Labor Movement Decline: Organizing and Influence

• In 1991, Stephen Lerner wrote "Let's Get Moving: Labor's survival depends on organizing industry-wide for justice and power"
• Labor's model for organizing has remained a site-by-site NLRB approach for the last 37 years
• Current organizing methods have not been successful for 37 years
• Keywords: union organizing, unionization, strategy

Labor Movement Decline

• By the year 2000 unions might represent only 5% of the private sector workforce.
• Unions are increasingly unable to negotiate wages and benefits, due to losing majority control of industries and markets
• Unions are becoming less able to move labor's larger social and legislative agenda
• The decline in the private sector will undermine the ability to organize and protect public sector workers
• Inferior contracts and an anti-labor environment makes organizing even more difficult
• There is a myth that unions had been slowly growing in numbers and power prior to the Reagan era
• Union membership peaked in 1954 at nearly 35% of the workforce
• There were a little more than 17 million union workers in 1954
• The number of union members increased by more than 3 million from 1954 to 1980
• In 1980 the 20 million union workers represented just 23% of the workforce
• Unions once represented one of every 3 workers, by 1980 only one of every 4 1/2, and today less than one of 5

Successful Organizing

• Successful organizing needs to be defined as organizing enough workers to increase the percentage of workers represented by unions
• More workers must be organized than jobs created every year
• Labor has been unable to organize more workers than new jobs since 1954
• From 1934 to 1954 the percentage of the workforce organized grew from 12% to nearly 35%
• Since then, it has dropped to just barely 16%
• Labor failure to organize started long ago
• It is more difficult now than in the mid-1960s

Current Organization Methods

• Current organizing methods involve targeting a specific site
• An organizing committee is built, workers sign cards, and then petition for an NLRB election
• Then the election is conducted
• If successful, an attempt to bargain a contract is made
• Employers aren't impacted financially until after the election
• The organizing occurs in a vacuum
• The campaigns are based on the target being "hot" and are not part of a company, industry, market or regional strategy, and won or lost on a narrow issue

Issues with Current Organization Methods

• Management arguments make sense, which is devastating to the ability to organize large numbers of workers
• A typical organizing campaign is alienating and backs up the employer's message: "We are strong. The union is weak."
• Workers see only a few organizers and co-workers who want the union
• It takes long and it is difficult to get contracts
• Clear plan for how a contract will be won is rarely in place

Labor's Goal

• Organize enough workers to increase the percentage of workers represented by unions in their industries and nationally
• Historically, labor's major gains have come through industry and region-wide organizing based on creating a movement with a clearly articulated plan for winning justice and power

Building a Movement

• Organizing was industry-based and/or region-wide, not site-based
• The goal was to organize everybody in an industry or industry segment
• Garment workers organized whole segments of their industry
• Steel, auto and rubber workers organized company-wide and industry-wide drives
• Coal miners organized whole regions
• Workers need a reason to take risks to organize unions
• Rebuild a movement of organized and unorganized workers that makes organizing its highest priority
• Workers will organize and take risks when they see themselves as part of a movement that has a chance to succeed
• Unions must capture on a large scale the emotion, anger and excitement of workers as part of a larger movement
• Approach organizing in a different way, exercising the power labor currently has, and taking risks on new ways to exercise power
• Create mini-movements that ultimately become the building blocks for large-scale organizing nationally

Mini-movement Creation

• Unions can effectively create mini-movements in major negotiations in the public and private sectors
• Combine large numbers of workers, militant action, emotion, concrete deadlines and force people to take sides
• Use the above stated methods to build an intensity of excitement and involvement

Fundamental Questions

• How to develop power to force employers to recognize the union and sign good contracts
• How to demonstrate power so nonunion workers want to join the union
• The conditions workers work and live under is what matters, as well as how to gain the power to win the union and improve conditions

Organizing Case 1: Citywide Healthcare Campaign

• Local X represents 10,000 hospital workers in a citywide master contract
• Represents 50% of hospital workers in the city, but membership growth is stagnant
• The union's ability to organize and negotiate continually declines as the union share of the industry drops due to an increase in total hospital workers
• Nonunion hospitals have consistently defeated organizing drives by matching close to whatever the union negotiates in the master contract
• Financial distress and reorganization have resulted in union hospitals operating a growing number of nonunion facilities and residual units
• Action to take: create a mini-movement by running simultaneous contract and organizing campaigns and card check recognition
• Goal: a citywide strike/healthcare crisis that could only be settled through hospitals agreeing to card-check recognition

Organizing Case 2: Organizing MFG's Suppliers

• Union Y represents almost 100% of MFG Corp.'s factory workers nationally
• MFG has outsourced much of its parts production to nonunion suppliers
• The fight to bring back the work in-house has been lost, and in addition there is a lot of work that has never been done in-house
• Strategy needed: industry-wide approach
• Action to take: identify a specific product, like proverbial “widgets.”

Organizing Case 3: Publicly Funded Private Sector Jobs

• The city of Unionburg, with a population of 1 million, is a former union stronghold
• The private sector is still heavily organized, but union membership has declined with the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs
• Union research has identified thousands of jobs being done nonunion-jobs ranging from laundries to microfiche filming, to law firms and consultants that employ large numbers of clerical workers
• The number of nonunion private sector jobs are dependent on city money jobs
• Needed strategy: multi-union citywide campaign to organize companies funded by city money
• This would increase total citywide union membership, strengthen labor's political clout
• Unions would gain footholds and leverage in new industries and would eventually build a citywide movement to support organizing and bargaining demands