University of Massachusetts Amherst

From the SelectedWorks of Dan Clawson

2012

Labor in Struggle Dan Clawson, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

Available at: https://works.bepress.com/dan_clawson/15/ Critical-Retrospective Essays 747

References Merrill, Francis E. and Carroll D. Clark. 1934. Gideonse, Harry D. 1934. ‘‘Money and Finance,’’ ‘‘The Money Market as a Special Public,’’ American Journal of Sociology 39(6): 749–758. American Journal of Sociology 39(5): 626–636. MacKenzie, Donald. 2011. ‘‘The Credit Crisis as Merrill, Francis E. and Melchior Palyi. 1938. ‘‘The a Problem in the Sociology of Knowledge,’’ Stock Exchange and Social Control,’’ American American Journal of Sociology 116(6): 1778–1841. Journal of Sociology 43(4): 560–577.

Labor in Struggle

DAN CLAWSON University of Massachusetts [email protected]

Reviving the Strike: How Working People Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Can Regain Power and Transform America, Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that by Joe Burns. Brooklyn, NY: Ig Changed America , by Joseph A. Publishing, 2011. 206pp. $15.95 paper. McCartin. New York, NY: Oxford ISBN: 9781935439240. University Press, 2011. 472pp. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780199836789. Organizing at the Margins: The Symbolic Politics of Labor in South Korea and the L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the United States , by Jennifer Jihye Chun. Future of the U.S. Labor Movement , by Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2009. 221pp. Ruth Milkman. New York, NY: Russell $35.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780801447112. Sage Foundation, 2006. 244pp. $24.95 paper. ISBN 9780871546357. The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements , by Dan Clawson. The Broken Table: The Detroit Newspaper Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2003. 235pp. Strike and the State of American Labor , by $21.95 paper. ISBN: 9780801488702. Chris Rhomberg. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2012. 387pp. The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor: Birth of a New $47.50 paper. ISBN: 9780871547170. Workers’ Movement or Death Throes of the Old? , by Steve Early. Chicago, IL: Beyond the Boycott: Labor Rights, Human Haymarket Books, 2011. 409pp. $17.00 Rights, and Transnational Activism , by paper. ISBN: 9781608460991. Gay Seidman. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007. 176pp. $18.95 Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, paper. ISBN: 9780871547613. Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement , by Marshall Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Ganz. New York, NY: Oxford Globalization since 1870 , by Beverly J. University Press, 2009. 344pp. $34.95 Silver. New York, NY: Cambridge cloth. ISBN: 9780195162011. University Press, 2003. 238pp. $31.00 paper. ISBN: 97805215207795. Reorganizing the Rust Belt: An Inside Study of the American Labor Movement , by Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Steven Henry Lopez. Berkeley, CA: Unions and Social Change , by Amanda University of California Press, 2004. Tattersall. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2010. 292pp. $26.95 paper. ISBN: 9780520235656. 209pp. $21.00 paper. ISBN: 9780801476068.

Raising Expectations: How American Workers Can Win (And Why They Don’t) , by Jane McAlevey , with Bob Ostertag. New York, NY: Verso, forthcoming 2012.

