Book Review: On the Virtual Picket Line
Michael Eisenscher
On the Virtual Picket Line
by MARCUS RASKIN
FROM THE TELEGRAPH
TO THE INTERNET.
By Morton Bahr. National Press
(1925 K Street NW,Washington,
DC 20006). 324 pp. $24.95.
The unfortunate flaw in From the Telegraph to the Internet is its title,
which suggests a highly specialized account of an industry when in fact it
is a deeply moving narrative of a committed labor leader who has written a
compelling autobiography about what it means to fill various roles (labor
leader, visionary, father, politician and negotiator) at a time of
tumultuous change in American technology and corporate restructuring. This
book should be required reading in education programs at labor institutes,
universities and especially business schools, so that its readers may gain
insight into the present-day struggles, tactics and organizing purposes of
a US labor union. Morton Bahr, president of the Communications Workers of
America, discusses how the union coped when AT&T was broken apart by court
order and how the CWA, which had its origins in a company union that had
virtually no role or say in the changes that affected hundreds of thousands
of workers, was militant enough to elbow its way into sufficiently
protecting workers' benefits and status.
Then the union began the difficult job of creating a vibrant new entity
for information service workers, who would fit into new patterns of
competitive business while reinforcing the principle that the CWA was an
international union. What Bahr has sought with some success is to find a
way of cooperating with business while maintaining labor's separate and
distinct voice. This is no easy matter and one that requires great subtlety
in advancing the cause of workers in labor-corporate relations. Whatever
unions hope to achieve for their members and society, they must expand
their base through organizing and identifying the causes of the labor
movement with community interests.
Now Bahr has a new job as AT&T seeks communications hegemony. Like the
mythological snake that is cut apart but then reforms itself, the
"re-merging" and new acquisitions of AT&T are intended, in the words of the
May 6 New York Times, to achieve dominance in "the communications landscape
unmatched by any company since the old American Telephone and Telegraph
broke up under government pressure in 1984." The inclusion of the cable TV
industry is intended to integrate various communications services to
consumers.
But where is organized labor in this story? Is it a partner, antagonist or
bystander? As Bahr points out, organized labor is already marginalized.
Unless it responds by building bigger unions, workers will be reduced to
commodities without voice in the Brave New World of the twenty-first
century. The CWA has expanded to public service workers, technical workers
and professional workers in governmenrt. But its success will stand or fall
on the basis of how it is able to adjust to and cause changes in the
communications industry. "Contracts covering the vast majority of our
membership," Bahr points out, "now provide for joint discussion of the
impact of new technology, as well as training and retraining
opportunities." Rather than wait for collective bargaining agreements to
expire, unions and companies should have the capacity to adjust wages and
profit sharing during the life of a collective bargaining agreement--an
idea predicated on the actual strength of the union at the grass roots. The
CWA already tested that in 1992, when it called for an "electronic picket
line" against AT&T. It urged its members to switch carriers and organized
other unions to boycott AT&T services, as well as immensely profitable
caller ID and call waiting services at the local level--an effective
strategy in a competitive market. Can the CWA now have any say in the
production, allocation of resources and likely layoffs as AT&T seeks
efficiencies? Will any vision be large enough and conscious enough of
itself and the national community to offer alternatives to be heard above
the din of clichés regarding "competition"?
As I read Bahr's account I could not help but wonder where labor leaders
fit into the folklore of American life. For Americans outside the labor
movement, labor leaders are thought of as square pegs in round holes, not
quite fitting the story of Capitalist Realism--namely, that the nation's
gains and prosperity came from the immaculate conception of the Founding
Fathers, who anointed businessmen as their disciples. To doubt this story
is to enter into a far more densely textured view of American history, one
integrally tied to organized labor and its leaders. This view requires
consideration of the struggles of freestanding labor unions, which in turn
raises deep questions about social and economic organization, capitalism,
class conflict, class collaboration versus business-labor cooperation, the
role of government, electoral politics and the courage and charisma of
labor leaders.
These questions have not been easy for the labor movement to confront
internally, torn as it has been at different times between the industrial
and craft unions, the left and right, issues of international solidarity
versus patriotism, and shrinking memberships within the shift to a service
economy. In the US context such issues have not been made easy, given the
lack of a major political party to present the needs of workers
consistently. Even the most naļve among us cannot fail to notice that the
two political parties adhere to one business ideology: The personal
ambitions of Republicans and Democrats may not coincide, but the views of
the parties have been virtually consonant in limiting labor's rights,
keeping its role as sotto voce as possible. Thus in recent years the
Democratic Party of Carter and Clinton has been supportive of blatantly
business-oriented ideas such as bipartisan agreements on export capitalism.
