Hardcover(1st Edition)
-
SHIP THIS ITEMTemporarily Out of Stock Online
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Focusing on the 1995 strike at Boeing, Cloud renders a multi-layered account of the battles between company and the union and within the union led by Unionists for Democratic Change and two other dissident groups. She gives voice to the company's claims of the hardships of competitiveness and the entrenched union leaders' calls for concessions in the name of job security, alongside the democratic union reformers' fight for a rank-and-file upsurge against both the company and the union leaders.
We Are the Union is grounded in on-site research and interviews and focuses on the efforts by Unionists for Democratic Change to reform unions from within. Incorporating theory and methods from the fields of organizational communication as well as labor studies, Cloud methodically uncovers and analyzes the goals, strategies, and dilemmas of the dissidents who, while wanting to uphold the ideas and ideals of the union, took up the gauntlet to make it more responsive to workers and less conciliatory toward management, especially in times of economic stress or crisis. Cloud calls for a revival of militant unionism as a response to union leaders' embracing of management and training programs that put workers in the same camp as management, arguing that reform groups should look to the emergence of powerful industrial unions in the United States for guidance on revolutionizing existing institutions and building new ones that truly accommodate workers' needs.
Drawing from communication studies, labor history, and oral history and including a chapter co-written with Boeing worker Keith Thomas, We Are the Union contextualizes what happened at Boeing as an exemplar of agency that speaks both to the past and the future.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780252036378 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Publication date: | 11/03/2011 |
| Edition description: | 1st Edition |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
We Are the Union
Democratic Unionism and Dissent at BoeingBy DANA L. CLOUD R. KEITH THOMAS
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2011 Board of Trustees of the University of IllinoisAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-03637-8
Introduction
"To Get to Boeing, We First Had to Take on the Union"
Advocates for social change often find themselves in an ambivalent relationship to the existing institutions, mechanisms, and rhetorical norms of change in U.S. society. For example, opponents of the death penalty and the vagaries of the criminal justice system still must use the courts as an arena of contestation. Activist Cindy Sheehan is a strong, vocal opponent of the war in Iraq; even as she enacts unruly womanhood, she uses her status and maternal identity as the mother of a fallen soldier to garner credibility and public voice. Many gays and lesbians question marriage as a heterosexist institution, yet they still recognize it as a central civil right and movement goal. A similar situation faces workers who know that unions are a source of collective power yet who also suffer the injury of being tied to an often undemocratic labor bureaucracy stumbling under its own weight. Unions may be the paradigm case of the basic paradox in the rhetoric of social change: the imperative to work within existing frameworks while trying, at the same time, to undo them.
The foremost purpose of a labor union is to give workers more power in dealing with their employers. If organized workers collectively refuse to work, production of goods and services halts and employers are forced to bargain with their employees. It is only the economic clout of the strike or threatened strike that provides workers with leverage to reach agreements on their terms, rather than just the bosses.' As Lawrence Mishel and Matthew Walters explain, the advantages of being in a union include "higher wages; more and better benefits; more effective utilization of social insurance programs; and more effective enforcement of legislated labor protections such as safety, health, and overtime regulations. Unions also set pay standards and practices that raise the wages of nonunionized workers in occupations and industries where there is a strong union presence. Collective bargaining fuels innovations in wages, benefits, and work practices that affect both unionized and nonunionized workers.... [U]nions enable due process in the workplace and facilitate a strong worker voice in the broader community and in politics. Many observers have stated, correctly, that a strong labor movement is essential to a thriving democracy." Although statistical evidence shows that unionized workers today earn more and have a higher standard of living than nonunionized workers (2008 median weekly income for the unionized worker was $880 versus $690 for nonunionized), unionization rates in the United States declined steadily from the late 1940s (when unions represented 36 percent of U.S. workers) until the present economic recession (12.4 percent). Favorability ratings of labor unions fell sharply between 2007 and 2010—years of heightened economic crisis—to just 42 percent, an all-time low.
There are many factors in this decline, including the postwar pact labor leaders made with American business, the McCarthyist purge from unions of the most progressive activists during the Cold War, and a relentless employers' offensive dating from the 1970s that has included rampant union busting alongside the off-loading, subcontracting, and outsourcing of previously unionized work. Alongside tax cuts for the rich, real wages have stagnated, and consumer debt (totaling $2.6 trillion) has hit record proportions. The present economic crisis has sharpened the class divide, as the U.S. economy shed 2.6 million jobs in the last quarter of 2008 alone. (At the end of 2009, more than 14 million people in the United States were unemployed.)
