too well.

Reagan didn't mean to destroy the moderate wing of Republicanism per se, or to root the party in Southern states exclusively. To be sure, his primary opponents in 1968, 1976 and 1980 -- Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, the senior Bush -- were moderates against whom he ran up big vote totals in the South. But each time Reagan selected a vice president -- in 1976 he announced he'd pick liberal Pennsylvania senator Richard Schweiker if he won the nomination; in 1980, he picked George H.W. Bush -- he went with pillars of the Northeastern GOP establishment.

By the time George W. Bush chose his fellow Houstonian Dick Cheney as his running mate, though, the Republicans had no Northeastern establishment remaining. Progressives had been banished; the socially tolerant had fled. Bush heads a party in which recent national leaders -- most certainly the trifecta of Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott and Tom DeLay -- are Southern right-wingers contemptuous of the traditions of both Roosevelts and not too crazy about the civil rights revolution of the '60s, either. Today's party narrowly clings to power in every branch of government, but it refuses to govern with, or listen to, anyone outside its ever-smaller tent. The post-Reagan Republicans have now shrunk to the party of culture war as well as class war -- to the nation's general woe.

BBB's experience as a Labor Union representative
BBB's experience as a Labor Union representative

Before I became a union representative, when I was the office manager for several large local labor unions in California, which included Teamsters, Retail Clerks, Building Trades, Electrical Workers, Hospital Workers, Office and Professional Workers. I changed jobs so often because once I got the union running properly, I would get bored and quit, then find another sick union that needed help. I trained newly elected and/or appointed rank and file union representatives to be successful in their negotiations and their representation. It pissed me off that, as a woman, I could train the men but couldn't be a representative at much higher pay. So I set out to get the "paper proof" that I could do the job and finally was successful.

One memorable day, I was threatened with being run over by a scab driver in a huge semi-truck trying to break a picket line. I was alone with no one to help me. I stood my ground between the truck driver and the loading dock. The cursing driver got out of his truck, jumped up and down in anger standing over me. He finally got back in his truck and drove away. I was left trembling but still blocking his way between his truck and the loading dock and I had not said a single word to him. Just stood my ground. I keep asking myself if I was brave or stupid?

As a Labor Union representative and contract nengotiator in California, I spent as much time researching my employer negotiator's needs for those he/she represented as I did on the employees I represented to try to achieve a win-win outcome. I never had a strike because both sides were satisfied with the fair negotiation outcome. I never BSed the employees to inflate my financial goals and was always realistic with them and they weren't disappointed.

I represented hospital workers, employed and private practice physicians and dentists, office workers. I also represented the union security guards who worked for the homeowners' association of which I was the homeowner president of the Board of Directors. Even though I was management/homeowner, they trusted me and I achieved good contracts outcomes for both them and the homeowners. Trust is key to successful contract negotiations for both employer and employee.

It's taken many years to force union leaders to change their policies. I worked very hard to achieve many of the changes that corrected some of the problems you listed. I'm proud that I never cause a strike over contract negotiations. I've been on a long strike against my own employer that could have been avoided, but was caused because of our union rep's competition attitude. I learned a lot from that experience that made me a better shop steward and later a union representative.

I don't like conflict as a means of settling and devoted much of my union life to find better ways to settle issues. I not only did it in unions, I was one of a small group of people who worked with the American Arbitration Association to research and establish neighborhood dispute resolution programs throughout the united states. It's a long story of a very successful program of which I'm very proud.

The Union Buster's goad is to crush his opponent. I believe in trying to find and agree to win-win solutions so that both sides can find compromises that benefit their members. Bullying by powerful and rich employers achieve nothing but hatred and, as we can see, decline of the working classes.

Labor unions were a major factor in creating and sustaining the American middle class. The anti-union corporate bosses used their hired guns to break unionism in the U. S. When Ronald Reagan became president, the corporate robber barons had the president's help in their campaign to weaken and/or destroy unionism. Reagan loaded the Labor Relations Board with anti-union Republicans, whose rules changes made it extremely difficult for unions to win organizing elections. Law firms that specialized in attacking unions and protecting corporations grew in numbers and increased financial support. Reagan's attack on labor unions began the demise of American Dream for the middle class.

But Reagan had help. The male national union leadership did not do a good job of responding to this challenge because they were slow in recognizing the threat. The old fuddy-duddy union leaders were not interested in organizing women and workers outside of industrial plants. These were the areas of potential growth of union membership. It took a bunch of union women activists to shake up the moribund male union leaders and change their direction. When I have more time, I may write about what these women did to save the labor union movement. I played a prominent role in that effort along with other women around the country.

