UNIONS AND THE ENTIRE LABOR MOVEMENT FACE NEW CHALLENGES
 

By Edward Gorham

President

Maine AFL-CIO

    Reading about the current difficulties of organized labor reminds me of a statement of Mark Twain more than 100 years ago when he read a mistaken newspaper report of his death – “Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
    In the last six to ten months U.S. press, radio and television must have spewed forth several thousand or more stories and columns, largely proclaiming the labor movement to be splitting, declining, and dying. Admittedly, the current situation, which is still not well defined, is complex. The eventual outcome is hard to predict and, at this stage, impossible to evaluate.

More on Facts

    However, it may be of value to workers – both union and non-union, to focus more on facts and less on speculation.

    First, do unions have a problem?

    The answer, obviously, is “Yes” but the problem is much wider and longer running problem than anything involving unions alone.

    The United States has a workforce, an entire middle class and a national economy in extremely deep trouble with a national government in control of one political party apparently firmly determined to make the situation even worse.

Widespread Crisis

    “Crisis” would not be too strong a word and the current organizational problems of labor are only one facet of a threat that faces all American workers and their families.

    The rich, the large corporations, indeed all employers, can hardly be foolish enough to believe that somehow they will be unaffected and prosper in a time of widespread national decline.

    John Donne wrote that “No man is an island” so that when the bell tolls “it tolls for thee.” The bell is tolling now for our entire working class and it is tolling as well for all elements of our society.

War on Workers

    For more than three years we have heard over and over about the “War on Terror” but we have heard little or nothing about the “War on Workers” carried on by a government of the corporation, for the corporation and by the corporation. Union strength, organization, membership and political impact are important factors in fighting this war but it is obvious that, no matter how unions fare in the future, change will require a far larger public base of dedicated effort than unions alone can muster.

    The issue is not union political power but rather American commitment to halting the erosion of democracy and decline of the Nation.

    How serious is our national problem?

Everyone Affected
    One California labor leader puts it this way noting that the burgeoning crisis impacts, not just unions and labor but entire communities. We have:
    A continual shredding of our healthcare safety net with record numbers of the uninsured and underinsured, skyrocketing costs that are pricing more people than ever out of access to care, and deteriorating care standards.

    Efforts to privatize Social Security and to sharply reduce or eliminate pensions that workers have earned.

    The greatest income disparity between everyday Americans and the wealthiest of our society since the Great Depression.

    Presidential directives, legislation and judicial rulings on behalf of corporate interests at the expense of  workers, consumers and our common environment.

Erosion of Rights

    We face a steady stripping away of the rights of unions and workers to collectively organize and a steady erosion of hard won worker’s rights from overtime pay to job safety.

    As a nation we face declining real wages, the health care crisis, the continued erosion of democracy in the workplace, outsourcing of jobs across the skill and pay spectrum, a deteriorating social safety net, declining support for public education, environmental degradation, social justice and ongoing racial and gender inequality, alienation and disaffection from the political process.

    Unions will regroup, form new alliances and coalitions and establish new ways of working together. Indeed in the labor movement we have watched this happen over and over for more than 150 years. But it is essential to remember that these unions are not disbanding or ceasing to exist. They are still part of a vital labor movement seeking ways to become more efficient and effective.

Much the Same Goals
    Regardless of how dues are paid and unions administered, they are still targeting much the same goals such as curbing corporate control of the political and economic system, launching a single payer-universal health care system that makes good health care a right not a privilege, establishing a progressive tax system that restores fair share taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals, taking corporate money out of politics, creating a new industrial trade policy in a peace, not war economy, as well as supporting a strategy for reforming repressive/crippling labor laws and enforcement bodies.

Some of the Facts

    Less the above sound like “just more union talk,” we might look at just a few of hundreds of largely economic hard facts that continue to pile up - all pointing to a growing national crisis for labor – indeed for the nation itself.

 22% of American children live in poverty.

    36 million Americans live in poverty – four million more than when President Bush was first elected. And 20 million low income Americans are on food stamps. In 2003 26 million Americans went to soup kitchens and food pantries.

    45 million Americans are without health insurance and 5 million have lost health insurance since Bush was elected. United States is the only industrialized nation without universal health care.

    In 2004 1.6 million American families went bankrupt – up from 289,000 in 1980. 90 percent of these bankruptcies were due to job loss or medical emergency, frequently going together as job loss leads to loss of medical insurance.

Wages Down, Down, Down

    “Real” wages (adjusted for inflation) have gone down in the last two years. There has been no gain in “real” average weekly wages in five years. We are at the end of the longest downward slide in “real” wages in 20 years. In the last 30 years the median wage in the United States has risen only 9% while productivity per employee has risen 82%.
    Congress has not adjusted the national minimum wage for more than seven years. The inflation adjusted value of the minimum wage is 26% lower than it was in 1979.
     So called “new jobs” pay 20% to 30% less than the ones that have been lost.

