Michael Albert
Having completed this article about
how the rest of us might contribute to winning the
Teamsters Strike, I awoke this morning to find labor had
won. There was no government intervention. UPS
wasn’t going to fight a long war of attrition. The
Teamster pension plan is intact and enlarged. UPS wages
are up, more for part-time than full-time employees.
Sub-contracting is limited. Safety protection is enacted.
The ethos of using part-time employment to lower wages
and reduce benefits is shattered.The key questions to be answered by
this strike were:
- Can labor conduct a national
strike without interference from the government?- Can the Teamsters reverse
trends toward part time employment that reduce
salaries and benefits and cripple solidarity?- And can the UPS workers
demonstrate that solidarity can win improved
wages, conditions, and rights?The answers would appear to be yes,
yes, and yes.
What Happened
Capital has been trouncing labor
since the 1981 PATCO strike-breaking by Reagan. The
already rich have climbed a 20-year ladder of
redistribution to an even more fantastic centralization
of wealth and power. At the top of their game, challenged
by the Teamsters in what capital would have to consider
merely a last ditch, desperation labor action, why
didn’t UPS hold out? Why couldn’t capital, in
such a dominant position, hold off Carey and Co.?Every victory for justice, for
equity, for diversity, for democracy, for anything that
fulfills anyone other than elites, and which costs elites
power and profit, is accomplished in one way. A situation
is created in which changes must be made or the costs to
elites will rise even higher.I think the answer to why UPS caved
in is: (1) The power of labor is in solidarity which can
grow at a rate that far exceeds the slow assault on labor
that capital is always waging; (2) The Teamsters
preparations and issues were such that there was a very
good likelihood that labor’s organizational,
ideological, and material gains would accelerate the
longer the strike lasted; and (3) capital saw this
possibility very clearly, and feared it, not wanting to
make any missteps that could contribute to such an
outcome.UPS and all capitalist institutions
take strength in capital mobility, union busting,
aggravating race and gender divisions, unemployment
threats made real by manufactured high unemployment,
residual fear based on prior experiences of loss, labor
fragmentation, technological and organizational
investments designed to weaken labor, government spending
that reduces social supports while protecting profits,
media manipulation and monopolization, and government
intervention via restrictive labor laws. Labor, in
contrast, takes strength in collective mutual aid,
solidarity, and growing hope and consciousness—that
is, in numbers and organization.In this context, the Teamsters
prepared to wage a battle not only in front of each
plant, with the workers unified and clear in their
commitment, but also on TV and in every venue of contact
with the public. The Teamsters had their facts down and
their presentation planned. They had lined up their
support mechanisms. They not only threatened to fight
long and hard, they were prepared to do so, with
widespread support that could easily grow and diversify
in its demands and commitment. The workers had unity and
clarity, plus a plan that promised more of both if the
battle lasted. UPS was outgunned. The facts were
irrefutable:
- Part timers at UPS earned
about $11 an hour – full timers about $20
per hour.- 46,300 new jobs had been added
since 1993, but 38,500 of them were part-time.- UPS had over 60 percent
part-timers—up 18 points in ten years.- In Chicago the percentage of
UPS part-timers had risen to 70 percent, in New
York 61 percent, in Boston 67 percent, in Dallas
68 percent, in Los Angeles 72 percent, in San
Francisco 76 percent, in Louisville 90 percent.- In 1996, UPS recruited and
trained 182,000 people for part-time jobs, only
40,000 of whom were still with the company at
year’s end.- Three of every four
part-timers who left the company cited lack of
full-time opportunities as a factor in their
decision.With facts like these widely
available, how was UPS to stem the energy of labor before
it could become something truly threatening to
capital—workers, across job designations, across
firms, and even across industries, aligning and becoming
active? UPS tried a few spins to try to divide and
weaken.They argued that the Teamster
leadership was in it for their own narrow gains and that
the strike was a power play smokescreen.But the response was increased
unity and clarity. People were forced to realize the
obvious: that 185,000 workers strike only when they are
angry at management and have goals they wish to fight
for. It became clear that the strike had a broader
meaning—that the 20-year trampling on labor’s
rights and the redistribution of wealth and power upward
were now over. The strike threatened the unification of a
new labor culture.Recently, much worker anger has
been misplaced into right wing anti-conspiracy movements,
sexism, and racism. Now, finally, a visible effort
coalesced this anger against the true enemy and with
proper solidarity. More, it was an effort that people all
over the country could relate to and become part of at
any UPS parking lot. We should take heart in the outcome.
It was vital that capital defeat this effort, yet
UPS’s final calculation was simple. The Teamsters
were not likely to be beaten. Capital had more to lose by
fighting than by giving in. Our lesson is just as simple.
