__What, if anything, does the historical record contribute to understanding the problems and challenges facing today's workers and today's unions?

Full disclosure: I am a member of the United Faculty of Florida, AFL-CIO, and secretary of the North Central Florida Central Labor Council

I'm aware that not everyone will agree with this answer. There is both a popular and scholarly literature that depicts organized labor as at best self-serving and high-handed and at worst literally counter-productive and obstructive. Thus declares legal historian Paul Moreno, "Everyone. . . suffers from labor unionization" because in his view unions restrict production, distort compensation patterns, and impede innovation. Indeed, economists Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway conclude that over the past century "labor unions have reduced U.S. output by. . . trillions of dollars." Even liberal t.v. host Bill Maher holds teachers unions responsible for the problems of the public schools, a view widely publicized in the much bally-hooed documentary film Waiting for Superman. Such views, you can be sure, do not go uncontested and indeed a never-ending (but always changing) debate continues to rage among legal scholars, historians, polemicists, and economists about the roles that unions have played and continue to play in the United States. It is not my intention here to address this matter directly⁽¹⁾. My premise is that a strong, autonomous, and energetic labor movement is a necessary component of a healthy democratic society.

1. Fifty year decline in membership. In the mid-1950s, about one-third of all workers in non-agricultural employment were union members. Today about one-eighth are. In non-public employment, only about one worker in 14 is a union member. (In public employment, about one-third are members).

Observes journalist Stephen Greenhouse: Even some labor leaders agree "that American unions seem to be sliding toward irrelevance and oblivion."

C. But do note the still-substantial dimensions of union membership. Here are some figures depicting the membership totals of some prominent US activist organizations:

Thus, even in its weakened state, organized labor is a significant element in American society, particularly in politics.

I've titled this section of my talk "The Uses of the Past," the idea being that perhaps, if we agree, if only for the sake of argument, that a revitalization of the labor movement is something to be desired, some understanding of the historical development of organized labor in America might be helpful. Imagine, then, my dismay when I read just last week the words of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: "At a time when America desperately needs stronger unions, A New New Deal [a recent book by Amy Dean and David Reynolds] sends a clear message that nostalgia for organized labor's past is no strategy for our future."

Undaunted by Trumka's words, however, ever the historian I do believe that there is some value in looking at a period of sustained union success, what economist Paul Krugman calls "The Golden Age" of the American economy (c. 1940-1973), especially for wage-earners. Distribution of income downward into the wage-earning class underwrote the booming prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s. During these years, income was more equally
distributed than during what Krugman calls the "Long Gilded Age,"(c. 1870-1933) and than it has been since the late 1970s. This was also a period of union growth, starting in the 1930s, and strong unions played a key role in both shaping public policy and in pressing the claims of wage-earners, both in the working economy and in the political arena. Klugman: "Everything we know about unions says that their new power was a major factor in the creation of a [post-war] middle-class society." (51)

1. Union growth; expansion into new sectors of the economy; collective bargaining gains, mostly post-World War II; creation of potent political arm (see Zieger and Gall for details).

2. Reasons for this success (not necessarily in order of importance, which is the subject of fierce debate among historians and others

a. Industrial structure. Targets of organization were relatively centralized and integrated; susceptible to carefully focused organizing campaigns. GM and Flint, e.g.

c. Rank-and-file activism-militancy; existence of a "militant minority" of labor activists, both old-school and radical. Key episodes: Rebuilding the UMW, 1933; 1934 strikes; Flint sit-down; Ford organizing campaign, 1941

Who said this?: "Unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice." [Dwight Eisenhower]

e. Bridging the racial-ethnic (but much less so, the gender) divisions among the industrial working class

f. Challenging business ideology. Making a "new deal" for American workers to replace the corporate-dominated "old deal" of the 1920s.

That was then. Can the labor movement once again become a force for a more egalitarian and worker-friendly society? Of what relevance, if any, is the story of the labor movement's successes in the "Golden Age" to the problems and prospects of today's wage-earners?

