Part 1 - Why Unions?

Some people say you can't fight city hall or buck the boss. In a democracy, this isn't true. You can. And this is what unions are for! Unions establish industrial democracy in our private enterprise and corporate-oriented economy. Unions represent the individual's interest when the company's interest conflicts with it or fails, even, to consider it. Unions represent employees as they seek to apply industrial democracy to their jobs and working conditions.

Let's consider a number of possible scenarios facing today's workers. You're in the workforce, trying to make a living, and you need a day off to move to a new home or to look after things at home because your spouse is ill. Or maybe you unexpectedly come down with an illness. Do you call your supervisor or department head and ask for time off? What if the supervisor says "No?" What do you do then? Go to the chairman of the board?

Or maybe you've been a loyal productive worker for the past year or two. You know the company is doing well and making money. So you figure you're worth more than you're earning would like a raise. Do you ask your boss? What if the boss says "No" or offers a few pennies?

Or assume you've been a loyal dedicated employee for 17 years. You've got a husband or wife, kids in high school hoping to go to college, equity in the house and stature in the community. You're over 40, but retirement is a long way off yet. Then one day your company is merged with, or acquired by, another one. New management moves in and decides you're through. They want younger employees; it's new company policy. Or they want more efficient production and are installing some new automated equipment that eliminates the need for your job -- and you.

What do you do then, and who do you talk to about finding a new job or taking another job in the same company through job retraining? How are you going to pull up roots in your community?

In each of these cases, what can you as an individual do to protect you and your livelihood? Who has the final word if you disagree with your employer's decision?

Now consider that there are millions of other wage and salary earners, just like you, working for a living in organizations that are apt to be very large, fluid and impersonal.

Look at it this way. Without collective bargaining, the individual employee has no voice but is subject to every arbitrary decision the employer makes. Some minimum legal standards excepted, the employer sets hours of work, level of wages and salaries, and determines job assignments and production quotas. When promotions are involved, the boss can reward favorites and ignore qualified workers of longer service. The employer can lay off or fire any worker - for any reason - or even for no reason. The boss can manipulate the organization chart and demote or shunt aside.

The employer can, in fact, be a dictator who is answerable to no one. Neither democracy nor human dignity has any place in this scheme of things.

Even a benevolent dictator, who tries to look out for the best interests of his people, is no substitute for democratic government. And a paternalistic employer is no substitute for democratically structured employee organizations and collective bargaining.

Where there is collective bargaining in industry, the individual worker has a voice and is not subject to arbitrary decisions. That worker shares with other employees, and with the employer, the responsibility for establishing orderly procedures for determining wages, hours of work, rates of production, promotion and layoff policies, and just penalties for the violation of necessary work rules.

As part of a union, you have the strength that comes from numbers and, through your union, the ability to hire able staff - negotiators, lawyers, research specialists, and others who specialize in the arts of collective bargaining.

Only as part of a group do you have the economic strength that permits bargaining with the employer on a basis approaching equality.

You may not find all the answers to your job problems by becoming a union member, but you will be free to present your problems and have them considered. This is the function of union stewards, grievance committees, safety committees and union representatives. As a union member, you also have a voice in your union. Union officers are nominated and democratically elected. Policies and conduct of the union are determined by its constitution and bylaws and these, too, are subject to amendment by the membership.

More workers are forming or joining unions, and it's easy to see why. In this day and age of high speed technological change, multinational corporations and conglomerates, if we didn't have unions for the people who work in them, then we'd probably have to invent them.

This is why meat cutters, grocery clerks, nursing staff, barbers and cosmetologists, packing house workers and even police dispatchers have formed unions and joined the UFCW just as steel workers, rubber workers and construction workers have formed their unions.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Lets go back a minute and see where unions came from. The trade union is one of our oldest economic institutions. In fact, it is a good deal older than the business corporation.

Part 2 - Where Unions Come From

The history of trade unionism in this country is frequently dated from 1792, when a local union was formed by the journeymen cordwainers (shoemakers) of Philadelphia. Within the next ten years, unions of shoemakers, carpenters and printers were founded in Baltimore, Boston, New York and several other cities.

Until after the Civil War, most of these trade unions were located in Atlantic seaboard cities and were local unions of workers in a particular trade or industry. These isolated locals, sensing the need for greater strength, formed city-wide federations called "trade assemblies" for mutual aid and support in strikes and emergency situations. They also functioned as boycott organizations, published newspapers, took political action and lobbied for local government legislation favorable to their members. Today these federations have evolved into city central bodies or state central bodies and their functions are much the same.

