American Unionism: From Protest to Going Concern

American Unionism: From Protest to Going ConcernAuthor(s): Jack BarbashSource: Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1968), pp. 45-59Published by: Association for Evolutionary EconomicsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4223896 .

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AMERICAN UNIONISM: FROM PROTEST TO GOING CONCERN

Jack Barbash

This is a first attempt to conceptualize rationalization tendencies in American unions as an example of the evolution of an institution from protest mass movement into going concern. Rationalization as used here is the making of unon decisions through rules, organization and ex- pertness rather than through trial by struggle, ideology and hit-or-miss. The alternatives from which these decisions are made are more likely to be "closely related to existing reality"' than to revolutionary goals. Rationalization is utilized to serve the union's purposes, which are, generally, the improvement of conditions of work for the union constituency, the advancement of union interests in social policy, the maintenance of a viable balance of sectional interests within the union, and the enhance- ment of the union leader's standing and the union's standing as an institution.

The examination in the first part of this paper is organized around the three major union functions: collective bargaining (further subdivided into the negotiation and administration of the agreement), union government and administration, and political-legislative activity. The second part discusses the limitations on and implications of union rationalization.

RATIONALIZATION IN COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

The terns of the agreement have been rationalized at the level of the enterprise by worling out mutually acceptable criteria for wage determination. The criteria on which consensus seems to have been reached are (1) the employer's ability to pay, (2) the equitable interest of the workers in increased productivity, (3) the differentiation of workers by skill, effort input, disagreeableness of work, and custom, in the form of wage and job structure, (4) the supplementation of direct wages by pension and health payments in behalf of the employee and his de- pendents, (5) the "vested interest" of the incumbent employee in the existing conditions of work and, in the event of a material impairment of that interest, the employee's right to an opportunity for another job

The author is Professor of Economics at The University of Wisconsin, Madison. This paper was presented before the Association for Evolutionary Economics, De- cember 27, 1967, Washington, D. C.

'Robert A. Dahl and Charles E. Lindblom, Politics, Economics and Welfare, New York, 1953, p. 82.



46 JACK BARBASH

or a compensatory payment in lieu thereof, (6) the maintenance of real wages, and (7) the right of management to some certainty in the con- tracted terms of employment for a middle-run period (that is, the one- year-plus agreement).

The effect of the criteria is to define and narrow the range within which the wage negotiations take place, while leaving indeterminate the precise point within that range on which the union and management will ultimately agree. Differences over the precise point nevertheless make strikes commonplace.

Most commonly, rationalization of wages operates at the level of the firm but it is not unusual for it to be upgraded to the level of the industry or the labor-market area. Still being debated is whether rationalization's reach should, or could, be extended economy-wide.

Rationalizing tendencies have made powerful strides in the process of collective bargaining. The strike is still the decisive sanction for the bargaig process but its function is limited almost solely to tactical support. Strike militancy for its own sake no longer has a significant place in the union strategy for the established unions. "The old theory of the Industrial Workers of the World," a socialist unionist wrote in the 1930s, "that no strike is ever lost must be discarded. It may be true that the vanguard of the trade union movement may learn from labor's defeats as well as from its victories, but anybody who has tried to organ- ize a group of workers who bear the scars of a strike defeat will know how timid these workers can be and how hostile to organization."'2 For some unions currently in the throes of a struggle for identity and recognition-like the teachers-the strike and other forms of direct action seem to serve not only as tactical support for specific demands but also as an expression of independence from and disaffection with the "power structure."

Picketing during a strike is token except in the rare instances where the employer chooses to operate the plant in earnest. The union and management come to an understanding as to how the strike ritual can conform to the union interest in no productive work, the management interest in safety and proper maintenance, and their joint interest in minimizing unnecessary friction which may imperil the relationship when the strike is over. National union controls over strikes by subordinate bodies act further to dampen impetuous striking.

The organization, rules of conduct and sequence of moves in the negotiations process have by now been regularized. Demands are served by the parties on each other several months before the expiration of the agreement. It is commonly understood that the first demands represent only a probing operation. To lessen the tension of negotiating under the gun of contract expiration, the parties in a few situations are

2Jack Rubinstein, "Aspects of Industrial Unionism," in Julia E. Johnsen, Craft Versus Industrial Unionism, New York, 1937, p. 171.



American Unionism: From Protest to Going Concern 47

experimenting with joint study committees to explore issues in advance of formal negotiations. These committees may include "informed neu- trals to facilitate the analysis of issues."'

