Unions, What Are They Good For?

The WSWS reports that the big three automakers, after slashing 250,000 jobs and receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer bailout money, scored record profits in 2010 of $11 billion, due primarily to declining wages, factory speedups and downsizing. The big three are now planning to hire 35,000 new workers. With the full complicity of the United Auto Workers (UAW) who negotiated a sell-out contract, new hires will be paid less than $15 per hour, less than half the traditional wages of auto workers and many will be hired as temporary workers who can be fired at will. The two-tiered contract also slashed existing employees’ wages.

A Union Loved By Bosses Is A Useless Union
The big three weakened the UAW (and increased profits) by shipping thousands of jobs overseas, resulting in high unemployment and declining wages in Michigan. Now, with a large army of unemployed workers desperate for a steady income, the big three can start hiring locally again, but this time at low wages, and still remain competitive with foreign auto producers. The U.S. has so decimated its labor movement that its labor force has become attractive to European companies seeking to increase their profits. Fiat, for example, is planning on shifting production of several models to North America in order to lower production costs, with a resulting loss of 16% to its domestic workforce in Italy. Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne said, “It’s a pleasure to negotiate with U.S. trade unions,” indicating that the UAW has served the interests of capital well, not labor.

A strong union should be feared and despised by the bosses, not loved or enjoyed, and it should help drive up wages and working conditions locally and abroad, not lower them. Consider that the Mirafiori Fiat plant near Turin forced its employees to accept dramatic rollbacks by threatening to ship even more production to the U.S., where labor is cheap (see Reuters, “Fiat’s Italian Investment Rests on Union Vote”). The new Mirafiori contract forbids workers from striking, forces 10-hour work shifts and triples mandatory overtime.

Stockholm Syndrome: Union Leaders Who Love Bosses
UAW President Bob King said “Relationships with Marchionne are extremely positive, we believe in him a lot,” reports the WSWS. Of course, union bosses and capitalist bosses have a symbiotic relationship not shared by workers. The union bosses want to maintain their jobs and their six-figure salaries and their opportunities to hob nob with politicians, philanthropists and wealthy liberals. This can only happen if their unions continue to exist and continue to funnel members’ dues into their coffers. Capitalists like Marchionne are only too willing to allow this so long as the union leaders serve as their bulldogs and enforce their demands on the workers.

This can be seen in a resolution passed last month by the UAW bargaining convention (quoted in the WSWS) which said “In order to promote the success of our employers, the UAW is committed to innovation, flexibility, lean manufacturing, world best quality and continuous cost improvement… We are moving on a path that no longer presumes an adversarial work environment with strict work rules, narrow job classifications or complicated contract rules.” In other words, the union agrees to enforce factory speedups, increased productivity, downsizing and anything else that will increase profits, regardless of how that affects working conditions and wages.

Of course it is not really a Stockholm Syndrome. The union bosses are not being held captive by the capitalist bosses. They are birds of a feather. Consider that the UAW has assets of $1.13 billion, according to the WSWS, paying out $3.4 million to its top 24 officers, who earned an average of $142,000 last year, plus another $80 million salaries and perks for 1,000 staff members who also averaged more than $100,000 each.

The relationship between the UAW and other mainstream unions with their members is a dysfunctional codependent relationship that is detrimental to the interests of workers. In the name of “saving jobs” or “collective bargaining” the unions continue to keep their members dependent on them, while whittling away at wages and working conditions for the benefit of the bosses. The unions, thus, are complicit in the downward spiral of living conditions that has plagued the majority of Americans for the past forty years (e.g., the minimum wage in 1968 had 25% more buying power than it does today, while the purchasing power of the average 1972 wages was higher than today’s average wages).

Many argue that unions continue to provide a few important services, like fighting for members’ due process rights. However, when we look at the bigger picture, it is clear that many unions have actually become workers’ class enemy, as they give away more and more wage and benefits concessions and contribute to workers’ pauperization. What use are rights when one cannot afford rent, mortgage, healthcare or nutritious food? What use is due process if it just keeps one in a job that is dangerous and abusive and that barely (or doesn’t even) pays bills? Why fight for collective bargaining if it is only used to win contracts with declining pay and benefits?

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/

:rofl:

starting in the Reagan Administration. Unions have
been weakened severely.

The Public Unions have been able to hang on and now
they are under assault.

I invite you go to all the Right to Work States(States unfriendly
and unwelcoming to Unions. You will find the lowest standards
of living, the highest rates of poverty, these states are usually
rated lowest in Education--you know rank in spots like 46 48 50.
Little health care coverage.

Globalization has finally come home to roost. Wages are
being lowered so we can compete against places like China.

People like to blame unions. The Unions have fought, but
companiew have moved to Right to Work States.

The Republicans in Congress pressed hard on making GM Chrysler
be paid at the rate Right TO Work Alabama Foreign Cars earn.
Back during the Bail out. The Unions fought but Business now
runs the country.

We need to support Unions. The move is on now to lower all wages.
If we are not organized we will stand by and watch our country
fall into Aristocracy. Companies will pay what they wish.

Of course, I AM my union-- I and my colleagues. We are the union, some 11,000+ of us. We do the work of bargaining, enforcing our contract, etc. My union is the reason I have a decent salary, reasonable working conditions, and-- so far at least-- a decent retirement to look forward to.

Do we get it right 100 percent of the time? Probably not. But we try, in solidarity.

example.

You are all correct. Don't get me wrong. I am a union organizer, myself and totally support the right to be in a union and collectively bargain. However, it is also important to consider the historical facts and learn from them to make unions stronger and more effective.

Mainstream unions have become huge, bureaucratic machines, with leaders who are more aligned with the ruling class than with their members. They have all but given up confronting the ruling class or fighting for better living and working conditions. The unions in Wisconsin readily gave up wage and benefits concessions in a desperate attempt to preserve their right to collect dues. Yes, they wanted to save collective bargaining, but for what? If you give away wages and benefits, there isn't a whole lot left to bargain. They also gave up the strategic advantage when they told protesters to go home and leave the capital, promising to fight the battle at the ballot box. They could have had a general strike. The energy and momentum were there. Instead, they did the bosses' bidding and convinced their members to go home, to basically quit doing the one thing that had a chance to scare the ruling elite into backing down. Voting is not going to solve this problem. Consider California, New York, Chicago, where Democrats are pushing through their own versions of austerity on workers. However, instead of strong arming it, they have gotten the unions to convince their members that it is the best deal in town and the unions have essentially bought it, hook, line and sinker.