But local unions also found it necessary to join with other locals within the same trade or industry. These national unions were labor's answer to dealing with employers who were selling their goods in a national market. Machinist local unions in New York, for example, worked for iron foundry employers who were competing with other iron foundries in Cleveland. In this national competition, the isolated New York local union soon found itself competing with its counterpart local union in Cleveland and in other plants of the industry located elsewhere. As the employers competed, wages, as a cost of production factor, were bid down and the lowest rates in the industry tended to prevail throughout the country.

So in 1859, the machinist and blacksmith locals united and formed a permanent national organization. The molders did the same; then the printers followed suit. In the decade after the Civil War, twenty-six new national unions were formed. The purpose of all these national unions was the same: to influence wages, working conditions and work rules, more or less, uniformly throughout their trade or industry.

The isolated locals thus learned that, by pooling their resources and cooperating with one another, they could more effectively deal with employers and, at the same time, give help and support to locals in distress. They demonstrated once again that in unity there is strength.

Today, national and international unions are the keystones of the American labor movement. More than 100 of them are affiliated with the AFL-CIO.

"Where did trade unions come from?" You might say they came out of the necessity of the working people to look after their own interests as businesses and industry organized and developed along national lines.

Another way to look at it is on the basis of self-interest as expressed by both labor and management, the employee and employer -- each promotes his own self-interest. Wherever we find competing self-interests, we find the possibility of conflict. It was out of such conflict that the trade union movement was born. And, it was to resolve the issues such conflict produces that collective bargaining was developed.

One thing about it -- 200 years have brought little change in the issues at stake or the basic need for unions. The individual member, no matter his or her trade, still has basic economic and social needs and has to deal with an employer to get most of them. Forming a union or joining a union makes the job a whole lot easier.

Part 3 - What Unions Want

Union members represent a broad cross section of America. They come from all walks of life in all parts of the country. They want what any American wants - peace, prosperity, security and dignity.

There are two ways to go about getting them. One is through collective bargaining. The other is through political and social action. Let's talk about them one at a time.

Collective bargaining is a rational, democratic and peaceful way to resolve conflict. In recent years, some 200,000 collective bargaining agreements have been made. Only about 2% of them were affected by strikes. So, in 98% of all cases, collective bargaining was successful. This is certainly not a bad record!

Back around the turn of the century, things were different. There were not very many unions then, and those that existed had a tough time of it. Employer resistance to collective bargaining was fierce and many times violent. There was no National Labor Relations Act then to give workers the right to organize and to promote collective bargaining. But workers persisted and the fledgling unions survived. Collective bargaining became the accepted way of regulating employer-employee disputes.

It took a lot of nerve for employees to stand up for their rights in those days. There were no job safety standards, paid vacations, sick leave or retirement plans. Hiring, firing, promotion and layoff policies were under the exclusive control of employers.

But they did it, and today we are enjoying the results. You can't put a price tag on the human dignity individual worker's feel when they stand up for their rights, either.

It hasn't changed today. Every time the union-negotiated contract expires, the members have to assess the situation again. They look at their wages and compare them with current price levels; look at company profits; determine if pensions, health and medical care plans are adequate. These are the quantitative factors that go into wages and salaries at collective bargaining time.

There are qualitative factors, too -- things like work rules, work speeds, occupational safety and health, time off for vacations and holidays, and promotion policies.

Put them all together and you have a package of wages, benefits and work rules that becomes the subject of contract negotiations. Employers -- large or small -- don't just hand out this package. The employees have to stick together and send their representatives into the negotiating room with employers or their representatives. Through a process of fact finding, discussion, argument and debate, they reach an agreement on just what the package will contain. Then, the membership has to either ratify it or reject it.

We call it collective bargaining, and it has played a vital part in lifting the living standards of the American worker to the highest level in the world.

Think about this next time you hear a company official say, "Here's what we give our employees." Even if that company doesn't have a union or the employees he is talking about aren't part of the union in the firm, do you really think they would give these wages and benefits if there were no unions? Maybe - but it isn't likely unless a pattern of union-won gains is in existence.

But, even then, the employee has no voice in matters affecting the job. Where's the dignity or security in that system?

The union movement, as a whole, however, does not operate on the narrow grounds of self-interest. It exists to help those people least able to help themselves.

It exists not only to win fair wages and working conditions and employment security for its members, but to champion the cause of justice and equal opportunity for those people beset by ignorance, poverty, prejudice and discrimination.

This means unions have a clear obligation to represent the interests of a great many people who are not union members.