The face-to-face negotiations take place at a neutral site. Each side is represented by a team which increasingly includes lawyers, and occa- sionally economists on the union side. There is a growing tendency for the union to present a formal submission and justification of demands. Its demands for wage increases may be supported by data on increases in cost of living since the old contract was agreed to, advances in productivity, improvements in the profit position of the company and the industry, and-as tactically relevant-wage comparisons, both within the firm to prove internal inequities and outside the firm to prove that comp- arable firms in the same area or the same industry pay higher rates. In large, industry-wide or key negotiations the union may commission outside economic consultants to strengthen the union's case. This is aimed as much at public opinion as at the employer.

The effective negotiations get underway when a small subcommittee- ultimately, perhaps one man from each side-meets in closed session. If, as is usual, the subcommittee reaches a consensus, it is taken back to the full committee for approval, which is commonly but not always forthcoming.

The contrast with earlier bargaining arrangements is very marked. In the early post-Civil War negotiations between International Harvester and the Molders,

Wage settlements were oral and of no set duration. Union rules that appear to have been successfully enforced included having skilled foundry work performed exclusively by the journeymen molders; one helper per journeyman; and payment of the minimum, locally deter- mined union-wage scale. Piecework was permitted by the union, and was the method of payment to molders in the McCormick foundry. Union shops for journeymen molders were demanded, but it is not clear how often they were achieved. Bargaining lacked much of the give-and-take of today's drawn-out negotiations. One side or the other opened "bargaining" by unilateral action: the employer generally by effecting a wage cut, the union by presenting a citywide ultimatum to all foundry employers calling for a wage increase by a certain date. Managements that failed to comply were generally struck, though compromises were sometimes achieved.' The grievance procedure has systematized the administration and

enforcement of the agreement. The contract commonly specifies the steps

'Benjamin Aaron in University of California, Los Angeles, Research Conference on Collective Bargaining, 1964, p. 1.

'Robert Ozanne, A Century of Labor-Management Relations at McCormick and International Harvester, Madison, 1967, pp. 5-6.



48 JACK BARBASH

in the procedure, the time limits for each step, the form of submission and the umpire's jurisdiction. The processed cases serve to build up a stock of precedent, a kind of "common law." In a few bargaining systems an outside agency is employed to codify in a manual the common law evolving out of arbitration.

Unions and management have worked out for themselves techniques, if not a science, of efficient grievance behavior. Almost every union publishes a manual or otherwise instructs union people in the objective techniques of resolving grievances. The goal is, of course, to win the grievance but, it should be noted, to win it on a live-and-let-live basis.

The grievance system represents rationalization in the form of a bi- lateral government based on a collective agreement. The system has not eliminated grevances; it has simply provided organiztion and rules for their adjustment-organization and rules which evolved, for the most part, from the method of catch-as-catch-can struggle for institutional power, which was the way grievance handling began in the mass-production industries.

There emerges from the negotiations a detailed contract, agreed upon by both sides. The contract sets out detailed terms of employment according to five main categories: wages, hours and supplements, job security, union security, management security and contract administration. The wages and hours provisions include wage supplements such as "cost of living" escalator clauses and health insurance and pensions. The latter are so detailed that they commonly require an appendix to the main contract. The job security provisions represent rules protecting the employee from arbitrary treatment: for example, "just cause" is prescribed as a standard for discharge, and seniority as a factor govern- ing layoffs, rehiring, promotions, transfers, and opportunities for over- time. In the present period, job security-type protections have been ap- plied to alleviate disruptions in employment caused by technological change. "Union security" provisions make the union secure as an institution by requiring union membership as a condition of employment and the "check-off" of union dues from the employee's pay. Management security provisions seek to make specified areas of the managerial function secure from union intervention. The provisions relating to the administration of the agreement describe the applicable employee unit, the duration of the agreement and the grievance procedure. This highly structured system of rules and procedures may be put beside the early union-employer agreement which was simply a brief price list covering only the simple wage terms.

Ratonalization has enhanced union influence by allowing the union to share in specified employment decisions as a matter of right and by expanding the employment areas to which these rights apply. The union applies a negative rationalization by rejecting shared power in the total management function on the ground that this right is not essential to




its goals, but even if it were essential, the union lacks capacity to discharge it effectively. Self-denial is further demonstrated by the union's preference for a defensive posture on the ground that the union cannot represent its constituents effectively if earlier it had had a hand in for- mulating the policy which a constituent is "grieving" about.

RATIONALIZING IN UNION GOVERNMENT

The union itself represents a stage in the rationalization process. In contrast with the more informal associations of workers from which it frequently springs, the union is not a tenuous mass or an "angry crowd." It has, on the contary, an identifiable membership with qualifications, rights and obligations specified in a written constitution and by-laws. The member's relationship to the employer relies on a written agreement which becomes the basis for constitutional government at the worksite.