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The editor gave me a very general charge: struggles within labor over what kind of choose a dozen books on labor, published union to aim for and how to get there. In in the new millennium, and write about some sense underlying all this, but until them. Since I can name perhaps three dozen recently largely absent from consideration, books I would like to include, a selection cri- has been the disappearance of strikes. terion is key. In most circumstances, for sociologists as well as others, the term ‘‘labor’’ evokes first Pure Organizing or Structural and foremost the labor process, the work Conditions? people do, whether that be carework, assem- For perhaps twenty years beginning around bly line production, professional careers, or 1990, the U.S. labor movement’s analysis of housework. But in this essay ‘‘labor,’’ as I the key to victory was organizing enough use the term, focuses on work-related workers to achieve a high level of ‘‘union groups that seek to transform society, in big density,’’ the proportion of all workers who or small ways, by bringing people together, were members of unions. There is good rea- developing their capacities, and using the son for a focus on density: studies show that solidarity of many individuals, each of if only one in ten workers in a sector are them weak if standing alone, to mobilize organized, then the union cannot win power and contest existing arrangements. much, or if it does win, the employer will This essay covers only books that fit that cri- constantly be at war with the union and terion, and by no means all of those works. looking for ways to move the operation or The confusion between these two senses outsource key components. On the other of labor is sometimes helpful, sometimes hand, if ninety percent of a sector is orga- a problem. At my home institution, the Uni- nized, not only do employers find it more versity of Massachusetts Amherst, the hith- difficult to displace the union, but also paying erto free-standing Labor Center was forced decent wages and benefits is just a cost of to merge with a department, and it chose doing business, and is no longer a competitive sociology. I very much hope that when the disadvantage. As a result, unions can do the chancellor or provost hears ‘‘labor center’’ most to improve conditions, and are in the they subliminally think it is about work most secure position, if they can achieve tout cours . The problem however, is that high density within a particular sector. 2 (The many of my colleagues subliminally think relevant sector for leverage might be down- the same way, and would be happy to have town hotels in San Francisco; workers and the Labor Center be a site for the study of the union would not need ninety percent work conditions, of the ways work is orga- density for hotels in the nation as a whole.) nized and changes, the workplace as a site During the last two decades studies of to study a range of issues. Such people— organizing were central to labor scholarship and I suspect it is not just my colleagues, as well as to the labor movement. The AFL- but many members of the ASA Labor and CIO itself sponsored three edited volumes Labor Movements section—want to see (not reviewed here) and each focused on a sympathy-for-the-victims standpoint. But organizing. Within that larger focus, some they have trouble understanding why I and scholarship focused on exemplary cases others jealously guard the special character and on principles that would apply to of a Labor Center as a site to focus on the vari- more-or-less any organizing at any time, ety of ways workers and their supporters while other scholarship emphasized the organize for transformation (whether or not importance of structural conditions, with they do so through a traditional union), of the ways people stop being (just) victims 2 See Laura Dresser and Annette Bernhardt. and assume agency in collective struggle. 2006. ‘‘Bad Service Jobs: Can Unions Save This essay looks at some of the ways that Them? Can They Save Unions?’’ Pp. 115–37 scholarship has changed in recent years, in R. Block, S. Friedman, M. Kaminski and A. Levin, eds., Justice on the Job: Perspectives on from a focus on what (if anything) can be the Erosion of Collective Bargaining in the United done to improve traditional union organiz- States . Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute ing, to alternative ways to exercise power, to for Employment Research.

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Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com at UNIV MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST on February 18, 2013 Critical-Retrospective Essays 749 the implicit or explicit argument that not all draws on an impressive database that aims things were possible at all times. In the to cover all strikes and labor activity from 1990s, work by Kate Bronfenbrenner (some 1870 through the 1990s to argue that what of it with Tom Juravich), using a pure- is possible is structurally determined. Labor organizing approach, had a major impact unrest is greatest during periods of capital on (some parts of) the labor movement. inflow. The characteristic form of struggle Quantitative studies of a sample of organiz- varies by the structure of the industry. Con- ing campaigns showed that no single tactic sider the auto industry: unrest shifts from was a magic bullet, but campaigns were far the United States and Canada in the 1930s, more likely to succeed if they employed to Western Europe in the 1960s, to Italy, a range of rank-and-file intensive tactics. Spain, and Argentina in the 1970s, to Brazil, Even if there were no changes in labor law, South Africa, South Korea, and Mexico in globalization, or politics, labor could sub- the 1990s (and we might add, to China stantially increase its victories if it ran the today). Each country’s struggle is unique— right kind of campaigns. 3 but in country after country, due to the Why David Sometimes Wins by Marshall tightly-linked character of auto production, Ganz provides another example of a focus the union is brought in through action by on pure organizing, using the 1960s Farm- a militant minority at a choke point in the workers, a union in which Ganz was a key system. Those tactics work in auto, and are participant, to develop a general theory of independently invented again and again, organizing. Ganz argues that the Farm- but they would not work in textiles. That workers succeeded in significant part is, the success of worker struggles does not because their leadership devised a stream just depend on injustice, or even worker mil- of effective strategy, strategy which came itance, but in a significant part on strategic from relying on a leadership team, and position and the ability to exert leverage. a team that involved people with a range Not all things are possible in all places at of different perspectives and from a variety all times. It may not be the most oppressed of structural circumstances. The lessons who are the key to victory. and techniques that Ganz both learned and My own book, The Next Upsurge: Labor and developed in his work with the Farm- the New Social Movements , offers a somewhat workers are invaluable for anyone trying to related argument. The key to organizing suc- organize, and Ganz has been important in cess is not just hiring good organizers, devel- spreading them far and wide, from the oping an effective framing, investing the Obama campaign to the Occupy movement. needed resources, and finding committed A case study of a remarkable movement is workers. People are doing those things at used to develop lessons that can be seen as all times, but most of the time labor is losing universal. Ganz does not try to explain ground. In occasional relatively brief why farm worker organizing succeeded in periods, however, labor has a dramatic burst the 1960s and not in the 1930s, or why other of growth; in the 1930s, union membership seemingly similar groups have not quadrupled in a dozen years, and at the succeeded, or any of a range of similar ques- same time the United States enacted a host tions; his issue is what it takes to organize of reforms, from Social Security to bank reg- successfully, with little or no attention to ulation to rules on overtime. In periods of the importance of structural factors. quiescence only great organizers succeed; At the other end of the spectrum, Beverly in periods of upsurge mediocre organizing Silver’s Forces of Labor , perhaps this millen- wins impressive victories. nium’s most influential study of global labor, Each period of upsurge re-defines what we mean by ‘‘the labor movement,’’ chang- ing cultural expectations, the form that unions 3 Tom Juravich and Kate Bronfenbrenner. 1998. take, laws, structures, and accepted forms of ‘‘It Takes More than Housecalls: Organizing and Staying Organized in a Changing Public behavior. The upsurge gives rise to an inte- Sector Climate.’’ Pp. 19–36 in Kate Bronfen- grated labor regime, fitted to the economy brenner et. Al., eds., Organizing to Win . Ithaca, and society of that time, which constrains NY: Cornell University Press. some forms of activity and promotes others.