This is why labor has a lobby. Sometimes it's called the "People's Lobby," because it pushes for legislation that doesn't benefit union members directly but helps those who don't have full-time personal representatives in the state capitals and in Washington to look out for their interests. Labor's record of support for free public education, for instance, goes all the way back to 1832. And, labor was in the forefront with teachers, church leaders, and university professors to get federal aid for grade schools, high schools and colleges and universities in the 1960's. Scholarships and loans for poor and needy students are part of labor's legislative program in education, too.

Then, there's the case of minimum wage legislation. Almost all union members make more than the federal minimum wage. But many people who aren't union members make less. And a lot more wouldn't be making the minimum if the law didn't exist. Labor was the first organized group to fight for a minimum wage, and it continues to press for legislation that will assure that the minimum wage will not fall behind the level of inflation or the government's official poverty level. A minimum wage, protected against inflation, is the best way to fight poverty and to help the working poor.

Equal employment opportunities, voting rights, civil rights, worker's compensation, unemployment compensation and public health programs -- all are the result of the "people's lobby" approach to legislation.

These programs contribute to the nation's progress and the worker's prosperity and job security. And, they help others less fortunate to stand up as dignified individuals.

American unions are wed to no single party; they support liberal and progressive candidates in both major parties. Union members participate in the parties to make their voices heard and their votes felt when it comes time to select candidates, write party platforms and persuade people to vote for their favored candidates and programs. Political interests begin at the grass roots level and their work begins there at the precinct level. It continues up through the party structure to county conventions, district conventions, state conventions, and national conventions. It consists of registering voters, distributing literature and campaign materials on issues and candidates, and getting out the vote on election day. Participating in politics is 90% sweat and 10% brain, but union members know there is no substitute for hard work. No one ever said making democracy work is easy.

So unions are in politics for three good reasons: to protect themselves and the gains they have won through collective bargaining, to promote justice and equal economic opportunity for all, and to elect public office holds who believe in both.

Part 4 - Politics and Unions

Collective bargaining is one way to help achieve peace, prosperity and security and individual dignity in America today. The other way is through political action.

Union members learned, early in the game, that they can lose in the halls of the legislature what they've gained at the collective bargaining table. Union security is a good example. Prior to 1947, many unions had made bargaining agreements with companies and employers that, if the union was going to represent all workers, then all workers should belong to the union. This seemed reasonable, since unions are legally bound to represent all employees in the bargaining unit, whether they are union members, pay dues, attend meetings and participate in the decision making process or whether they don't.

Then, some regressive and reactionary employers banded together and, in an expensive and high-powered lobbying campaign, began pressing for legislation in Congress to make it possible to outlaw such agreements. Congress went along and permitted states to enact laws banning such agreements.

Today, in 22 states, the law allows an individual to benefit from a union-negotiated contract without paying dues or contributing anything toward maintaining the union or servicing the contract.

Such an individual is a free rider on the backs of fellow employees. And, there's not much dignity in such a distinction.

It is interesting to note, too, that there is not much prosperity in the states that have these so-called "right-to-work" laws.

Part 5 - About Strikes

Unions negotiate for agreements -- not strikes. No union wants a strike. Strikes develop only when both sides -- labor and management -- can, in no other way, reach an agreement.

To union members, a strike means sacrifice for themselves and their families. And, they will not vote to go on a strike unless the issues involved are so great they are worth the sacrifice.

Remember -- strikes are not called or ordered by union leaders. They are voted by the union membership -- to take strike action or not to take it -- and 2/3 majority rules.

We've already said 98% of all contracts negotiated result in agreements achieved without a strike. In fact, the work time lost because of strikes in recent years has been less than three days for every four work years. The common cold causes more lost time than strikes!

But, strikes are controversial and controversy makes news. This, no doubt, is why many people think strikes are the rule rather than the exception.

Management can trigger a strike simply by refusing to bargain or to yield on a point of contention. But the union has to take the first overt action, and the strike is the first visible sign of dispute. This probably accounts for the public blaming unions for strikes in many cases.

But the right to strike -- or right to withhold one's labor in unison and agreement with fellow workers -- is paramount to maintaining democracy. In totalitarian countries, the right to strike is prohibited along with all other freedoms. Put in proper perspective, then, the right to strike is a matter of freedom, and a democracy cannot function without freedom.

Part 6 - Facing the Future

If you are now working on a job, or just out of high school or college, or otherwise active in the labor market, then you have a lot of job thinking to do.

Give just a moment of thought to the long history of the trade union movement in this country and compare the days of the past with the here and now. Then, look to the future. The big employers aren't getting any smaller and the rate of change isn't slowing, but it is opening up new kinds of jobs.

Think about the opportunity to join a union -- about collective bargaining -- about industrial democracy and peace, prosperity and security, and individual dignity on the job.