Why the Closed Union Shop is Fair

Last week the Republican-controlled Michigan House and Senate passed legislation banning the closed union shop.  What it basically does is make it illegal to require someone to belong to the union in order to work at a unionized employer.  I'd like to touch on the reasons why the closed shop is reasonable and justifiable. 

The most often-cited justification is to stop the unfair practice of "free riders."  Since negotiated wages, benefits and safe and healthy working conditions are enjoyed by all the workers, it is unfair for some to reap the rewards without contributing through their membership and dues to the cost and support of bargaining for them.

A second reason comes from the idea of the corporation as a cooperative endeavor in which management and labor each have roles and responsibilities to the organization.  The company cannot operate without both.  Opponents of union shop often say they stand for the freedom of workers to choose.  They like to call such laws as recently passed in Michigan "right to work laws."  A better frame of reference might be "corporate servitude laws."  When a person hires into a firm there are always a number of requirements involved.  The prospective employee doesn't get the freedom to tailor everything to his or her own personal wishes.  A host of such issues as hours, pay, breaks, vacation policies, sick leave, retirement benefits, discipline procedures, scheduling and the work to be performed are all part of the package.  When you hire in you are accepting all of the above.  To say that the worker has no freedom with regards to what management wants but freedom only in what their fellow workers want smacks of the authoritarian mindset toward which that view is slanted.

Finally, the union shop can only exist where it is democratic and contractual.  Unlike the corporation, the union is a democratic organization.  It must be voted in by the workers and the contracts it negotiates for them must be democratically approved by their votes.  When union shop arrangements are in place they exist because they have been negotiated and accepted by both sides and ratified by a vote of the workers.  The result is a contract, a binding agreement on both sides with the force of law.  Consequently, to pass laws like Michigan's is to restrict the freedom of labor and management to negotiate conditions of employment, to subvert the force of a contract and to obviate the democratically expressed voice of the workers.

Budget Woes Spark Challenges at Work

Here is a piece I submitted to our local newspaper yesterday.  In difficult budget times where I teach, how have contentious negotiations played out?  How will it affect students?  Here is my take.

After reading two recent pieces in the Times-Delta’s Opinion section, I felt the need to set the record straight on how things really are at College of the Sequoias.  One was an editorial urging the Board of Trustees to implement a benefits cap on faculty to save money.  The other was a letter imploring faculty and administration to work together for the good of the students rather than let difficult contract negotiations get in the way.

I am currently in my thirtieth year of full time teaching and my fourteenth at College of the Sequoias.  Counting a couple of years as a substitute when I was starting out, it adds up to thirty-two years of teaching.  That includes time at adult school, high school, middle school and community college.  I bring this up to underscore the point that although I have found a high level of dedication and professionalism in all the levels and settings of education I have been in, none exceeds my experience here at COS. 

Whenever there are money problems in a school system there will be disagreements between employees, administration and boards.  I have seen them before in other districts and here, and I expect to see them again.  When revenues are reduced at the college level it means fewer students can be served.  COS is serving some 3,000 fewer students now than when finances were better.  Summer school has been eliminated the past two years.  Programs and people have to do with less.  Sometimes people are financially hurt.  Where and whom to cut are contentious issues.  I have served on the teachers association bargaining team for the past two years and can attest that at COS, contract negotiations between the District and the employee unions representing both the faculty and the classified staff have been long and trying for all concerned.  

As far as the health, vision and dental benefits cap goes, as reported in this newspaper, the Board acted to impose such a cap at their last public meeting.  The faculty and classified associations have been willing to and have proposed many ways of saving the District substantial funds, including salary and other concessions in the amounts management felt were necessary.  For tax and other reasons, their members have preferred these savings come out of things other than benefits.  At one point, faculty even ratified a tentative agreement in which they would have agreed to teach extra classes for free.  This would, if ratified by the Board, have saved the District over half a million dollars a year.  The amount of savings to achieve was never the point of contention; the manner in which they would be exacted has been the issue.  It is clear the Board’s judgment has been that only the benefits cap was acceptable as a way to achieve these savings.  The employee associations have believed there are other ways to accomplish the same goal.  I personally feel that everyone involved has been sincere in their views, and concerned with the financial condition of the District in trying times.  Unfortunately, the District’s insistence on the cap has indeed caused exasperation and been a source of frustration among employees at the college.         

Yet on the other topic, despite such disagreements, the parties have continued to work together to serve students in a highly professional manner.  Community members who have taken courses at COS, or those whose children have, will confirm what I have seen since I arrived here: the quality of the faculty and their dedication to students is exceptional.  As Academic Senate president I got to know and work with most of them, not only teaching faculty but also counselors, work experience technicians, technology and curriculum specialists and librarians.  And I extend this to include the adjunct, or part-time faculty as well, many of whom are experienced local high school teachers or highly skilled professional and vocational practitioners presently in business in the area.

But in a larger sense, I have found this same standard of responsibility across all the staff at COS.  The truth is, the COS family is full of good people who take seriously their service to students and the institution and work collegially to get things done.  That includes the classified staff who do their part to keep things running smoothly in such fields as maintenance, computer services, registration, financial aid, food services, the bookstore, student life, payroll, copy and mail, our police officers, secretaries and many others too numerous to name.  Our administrators have the often thankless task of monitoring and leading programs that are expected to achieve consistently improving results with shrinking budgets and fewer personnel.  They are highly competent people.  Our Trustees are all respected community members strongly interested in expanding the educational opportunities COS offers but keenly aware of their fiduciary responsibility to the financial condition of the District in these challenging times.  They are conscientious public servants.   