But unions themselves must bear part of the blame for the present state of labor in the United States. The history of U.S. labor is basically one of a profound reluctance to fight on the part of official union bureaucrats. Julius Getman captures the problem when he writes, "The labor movement must be not only for the people, as most unions are, but also of the people, in ways that most unions are not." Getting a union to move has always been the product of pressure from below, from the rank and file, on union leaders. It is a paradox that workers in the United States have been faced not only with the glaring necessity of organizing in unions to protect their interests but also with the fact that their unions have not been strong advocates of those interests. Representing rank-and-file interests, union democracy groups are in a position to make important criticisms of union officials' partnerships with management (for example, workplace quality and team programs and joint management-union grievance and safety committees).
In this study of particular reform groups, I demonstrate how members negotiate meaning, identity, and control between and among employer, union, and union faction. In other words, management attempts to "include" workers in their stories of a firm; the union claims to represent workers in bargaining; and workers themselves—neither dependent upon nor independent of the other storytellers' efforts—produce and seek out stories that they perceive as faithful to their interests.
The experiences of particular union democracy activists shed light on the successes and pitfalls of democratic union agitation. The central argument of this book is that reform groups agitating for greater union democracy, accountability, and militancy are crucial to the fight to restore the power of unions. Leaders and members of such groups create and circulate coherent accounts of their antagonistic relationship to the company and critical relationship—best captured in the term loyal opposition—to the union. This stance positions the activists in a series of dilemmas as they find themselves advocating for broader democratic involvement while relegating reform efforts and decision making to only a few people. Without a great deal of rank-and-file involvement, the dissidents resort to top-down tools such as electioneering and lawsuits to achieve the groups' objectives. In addition, the position of loyal opposition, as the very term suggests, entails a vexing balancing act between using the union both to target the company and to target the union in ways that seem to established union leaders potentially damaging to the union's effectiveness.
In this book, the dissidents articulate two main criticisms of the union: First, they argue that entrenched leadership of the union cooperates with management in the implementation of team programs and quality management initiatives, turning them effectively into "Boeing managers." Second, they call attention to such undemocratic practices as election fraud, routine in their union's life. Exclusions from the regular political process generate the need for reform-oriented groups to develop independent organization to organize and exert pressure on reified institutional structures. As one worker told me, "To get to Boeing, first we had to take on the union."
About the company, the subjects of my interviews explained that Boeing exerts incredible pressure on and demands concessions from workers even in times of tremendous profitability. The regular layoffs of tens of thousands of workers stand as constant threats to job security. The pressures of neoliberalism—a global economic regime characterized by off-loading, offshoring, and lean production—reach Boeing workers by way of seemingly empowering managerial partnership and employee voice initiatives. Members of established and upstart groups alike called my attention to the problems of job insecurity, on-the-job dangers, and the enduring salience of race, gender, and sexuality in their workplace culture.
While the timeline of this project stretches from 1989 to 2008, the 1995 strike of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) is at the center of my book's narrative. In the face of the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, union negotiators pushed for a three-year contract that included wage increases, increases in cost-of-living formulas, new safety and health provisions, and improvements in insurance. In addition, the union sought income protection plans for laid-off workers, including continuation of insurance. Most important, the original union proposal included language that prohibited further subcontracting. IAMAW President George Kourpias gave voice to fighting words, accusing Boeing of "punching holes in America's future." The company, of course, pleaded economic insecurity and argued that outsourcing and layoffs were necessary to stay afloat. The union members approved a strike authorization vote in September after the union brought the company's "last, best, final offer" to them. The first time, the union recommended rejection of the offer, and it was voted down. The workers went on strike on September 13. Weeks passed without the delivery of a single new plane. Journalist Michael Cimini describes what happened next:
On November 19, a [second] tentative agreement was reached between Boeing and the IAMAW. Although the IAMAW bargaining committee unanimously recommended acceptance of the pact, the rank and file soundly rejected it. Union members said that they were dissatisfied with the contract offer because it still called for increases in employee contributions towards health care and contained weak job security language.
It was at the moment of the union endorsement of the second contract that the conditions for challenging a stale bureaucracy were born. In an unprecedented wave, the workers of the union slapped down the cautious recommendation of the leaders and voted to remain on strike. Worker accounts of this event are moving revelations of their sudden recognition of their own power. The rank-and-file members of the IAMAW went up not only against Boeing, but also against the unaccountable leadership of the union itself. It was a moment of profound class-consciousness, in which workers realized that they had the power to take their future in their own hands. Wichita, Kansas, union activist Keith Thomas described the mood of the rank and file:
They just set that ass down there, they stuck their finger up there and they said I've just had enough. People out on the picket lines were waving their welcome back letters to the cameras and to the general public as folks would go by. And just how outstanding that was.
The images of workers metaphorically (and, in some cases, literally) giving their leaders "the finger" and waving the arrogant welcome back letters from the company on the picket line convey the sense of agency and defiance the rank and file felt at that moment.
