The following is an excerpt from the interview by the American Herald Tribune and reporter, Mohsen Abdelmoumen, with Dr. Jack Rasmus. The subject focus is the decline of organized labor in the US and advanced capitalist economies under Neoliberal offensives since the 1970s, and what might be done to begin a resurrection of a unionized working class.
Mohsen Abdelmoumen:
You have worked on trade union issues and you have been a trade unionist yourself. In the face of the fierce neoliberal offensive, do we not have a vital need for a very strong trade union movement to defend the working class?
Jack Rasmus:
Absolutely. One of the great tragedies in recent decades is the destruction and co-optation of what’s left of that trade union movement. The destruction was planned in the 1970s and the implementation of a strategy of union destruction began in earnest under Reagan and has not ceased ever since. One of the greatest and most successful union strike waves in the US occurred in 1969-71 (second in scope only to 1946). Workers won wage and benefit gains of 25% in the first year of contracts at that time (1970-71). First construction trades, then teamsters, then auto and steel, then port dockworkers. Employers could not stop them. They were too well organized and remembered how still to fight from the traditions left over from the 30s and 40s. That’s when a plan was developed first to destroy the building trades. That was implemented back in the late 1970s, even before Reagan. Under Reagan the attack was directed at manufacturing and transport unions. At its core was the offshoring of their jobs and the deregulation of their industries to intensify competition to drive down wages. The beginning of the ‘contingent’ labor transformation began in the 1980s as well, then accelerated. Free trade wiped out more jobs, especially under Clinton in the 1990s. Pensions were destroyed in the private sector in the 80s and 90s. Minimum wages were allowed to lag. Healthcare costs were privatized and shifted to workers. Some workers fought back, a rear-guard action.
But the explanation for the demise of unionization in America in the private sector cannot be understood as solely the result of capitalist offensives. That was important. But so was the lack of leadership by unions at the top. They thought it would temporary, under Reagan, and they could recoup losses thereafter in membership, wages, and benefits. But it was not temporary. It continued under Democrats in the 1990s. The problem was that unions, as they weakened, turned to the Democratic Party to save them. It didn’t. As they got weaker they pleaded with Democrats even more, but the latter simply took their support for granted and did little in return. The Democrat party insisted the Unions not embarrass them by strikes, especially under Clinton. The leadership abided by the party’s request. And got weaker still, losing more members. Then came NAFTA, China, and H1-B visas giving hundreds of thousands of jobs to skilled labor coming to the US. Millions of jobs were lost after 1997 to trade. Then came tax cuts for business that subsidized the replacement of labor by capital and machinery. That devastated at least as many jobs as free trade deals. Then came the collapse of housing markets and permanent loss of millions of construction jobs. Filling the gap of jobs were more low paid service employment and more contingent part time, temp work, at lower pay and no benefits. All the while the leaders of unions pleaded with Democrats to help them. Obama promised reforms to help unions organize new members in 2008, then buried the promise once elected and having received union members’ contributions in the millions for his campaign.
The problem of declining unions is a problem of capitalist restructuring and change, of capitalist offensives to de-unionize and weaken collective bargaining. But it’s also a consequence of wrong union strategies, especially becoming more dependent on Democratic party leaders who abandoned unions once they took their campaign contributions. If unions are to resurrect themselves, and I believe they will, it will have to be an independent union movement, not depending on either wings of the corporate party of America—aka the Democrats and the Republican wings of this single, essentially capitalist party. It will probably have to assume a new kind of organizational form as well. Not organized along lines of ‘smokestacks’, for this or that industry, and not placing contracts as its key objective but forming alliances and new organizations that include allies outside of work and pursuing political-legislative objectives as equally important strategies.
Having personally lived and worked in unions when they were at their peak, and then experienced and witnessed the decline, from within and from afar, it is clear union labor will have to undergo a major organizational and strategic restructuring of its own if it is to become a force it once was. But this is not the first time historically it has undergone such a transformation and arose to resume its critical economic and political role. I’m convinced it will do it again. But only if that resurrection attempt is done independently and it breaks as an appendage of either of the wings of the corporate party of America.
Unions should be subjected to anti-trust laws.
michael zitterman
mikiesmoky@aol.com
Can’t agree with that at all. Union are the only way some workers can recover some wages and benefits. leave it to the market, as has been the case since 1979 as unions have declined, and what you get is stagnant and falling real wages since 1982, loss of pensions and employer paid health care coverage, rising household debt as working families borrow to try to maintain their living standards. And a major factor in the growing income inequality trends in America.
Rising union wages is suicidal.
Who pays the increases in union wages?
Consumers, which lower their standard of living in favor of union labor.
The main culprit is the “minimum wage” concept.
PROOF:
Assume the national minimum wage were raised to $25/hour.
What effect would that have upon “unauthorized visitors” into this nation?
What effect would that have upon HS graduation rates?
What if there were no minimum wage?
What effect would that have upon “unauthorized visitors”?
What effect would that have upon HS graduation rates?
THINK without bias.
Assuming that Congress should pass legislation that should benefit this nation, why are we where we are?
Does anyone know the answer??
.
I “think” I do.
michael zitterman
mikiesmoky@aol.com
Hello Jack, appreciate your optimism with the potential resurgence of unions and organized labor…but wouldn’t people actually have to work together to achieve these goals? It’s hard enough to get a group of people to support a bake sale, much less organize toward a common goal on a mass level. It seems that most working class people are distracted by TV and technology, fearful of each other, cynical, skeptical and plum tuckered out tired. I don’t see where the impetus will come from to inspire mass action any time soon. Too easy to sit on one’s behind and binge-watch Netflix. We talk about macro change from above. How about mass change from below?
I can’t disagree with a lot of what you’ve said. But I’m presuming that younger workers–millenials and genzers–are going to be forced to do something to protect themselves. Right now, most are still settling for personal alternatives and adding 2nd and 3rd pt/temp/gig jobs and accepting a lower standard of living. But as the next crisis soon hits (already beginning) that may become difficult. The big crunch will come by 2025 as AI technology starts to wipe out much of those jobs. One indicator is the growing interest in ‘socialism’, which to them simply means ‘not the present’. They’ll have to organize themselves economically eventually. But the economic and political will overlap in new ways. That’s why I say the next re-unionization wave next decade will not take the form of the last (in the 1920s-30s-40s). It will not be ‘smokestack’ structures around industries and negotiating contracts, although that too won’t disappear altogether. I trust that capitalism will push people too far and they’ll respond organizationally to defend themselves; at least the younger who are the most exploited right now. Middle agers and pre-retirees will, as always, try to find a way to ‘make it to the retirement line’. But they’ll find that line has evaporated. Retirement will be continue work while drawing on a meager stipend (social security and a couple thousand in 401k or IRAs) while they continue to work somehow on meaningless part time service jobs. A lot will depend whether the ‘awakening’ of unionization once again can manage to do so independent of the Democrat party and the top union leadership who can’t see any alternative than to plead with the Dems to help them.