The "early" Bill Clinton took a leaf from the anti-union stance of Ronald
Reagan. Coming from an anti-union, right-to-work state, Clinton kept the
story of Capitalist Realism going, emphasizing world trade and global
competition fueled by individual consumer desire in the marketplace, with
workers left virtually without protection.
In this framework, labor unions retained the aura of illegitimacy, not to
be mentioned in speeches and ill considered in polite company or where
major policy questions were to be thrashed out. Bahr makes this point in a
telling way by gently upbraiding former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who
by the estimate of many was a progressive-minded secretary. It took Reich
three years to mention the word "union" in public and then only at a
meeting in Geneva of the International Labor Organization. As Bahr notes
more out of sorrow than controlled anger, "Every other Cabinet secretary
can advance the cause of their constituencies. It is perfectly all right
for the Department of Commerce to carry water for corporate America. The
Secretary of Veteran Affairs is unashamedly 'pro-veteran.' The Secretary of
Education is never blamed for being 'pro-education.' But for some reason
the Labor Department cannot be seen as being 'pro-labor.'"
The cultural reasons for this require some explanation. One of the
interesting aspects of the American working class is that it is not known
as a working class. Instead, it is nominated as middle class (even by its
leaders), or, in the case of those in the secondary labor market, referred
to as working poor. The working class is not an acceptable American
category, perhaps because it reflects group or social solidarity in a
nation that prides itself on individualism and "making it on your own," a
very silly self-deception indeed. Thus the term "middle class" conjures a
certain economic independence while it prizes individualism. The reality is
different in that this "middle class" is insecure, often overworked and
greatly in hock. It is a debtor class. A labor leadership that seeks to
point out this reality can hardly be expected to receive much praise in the
"free press." Indeed, as Bahr points out, the New York Times no longer
bothers to have a labor beat reporter. Similarly, the Washington Post gave
up such notions of "specialized" coverage long ago, as its business and
sports pages expanded.
One should not be surprised that under the catechism of Capitalist Realism
labor leaders are depicted as greedy and self-interested, even those who
are moderate and community-minded. Thus Bahr points out that the legendary
leader of the AFL, Samuel Gompers, is fixed in the minds of millions of
schoolchildren as the labor leader who was asked what labor unions wanted.
He is reputed to have said, in an answer like that of a Wall Street yuppie,
"More." What was created in the minds of generations of Americans was that
no essential difference existed between capital and labor. Both wanted
"more." But what Gompers said was far different. "What does labor want? We
want more schoolhouses 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." In other words, Gompers had a
social democratic conception. Like other labor leaders, whether Eugene
Debs, Walter Reuther, the Dobbs brothers or Bahr, Gompers had a clear
vision of the role of labor and the individual: The liberation of the
worker and the liberation of society go hand in hand. Yet this social
vision could not compete with the romance of the American individualist.
In the popular culture, we have created loner archetypes, heroes and
antiheroes, self-made and unconnected to the social forces around them--the
American cowboy, for instance: independent, uses force when necessary, can
be counted on in a fight, etc. (There is a tragic quality about the cowboy
as well, for he is also a failure in financial terms, lacking that magic of
commercial entrepreneurialism that the economist Joseph Schumpeter writes
of as the spark of capitalist innovation.)
The paradox, of course, is that a worker's individuality and dignity can
be best protected through his or her organization, the labor union, the
institution in which personal and community interests are brought together.
This fact is something that Bahr understands, for he knows that
individuality needs safeguarding--big time. Hundreds of thousands of people
are now employed in management and public relations offices to mask this
need by discouraging workers from joining unions. What is at stake, under
the banner of "productivity," is control over workers' time and space. Bahr
tells of a worker being treated for an illness with a medication that
caused her go to the lavatory several times a day. Each trip was announced
on the plant loudspeaker by management. Such corporate control over the
worker's life is no sideshow. It defines, albeit in extreme form, the
situation of millions of people.
This brings us to labor leaders. Where do they fit into the pantheon of
heroes and villains? We've seen them drawn out in Ray Ginger's biography of
Debs, The Bending Cross; Mary Jones's The Autobiography of Mother Jones;
Harold Livesay's Samuel Gompers and Organized Labour in America; Melvyn
Dubofsky and Warner Van Tine's biography of John L. Lewis; Victor Reuther's
The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the U.A.W. and elsewhere. They are
part of the romance of America, but the question is whether they will be
rendered irrelevant when labor movements don't organize and lose membership
or moral purpose.