Comparisons between then and now are tricky. Probably the most important difference is that then, most workers actually made things and employers relied on them to generate production and hence profits. Today, corporate bottom lines (and share prices) are associated with shedding workers, both in production and management. Thus, boasted Alcoa's chief financial officer, as the company recovers from the 2007-08 recession, it would bring back few of the 37,000 employees terminated earlier. Indeed, he promised stockholders, "We're not only holding head-count levels, but are also driving restructuring [further and] that will result in further reductions." (Herbert column)

Globalization; outsourcing; substituting low-wage off-shore workers for high-wage American workers; temporary, "just-in-time" employees; contract workers. For today's workers, the notion of full-time, life-time employment, with defined-benefit pensions-once thought to be the proud American standard.--is a distant memory.

Says management scholar Peter Cappelli in The New Deal at Work: "Employers broke the old deal [i.e., job security, etc.] because they didn't want long-term commitments. But increasingly they don't want employees at all." He adds that "The 'happy worker' model of employee behavior. . . was a basic tenet of business school course work. . . it said. . . that the best way to keep workers productive as to keep them happy, that satisfied and committed employees were the key to [company] performance. While it is difficult for many of us to admit, that model more or less went out the window in the 1980s and was replaced by what might be called the 'frightened worker' model."

This "new model" employment structure has paid off in important respects. Productivity has grown substantially over the past quarter century. Share prices have rose to dizzying heights. Corporate profits mushroomed.

But the price for working people has been high. Wage rates have stagnated even as hours of work have increased. Unemployment, even before the current crisis, was higher on average than had been the case in the 1945-73 period. Glaring inequalities of income and wealth have emerged, inequalities that have a variety of pernicious effects in regard to health, mortality, educational attainment, and civic participation.

One answer, prominent in the boom years of the 1990s, was that in view of the changing structure and technology of work, workers needed to re-invent themselves. Thus, the UAW assemblyline worker was to retrain as an IT expert. But in fact, such skill enhancement has limited relevance to ordinary workers. The great majority of the men and women displaced in the new economy have found little opportunity for high-wage (to say nothing of secure and benefit-providing) employment. Asks journalist Louis Utchitelle, "Training for what? . . . .Rather than a skills shortage, millions of Americans have more skills than their jobs require" and most job creation is for relatively low-wage work-"hotel and restaurant workers, health care employees, temporary workers. . . ." Moreover, he adds, this "trend is likely to continue."

So our question: Does the labor movement have a role in this "new model" structure of employment? Can it advance its goals of achieving a more equitable, secure, and humane social order and a more engaged and active citizenry? Yes, says Greenhouse. It is necessary "To insert the American worker back into the national conversation. . .," but he warns, it "won't be easy."

Prospects for the labor movement's resurgence rest largely on its ability to organize the service sector of the economy. During World War II and into the 1950s, the vast majority of wage-earners toiled in manufacturing, construction, transport, and mining. Today, over 70% of those employed are in "services." Even so, there are certain similarities between then and now. As in the 30s and 40s, if it is to avoid drifting into irrelevance, the labor movement will once again have to "reach out to a largely non-skilled and ethnically diverse workforce."

The mission of today's labor movement is what has always been, i.e., to improve the conditions of wage-earners and their families, especially among those with limited career and employment choices; and to promote the interests of working people in the political arena. Just as the New Deal and the CIO brought a degree of security, workplace due process, increased wages, and so-called "fringe" benefits to an earlier immigrant-based generation of non-skilled workers, so a revitalized labor movement can improve the standards and circumstances of a new generation of custodial, food processing, health care, and clerical workers. And though you can off-shore the manufacturing of the goods the big box stores sell, you can't off-shore the stores themselves, nor can you farm out the hospitals, retirement facilities, medical facilities, office buildings, extended care centers, entertainment complexes, and shopping malls that employ increasing numbers of low-wage workers, the majority of them people of color and/or women. Think of what it would do to current gross disparities in income and wealth if a million Wal-Mart workers gained union standards.

