Organized labor in the United States is in big trouble. That is not exactly hot news. Everyone knows that union membership has been declining for years, and it's no secret that the 1984 election results were disastrous for the AFL-CIO. But in recent months, two documents have been released that shed some new light on just how bad things have gotten for the unions and some of the reasons why.
In February the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a report showing that the percentage of workers belonging to unions has declined from 23 percent in 1980 to 18.8 percent in 1984. The biggest losses were in the manufacturing sector of the economy, long the backbone of the union movement. There the percentage of union members has fallen from 30.5 percent in 1980 to 24 percent in 1984. In the fast-growing service sector, where unions were already weakest, membership declined from 13.5 to 10.5 percent. Only among public employees have the unions held their ground thus far in the Reagan era.
There are many reasons for the continuing decline in labor's power. The one most often noted is the changing nature of the economy. New technologies have made it easier for U.S. companies to spread their operations across the globe in search of cheap labor, and naturally the union jobs in this country have been the first to go. In a classic "Catch-22," the resulting decline in the unions' membership base leaves them with shrunken resources to devote to new organizing or to political action against capital flight.
The toll of deindustrialization alone would have been bad enough for the unions, but that process has increasingly been coupled with more aggressive union-busting tactics on the part of corporations. And the federal government, long the chief protector of trade union rights, has over the last decade slowly shifted its weight to the side of business.
Today the National Labor Relations Board, the agency charged with supervising union organizing, elections, and negotiations, is dominated by Reagan appointees and has made a series of rulings that increase management's ability to fire union activists, bring in strike-breakers, and intimidate workers considering unionization with the threat of layoffs.
While the intense corporate and governmental assault on labor has probably been the most important factor in the unions' loss of membership and power, it must be admitted that organized labor has contributed to its own decline. That was the much-needed message of the AFL-CIO's own "state of the unions" study released at the federation's annual leadership gathering in March. While noting the external forces arrayed against the labor movement, the report, the first such self-examination in the AFL-CIO's history, also admitted that the unions' leadership and bureaucracy have been complacent, ineffective, and unresponsive in facing the changed circumstances of recent years. The study's prescription was more democracy, within the unions and in the workplace. The unions' report even admitted that organized labor must respond to the "insistence voiced by workers ... to have a say in the 'how, why and wherefore' of their work."
ONE IMPORTANT DILEMMA facing the U.S. labor movement in the 1980s was only indirectly addressed in the self-criticism document, though it is a major concern for many union activists. That is the labor movement's relationship to the various grassroots social movements of our time.
Throughout much of its history, the American labor movement has been a major force in the broader struggle for social justice and democracy. And during that time, labor found its allies among the progressive, populist, feminist, and other dissident forces outside the workplace. But for the last 40 years, the labor movement has come to depend on its alliance with the federal government and the Democratic Party.
As a result of that alliance, the labor movement has, in the postwar period, become identified with the worst aspects of America's Cold War and interventionist policies and has often seemed more interested in protecting its institutional prerogatives than in fundamentally reshaping the balance of wealth and power in the United States. Today the unions are being forced back into a stance of opposition, but four decades of conservatism have alienated them from many potential allies.
Given this history, it would be no surprise if many peace and social justice activists, including those in the churches, were tempted to say "good riddance" upon hearing that the unions are in dire straits. But that kind of short-sighted writing-off of the labor movement can be at least as big an obstacle to social change as is the conservatism of some labor leaders. For one thing, many labor activists, including the heads of some of the largest unions, advocate a more progressive foreign policy and more far-reaching social vision, and their influence within the councils of the AFL-CIO is growing slowly. And, like it or not, it is a cold, hard political fact that there will be no effective movement for social change in the United States without the full participation of the labor movement.
But more important than that, Christians who are trying to flesh out the biblical vision of justice in our time need to stand with the labor movement because it is right to do so. Unions are an indispensable instrument for humanizing and bringing justice to the workplaces where most Americans spend at least a third of their lives. Economic justice is a part of that.
Without the labor movement, there would be no minimum wage or 40-hour work week in the United States. There would also be no Social Security, disability payments, unemployment insurance, welfare, or anything else for those unable to work or denied the opportunity. But there is also the more important matter of human dignity. Unions are the only potential voice workers have in their struggle to be treated not as depreciable assets but as human beings with rights. Non-union workers may sometimes enjoy good wages and even a fairly humane work environment, but in almost every case that is only because other workers have organized and fought for those gains. And in the absence of a strong labor movement, those indirect benefits to the unorganized would quickly disappear.
Historically Christian social activists and trade unionists have been side by side in the great struggles of our nation. Many of the Christian abolitionists of the 19th century were also vigorous partisans of the labor movement. The churches and unions were often together in the most difficult struggles of the Depression era. The Roman Catholic Church in the United States has had an especially strong history of support for workers' rights. More recently, despite occasional disagreements on other matters, churchpeople and trade unionists have formed powerful partnerships around the rights of farmworkers, textile workers, and others in situations of gross exploitation.
Today that kind of exploitation is becoming the lot of millions of other workers, including many we might have come to think of as relatively affluent. In such a time, it is more important than ever for Christians to stand on the side of workers and their organizations. That doesn't mean being uncritical of shortcomings in the labor movement. Both religious activists and unionists would benefit from a vigorous discussion of their differences. But it does mean making the unions' right to exist and flourish a central component of our political agenda.
Danny Collum was an associate editor of Sojourners magazine when this article appeared.
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