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New groups of workers are organized, using coworkers, and used ‘‘an escalating strategy new tactics and new organizational forms. of collective action aimed at building The 1960s, when labor and the new social workers’ solidarity’’ (p. 65); the union won movements failed to connect, could be seen by a two-to-one margin. as a missed upsurge, and the question my book investigates is whether the pieces are in place for a new potential upsurge. New Ways to Exercise Leverage Steve Lopez offers something of a middle If structural conditions have changed, if ground: a focus on the organizing process, workers are skeptical of unions, then we what worked and what did not, but framed need new forms of organizing, and three in terms of the way organizing among nurs- works, two of them by younger scholars, ing home service workers is shaped by focus on alternatives to traditional union people’s past experiences with actually approaches. Gay Seidman looks at organiz- existing industrial (especially steel) unions. ing consumers instead of workers, Amanda Reorganizing the Rust Belt is an ethnography Tattersall at a focus on building community of an interconnected set of organizing drives coalitions to exercise political power, and and contract campaigns among health care Jennifer Chun on the use of symbolic power. workers in a Service Employees Internation- Since union organizing is extraordinarily al Union local in the Pittsburgh area. Labor difficult in the United States, and dramati- scholarship provides surprisingly few cally more so in much of the Global South, ethnographies; apparently, scholars general- consumer boycotts are an appealing alterna- ly arrive after the battles are over, or at least tive way to win decent pay and working well along, and rely more on interviews than conditions. In practice however, Seidman on observation. Lopez’s work puts us inside shows that boycotts are not controlled by the struggles as they develop, and provides the Global South workers themselves, but a powerful example of why we need more rather by well-meaning groups in the Global ethnographies. North. Instead of being run in solidarity with Much labor scholarship connects primari- workers, boycotts are run for workers. ly with union staff and with the most Seidman shows that the boycotts have had involved and committed workers. Lopez, very modest success in improving condi- more than any of the other authors consid- tions for workers, and often create collateral ered here, shows us how the campaigns damage, for example when people in the looked to workers who were anti-union, or United States continue to boycott after the at least had strong reservations about the issues in El Salvador are resolved, leading union. In important ways that is what labor to a drop in demand and worker layoffs. Ful- most needs to understand. For one example, ly aware of how counter-intuitive the con- Lopez explains that in the first organizing clusion might seem, Seidman argues that drive he was involved with ‘‘Every [nursing improved state regulation to enforce worker home] aide I talked to had her own angry rights would probably provide more benefit stories about instances in which residents than consumer boycotts. who clearly needed medical attention or Amanda Tattersall takes off from the same a modified care plan were ignored by man- starting point: ‘‘Today, ‘the workers united’ agement, sometimes for weeks’’ (p. 44) but are frequently defeated’’ (p. 2), which leads the workers nonetheless (narrowly) voted unions to seek (political) coalitions with against unionizing, concerned (based on community groups. Tattersall’s case stud- experiences with other unions) that the ies—of union coalitions in Australia, union would not do much, and that its Canada, and the United States—reach most likely ‘‘accomplishment’’ would be to a number of counter-intuitive conclusions. protect workers who did not do a good job. It seems obvious that the more members of A year later the union ran a new campaign, a coalition the better, but Tattersall finds visited workers in their homes, built a that ‘‘less is more,’’ that coalitions with fewer broadly-based organizing committee of members were stronger and more effective. workers committed to the union, trained Union leaders typically assume that the coa- workers in how to organize and assess their lition will not serve labor’s interest unless