The middle class still has not recovered from Reagan's assault against labor unions. As a result, the middle class has been weak in protecting itself from George W. Bush's anti-labor policies and economic globalization. Bill Clinton didn't help with NAFTA's lack of U.S. labor protection and environmental standards. All of the recent international trade agreements have favored the corporations and sacrificed U.S. workers in addition to exploiting foreign labor.

I was a representative of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists in California for 10 years in the 1970s. I spent most of that time trying to convince physicians that their ability to be advocates for their patients and the economic future was a risk if we didn't get rid of employer-based health insurance. So many people don't know the history of employer-based health insurance. It started during WWII when wage controls were in effect. The unions found a way to increase wages while not violating the laws. The employers agreed to give employees health insurance, which would not, at that time, be counted as "wages." When the wage control laws were discontinued, the practice of employer-paid health insurance continued. With the global economy, employers can't compete with other countries that don't have employer-based health insurance. We are so far behind Europeans in changing our policies.

Not only did I have to fight the doctors who had their heads in the sand about the take over of medical decisions by insurance companies and HMOs, but the American Medical Association was the biggest hurdle, who were only interested in protecting their financial interests and power to control health care delivery.

I organized and negotiated contracts for doctors working for the State of California, the State University campuses, Counties and cities, trying to protect patient rights advocated by doctors. I organized doctors throughout the U.S. as well, both in private practice and employees.

I finally quit my job in 1986 because I became so disabled that I couldn't fly around the country or walk long distances in hospitals and clincs any longer. I tried to make health care better but my body wouldn't cooperate in letting me pursue my goals.

BBB, I hope you get some knowledgable posters on this thread. I wish I could contribute, but my knowledge and experience is very limited.

I do know that there was tremendous wrong doing on both sides, including corruption and ruthless manipulation. It has always troubled me that power corrupts so easily. IMO, those who have it should be required to step down after a few years in order not to become so entrenched that they lose all perspective.

That greed for more and more money and power allowed corporate leaders to employ children is sickening. And now, people just like them send their products overseas for the cheaper labor, some of it done by children or by workers who are literally trapped in the workplace.

The same happens on the other side, though. Power seems to be the truly evil motivator behind most of the atrocities on both sides.

Your background is fascinating. Sounds like you were right there on the line for most of your career.

BBB was also very instrumental in organizing labor women across the country at the forefront of the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) movement in the 70's.

She was a founding member of C.L.U.W. - Coalition of Labor Union Women back in the late 60's early 70's and also W.A.G.E. - We Advocate Gender Equality.

Some of my earliest memories are of my mom out on the picket line for months when her office worker's union would go out on strike; and of us kids volunteering at her union at Christmas time helping to wrap barrels full of toys for kids from striking union families; and decorating the union hall for the holiday party.

I remember all the boycotts we all helped her advocate while growing up too; Coors, JP Stevens, non-union grapes, and many others. I spent many weekends at the grocery store handing out leaflets with her for the grape boycott.

Also remember the boxes of groceries she used to gather and deliver to Caesar Chavez's fledgling union members in Delano during the early days of the grape boycott.

I agree with you, BBB. Reagan was a disaster for the woking Americans.

The union movement was at deaths door as the 80's came in, let's not be over dramatic. Of course the incompetent and corrupt union leaders had no clue that the end was near, but Reagan can't be blamed for that. Now the Corporate class is busy trying to cement in place international law that will make sure that Unions never return. I don't see much improving for the poor and the ever shrinking middle class of America until the entire economic regime collapses, which might be closer at hand than almost anybody realizes. The peoples of the world have been sold down the river by a incompetent and corrupt corporate class (see current failure of the financial markets due to mismanagement for the class on this subject) that is more interested in getting more of everything for themselves than they are the general welfare of the masses. Power corrupts.....as always.

BBB may I grovel at your feet????

I was an IBEW electric workers shop steward at the telephone company'

Hang Tough

Wow, a2k has some impressive women members. I hope more of them show up on this thread. Too often, they tend to stay back quietly while louder mouths make all the noise.

Hawkeye, I have always wondered how it is that power corrupts once it is tasted, by anyone, even the most altruistic among us. It blows my mind to realize that power is such a dangerous thing. I've certainly never had it, so I can't begin to comprehend how or why it is the ultimate ruin of those who become addicted to it.