Everett, Washington, organizer David Clay told me that in his shop membership held lunchtime marches, banged on pipes with tools, and disrupted delivery of 777s. He said, "We shook the walls. People got the idea that this thing is theirs." By most accounts, the outcome of the 1995 strike was a major victory for the union. In the face of bureaucratic sluggishness on the part of the union and a relentless offensive on the part of the company, the rank and file stood up and used their collective strength to challenge both.
In this context and before, small groups of agitators gave voice to this fighting spirit. In order to understand this movement, I have conducted and taped more than forty hours of interviews with dissident unionists during 1998, 1999, and 2001. These workers spoke with me openly and at length about union strategy in contract negotiations; they also shared their experience of work at Boeing, their perceptions of the internal politics of the union, and the impact of race and gender on their work and union organizing. Since those initial interviews, I have talked and corresponded with several core activists through mid-2010. Along with media coverage and supplemental interviews with community organizers, journalists, and company spokespersons, these accounts are the foundation of this book.
The first group of activists I encountered was Unionists for Democratic Change (UDC), made up of a group of IAMAW members in Wichita who formed the dissident caucus in 1990. Keith Thomas was the most prominent leader in this organization, putting out email newsletters over a period of several years to educate union members, leading pickets and other demonstrations, producing buttons and T-shirts for workers during contract negotiations and strikes, leafleting inside the plants, and engaging in other agitation-oriented activity. The UDC group contended that the international union had been operating undemocratically and against the interests of rank-and-file workers. Over a period of several years, they attempted to build an organization whose goals were worker education and winning elected office inside the union. In the Puget Sound, Don Grinde found himself at the head of a parallel caucus allied with the UDC. Variously called the "New Crew" and "Rank and File," this group of activists focused on challenging the entrenched political power of a union leadership hostile to its aims. It is worth noting that being a union official in District 751 (Puget Sound) of the IAMAW, comprising seven locals (A through F) and more than 35,000 workers, is no small deal. Those entrenched officials fought tooth and nail against the challenges of reformers. Arising at about the same time as this crew in Everett, another reform organization called Machinists for Solidarity/Take It Back rose under the leadership of David Clay. (Clay rejects the label dissident even as his group serves functions that are similar to the others.') Clay had been more or less aligned with Team 751, the established union leadership, in the early 1990s, but he broke with it as the decade wore on.
In the chapters that follow, I describe workers trying to navigate the dilemma of needing not only to use the union but also to fight its bureaucratic and undemocratic aspects. They tell the story of pushing the union toward greater victory and of marginalizing themselves and getting mired in internal power struggles that sometimes have taken precedence over a focus on the company or efforts to organize and involve larger numbers of the rank and file.
Organization of the Book
This book situates the struggle at Boeing inside broader narrative frames, one about the history of unions and movements for union democracy, and the other about the history of the Boeing Company and its unions in particular. The book thus moves from introductory chapters setting the stage into a narrative of the Boeing struggle followed by detailed discussion of the dilemmas and challenges facing the democratic unionists there. The 1995 strike is at the center of the book.
Chapter 1 introduces the arguments of the book in the context of a summary of the critique of traditional American union leadership as pro-business and dangerously invested in partnerships with management. The chapter chronicles the history of the rise of democratic unionism with particular attention to such movements in the United Auto Workers and Teamsters. The chapter traces the crisis of U.S. unions through the 2005 split in the AFL-CIO. The chapter also summarizes key instances of failures/selling out of union leadership, including Jay, Maine; Staley; and Detroit newspaper workers. The chapter argues for the importance of independent, pro-democratic voices inside of unions, like those that marked the early labor movement's willingness to fight even under prohibitive conditions.
Chapter 2 begins with the narrative frames of company and union, describing the rise to power of the Boeing Company—and of the IAMAW. Known for its militancy, the IAMAW has enacted a history paralleling the turbulence of the larger labor movement. Throughout its history (albeit with a few notable exceptions), the leadership of the IAMAW at Boeing has cooperated with concessions unless forced to do otherwise by the rank and file of the union.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from We Are the Union by DANA L. CLOUD R. KEITH THOMAS Copyright © 2011 by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: "To Get to Boeing, We First Had to Take on the Union" 1
1 Business Unionism and Rank-and-File Unionism at the Turn of the Millennium 11
2 Not a Smooth Flight for Boeing and the Union 30
3 Enter the Dissidents 51
4 The Problem with "Jointness" 80
5 The 1995 Strike and the Rejection of the Second Contract 100
6 "The Feeble Strength of One" 118
7 Carrying the Memory of Agitation: A Dialogue between Keith Thomas and Dana Cloud 153
8 Communication and Clout 175
Conclusion: The Beginnings and Ends of Union Democracy 183
Notes 197
Interviews and Archival Sources 225
Index 229