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Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com at UNIV MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST on February 18, 2013 Critical-Retrospective Essays 751 the union maintains tight control, but Power contingent, contracted out, flexible workers in Coalition argues the opposite: ‘‘Across the who are (it is claimed) employees of so- case studies, unions gained more power called ‘‘independent contractors’’ (say, a Chi- from working in coalition when they had nese sweatshop) rather than of the entity less direct control over the coalition’’ that actually controls their terms of employ- (p. 161). It would seem easier to agree on ment (Walmart). a minimalist negative message (‘‘stop Wal- Symbolic power, to the extent that it mart’’) than on a positive message, but the becomes crucial, in some sense reverses coalition message ‘‘was dramatically more labor’s previous power dynamic. When powerful when it was positively framed’’ labor’s power depended on strategic posi- (p. 146) (‘‘big box retailers should pay a liv- tion, power tended to concentrate in those ing wage’’). who had the most skill and occupied the Building coalitions is closely related to the most crucial positions; these were typically issue of how workers and unions hope to relatively well-paid white men. But to the exercise power. A generation and more degree that symbolic power is what matters, ago, by far the most important source of victory might be most likely for low-paid union power was the strike. As that option and poorly-treated women of color, and it has receded, at least in the United States might be most likely at employers with (see below), labor has sought other ways of a high degree of brand recognition among exercising leverage. Jennifer Chun’s Orga- final consumers. Thus Chun’s case studies nizing at the Margins: The Symbolic Politics of focus on janitors at the leading universities Labor in South Korea and the United States in Korea and the United States, golf caddies develops the concept of symbolic power as in Korea, and home care workers in the Unit- an increasingly important part of labor’s ed States. toolkit. In recent years labor has won not pri- marily through strategic position and struc- tural power (the auto workers shutting What Kind of Union? down one part of a tightly linked auto com- Innovation comes in many forms, not just plex, depriving the company of all its trans- boycotts, coalitions, and symbolic power. missions), but rather through exercising Ruth Milkman’s L.A. Story focuses on what symbolic power, appealing to a broader pub- in some sense is highly traditional union lic and eliciting their support by influencing activity, and in other senses is totally innova- culture and public debates, articulating a set tive. I suspect that for most sociologists the of values that speak to a general audience focus will be on one of Milkman’s three (an approach similar to the consumer key points, an historic shift by the labor boycotts that Seidman studied). It is more movement, which had long advocated poli- difficult for autoworkers or truck drivers to cies seen as anti-immigrant, and in the late make such symbolic appeals, and very 1990s and early 2000s flipped to strongly much related to that, they have had a diffi- support immigrants, including undocu- cult time winning victories. (The Teamsters’ mented immigrants, and to emphasize greatest victory in the last generation, it is what was in practice already happening: interesting to note, focused on winning jobs the need to organize immigrant workers. for part-time workers at UPS, who were For those inside the labor movement how- said to be unreasonably exploited; that is, ever, two other arguments are likely to prove even Teamsters won in significant part even more provocative. First, Milkman through symbolic power.) The strike, we argues that Los Angeles’ labor revival was might say, gets replaced by a set of tactics driven by unions that were once in the that rely on ‘‘naming and shaming’’—identi- AFL, something of a surprise to people fying those who are exploiting workers and who still think of the CIO as the dynamic, holding these practices up to public scrutiny, progressive, rapidly growing part of the enabling people to see and condemn labor movement. AFL unions, she argues, those responsible. These new tactics are cre- emerged before the welfare state and ative responses to the new forms of employ- monopoly mass production industry. They ment relationship, especially the rise of were occupationally-based and dealt with

