Labor unions: history, impact, and contemporary role

Labor unions are associations of workers for the purpose of improving the economic status and working conditions of the employees through collective bargaining with employers (Union pp). The two general types of unions are the horizontal, or craft, union, which is composed of members who are skilled in a particular craft, such as the International Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, and the vertical, or industrial, union, which includes workers in the same industry of industries, regardless of skills, such as the United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (Union pp). And a company union is an employer-controlled union that has no affiliation with other outside labor organizations (Union pp).

Essentially, labor unions are the product of the Industrial Revolution, although there were associations of journeymen under the medieval system of guilds (Union pp). After the French Revolution, there were fear of uprisings by the working classes in Great Britain, which led to the passage of the Combination Acts that declared unions illegal (Union pp). The acts were repealed in 1924, however little progress was made in union growth until the 1860's when the miners and textile workers organized and waged a vigorous struggle for legal recognition (Union pp). The Trade Union Act of 1871 guaranteed British labor unions legal recognition, yet it required the additional laws of 1913 and 1915 to assure their status (Union pp). During the late nineteenth century, the socialist movement gained momentum among trade unionists, and in 1893, James Keir Hardie persuaded the trade unions to join forces with the socialists in the Independent Labor party (Union pp). In 1868, the Trades Union Congress was formed and became the central organization of the British trade unions, with the purpose of coordinating and formulating policy on behalf of the entire labor movement (Union pp). Chris Wringly writes that the British trade unions "emerged from the Second World War with both their size and their political and social status enhanced" (Friedman pp). However, union membership was growing rapidly even before the War, with half of the total growth in union membership for the 1935-1945 period coming before 1939 (Friedman pp). Wrigley attributes most of the union growth during the 1930's to pro-union legislation and other state intervention in industrial relations by the National Government (Friedman pp). More than half the international labor institutions are currently run by Brits, and in 2003, John Monks, became the first Englishman to run the European Trade Union Confederation (Taylor pp).

Throughout the European Continent, labor unions developed differently than they did in Great Britain and in the United States (Union pp). The main reason for this was because the European unions organized along industrial rather than along craft lines, and also due to the fact that the unions were engaged in more partisan political activity (Union pp). For example, the printers' and cigar-makers' unions in Germany were started after the uprisings of 1848 and were responsible for much of the social legislation until World War I (Union pp). Labor unions in France were organized during the early nineteenth century, however they did not receive legal recognition until 1884 (Union pp). In the majority of European countries, labor organizations are either political parties or are affiliated with political parties, which are usually left- wing (Union pp). In some European countries, such as Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands, there are rival Christian and Socialist trade union movements (Union pp). Trade unions in Russia first appeared on a considerable scale during the revolution of 1905, however were later stamped out, only to reappear during the 1917 revolution when they became highly organized in a national movement under Communist control (Union pp). From the time of the revolution until the fall of the Communist party in 1991, the trade union movement in the Soviet Union was for the most part an instrument of the state in its drive for higher industrial production (Union pp).

Unionism within the United States is almost as old as the nation itself, and has always existed in some form or another (Union pp). During the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, crafts such as printers, carpenters, tailors, and weavers formed local unions to keep up craft standards and to prevent employers from hiring untrained workers and importing foreign labor (Union pp).

Beginning in 1806, there were numerous prosecutions by employers of unions as combinations in restraint of trade, and the early 1830's saw a period of industrial prosperity and inflation which led to increased union development, however the financial Panic of 1837 stunted this growth (Union pp). After the Civil War, the National Labor Union was formed in 1866, and included such objectives as the abolition of convict labor, the establishment of the eight-hour workday, and the restriction of immigration, yet it collapsed when it entered into politics in 1872 (Union pp).

The Knights of Labor, 1869-1917, was among the most important of the early national organizations (Union pp). Its policy of organizing both skilled and unskilled workers brought it into conflict with the established craft unions, who joined together to form the American Federation of Labor, AFL, in the 1890's under Samuel Gompers, thereafter, the Knights declined in numbers and effectiveness (Union pp). In 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World, IWW, arose, which was a large unwieldy militant industrial body that concentrated on unskilled workers such as lumbermen, migrant workers, and miners (Union pp). However with the conviction of many of its leaders under the Espionage Act during and after World War I, membership in the IWW declined and the organization became ineffective in the 1920's (Union pp).