I know practically all the people behind the titles I’ve mentioned on a first name basis and believe all are working sincerely to help the school.  The advice to stop bickering and help the students misses the point.  The fact that contract talks have been tough has not stopped the COS family from working together and putting students first.  For example, I recently served on a committee working on the Accreditation process the college goes through every six years.  A fine administrator and I jointly chaired our part of this effort.  Our committee included not only administrators and faculty, but classified (non-teaching) staff, students, and one member of the Board of Trustees.  Everyone worked as a team for the good of the school.  In another example, the Teachers Association recently got together with the Academic Senate to ask faculty to expedite a number of curriculum issues critical to students meeting their program and graduation requirements.  To teachers, students are not just enrollment figures or names on a sheet.  They are people whose names and faces we know, people who, though often contending with numerous obstacles, inspire us with their personal stories and dreams and the efforts they are putting forth to achieve them.  We will not let them down.

Steve Natoli

In Observance of Labor Day

Happy Labor Day, everyone! We celebrate Labor Day both to pay tribute to the dedicated work done by American workers and to commemorate the improvements in our quality of life won by the steadfast efforts of the American Labor Movement.  The first Labor Day was celebrated on September 5, 1882 by the Central Labor Union in New York City.  By the time Labor Day became a national holiday in 1894, it was already being celebrated in thirty states.  As you enjoy the day off today, don't forget to think a moment or two about the sacrifices made throughout the years to win the pay, rights and benefits that even non unionized workers today enjoy.

One of the earliest focuses of Labor was workplace safety.  In 1904, 27,000 American workers were killed on the job just in transportation, manufacturing and agriculture.  In 1914 35,000 died in industrial accidents and 700,000 were injured--and that was in a population only one-third that of the United States today.  Particular incidents such as the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911 galvanized the people and finally moved protective legislation.  In that disaster 146 workers, mostly women, burned or leaped to their deaths from the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of a New York high rise.  Without running water, fire escapes or fire extinguishers, with the doors locked and the fire department's ladders not reaching past the seventh floor, the tragedy was inevitable.  100,000 marched in support of workplace safety regulations and the politicians finally had the courage to overcome employer resistance.

The Populist and Progressive Parties of the 1890s and early 1900s stood for the rights of union membership and collective bargaining.  They campaigned for the 8-hour day, railroad, banking and telecommunications regulation, health and safety protections and a minimum wage.  Though both parties eventually went defunct, virtually their entire programs were eventually adopted, much of them co-opted by the Democrats and Republicans.  They endured violent assaults that killed many workers in such strikes as that at the Homestead Steel Mill and Pullman Sleeping Car Company.  

Such standard practices as lunch breaks, weekends, overtime and holiday pay, vacations, health benefits, worker's compensation, health and safety standards and enforcement and even the concept of national immigration restrictions owe their existence to the organized labor movement, which is nothing less than the democratic action of workers banding together to support humane treatment, due process and a just compensation in repayment for the value they add to their employer's bottom line.

In these times when once again large employers and conservative politicians are trying to roll back the benefits common people have won through years of struggle, give a thought or two on this Labor Day to the workers down through the years who risked their jobs, safety and sometimes even gave their lives for the pay and working conditions most of us now enjoy.

The San Francisco General Strike

Seventy-five years ago this May workers of Depression-era San Francisco, fed up with low wages, intolerable conditions and organized violence against them, flexed their muscles and staged a four-day general strike. The General Strike of '34 ushered in an age of prosperity for working people in San Francisco and spurred passage of the Wagner Act that, in 1935, extended the gains across the nation. The history of this bold action should not be forgotten. You can see yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle article on it here.

Action began with the longshoremen. In those days men simply showed up before the crack of dawn every day to try to get hired in a desperate exercise called the "shapeup." No one knew how many hours he would get or how much he would be paid for them. Often it meant 16-hour days for starvation wages. An Australian immigrant and 13-year dockworker named Harry Bridges patiently coordinated with longshore workers all along the Pacific Coast. In May, 1934 40,000 longshoremen went on strike and shut down every West Coast port. Police and paid company enforcers responded with savage violence, and "sent hundreds of strikers and sympathizers to hospital emergency rooms."

The brutality culminated on July 5, "Bloody Thursday," when police bullets killed two strikers outside the Longshoremen's Union Hall on Stueart Street. The two men lay in state before being led through the city at the head of a massive and disciplined silent parade that finally galvanized the city's working people and gained the support of the middle class. A four-day general strike of practically the entire work force paralyzed the city's economy, demonstrated what the united power of the workers could do, and struck terror into the hearts of the Titans of Nob Hill. "After this display of determined collective power, the maritime workers gained union recognition, substantial increases in wages and control over their hiring halls."

The San Francisco example set off similar movements across the nation in such places as Minneapolis-St. Paul, Toledo, and throughout the Carolinas textile industry. Workers were killed in every one of these challenges to employers, who time and again resorted to armed thugs to attempt to enforce control over the workers. Chaos and bloodshed made it obvious that peaceful procedures needed to be devised to settle labor disputes. The very next year congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) that guaranteed the right to organize and set up the ground rules for collective bargaining. The San Francisco General Strike "was cited as Exhibit A" in this great advance for American wage earners.

It began the process of strong union representation that resulted in the economic and political power that transformed America's blue collar workers into the foundation of the prosperous middle class of homeowners that propelled U.S. living standards to the pinnacle of the world by mid-century. This month, the 75th anniversary of these seminal events, it should be remembered not only that many died for these gains but that the stringent efforts of the past thirty years to discredit and limit the effectiveness of the labor movement have coincided with stagnation and indeed a reduction in the national standard of living for all but the top few percent of the American people. This points up a consistent theme. Rights are not granted from on high. They must be won, often at a terrible price. And they must be defended, or eventually they are lost.