Reorganizing American Labor

By Jack Rasmus

At no time in the past 70 years have American workers and unions been under more direct and intense attack by corporate America. Moreover, that attack continues to show signs of becoming increasingly virulent and bold.

In the heartland of U.S. unionism, the auto industry, 100,000 union jobs will soon be lost in a second major wave of offshoring to China and Asia, textile union membership reels under the effects of the last year's passage of CAFTA, construction jobs plummet with the emerging collapse of the housing industry, airline and railroad employment falls as management costcutting continues unabated, while regular full time jobs constrict in the manufacturing sector of the economy despite the quadrupling of profits in that sector since 2002.

Beyond manufacturing, for the U.S. economy as a whole, government data released this past June revealed that profits rose 123 percent from the end of the Bush recession in 2001 to the start of 2006, from $714 billion to $1.59 trillion. Measured in terms of national income, that is equivalent to the growth of profits as a share of national income from 7 percent to 12.2 percent--the fastest rate of growth since records were first kept in 1947--according to the international business source the Financial Times.

In the midst of union membership loss and the obscene growth of corporate profits, companies across the board continue to accelerate their abandonment of pension plans, health care costs continue to shift from employers to workers at a growing rate, a new model to undermine public employee unionism and bargaining takes shape in the Midwest, the hiring of temporary and contract workers outside bargaining units at lower pay and fewer benefits becomes increasingly the norm, while employers everywhere watch intensely the outcome of bankruptcy courts' pending decisions to legitimize wage cuts of 50 percent, eliminate pensions altogether, and cut remaining benefits to the bone.

The central organizational question facing U.S. labor today is what kind of organizational restructuring is necessary to restore union membership to what it once was in 1980, at the time of the launching of the current corporate offensive? What new organizational forms are necessary to achieve a more effective division of labor--i.e., between coordinated labor action at the point of production (e.g., organizing, bargaining coordination, strike support, boycotts, corporate campaigns, defense of community struggles, etc.) and political action at the legislative executive level?

(Z Magazine Online Z Papers on Strategy

July August 2006, vol. 19, no 7-8)