The dawning of the 1930's saw the United States sliding deeper into the Great Depression, as unemployment soared with little help from the federal government, and employed workers began feeling less secure in their own jobs (Grijalva pp). This led to widespread unrest among the working class and provided fertile soil in which the seeds of radicalism could easily be planted, thus many new recruits saw the Communist Party as a way to address particular concerns: "a means of fighting fascism or racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination, of gaining labor-union objectives, general social improvement, or humanitarian socialist goals" (Grijalva pp). While others saw a more transcendent purpose, embracing the vision of the Communist Manifesto in which Karl Marx eloquently stated, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (Grijalva pp).

During the Great Depression of the 1930's, unions experienced a rapid membership growth (Union pp). It was during this time that the Congress of Industrial Organizations, CIO, was formed, which was, in the beginning, made up of dissident unions of the AFL and was led by John L. Lewis (Union pp). During the Franklin Roosevelt administration, steps were taken to restore standards of employment, which were seriously deteriorated, and to facilitate the development of trade union organization (Union pp). These goals were accomplished through the passage of such acts as the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, commonly referred to as the Wagner Act, which enlarged the rights of unions and created the National Labor Relations Board, and by protective labor legislation such as the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and the Social Security Act of 1935 (Union pp). During the 1930's and 1940's, there were often severe conflicts between the AFL and the CIO, thus it was a momentous step when the two labor groups merged to form the AFL-CIO in 1955 (Union pp). The larger of the two organizations, the AFL, was given a proportionate share of the offices of the new federation and unanimously elected George Meany as president of the combined body, and the industrial unions of the CIO were given a department of their own within the merged organization (Union pp).

The AFL-CIO issued a series of ethical practice codes to govern the behavior of union officers and in 1957 expelled the Teamsters for corruption, however during the late 1950's, the entire labor movement was put on the defensive following the disclosures made by the Senate Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field (Union pp). Commonly referred to as the McClellan Committee, the panel exposed such abuses as collusion between dishonest employers and union officials, extortion, the use of violence by segments of labor leadership, and the misuse of funds by high-ranking union officials (Union pp). These findings led to the enactment of the Landrum-Griffin Act to correct abuses within labor-management relations (Union pp).

Unions in the United States have undergone a period of decline since World War II (Union pp). In fact, in 1960, approximately 33% of all American workers belonged to a union, yet by 2003, the proportion had dropped to less than 13% (Union pp). Facing foreign competition and financial troubles in its traditional power base, manufacturing and mining, organized labor was hurt during the 1980's by layoffs and in many cases was forced to accept reduced wages and benefits (Union pp). In response, many unions adopted a more conciliatory attitude by reducing the number of strikes to record lows in the 1980's and 1990's, and by attempting to negotiate contracts that provided job security for members (Union pp). Moreover, unions have placed greater emphasis on organizing drives for new members, and although they have been successful in organizing government employees, they have had less success in recruiting office workers in the rapidly expanding services sector (Union pp). A major problem is demographic, since the fastest growing parts of the labor force, such as women, service industries, and college-educated employees, are generally the most reluctant to organize (Union pp). Unlike the European union movements, organized labor in the United States has avoided the formation of a political party and has remained within the framework of the two-party system (Union pp). By the mid-1990's, the number of strikes in the United States had reached its lowest level in fifty years, however, by the end of the decade, a tighter labor market under a more aggressive union leadership led to a resurgence of strikes against such major companies as Northwest Airlines, General Motors, and United Parcel Service (Union pp).

Although generally small in numbers, organized labor in the Third World has played a disproportionately large role in political developments within those countries (Union pp). Numerous union movements in the underdeveloped countries, especially in Asia and Africa, have risen on the wave of nationalism, and have led anti-colonial movements toward political independence (Union pp). In fact, leaders of many newly independent nations have risen largely due to the support of the workers they have organized (Union pp). In Latin America, labor unions are also a powerful force, constituting as they do the most important mass political organizations in the nations of that region (Union pp).

Internationally world trade unionism was split after 1949 between two rival organizations, the World Federation of Trade Unions, WTFU, a largely Communist organization set up in 1945, and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, ICFTU, which was founded in 1949 by member unions that had withdrawn from the WTFU in protest against its Communist domination (Union pp). The international federations are recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organizations, UNESCO, and there is close cooperation between the ICFTU and UNESCO within the field of education (Union pp). The International Labor Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations, of which some of its goals include raising living standards, improving working conditions, gaining recognition of the right to collective bargaining, and the protection of workers' health (Union pp).

In April 2003, it was reported that after reviewing a thousand studies on the effects of unions and collective bargaining, the World Bank revealed that a country's economy may fare better if large numbers of workers are unionized (Unions pp). Although the World Bank has in the past been rather hostile to trade unions, the new study concluded that "high unionization rates can lead to lower unemployment and inflation rates, higher productivity and faster adjustment to economic shocks" (Unions pp). According to the report, workers who belong to unions earn higher wages, work fewer hours, receive more training, have longer job tenure, and can fight discrimination and close the wage gap between men and women (Unions pp).

