Socialist Action /January 2000
Labor Briefing
Teamsters urge members to fight U.S. postal monopoly
Organized labor rightly takes credit for its early support of public
services, such as schools, libraries, hospitals, and the like. More recently,
unions have opposed the privatization of public-sector jobs held by teachers,
clerks, and custodians.
Now the Hoffa-led Teamsters Union has taken a step backwards. The union
is calling on its members and their families to demand that Congress end
the post office's "competitive advantage," which "artificially
impedes job growth in the private sector industries specializing in package
delivery...."
The union adds that "if the Postal Service is permitted to continue
to use profits from its government-granted, first-class mail monopoly to
subsidize the price it charges for other delivery services, then our Teamster
jobs at UPS are in jeopardy." On the other hand, postal workers' jobs
are in jeopardy if Hoffa gets his way.
That union leaders would permit bosses to play off the UPS workers against
the postal workers is outrageous. A long time ago, workers' organizations
successfully fought for a eight-hour workday, so that all workers might
have a job. But that's ancient history.
More recently, union officials have, in effect, given up the eight-hour
workday, in exchange for overtime pay for some, and pink slips for others.
Interns are workers
For decades, the press has re-told the story of medical interns and residents
working 24-hour shifts, certainly not by their choice nor that of their
patients. Now the long hours and much more may change for up to 100,000
doctors-in-training.
By a narrow majority, the National Labor Relations Board reversed a 1976
decision and ruled on Nov. 29 that federal law gave the previously excluded
personnel at the nation's 400 private teaching hospitals the right to form
unions.
The AFL-CIO and the American Medical Association (AMA) filed briefs in
support of the interns and residents. Earlier this year, the AMA voted to
support unionization of doctors. About 10,000 interns do belong to unions,
but they work at public, not private hospitals.
"This decision gives us the power to negotiate better conditions
for the nation's residents and to advocate better for patients," a
residents' representative told The New York Times ( Nov. 30).
As economy grows, workers' share shrinks
The nation's economic pie is growing, but are workers as a whole getting
a bigger slice? No, according to a university economist. Edward N. Wolff
says his new study, as reported in The New York Times (Dec. 5), reveals
that despite the current economic expansion, labor's share "is two
to nearly four percentage points below levels reached in the late 1960s
and the 1970s." That's two to nearly four percent of eight trillion
dollars!
Wolff suggests that workers in general are even worse off than his figures
indicate. That's because the "bonuses, exercised stock options, profit-sharing
fancy perks and more" received by multimillionaires, such as Bill Gates
of Microsoft fame, is included in the government's total of workers' incomes.
"This is a shell game," said Richard Freeman, a Harvard University
labor economist. "If Gates does not take his income in Microsoft profits,
he pays himself a bigger salary, and labor's share goes up. But Harry Sixpack
has little to show for that improvement."
Wolff also has an explanation as to why the nation's working-class majority
is seeing its share of the nation's income falling: "I think it is
due to the declining power of labor, reaching back to the Reagan administration's
decision to break the union of air traffic controllers. That was a signal
that government wasn't going to support labor anymore." Perhaps a Times
editor agreed, for the article was captioned, "As Class Struggle Subsides,
Less Pie for the Workers."
Wolff didn't openly criticize organized labor's tops for their cowardliness
in the face of Reagan's blatant attack, nor did he mention their collaboration
when earlier Nixon ordered a wage freeze. Nor did he mention their rolling
over when the bosses demanded take-aways during the 1980s and 1990s, as
evidenced by the declining number of strikes. And Wolff didn't mention the
union bureaucrats' current promotion of labor-management committees and
so-called jointness programs.
Neither the so-called invisible hand of the market, minimum wage, or
living wage laws have kept workers from losing out, even as the economy
expands. That expansion has meant a bit more pie for many workers, but a
smaller share for workers in the aggregate.
There may be a more telling indicator of the union bureaucrats' failure
to organize workers to defend themselves from the bosses than workers' shrinking
share of the national income, but perhaps none are as easily measurable.
Workers' falling share will become more obvious and perhaps troublesome
for bosses and union bureaucrats alike when the inevitable economic contraction
takes hold.
Socialist Action /January 2000 |