Income Gap Up, Up, Up

    The income gap between the rich and the poor doubled between 1979 and 2000.

    After taxes, the richest 1% of Americans have as much to spend at the bottom 40%.

    The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that, over the next 10 years, the top growth occupations will be those with low pay requiring few skills.

    In the last four years alone U.S. trade policies have cost the nation 2.7 million manufacturing jobs – a half million of them high technology jobs. In the next 10 years it is forecast that 14 million more U.S. jobs will be outsourced.

    American families are $9 trillion dollars in debt – 40% of this debt acquired in just the last four years. Not counting mortgages American consumers are $2.4 trillion in debt – the highest level of consumer debt ever recorded. The national savings rate is 0.2% - the lowest level ever recorded.

    For eight straight years the growth of medical costs has far out paced wage growth – in 2004 by nearly four times. Two million Americans a year are crossing borders to buy cheaper prescription drugs.

More Corporate Welfare

    “Corporate welfare” such as subsidies, tax breaks and indirect assistance under the Bush Administration remain at $87 billion a year.

    Many failing corporations are costing employees the pension payments they were counting on for retirement. The federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation has lost $10 billion a year for the last three years. It has $39 billion, owes workers $62 billion and faces a likely $92 billion in future defaults. However, PBGC pension guarantee payments are far lower than employees of failed corporations expected to receive.

    Maine lost 20% of its manufacturing jobs since Bush was elected.

    The national budget in 2001 was $5.6 trillion in the black. In July 2005 the national budget was $5.5 trillion in the red.

Record Trade Deficits
    The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2004 was $162 billion – the highest ever with a single nation. The United States registered a record $489.4 billion trade deficit for 2003. This annual trade deficit was 17.1 percent larger than the previous record shortfall of $418 billion posted in 2002.

    33,000 current federal contractors owe the U.S. $3.3 billion in back taxes and little or no effort is being made to collect – IRS has a more than 40-year-old computer system and has had its collection budget repeatedly slashed by Congress.

    In 1956 corporations paid 28% of all U.S. taxes – by fiscal year 2004 this was down to 11.4%. Of 275 of the top 500 companies reporting $1 trillion in profits in 2001- 2003 82 of them had at least one year in which they paid zero taxes.

Corporate Tax Breaks

    In the face of these (and many, many more such problems in other areas from education to environment) Congress just passed an energy bill which provides $170 billion in corporate tax breaks over the next decade. Congress is also considering repealing the estate tax – which affects only 1.5% of all estates and which would cost more than a $1 trillion in lost taxes over the next 20 years.

    One might think that the Bush Administration would be concerned about the direction in which the nation is moving (falling behind would be more accurate) since almost 70% of Americans see the United States as going “in the wrong direction.” However, testifying this spring before the Financial Services Committee, the Bush Secretary of Commerce characterized the situation by stating that America is experiencing “tremendous economic prosperity.”
    Really?

Gompers Replies
    When the founder of the AFL Samuel Gompers was asked, “What do unions want.” He replied, “More school houses and less jails, more books and less arsenals, more learning and less vice, more constant work and less crime, more leisure and less greed, more justice and less revenge.” This was more than 100 years ago but the basic goals of unions still encompass far more than the operation of unions and gaining union members, as important as these are. In passing, one might note that more than half of American workers say they would like to join a union if they were not fired by employers (like WalMart) for doing so. Unfortunately, many employers do illegally fire workers for trying to organize and the employers pay little or no penalty for doing so.

Overtime Cooperation

    A perfect example of labor movement cooperation is the legislative battle last spring to preserve the Maine law on overtime in the face of the Bush Administration drive to take overtime away from millions of workers. Our success was three-fold.  First, based on existing law, the Maine AFL-CIO successfully advocated for the Baldacci Administration and the Maine Department of Labor to adopt new rules protecting the 40-hour work week.  With the help of many, we were successful in the rule making process. Second, Maine enacted new legislation expanding eligibility for overtime for certain low wage workers.  Finally, we defeated L.D. 435, which would have repealed our excellent overtime laws and standards. This success of this broad based cooperation affects not just union workers but all Maine workers.
     We did not accomplish this alone. We worked closely, as we have done in the past and will continue to do in the future, with many organizations and unions. We are all part of a much broader labor movement which needs and which, I am sure, will get continued support to reach common goals.
    We may emphasize different tactics but we are all reading from the same page. We realize that we face a national, not just a union or even just a labor crisis. We realize that the fate of the nation is intertwined with the labor movement and its success. We realize that unions, all unions, set the economic and social standards upon which the lives of tens of millions of workers, union and non-union, depend. And we realize that unions and the entire labor movement represent the most continuous and effective force to halt the rise of unrestricted corporate domination of American life.