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Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com at UNIV MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST on February 18, 2013 752 Critical-Retrospective Essays a host of small and unstable manufacturers, was missing, the campaign failed; if both ‘‘historical circumstances that are strikingly were present it succeeded. similar to those that unions face’’ (p. 4) In 2006 trusteeships and aggressive inter- today. The CIO unions emerged and grew vention by the national union might have together with the regulatory state; they looked like the route to union revitalization; relied on government-supervised elections by 2012 such a position seems much more and on a handful of employers dominating problematic. In L.A. Story the exemplar an industry. Now that those conditions no union is the SEIU, one of the largest unions, longer apply, the CIO unions do not have probably the fastest growing, and probably a viable strategy. The AFL unions on the oth- the best at publicizing themselves and er hand, have a long history of organizing at connecting to non-labor groups, very employers as well as workers, persuading much including academics. But recently the employers that if the union represents SEIU has also been at war with others in more-or-less all of the workers in the indus- labor, most notably with its own members try, that provides a means to bring some sta- in California and with another major nation- bility and order, reducing ferocious competi- al union (UNITE HERE), battles chronicled tion that hurts company profits as well as in Steve Early’s The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor . worker wages. Early’s primary focus, although by no Second, and entering into debates that means his only one, is on the national SEIU’s have since become even more central to the decision to ‘‘trustee’’ its 150,000 member labor movement, Milkman argues that California ‘‘local’’ (although with that labor’s Los Angeles success depended in many members it no longer resembles a tra- significant part on the fact that AFL unions ditional local). To ‘‘trustee’’ the local meant traditionally gave more power to staff, hired to remove all its elected leadership, to seize college-educated non-members as staff, and all its assets, to take control of its offices, to were more likely to put local unions into use a privatized security force to implement trusteeship. Trusteeship gives the national the takeover, and to bring in hundreds of union the right to seize all the assets, remove outsiders to run the local. SEIU trusteed all the staff and elected leaders of the local, that local, Early argues (and I would and appoint new people to run the agree, but then I was a participant in these local. Put another way, local level union battles, and at times in alliance with Early), democracy might lead to stagnation; top- primarily or exclusively because the local down control from the national union can challenged the policies of the national union. shake things up. The fastest growing union, The reasons that are usually given for trust- SEIU, has called this the difference between eeship did not apply: the union was not cor- ‘‘just us’’ unionism (a focus on what is best rupt in any way, and it was one of the most for the workers already in the local union) dynamic and rapidly growing in SEIU. and ‘‘justice’’ unionism (a focus on growing Early’s argument is that there has been too and reaching out to new workers). Such trust- much focus on the difference between no eeships are highly controversial (see below), union and having some sort of union, and can be abused, and can create problems, but, not enough focus on the difference between Milkman argues (as do Kim Voss and Rachel a mediocre union and a strong union. More- Sherman in their influential 2000 AJS article) over, Early argues, although it may seem that local unions often need to be pushed appealing to have control from the top by to be innovative, and many local unions smart union staff who are comfortable have become ineffective or outright corrupt. talking to academics, before long that route The ability to shake things up—or threaten leads to hubris, disaster, and destructive to do so—was, Milkman argues, one key to internal battles, as SEIU’s recent history labor’s growth in Los Angeles. Milkman shows. Winston Churchill noted (and Early insists that top-down control is not enough: effectively repeats) that ‘‘it has been said success depended on campaigns that com- that democracy is the worst form of govern- bined strong staff strategic planning and ment except all those other forms that have resources with strong support from workers been tried . . . ’’ (McAlevey, discussed below, on the ground; if either of those elements is in many ways similar to Early, but she