The service sector, however, offers challenges that the men of the 1930s and 1940s did not face. Much of the labor force is comprised of women and people of color. Organizers must root themselves in communities and work with the clergy, citizen activists, and grassroots leaders. Organizers are learning that service sector workers-nurses and teachers; health care and assisted living workers-care deeply about doing their jobs well. Thus, in addition to traditional (and still eminently relevant) concerns about wages, workplace discipline, job security, they may see the union as a means of more effectively helping the people they serve. This has been a recurrent theme in the expansion of organization among both professional workers, such as teachers and nurses, and among non-professionals such as home care workers, hospital workers, and other personal service workers.

In the 1930s, CIO organizers and activists devised innovative techniques, for example the sit-down strike. Successes in the service sector have also featured a number of innovative strategies: the "comprehensive campaign"; the enlistment of the clergy and community leaders; the engagement of the union with the local community; the deep involvement of local workers in setting agendas and in implementing policies; and making the union as a source of worker training, education, and opportunity for job upgrading and education. This formula has been successful in organizing low-wage service and clerical workers, as reflected in the remarkable story of the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union (HERE) in Las Vegas; in the Service Employees' organization of Home Care Workers; in the same union's Jobs with Justice campaigns that have brought thousands of custodial workers into the union; in Healthcare Florida, which has organized thousands of immigrant, minority, and female health care workers in nursing homes, medical facilities, and retirement communities.

Labor organizations and activists have found that they must reach out to the broader pool of progressive-minded people. Working America (2 million members, and counting, enhancing organized labor's political capabilities); worker centers, assisting low-wage, insecure workers, many of them immigrants, documented and not documented-e.g., South Florida Inter-Faith Worker Justice; professional associations-cum-unions (e.g., teachers; nurses); political coalitions with progressive groups (e.g., Living Wage referenda-Florida, 2004; protests against anti-immigration legislation, March 2006).

So-called "contract" workers have devised new forms of organization. These workers are not covered by labor laws and do not enjoy the right to engage in collective bargaining. It is not uncommon for employers to terminate employees and then hire them back on an individual contract basis. One intriguing initiative is provided by the NY Taxi Workers' Alliance, providing an organizational vehicle (NPI) for drivers, who were once paid employees but are now classified as contract workers and hence are exempt from labor law protections. As is also the case in the parcel delivery business, in many cases drivers are expected to "buy" their vehicles (or medallions), and are thus forced into a kind of ruthless self-exploitation. Recently, however, the Taxi Workers Alliance-not a union-has been successful in forcing fare increases and in gaining public awareness of the dangers and hardships that cab drivers faced. Unaffiliated with the AFL-CIO, the TWA has demonstrated that contract workers are not without resources in the struggle to achieve workplace improvements.

Another example is the NYC based Freelancers Union, which offers another example of self-organization. Enrolling thousands of contract workers, primarily in media, advertising, and related fields, it provides health insurance, legal aid, training, for independent contractors outside the collective bargaining umbrella (a kind of modern-day throwback to the workers' mutual aid societies of the 19^th century. Out there in the country, especially in cities with large immigrant, minority, female labor forces, there is a veritable flowering of laborite grassroots organizations. For example, New York's Chinese Staff & Workers' Association (CSWA); Coalition of Imockolee Workers which has just won another increase in the price paid to immigrant tomato harvesters in Florida; Industrial Workers of the World (Starbucks; Jimmy John); Rocunited (Restaurant Opportunities Center); Young Workers United (San Francisco). ROC United, for example, has its roots in efforts to help displaced restaurant workers in the wake of 9/11. Officially founded two years ago, it does job training and placement; research; advocacy for restaurant workers; legal services that represent restaurant workers in workmen's compensation, race and sex discrimination, and wage chiseling cases; and advocacy for changes in health and safety rules and wage standards. It now has about 3200 members and has branched out to open centers around the country. The immediate goal is not to funnel people into the Restaurant Workers national union-although a HERE representative does sit on their advisory board-but rather to use publicity, advocacy, legal action, and cooperation with progressive employers to improve conditions and create opportunities for historically low-wage restaurant workers