I am not sure but two things strike me:

1) many of the great thinkers have come to the conclusion that we don't know ourselves directly, we know who we are by our interactions with others. We see ourselves only by how our self reflects off of others.

2) science has only in the last years has proven that the brain constantly rewires itself

So I figure if a person in power gets treated "special" because he/she is in a power position then this will reflect back at them off of other people, the image of who they are is warped because they have power. Over time the brain rewires around this warped reality, and thus you get a warped consciousness, EKA a corrupt soul.

BTW- I have been a union man for much of my working life, It came as a rude awaking to me that modern unions are corrupt. Also I was a member of a student housing co-op at the university, and the student housing movement was closely affiliated with union theology. My co-op days were for the most part fullfilling. I have a soft spot for movies such as Matewan and Norma Rea

Butrflynet


The WAGE organization you noted was not the organization I helped to found. It was UNION WAGE (Union Womens' Alliance to Gain Equality, I coined the name) founded by my friends and me in California. Some of us later joined in founding CLUW (Coalition of Labor Union Women) to create a national organization.

Union WAGE was the first women's labor union organization in California. It was formed in the women's restroom after I and several friends attending a NOW convention in Berkeley. We were unhappy with the leadership's agenda and felt they were ignoring union women. During a break, we gathered in the restroom and decided to take action to create a union women's organization. To say we were successful would be an understatement. Within a week, they had approved my name for our new organization and we were off and running. We accomplished a lot with Union Wage at the local level, which is another long story. Here is a little of the story on the following 2 pages:
http://books.google.com/books?id=EZSy4lDOmXAC&pg=PA275&lpg=PA275&dq=Union+Wage+organization&source=web&ots=GB1AHWVq5x&sig=PSHlriNs-a918X9axZ7bNprwREg&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result

I stayed with CLUW for three years, as a founder and as an executive board member, flying around the country to get it off to a good start. But the longer I stayed and the more involved at the top I became, the more I realized that I was spending too much time battling politically with those who were more interested in creating power for themselves in the labor movement. We also had to fight off the Communists and radical Socialists who tried to take over CLUW---and blocked their efforts. So I resigned my Board seat and concentrated on my work in California. In addition to my full-time day job, I was an executive board member of the Office and Professional Workers Union, located in Oakland, California. I concentrated on organizing these workers that had been ignored by Big Labor, negotiating their union contracts, strengthening their shop steward training and programs, etc. This labor of love was much more rewarding to me than being a big shot at the national level.

I finally got to go to college for the first time in my mid-forties. I enrolled in the University of California's Labor Studies Program, going to school at night and working during the day. I was surprised to achieve a 3.85 grade average before I had to drop out after two years. I finally had been hired as a Union Representative with the Union of American Physicians and Dentists. My travel schedule made it impossible to continue to earn a BA degree, a huge disappointment to me because I never had the opportunity to go to college after High School.

An aside, I was working during the day, doing my volunteer union work and going to college at night, all at the same time. I lived near my work office and drove 20 miles to my night time activities. After falling asleep while driving home at 1 am in the morning a couple of times, I decided to move closer to my night time activities and commute to my day job to avoid killing myself or someone else on the freeway. That's the only way I could survive such a heavy schedule. It was worth it because I finally broke the glass ceiling and became a Union Representative.

BBB

Women fight corruption in unions
Unions are as vulnerable to corruption as any other corporation and government.

My first union job in the 1960s was for a large Teamster local union in northern California. I was hired as the bookkeeper. It was difficult to work in this office because the office manager went into the union president's office next to my office each noontime to have sex with him. They were both married to other people.

After about a year of bookkeeping, I discovered that the union president was stealing the union member's dues money. He was a powerful man in the city and a member of the grand jury. So I quietly documented his thefts until I had enough evidence to prove his corruption. I privately showed my evidence to the leader of a group of members who wanted to reform the local union. They cautioned me that my life would be in danger if I exposed the crook. So I quit my high-paying job. Instead of giving the reformers the paper trail evidence, I showed them where to find the evidence and what it meant, and who all was involved in the corruption, including some trustees. The reformers waited for about three months after I left the job during an election campaign to bring charges against the union president. He was voted out of office, but was never indicted for his crimes. The office manager departed with him. So did several union trustees.

Several years later, I was the bookkeeper for a large local Retail Clerks union in California, which also had a large credit union in it's office. After working there for two years, the Credit Union woman manager and I discovered that the newly elected union president was trying to corrupt the credit union. She collected the evidence and several women members planned to confront the union president with his corruption in a public meeting. He walked into the trap and was removed as a credit union officer. The president fired me from my job for my part in taking the him down, but I won the grievance filed against him and was restored to my job. Then I quit!