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Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com at UNIV MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST on February 18, 2013 Critical-Retrospective Essays 753 shows little interest in issues of democracy.) a union intern ‘‘he sent the group [of nursing In the case of the California local, the leader- home workers] into paroxysms of anger’’ ship and much of the staff responded not by when he referred to the union having done contesting the action within SEIU, but by something. Workers responded to his starting a new union and fighting SEIU tooth remarks by saying ‘‘The union DIDN’T and nail over who would represent the stop privatization—WE did!’’ (p. 132), members. Millions have since been spent, although workers and community members and are still being spent, not on organizing had done so through a campaign coordinat- non-union workers, but rather on which ed by the union, and which could not have union will represent already unionized happened without the union. The hope is workers. In many ways that battle is that sustained experience with McAlevey’s a destructive waste, but there is also the pos- form of union negotiations would lead sibility that it will lead both sides to build workers to conclude ‘‘we are the union,’’ more effective unions. that it does not make sense to talk of workers Jane McAlevey’s Raising Expectations is at and the union as separate entities. On the times even more biting than Early in its con- other hand, the conclusion of events in demnation of national SEIU actions and Nevada (you’ll have to read the book to leaders. (Both Early and McAlevey name find out) challenges the hope to build such names; one aspect of both books is a kind a union. of People magazine for labor insiders; Early also discusses the role of academics involved in these battles.) As a marginal member of Strikes SEIU’s national leadership, she knows and The recent focus in the labor movement on presents the (or at least an ) inside story of what kind of union is needed, and recent many key battles. For a certain part of the divisions within labor, as well as the focus labor movement, that will be the book’s on new ways to exercise leverage, are in main interest. For most students and some sense linked to what the labor move- sociologists, however, the focus will be on ment has avoided for many years—strikes. McAlevey’s upbeat account of building In 1970, 320 strikes involved more than a vibrant labor movement for healthcare 1,000 workers; in 2009, only five did. (The workers in Nevada, particularly Las Vegas. Reagan administration stopped collecting Raising Expectations , an autobiography by data on smaller strikes; the drop there is a leading labor organizer who is now taking probably just as precipitous.) Whether by a pause and earning a doctorate in sociology, coincidence or by some larger karma, in presents perhaps the most readable and fun the last year three of the most stimulating account I know of what it means to build and provocative labor books have focused a militant and participatory labor move- on strikes. ment, even if the account ends in double Back in the day, strikes not only helped dealing, disaster, and expulsion. Consider win better conditions, they provided a con- just one of the many examples McAlevey crete test of worker support, and forced offers of doing things differently: most union unions to reach out to members, educate contract negotiations consist of five people them, and actively work to build solidarity. from the employer side facing five people In most cases, a simple majority is nowhere from the union side (typically, one staff per- near enough to win a strike, and the commit- son and four workers). In McAlevey’s ver- ment has to be many orders of magnitude sion, the union bargaining team was 120 higher than that required to sign an email workers, one representative for each 15 petition. Strikes provided a no-way-to- workers, and all 120 workers spoke at hide-it test of the level of worker willingness bargaining, each presenting one part of the to confront employer power, and every few worker-union proposals; all workers, not years forced unions to re-organize and re- just those on the (already large) bargaining invigorate. The absence of strikes hollows team, were encouraged to attend negotia- out a union, and creates the kind of low vis- tions. In Steve Lopez’s account of the SEIU ibility, low engagement, do-nothing unions local he studied, when he was working as that lead national leaders (and sympathetic