The Mauritian governments have, for several years, accepted loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank under specific conditions (Collen pp). However, in December 2001, in response to the "strings," opposition political parties, 300 odd trade unions, 550 women's organizations, clubs and grassroots political activists stated that that will stop the governments from implementing them (Collen pp). Although there are still universal old-age pensions from the age of 60, the Government held a conference on pensions with the World Bank and supposedly "independent individuals and organizations," however the left party, Lalit, exposed them as being in cahoots with each other and the conference lost all credibility, causing the Government to back-peddle (Collen pp). This type of spectacular result was mainly achieved because of the existence of the All Workers' Conference, AWC, which succeeded in uniting every union at shop-steward level for five years, between 1995 and 2000 (Collen pp).

In 2002, it was reported that trade unions in many countries, including Britain, Australia, South Africa, Germany, Canada, South Korea, and the United States, are questioning their long-standing political alliances and priorities (Davies pp). Dean Mighell, the Victoria electricians' union leader, left the Australian Labor Party, ALP, to join the Greens, and was followed by Peter Marshall, state secretary of the United Firefighters Union (Davies pp). Then the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union, with some 160,000 members, took the dispute to the federal arena (Davies pp). As in Britain, the party leadership talk of modernization and the unions complain that they are ignored, as old left-wing allies embrace privatization and new corporate friends (Davies pp).

The AFL-CIO drew up a Statement of Principles for Public Officials for candidates to sign as part of the endorsement process, and also produced fifty questions in sixteen subject areas, from workers' rights and the World Trade Organization to privatization and the minimum wage, all as a tool for evaluating candidates (Davies pp). Former Teamsters official, Andy Banks, says, "Many unions are adopting a more strategic approach to political expenditure. Rather than just handing a check to the Democrats, unions see it as more effective to spend their money on selected candidates or specific campaigns" (Davies pp).

Union leaders want greater independent action from organized labor, and according to AFL-CIO political director, Steve Rosenthal, American unions must become more aggressive in pursuit of worker rights and the election of a pro-labor Congress, and if "that means supporting certain Republican candidates, so be it" (Davies pp).

The unions in South Korea have recently created their own party, the Democratic Labor Party, which has become the third-largest party in just two years (Davies pp). And the South African unions have been in a continual battle with the government over privatization and other pro-market policies, while German is showing signs of strains in the relationship between the unions and the Social Democrats (Davies pp). In Canada, the New Democratic Party, NDP, faces a challenge from the New Politics Initiative which is a grouping of NDP and non-NDP members calling for the creation of a new party of the left that includes a number of prominent union officials (Davies pp). In Britain, most of the public attention has focused on whether the unions will disaffiliate from Labor (Davies pp). It is important to note that major unions are questioning their old assumptions, and as social democracy worldwide has embraced market politics, so the unions are demanding value for money from traditional allies and a better return on their investment (Davies pp).

In 2004, a Washington Post article reported that labor experts are calling Unite Here, the newly merged union, is one of the most outspoken and toughest unions under the AFL-CIO umbrella (Joyce E01). For example, Unite, which represented textile workers before its merger, took an unusual tack in negotiation on behalf of airline laundry workers with Royal Airline Laundry Services (Joyce E01). Workers reported that they were being asked to increase productivity by repackaging used blankets and headphones without laundering them first, so Unite's president, Bruce S. Raynor, started a campaign in late 2000 in which air passengers were given a test tube and swab to find out whether bacteria was crawling on the blankets they cuddled (Joyce E01). Airlines called Royal and begged officials to settle with the union, and according to Kate L. Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University, what followed was a contract that provided workers with more pay and better working conditions (Joyce E01). Said Bronfenbrenner, "They are creative, aggressive, and willing to do what it takes" (Joyce E01).

Although many believe that trade union have gone the way of the dinosaurs, according to David Ransom in a December 2001 article in "New Internationalist," "the truth is that trade unions are still very much alive" (Ransom pp). Ransom believes that not only are they still alive but that in the future they are going to matter even more, because so long as people have to sell their labor to someone else in order to survive, the "freedom of association" at work will be fought for and celebrated (Ransom pp). Ransom believes that when they go to work, human beings will always aspire to a measure of dignity, self-expression and democracy at their workplaces (Ransom pp).