There are many ethical union members who take on their corrupt officials, sometimes at great risk, and restore their unions to their responsibilities of servicing their members. Some are men but many are women.

BBB

Strike breaking and union busting, 1960s-present
Strike breaking and union busting, 1960s-present

There is little evidence that employers availed themselves of anti-union services during the 1960s or the early 1970s.[71] However, under a new reading of the Landrum-Griffin Act, the Department of Labor took action against consulting agencies related to filing of required reports in only three cases after 1966, and between 1968 and 1974 it filed no actions at all. By the late 1970s, consulting agencies had stopped filing reports.

The 1970s and 1980s were an altogether more hostile political and economic climate for organized labor.[3] Meanwhile a new breed of union-busters, with degrees in industrial psychology, management, and labor law, proved skilled at sidestepping requirements of both the National Labor Relations Act and Landrum-Griffin. By the 1970s the number of consultants, and the scope and sophistication of their activities, increased substantially. As the numbers of consultants increased, the numbers of unions suffering NLRB setbacks also increased. Labor's percentage of election wins slipped from 57 percent to 46 percent. The number of union decertification elections tripled, with a 73 percent loss rate for unions.[72]

Labor relations consulting firms began providing seminars on union avoidance strategies in the 1970s.[73] Agencies moved from subverting unions to screening out union sympathizers during hiring, indoctrinating workforces, and propagandizing against unions.[74]

By the mid-1980s, Congress had investigated, but failed to regulate abuses by labor relations consulting firms. Meanwhile, while some anti-union employers continued to rely upon the tactics of persuasion and manipulation, other besieged firms launched blatantly aggressive anti-union campaigns. Although the general direction of professional union-busting has been toward greater subtlety, strike-bound employers have turned once again to agencies that supplied replacement workers, and professional security firms whose operatives "have proved to be little more than thugs." At the dawn of the twenty-first century, methods of union busting have recalled similar tactics from the dawn of the twentieth century.[75]

Hawkeye, your idea of the corruption due to the image of power and a focus on one person in power who is accepted as a leader, rightly or wrongly, makes good sense.

Wow, BBB, what an impressive career you've had. I only wish that more people with union experience would post.

Diane
Diane, Union supporters post here? I won't hold my breath. Most people tend to be anti-union because they've bought into the Union Busters' propaganda or have "got drunk on the boss' cigar." They don't realize the damage done to the middle class with the weakening of labor unions by the Reagan and Bush administrations and their hired gun union busters.

My career was not devoted entirely to the Union Movement. As you know, I was involved in many of things (even chorale singing and art). The one I most enjoyed was the Cooperative Movement. It seems there are always so many wrongs to right and too few people willing to support the Common Good instead of greed.

It's frustrating that my body has given up while my brain is still a rebel. What a cruel trick on me!

BBB

You're so right about workers being convinced by propaganda. Problem is, many unions brought it on themselves.

A few months ago while listening to a program on the radio, a man called in to talk about the life his father had as an airplane mechanic. The man said that, although there were five kids, his father was able to support them and, for those who wanted to go, he sent them to college.

Now he is an airplane mechanic and barely makes enough to pay the rent and own a car. If his wife didn't work to help support the family, they would be on food stamps.

When his union went on strike, another union called the airline and offered to send their workers to fill in. Without unions supporting other unions, they will lose their reason for being.

I remember the days when men worked low paying jobs, but their wives didn't work and they still led a good life. This is a very complicated matter now, involving ipods, designer tennis shoes and drugs, but the basic fact is that is that if more people could support their families, the families would be stronger and the children would have a stronger support system

I regret the need for unions.

Diane
You are so right, smartie Diane.

When a union organizing election is scheduled for employee voting unions, other than the one doing the original organizing, will sometimes file to participate in the election if they can show the qualifying number of employee supporters. The vote gets split and the employer wins---again. I know of instances when the employer invited the additional union to participate in the election for the purpose of splitting the vote.

You described a preditory union offering it's members as scabs against a another union on strike. The employer often invites the scabbing union. In the end, the employer wins and the scabbing union will eventualy will suffer the same fate as the striking union because the scabs have demonstrated to the employer that they have no loyalty and can't be trusted.

All of this sounds very much like business-corporation competition, doesn't it? I wonder who the unions learned from?

BBB