Unions Surrendered Their Strike Option
And Weakened Their Bargaining Power

The grim story of labor’s decline in membership and bargaining power can be encapsulated in these contrasting figures about strikes of 1,000 workers or more from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:

During the 1970s, when unions were stronger and still growing, they conducted an average of 280 strikes a year to force employers to make concessions on wages and benefits. They did not win all the battles, but they convinced employers they were ready to play tough — even strike — to gain improvements they considered justified.

But in the years 2000-2007, the number of strikes plunged headlong to an average of only 23 a year. Since employers knew that unions had largely abandoned the strike tactic, they could refuse to sign any contract until the unions met their terms. Unions were faced with the alternatives of making serious concessions or going without a contract for months, even years.

The fear about strikes — labor’s weapons of last resort — was promoted by the media, the employers, government and even by labor leaders. It was said that strikes were a relic of the past; there were more effective ways of resolving labor-management disputes. Union members were persuaded that a strike was very costly, and how would they manage if it lasted for weeks, maybe months? A work stoppage would also antagonize the public, whose good-will the union needed. And winning a strike often did not compensate workers for their loss in wages.

The abandonment of the strike option became the excuse for “concessionary bargaining.” Union leaders could justify their failure to negotiate a decent agreement and getting their members’ reluctant approval by insisting that “this is the best we can get without a strike.”

No one is suggesting that unions become “strike happy” and call a work stoppage at every controversy with an employer. But the “threat” of a strike, if it is made convincingly clear to the employer, can strengthen labor’s hand at the negotiating table. Unions often face situations when they must either strike or capitulate on a vital issue — and they must not rule out the strike option.

The Militancy That Enabled Unions to Grow Has Vanished

It was back in 1936 that auto workers in Flint, Mich., defying the police, staged a sit-down strike in a General Motor’s plant, that finally forced GM to sign a contract with the United Auto Workers. The success of the Flint sit-down drew imitation. Between Sept. 1936 and June 1937, almost a half-million workers became involved in sit-down strikes in rubber, textiles, glass and many other industries.

The Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) came into existence in 1936 as a breakaway from the bureaucratic, stand-pat American Federation of Labor (AFL). Under the CIO’s aggressive organizing campaigns, millions of workers, including women and minorities, were brought into industrial unions in the nation’s major manufacturing industries.

But after the expulsion of about a dozen left-wing unions from the CIO in 1950, the militant spirit was drained from the labor movement. Since the AFL-CIO merger in 1955, labor leaders have largely refrained from taking any radical national action to register the discontent that working people feel about the economy and their government. They confine their protests to resolutions and statements, but no forceful action on such issues as letting multinational corporations export hundreds of thousands of manufacturing and service jobs to low-wage regions.

The Lessons We Can Learn from Our Foreign Labor Allies

Unions in both large and small countries use the strike option to help workers receive their unpaid wages, prevent layoffs, protest discrimination against women, halt government efforts to privatize state-owned industries and press their demand for union recognition. They conduct strikes in countries that do not allow basic human rights, as in Iran, Egypt and Burma.

Strikes have been taking place wherever workers feel abused and seek to be treated fairly: railroad workers in France and Germany, construction workers in South Korea and Saudi Arabia, tea workers in Kenya, dockworkers in Belgium, high school teachers in Israel, sugar workers in Guyana, university professors in Zimbabwe (to name a few examples), who have walked off their jobs to demand that their grievances be addressed.

Workers in each country have used different strike tactics, but all with the same general purpose. There have been one-day strikes at Ford’s Russian car plant; four-hour stoppages by Japanese workers at a U.S. military base, sit-in strikes by Egyptian garment workers, hunger strikes in Lithuania and even two-hour strikes against government policies. More and more workers everywhere are fighting for their rights with whatever means at their disposal.

But what about the American labor movement? Can the leaders of the AFL-CIO and Change-to-Win think of no public action to express the rage that working people feel about the lack of attention to their unfulfilled needs? Or will they simply spend the next year in limbo, waiting for the results of the 2008 elections?

Our weekly column, “The World of Labor,” reports the struggles and victories of unions in countries around the globe. Check our web site: www.LaborEducator.org.