Solidarity and organization plus preparation can win.Another line of argument UPS tried
to pursue was the pension fund, even subtly playing the
corruption card. But the Teamsters wanting to control
their workers’ pension funds and to do it in a
collective manner that helps those who work at smaller
firms, was exemplary. Highlighting this only pushed
workers into more explicit awareness of the value of
pension funds and of controlling them, and especially of
creating collective structures that equalize rewards and
benefits among more and less advantaged workers. For the
Teamsters to give in on pensions would have reduced
pension portability for members, reduced union and
workers’ control over the pension, and opened the door to
UPS in future bargaining threatening to reduce
contributions to the fund.There was one other card to play:
the democracy angle. UPS tried to attack the Teamsters
for not calling a vote on the company’s offer. They
claimed that the union was undemocratic and didn’t
care about the workers, and that a culture of fear
prevented members from rebelling.But this approach could only reveal
that while it was still far from the participatory
democratic ideal its own best members seek, the Teamsters
are one of the more democratic institutions in the
country. Even worse, this line of attack would compel the
union and its rank and file and the public to think about
issues of participation and democracy in the economy. It
would illuminate the obvious truth that capital needs
hidden. Every day capital functions from atop an economic
structure that is dictatorial and bolstered by threat and
fear. When Federal Express delivered a package yesterday
afternoon to my door, I joked with the driver, "Hey,
if the Teamsters win, you guys can go out next, after
joining up." He said he’d love it, but if they
tried to unionize and walk, Fed Ex would fire them in a
second. That is fear at work, fear which this strike, if
successful, may help uproot.My letter carrier just dropped off
our mail. To my queries, he said he would like to do a
support action for the strike and that it felt like we
were in the 1890s with robber barons the way wealth was
sliding upward. But he also said he was afraid that if
the Postal workers acted they would suffer repression.
That is fear holding back insight. Give him a vote on
hiring and firing, wages, and conditions, and see the
changes that follow.Democracy? Voting? In capitalist
workplaces there is no right for workers to vote about
anything whatever: not salaries, not conditions, not
hours, not structure, not investment, nothing.
Corporations are dictatorships. And suddenly management
expressed interest in voting. This only evidenced how
venal they are. To argue for votes on every contract
offer is not a workable approach for capital against a
workforce big and visible enough to get its answer heard.
It risks people asking why UPS (and capital) don’t
offer a contract package that says there will be worker
votes on all policy and wages henceforth, to see how
Carey replies to that.In short, UPS had no path to follow
that didn’t threaten to enlarge their losses. The
odds were good that UPS would, by fighting on, merely
enlarge the solidarity and power of not only their own
workforce and the Teamsters, but of labor more broadly as
well.
Build Movement Unionism
Where does labor go next? How does
it reverse the drastic decline in union membership, from
30 percent in 1955 to just under half that now? And how
does it increase the power of members in winning valuable
gains?First, take a look at the summer
issue of Monthly Review. It is a collection
organized under the title: "Rising from the Ashes?
Labor in the Age of Global Capitalism." There are
many excellent contributions arguing the need for a
tremendous increase in union attention to organizing the
unorganized. There is considerable focus on how to
develop a new labor culture emphasizing internal
participation and democracy. And there are refutations of
the misinterpretations of technological unemployment and
internationalization of capital now commonly believed by
many progressives. But amidst all this good stuff, I
found one piece especially refreshing. It was by a
Canadian, Sam Gindin, titled "Notes on Labor at the
End of the Century: Starting Over?"Gindin’s focus presumes a need
to expand the organizing aims of unions relative to the
service component, and moves on to argue for what he
calls "movement unionism." It is a very
aggressive stance built around worker solidarity not only
across types of workers within firms and across firms
within an industry, but also across industries in
communities, regions, and the country as a whole. Gindin
argues, very persuasively, that succumbing to the
rhetoric of competitiveness, wherein the workers in a
plant are told that their fate and management’s are
together opposed to the fate of workers in other plants
and industries, is a disaster. And Gindin argues as well,
also persuasively, that there is a very big difference
between organizing that emphasizes preserving the
union’s internal hierarchy and only developing
viewpoints and agendas sanctioned at the top, and
organizing, instead, that empowers the base of workers.
Gindin seeks a unionism "that is workplace-based,
community rooted, democratic, ideological [meaning driven
by larger visions and aims], and committed to building
the kind of movement that is a precondition for any
sustained resistance and fundamental change."Gindin wants unions in which local
committees "are open to workers’ spouses and
teenage sons and daughters" and which address the
quality of life of members and members’ families in
the workplace, but also at home and in schools. Without
rehashing his whole argument, Gindin’s discussion of
what he calls Job Development Boards innovatively
addresses job training and placement in a manner
conceived to create solidarity and movement
infrastructure while also meeting pressing needs and even
presaging possible institutions of a better future. These
are things worth thinking about, and then acting upon, as
we all struggle to enlarge the gains of the Teamsters and
to build movement unionism.