Labor activists and scholars debate what needs to be done. According to one model, embraced by the top AFL-CIO leadership, changes in labor law are critical to organized labor's ability to rebound. Its efforts have centered on the doomed effort to gain passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would simplify union recognition procedures, promote first-contract resolution, and stiffen penalties for labor-law violators. Union advocates point to the injustice of other labor-law provisions, notably the ban on secondary boycotts (perfectly legal in most industrial countries) and employers' ability to hire permanent replacements during strikes, workers who can then turn around and form the basis for successful decertification proceedings. (As journalist Alexander Cockburn once remarked, "In America it's legal to go on strike; it's just illegal to win.")

Other advocates argue that devoting substantial resources to changing labor law is a non-starter. Even with a substantial Democratic majority in Congress and a Democratic president, the hopes of passing EFCA were quickly shown to be illusory. Workers, this strain of argument runs, must rely on their own resources. Organized labor must once again function as a movement and reach out to ethnic communities, people of faith, young activists, and other fair-minded citizens to develop what HERE's John Wilhelm has termed "comprehensive campaigns," by-passing the counterproductive NLRB entirely and compelling employers, through imaginative public relations, exposure of corporate wrong-doing, real rank-and-file involvement, and cultivation of community allies to compel employers to remain neutral in organizing campaigns.

I'm not in a position to tell labor activists in which direction to move. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. Certainly, it took grass roots militancy, imaginative and resolute leadership, community allies, and favorable changes in the content and enforcement of labor laws to build the industrial union movement. After all, the language of the 1935 National Labor Relations (or Wagner) Act remains in force: "It is . . . the policy of the United States to . . . encourag[e]. . . the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and . . . [to] protect. . . the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating and terms and conditions of their employment. . . ."

What's at stake? A revitalized labor movement can be a potent force for a much-needed downward distribution of income and for the promotion of a more egalitarian society. Moreover, it seems to me self-evident that an authoritarian-or even a paternalistic-workplace is an anomaly in a putatively democratic society. In the fight against Apartheid in South Africa, we celebrated the role of the unions in promoting democratic change. We hailed the rise of Solidarity, the Polish workers' union, in its challenge to the Communist regime there. As in those countries, so in the US. In mind the words of Elaine Bernard, director of Harvard's Trade Union Project: "By bringing together workers who are isolated as individuals and often competing against each other . . . , unions forge a community in the workplace. They help workers understand that they have rights, and they provide a collective vehicle for exercising those rights. . . . They provide a powerful check to the almost total power of management in the workplace. And they fight for the right of workers to participate in decision-making in the workplace [and in the larger community]."

I end with a dilemma, perhaps an irony. On the one hand, for the labor movement to carry forth the project of organizing the unorganized it must gain greater political clout. But if it is to expand its political influence, it must grow its membership. Asks political scientist Susan Orr, "How long can the labor movement provide effective support for progressive public policies without expanding its organizational base?"

Historians relish by dilemmas and ironies. As a historian, I am intrigued by these questions. As a union supporter, however, I find the challenge they pose troubling and perplexing. In some of the initiatives mentioned earlier, however, I do find a sustaining possibility. I do see a margin of hope.

Sources. The historical material in this talk is based largely on Zieger and Gall, American Workers, American Unions.

Peter Cappelli, The New Deal at Work: Managing the Market-Driven Workforce (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999)

Dorothy Sue Cobble and Michael Merrill, "The Promise of Service Worker Unionism," Service Work: Critical Perspectives, ed. Marek Korczynski and Cameron Lynne Macdonald (London: Routledge, 2008), 153-74

Julius G. Getman, Restoring the Power of Unions: It Takes a Movement (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010)

Steven Greenhouse, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker (NY: Knopf, 2008)

Louis Uchitelle, The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences (NY: Knopf, 2006)

1. For references to work considering the pros and cons of unions, see Robert H. Zieger, For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 236-37, note 8; and Lawrence Mishel (with Matthew Walters), "How Unions Help All Workers," Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper, August, 2003 (at http://epinet.org )