Unlike the informal shop society which rarely reaches beyond the workplace, the union ultimately breaks out of this constraint in order to adapt to the product or labor market of its relevant employers and to maximize its power for politcal and legislative interests. Accordingly, the union combines with other unions to establish multi-shop forms of government. The intermediate body and the national union are thus multi-shop forms to enforce marketwide power, while the local and national federations are forms for political and legislative power.

From the beginning, national unionism was a calculated experiment in the coordination of sectional labor interests, prompted by the "na- tionalization" of the market. The national union's subsequent rise to the commanding position in the network of union government has been a demonstration of the economies of scale. For most industries, only the national union could marshal the financial and manpower capabilities to support organizing, striking, representation and jurisdiction in contests with employers and rival unions.

To fulfill these capabilities, the national union has built what for unions is a substantial infrastructure of organizational units for auditing, data processing and field representation. The infrastructure is invariably manned by technicians in law, economics, insurance, accounting and public relations. In the very large national unions the professional headquarters staff comprises a technical secretariat, which is also influential in the making of public policy.

In its most prominent form the intermediate body (intermediate, that is, between the local and the national) combines, coordinates and (not infrequently) displaces the collective-barganimng function of local unions in the large city, metropolitan area, or region. Other typical forms of the intermediate body include the corporation or industry council, which brings together locals of the same national dealing with a common in-



50 JACK BARBASH

dustry or employer, and the occupational council or department, as in the white-collar council or skilled workers' council, bringing together locals representing a common craft constituency.

This drift toward inclusive unionism or, more broadly, toward industrial types of unions at the expense of the craft-like types represents an accommodation of union forms to the labor problems of modem industry. It was precisely on this argument that the case for industrial unionism was made in the 1930s: "The craft union principle of organization has become fundamentally ineffective in the face of modem conditions," John L. Lewis said in 1935.6 Experience has made the case for the efficiency of industrial unionism so persuasively that virtually all of the traditional craft national unions have substantially "industrialized" their structures by bringing in large numbers of workers organized in industrial-type units.

Industrial unionism represented more than a change in structural forms, however. It created an elaborate system of grievance administration. It enlarged the scope of collective bargaig to include a vast complex of health and pension benefits. As Lewis predicted, industrial unionism generated a mass working-class movement in politics.

The greater inclusiveness of the union unit has brought with it greater "pressures for internal equity"6 and the need for union forms through which these pressures could be channeled. The pressures for internal equity have come from skilled and white-collar workers within industrial unions and have prompted the establishment of the kinds of occupational councils referred to earlier. The traditional craft unions adjusted to industrial unionism by establishing manufacturing departments within their structures.

Forms have been designed not only to assert but also to resolve the pressures for internal equity within the union. Tribunals, presided over by impartial outsiders in the federation and in several of its trade and industrial departments, are used to adjudicate inter-union disputes over jurisdiction and representation. In several national unions, third-party tribunals function as courts of final appeal in disciplinary cases; and, at least in one union, an "ethical practices" committee decides whether officers have been guilty of improper acts. The breaks with the past which these forms mark are, first, the use of outsiders to settle internal union affairs and, second, the acceptance, even if limited, of the authority of a federated body to resolve jurisdictional disputes among autonomous unions. Long-established union prerogatives of self-determination are thus giving way to the overriding need for abating inter-union warfare.

The most pervasive way in which rationalization has taken hold in the

'John L. Lewis, 'Towards Industrial Democracy," in Johnsen, Craft Versus In- dustrial Unionism, p. 151.

'G. Rehn, "Unionism and the Wage Structure in Sweden," in J. T. Dunlop, Theory of Wage Determination, New York, 1957, p. 228.




union's intemal management is the continuing replacement of the vol- unteer by the paid full-ime officer. In the "days of militant rank and file uniom . . . it was deemed a mark of honor for a Union brother to give his services to our cause without reimbursement for 'lost time' if it did not interfere with his livelihood."7 But now the union can no longer be effectively administered solely as a sideline caling. Also, the pay for union employment can no longer be based on complete self- denial of personal interests.

The full-time officer, it should be noted, is more important in the national and intermediate union and less important in the local, except in the crafts where every local union, singly or in groups, will have access to the services of a full-time business agent. The large factory union may acquire the equivalent of a paid officer through having the company pay the union officers at the plant level for the time-which is frequently full-time-lost in handling grievances.