During the early years of the Industrial Revolution, trade unions in Britain were legislated away by the Combination Acts, and in a paranoid political atmosphere and amid the air of rebellion in the lower orders, employees were prohibited from even thinking to 'combine' against their employers, on threat of arrest, imprisonment and deportation (Ransom pp). Ransom points out that this was the crudest attempt to make freedom of association in Britain entirely subject to the sanction of the state, and it did not work (Ransom pp). The result, says historian E.P Thompson, "dissolved the remaining ties of loyalty between working people and their masters, so that disaffection spread in a world which the authorities could not penetrate" (Ransom pp). Thus, the Combination Acts were quickly repealed and the long, slow haul to democracy at work resumed once again (Ransom pp).

Richard Sennett discovered a related anxiety among the ludicrously rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (Ransom pp). According to Sennett, the Forum, which is held every year in the ski resort where Thomas Mann wrote The Magic Mountain, is more like a court than a conference (Ransom pp). Says Sennett, "They, of course, fear the resurgence of unions, but become acutely and personally uncomfortable, fidgeting or breaking eye contact or retreating into taking notes, if forced to discuss the people who, in their jargon, are 'left behind,'" and they are keenly aware that the great majority of those who toil are left behind (Ransom pp).

To this point in time, trade unions have shown what is possible only in a tiny enclave: "the 20% of the world's people who consume 80% of its shrinking resources" (Ransom pp). It is easy to understand why, in the North, unions might wish to circle the wagons, so to speak, against the rest of the world, however, that maneuver is self-defeating if the most important battles are being fought somewhere else, and that is exactly why trade unionists have always been internationalist in their outlook (Ransom pp). Due to corporate globalization, most of the world's industrial labor force now works in the South, in conditions resembling those of early nineteenth century Britain, and there people are turning to trade unions in increasing numbers, since there is no where else for them to turn now that their governments are effectively run by the International Monetary Fund, IMF, and the World Bank (Ransom pp).

The progressive Workers' Party, PT, in Brazil, emerged from the trade unions in the car factories of Sao Paulo, led by Luis Inacio da Silva (Ransom pp).

The PT plays a major role in steering that country away from military dictatorship and in restraining its rapacious oligarchy (Ransom pp). The Nigeria Labor Congress, COSATU in South Africa, the ZCTU in Zimbabwe, are having a similar effect in Africa (Ransom pp). And Trini Leung says that unions have been taming the savage regimes of the Little Tigers in Asia, and perhaps, eventually, even China as well (Ransom pp). Moreover, it was decidedly the strike by Russian coal miners in 1989 that finally felled the Soviet Union, and the pattern repeated in other areas in the former Soviet bloc, including Poland and Romania (Ransom pp).

Yet, Ransom believes that the distance between the 'advanced' and the 'backward' is getting bigger, not smaller, and that there is no catching up going on, but rather the advance party has disappeared over the horizon, resulting in the vast majority being left behind in a "wilderness and is beginning to wonder whether it was ever on the same path at all" (Ransom pp). The inability of capitalism to deliver even the most basic necessities of life becomes glaring when magnified to the global scale on which it operates, because it cannot even create jobs, let alone a decent living (Ransom pp). Economist Susan George points out that between 1993 and 1996 the world's top 100 firms increased their sales by 24%, while the number of people they employed actually fell (Ransom pp). Unemployment has been rising sharply, and strangely un-remarked, most everywhere, even in places where it is said to have declined, like the United States or Britain, thus it "looms behind the smoke and mirrors of part-time, 'flexible' work, employment programs and official statistics (Ransom pp).

According to Ransom, unions have been on the defensive because of their own frailties and because they have been under sustained attack (Ransom pp). Governments allied to business interest and free-market orthodoxy want to see the back of them altogether, and so the attacks continue (Ransom pp).

According to a recent survey of employee attitudes in Britain, 80% lack any real commitment to their employers: "The uncommitted majority say they don't know what is expected of them, that their line managers don't care about them as individuals, that they feel poorly suited to their jobs and that their bosses generally disregard their views" (Ransom pp).

Japan is often cited as one of the great modern success stories regarding its dynamic labor market, high levels of employment, and its ability to guarantee employment for life to workers in certain sectors (Benseddik pp). The idea that labor protection hinders economic growth by decreasing workers' productivity and hampers competitiveness should be weighted against Japan and other countries (Benseddik pp). For example, the complexity of this issue is generally ignored among policymakers in Morocco and other countries in the region (Benseddik pp). Unfortunately, the reality in the Middle East and North Africa countries is that far from being in a position to play the functional role, unions are frequently simply trying to exist, and even where they are allowed to exist, their authenticity and ability to associate freely is questionable, since they are usually controlled by governments, public administrations or political parties (Benseddik pp). And where a union exists independently, it may or may not be able to engage in collective bargaining, which is very often relegated to a dialogue between the government's ministers and unions' top management and takes place in offices with journalists present, and with little or no connection to the reality of the workplace, resulting in little room for negotiations (Benseddik pp).