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Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com at UNIV MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST on February 18, 2013 754 Critical-Retrospective Essays academics) to want to find a way to shake they were treated, the stress of the work, things up. The absence of strikes may help and the very real danger that the work prac- explain not only the rise of the alternative tices would lead them to be the putative tactics studied by Seidman, Tattersall, and cause of collisions killing hundreds of peo- Chun, but also labor’s internal wars, the ple led them to organize, at first for airline use of trusteeships, and the focus on ways safety, always for dignity and respect at to revive moribund unions. work, and at the end for major pay raises. As Joe Burns shows in Reviving the Strike , Over the course of a decade air traffic the problem is that a series of laws, court controllers took several illegal strikes and decisions, and regulatory actions have job actions; in just about every case they made it increasingly difficult to strike. The won, and although a few people were fired, basic rule is that if any labor tactic is effec- almost all of them got their jobs back. In tive, it will be made illegal, whether solidar- 1981, Reagan authorized a pay package ity strikes, secondary boycotts, partial that was considerably more generous than strikes, or sit-down strikes. Not surprisingly, the guidelines he had said must govern all the dramatic turning point was 1981 and federal workers, but the union rejected that Reagan’s crushing of the PATCO strike. Fol- offer, and at that point Reagan decided to lowing that, the number of strikes dropped crush the union and fire every striking air precipitously, and in the most visible traffic controller. PATCO activists thought confrontations employers replaced their the strike would impose huge costs and crip- workforces and eliminated the union. ple air travel. To a considerable degree they Two impressive recent books, Joseph A. were right—the strike cost airlines $1 billion McCartin’s Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, per month at the outset (p. 304), and even the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that a year later TWA was down 17 percent and Changed America and Chris Rhomberg’s The Pan Am down 31 percent (p. 305)—but the Broken Table: The Detroit Newspaper Strike government never wavered. and the State of American Labor , show how Rhomberg’s story is in many ways very strong worker solidarity can be, how long similar, although in his case it was the workers can hold firm, what heavy costs employers, not the workers, who were deter- a strike can inflict on employers, and how mined to force a confrontation. The unions workers can nonetheless lose. Both books maintained an impressive degree of solidar- are based on massive amounts of data, ity, and held for a very long time, in fact for show the long history leading up to the years. In the union town of Detroit, commu- strike as the employer saw it, and as the nity support was solid: ad lineage fell by union saw it, show what was going on one-third, the newspapers reported losing behind the scenes, including the divisions $92 million in the first six months, and they within the union side and within the did not report circulation figures for a year employer side, give us a good sense of how after the strike began. Although Rhomberg the strike was in some sense inevitable and does not stress this point, I would say that in another sense contingent, and are surpris- he fairly decisively shows that had the strug- ingly good reads. McCartin analyzes the gle been confined to Detroit, had two Detroit more decisive battle, indeed the most impor- newspapers confronted five Detroit unions, tant U.S. strike since 1937, but Rhomberg the employers could not have survived, does more to put the strike in the context could not have been as vicious and intransi- of American labor more generally, and to gent as they were, and would have had to relate the strike to social science literature accept the compromise offers the unions on unions and on conflicts. were prepared to accept. But by 1995 the McCartin tells the story of PATCO before newspapers were parts of massive chains its inception to years after the conclusion of and could sustain huge Detroit losses indef- the strike, a fascinating story with many initely in order to establish, for the nation as twists and turns. Most air traffic controllers a whole, that newspaper employers were were military veterans with limited educa- willing and able to grind workers and tions who believed in America, discipline, unions into the dust, so that if unions and hierarchy. But the humiliating ways wanted to survive at all they had to accept

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Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com at UNIV MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST on February 18, 2013 Critical-Retrospective Essays 755 most of what employers demanded. Based for workers. As AFL-CIO president John on Rhomberg’s impressive evidence of the Sweeney said following the 1997 Teamster level of worker and community support, I UPS strike, ‘‘You could make a million house would conclude that this strike, and by calls and run a thousand television commer- extension many similar strikes, could not cials and stage a hundred strawberry rallies, be won in a single city. Setting aside all the and still not come close to doing what the other ways the law favors employers (and UPS strike did for organizing’’ (Rhomberg, the ways are legion) unless worker and p. 270). unions can organize on the same scale as Since the on-the-ground action is shifting, employers it will be extraordinarily difficult labor-related scholarship is sure to shift. In to win. the next decade we can anticipate exciting new work on labor’s response to Republican attacks on public sector unions in Wisconsin, Next Steps? Ohio, and elsewhere; on Occupy and the Labor scholarship responds to on-the- labor movement; on attempts to blame ground battles. In recent years it has moved teachers and their unions for all the from ‘‘how can we do a better job with our problems with education, and sometimes traditional organizing activities?’’ to a focus for inequality more generally; and on on innovative forms of action, combined unspecified-unknown issues that are soon with a consideration of how we can rein- to emerge, but have not yet come to vigorate existing unions, and the labor prominence. wars that have gone with that. Arguably, all of these changes are a response to the inability to strike—still technically legal, Reference but in practice facing the unified power of Voss, Kim and Rachel Sherman, 2000. ‘‘Breaking employers and the courts, and rarely win- the Iron Law of Oligarchy: Union Revitaliza- ning. The loss of the strike weapon makes tion in the American Labor Movement.’’ The it difficult to win substantial improvements American Journal of Sociology 106(2), 303–49.

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