Socialist Action /May 2001
Labor Briefing
Hoffa V.P. says union good for bosses
Teamster International Vice President Ken Wood
(elected on the Hoffa slate) must think that bosses are boneheaded when
they resist his organizing efforts. That's because Wood says his union's
contracts help the bosses with troublesome issues like workers who want
a little more money, or protection from discrimination, or workers' demands
that might force bosses out of business.
Wood told a Tampa Tribune reporter, "I take
the position that really, I'm good for an employer. My reason is this: I
become your perfect 'No' to the employees when they come to you wanting
an additional hire day, or additional vacation, or pay raise, because all
the employer has to say to them is, ' I'd love to give it to you, but the
contract says this.'
"Also I keep you [the boss] out of the court
system, the labor board, the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission],
the Wage & Hour, all these places. Because seniority is totally blind
to race, color, creed, sex religion, national origin, whatever.
"It's like I try to tell employers: You as
an employer will probably succeed without [organized] labor. Labor will
not succeed without an employer. So we're not in the business of putting
somebody out of business."
While it's easy to understand Wood's frustration
with stubborn bosses, it's not easy to understand how "his" union
local recruited its 3500 members. Surely, the union doesn't find the same
arguments it uses with the bosses to be persuasive with workers.
Cross-border trucking: Where's the solidarity?
By the end of the year, Mexican trucking companies (perhaps some U.S.
owned), expect to be sending their big-rigs and Mexican drivers across the
U.S.-Mexican border, under bipartisan NAFTA legislation.
Up to now, an unacknowledged deal by the Clinton administration and the
Teamsters Union has blocked the proposed cross-border trucking.
The Teamsters Union argues that the Mexican trucks are hazardous, and
that the Mexican drivers lack basic workers' protections. Teamster President
James P. Hoffa says, "We will continue to fight for the safety of the
American motorist..." So judging from the union's statements, its number
one concern is highway safety.
But is that true? Is highway safety the fundamental Teamster issue? If
it is, how does the union justify its mediocre record when it comes to fighting
trucking bosses who push drivers to violate hours-in-service regulations,
purportedly designed keep exhausted and sleepy drivers off the road?
By the way, the 50-year-old Department of Transportation regulations
have long been out-of-date. For example, they fail to recognize the human
body's natural rhythms, permitting companies to impose irregular schedules
and quick turnarounds. Numerous studies indicate that the majority of drivers
work more hours than the law allows. Indeed, one union-friendly academic
analyst calls today's big-rigs "sweatshops on wheels."
And no wonder. The Teamsters Union has thousands of its members working
under contracts that are clearly piecework schemes. Rather than get paid
by the hour, these drivers are paid by the mile and the load. The more loads
they deliver the more they are paid. And the faster they drive, the more
loads they deliver.
With contracts that virtually institutionalize piecework and the union's
weak record on filing effective grievances, failing to strike to enforce
safety issues, it's hard not to think that the safety issue is just a mask
to cover up its real concern-competition from low-wage Mexican workers.
Of course, no should blame Teamsters for wanting to hang on to what they
have. But is treating Mexican drivers as little different from potential
scabs the way to win from the bosses secure jobs that pay well? Isn't such
thinking playing into the bosses' game of divide-and-then-conquer workers?
Back when unions' rallying cry was "organize the unorganized,"
unemployed and poorly paid workers were not considered a threat to unions
but an opportunity to increase their numbers and increase their power to
force bosses to make concessions on wages and working conditions.
It was massive organizing drives-not limited to what the laws, bosses,
or politicians allowed-that brought U.S. workers and their unions their
greatest basic gains to date, and all that during the toughest economic
times, with historically high joblessness.
Now that it almost certain that Mexican drivers will be crossing the
border, Teamsters need what they should have had in the first place: A strategy
to organize our fellow workers, not fight them!
Carpenters vacate 'House of Labor'
On March 29, the Carpenters Union's national leadership marched the union's
325,000 members out of the AFL-CIO. Almost immediately President John J.
Sweeney ordered all state and local AFL-CIO bodies to expel Carpenter delegates.
Both sides have been closed-mouth about the dispute, but labor commentator
Harry Kelber says that Carpenters President Doug McCarron is seeking to
infringe on other building trades jurisdictions, as McCarron tries to transform
the union into a "wall-to-wall" outfit "through which contractors
could be assured of lining up the services of ironworkers, bricklayers,
laborers, plumbers, and other trades for a complete construction job."
Kelber says that McCarron "hopes to attract tens of thousands of
non-union workers in all crafts who are willing to work below the union
scale and with fewer benefits. If McCarron goes ahead with his plans, it
will amount to a declaration of jurisdictional war with the other crafts,
with predictable turmoil for the construction industry."
McCarron has angered rank-and-file carpenters by his forced "restructuring"
of the union, putting locals into authoritarian regional bodies, without
the ranks' say-so. One critic says, "About the only activity that seems
possible and permissible in the locals is running picnics."
Still McCarron was recently reelected to his second term, though the
ranks couldn't vote. Canadian carpenters may secede from the parent union,
charging that "the International continues to take away the democratic
rights of carpenters all across North America."
Socialist Action /May 2001 |