One of the tasks of the antihero of modern capitalism, the corporate
gunslinger, is to turn the labor leader into a dying breed without
relevance, who must fall before the wonders of changing technology and
social organization. Cultural stereotype celebrates business as the
innovator and the entrepreneur as the heartbeat of America. As President
Coolidge put it, "The business of America is business."
With its prerogatives, business becomes the locomotive of American life.
And in countless texts US entrepreneurs are presented as folk heroes who,
through determination and innovation, keep society going in a progressive
direction. This is an old story. Even John D. Rockefeller, thanks to the
massaging of the press by his public relations experts, ended his days less
as the villain of the Ludlow massacre than as a grand paternal figure whose
largesse, along with that of Andrew Carnegie, guided education and science.
Never mind that Henry Ford was almost overwhelmed by his own anti-Semitic
ravings and undermined by a brutal internal police force aimed at
destroying an independent labor union. Ruthlessness is forgiven because US
economic ideology claims to be serving a greater good: the project of
production, which has received intellectual blessing through modern
economic ideas, from left to right. In the popular culture the question
became one of whether there was a counter to these men among leaders of
labor. The "disinterested" needed a picture of what labor leaders were.
There are two prevailing, composite perceptions of the labor leader. One
comes to us through the corporation and the media, the other through
literature and folklore that oftentimes does not find its way into
middle-class or "mainstream" literature and consciousness. In Hollywood the
labor leader is commonly depicted as selfish, brutal and uneducated, a
villain, invariably on the take from a businessman or from crime bosses who
remain the shadowy string-pullers.
The cliché of the arrogant and parochial but cunning labor leader who
cares nothing about local communities is almost perversely the inverse of
the extraordinary sophistication that labor leaders/organizers tend to
possess concerning their workers, irrespective of the industry involved.
Indeed, just like CEOs at major corporations, national union heads, for
good or ill, commonly depend on highly trained staffs. And while some labor
leaders undeniably have been corrupt, they have hardly been a match for the
likes of the senior Annenberg, or even of Hollywood moguls.
The second and more sympathetic account of labor leaders is that an
overwhelming number of them were cut from a different mold. They were
organizers who at great personal risk and undeniable suffering built the
movement in the United States. Joe Hill told his comrades not to mourn for
him but instead to organize. Such great labor leaders of the twentieth
century as A. Philip Randolph, Eugene Debs, John L. Lewis, Harry Bridges
and Walter Reuther were powerful organizers who saw no contradiction
between the demands and needs of the larger community and those of workers
as a class.
This deep understanding of the role of organized labor continues into the
twenty-first century. Its organization does not represent capital, it
represents the community--that is, people in terms of their everyday needs.
This can be seen in the extraordinary work of Morton Bahr. The CWA
represents 630,000 workers from diverse industries, "all of whom have
common concerns." Bahr envisions his union as a broad social and economic
movement. As he sees it, the labor organizer must not only win recognition
for the union but organize the basis of material benefits both inside and
outside the workplace. Unions must fight for the rights of the unorganized
so they can become citizens of the political nation. Like other of his
forebears, Bahr believes that organizers are teachers with two objectives.
One is serving notice that workers are more than extensions of a machine or
marginal, disposable as used Kleenex.
Second, that workers' dignity is the key element in this nation's drive
for its humane identity. While the two major political parties, supported
by their corporate sponsors, are concerned about "competitiveness," workers
know that human dignity is the purpose of work. And where that is not
present, union leaders must reshape industry (indeed, the nation) to that
purpose. Bahr believes that unions have moral as well as financial capital
in their pension funds, which the nation--and business--has been trading on
throughout the twentieth century.
So, what does a modern labor folk hero look like? He or she seeks a moral
vision grounded in sophistication about law, business, government and
politics, as well as technology. He or she knows the difference between
selling out and business-labor cooperation, and seeks ways to insure that
technology is understood as a tool of workers and society rather than an
instrument to which people must refashion themselves as in a Procrustean
bed. And he or she is not afraid of being either on picket lines or in
boardrooms when necessary. Nor is that leader passive about investment of
pension capital in the regeneration of society. It would appear that Bahr
qualifies as a modern labor folk hero.