In fact, employees who meet, elect representatives and inform their employers of that they wish to discuss work-related issues, such as sanitation, security, transportation, are most often simply dismissed (Benseddik pp).

Some believe that there is no labor side that is separate and apart from the public side, therefore, there is no basis for labor controversy, and thus social reform should take the place of the labor movement (Marot pp). This partisan position typifies the intensity of feeling that surrounds the labor movement (Marot pp). Labor problems usually remain academic to those on the outside until the movement takes a more determined and militant aspect (Marot pp). Labor unions do not claim that strikers are never disturbers of the peace, however unions of all affiliations insist that:

(1) rioting and violence are good for the cause of the employer and bad for the cause of the strikers directly concerned except in certain aggravated cases;

(2) that the importation of thugs and professional strike-breakers into strike zones precipitates riots;

(3) that the presence of militia is not conducive to order but to violence;

(4) that "striker" and "rioter" are synonymous terms to the average judge

(Marot pp).

Helen Marot writes, that the usual instructions given by union officers to strikers is to "picket with hands in pockets, to walk singly or in twos, to watch closely for every possible strike-breaker, and to persuade, to persist in persuading them by all peaceful means, that is, by means of speech only, to forego their intention of taking strikers' jobs" (Marot pp).

August 2005 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of Solidarity, the Polish trade union that played such a central role in the defeat of communism (Puddington pp). Celebrations took place in Warsaw and Gdansk, the spiritual home of the Polish revolution, and was attended by Lech Walesa and other heroes of the struggle against communism, as well as leaders of the recent revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia and representatives of democratic movements in Belarus, Iran, and Zimbabwe (Puddington pp). Solidarity, a model for peaceful resistance to tyranny, was such a success due to the courage, persistence, and sacrifice of the Polish people, and to the discipline of the Solidarity leadership (Puddington pp). Despite the regime's policy of provocations, duplicity and repression, Solidarity eschewed violence and shunned those who advocated street fighting and sabotage (Puddington pp).

In August 2005, the Labor Council received a letter from John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO informing member how to move forward, including collaboration with the unions that have pulled out of the AFL-CIO, and the Labor Council vowed it will not violate the AFL-CIO's Constitution or By-Laws (Butkiewicz pp). The Federation's Constitution and standing rules governing affiliation and participation in state federations and labor councils will continue to apply:

Only locals of national unions that are affiliated with the national AFL-CIO may affiliate with or pay per capita (or per capita equivalents) to a state federation or central labor council or participate in its governance, including voting. State federations and central labor councils may not accept per capita payments (or per capita equivalents) from unaffiliated unions. State federations and central labor councils may (and should)

collect per capita tax from locals of the disaffiliated unions that is due for the period through July 2005 (Butkiewicz pp).

Strikes, for the most part, were theatrical demonstrations of working-class power, taken against a fixed employer by a fixed workforce (Lloyd pp). The death of the working class has been forecast for several decades, including by Eric Hobsbawm in "The Forward March of Labour Halted," which revealed that what labor activists had seen as the high-water mark of their success in mortally wounding a Labor government was as likely to be their nemesis (Lloyd pp). Society is deeply unsettled, and often in ways for which unions, in their political mode, have fought (Lloyd pp). The influx of women into the workforce since the 1970's has been huge, particularly within the professional and managerial workforces, however many had no union traditions and worked individually or in small groups where unionization seemed irrelevant or was regarded as subversive (Lloyd pp). Although educational levels have soared, however most of the managers and specialists that the system produces and that modern society demands do not join unions (Lloyd pp). However, the question of why women join unions has elicited much interest from the industrial relations community, and despite the many studies of union organizing efforts among men, there are few that investigate this issue in relation to women (Forrest pp).

International Labor Organization perspectives and activities balance the diverse viewpoints of Governments, business and workers around the globe, and its focus on the world of work puts members at the intersection of the economics of the market and much harder to measure values, such as justice and fairness, dignity and respect (Somavia pp). Writing for the 2000 Summer issue of the U.N. Chronicle, Juan Somavia says, "It is at this intersection that business meets the call for decent work, and a global compact to promote the values underlying decent work is being forged by business and the ILO and other UN agencies (Somavia pp).