The political interests of the labor movement are implemented by an organizational network at the federation level consisting of a Committee for Political Education (COPE), a Legislative Department, and a technical staff secretariat specializing variously in economic policy, civil rights, social security and international affairs. The federation network is aug- mented by political departments in several large international unions and by state legislative and political activity units (local versions of COPE) in every state and in every city of any size.

The political organization utilizes specialized techniques in propaganda, education and training, lobbying, registration campaigns and polling sur- veys; and it expends manpower and money in behalf of candidates. "What we're doing now that wasn't done before," George Meany has said, "is that we are going into the localities, right down to the precinct level with our organization, and we're doing it on an educational basis."8

LIMITATIONS, CONDITIONS AND COSTS OF RATIONALIZATION

Rationalization is, in the first instance, subject to the political nature of the union. The sources of political interests are the differences among members in skill, ethnic attachment, sex, age, personal ambition, union status and ideology. Although it is well understood that a union's survival depends on its ability to deal with the employer, it is not so well understood that the union's survival depends equally on its ability to conciliate sectional interests, based on these differences, within the union.

Rationalization has been influential in narrowing the zone within which

'Ross Blood, "Blood Urges Prudent Expenditures of Funds, Expansion of Union Service," Shipyard Worker, Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, September 17, 1945, p. 2.

8U. S. News and World Report, November 6, 1953, p. 61.



52 JACK BARBASH

the union-management settlement will ultimately fall, but the identifica- tion of the precise point within that zone still eludes predetermination. The reason is that no rationalized substitute has yet been found which performs as well as the attrition of negotiations in achieving acceptability to management, acceptability to the diverse sectional interests within the union, opportunity for the parties to perform according to expected roles, and wearing down of the bargainers for consensus.

Even if rationalization stops considerably short of leading to the final decision, it has nevertheless altered the union-management posture from a massive class and power confrontation to an almost, but not quite, routine transaction over wages and employment conditions. This trans- formation has not been achieved solely by rationalization; undoubtedly, a prosperous economy has made belligerence less pressing.

The techniques of rationalization in the union are still at a rudimen- tary level. Computer types of rationalization are limited largely to facili- tating clerical tasks like dues collection, financial reporting and membership counts and, more recently, contract analysis. For higher-order tasks, rationalization is the working out of organization and rules by trial and error. Unlike the modem business enterprise, rationalization does not permeate the union's style of life but is mostly an expedient way of dealing with critical incidents. Beyond checking staff expense accounts, unions do not have departments with a contuing responsibility for con- trolling and improving efficiency.

Rationalization is most conspicuously absent in the union's administration of its personnel functions. Very few unions, for example, have personnel departments and policies. For most unions, agreements for the clerical staff represent the extent of personnel routinization. Only very few unions deal with unions of their own servicing and professional staffs. The failure of staff unions to gain general acceptance derives not so much from their function as unions, as from the possibility of their use as internal factions.

Rationalization is not without costs. The objective rule through which rationalization operates cannot always alleviate-and may even exacer- bate-individual discontents at work, which, while not always "rational," are nevertheless deeply felt and hence are the cause of considerable unrest. The anti-rationalization flavor underlying the current wave of rank-and- file unrest is reflected in on-the-job gripes which cannot be resolved by the grievance procedure and in the younger workers' criticism of seniority. If such discontents cannot travel the rationalized routes, they go the way of wildcats, slowdowns, rejection of contracts and delayed local approval of company-wide agreements. Given what is undoubtedly the root factor in the present unrest, namely, that an expanding economy has made many workers dissatisfied with their situation, the chances are that the eruptions would have occurred under any circumstances-ration- alizaton or no. In any case, the unrest and its effects indicate that the




rank and file are not powerless to resist rationalization if they judge that their vital interests are being impaired thereby.

The most pressing problem in the rationalization of collective bargaining is enforcement at the level of the economy. This is a critical problem for every industrialized and industrializing economy which under- takes to make the results of collective bargaining compatible with growth and with price and political stability.

RATIONALIZATION AND ENVIRONMENT

Some industrial environments are more problem-prone-or, to be specific, more labor problem-prone-than others and are therefore more likely to generate greater efforts at rationalization.

The scale of the enterprise in which the union operates is undoubtedly a labor problem-creating factor. The larger the scale, the less likelihood there is that differences can be resolved face-to-face and the greater, therefore, is the need for organization and rules. This is probably an important reason why, for example, rationalization in mass-production unionism has gone further than it has in construction unionism. The large scale of enterprise in mass production is responsible for involving the union in such complex rationalizing forms as wage and job structures, grievance and arbitration systems, schemes for sectional representation within the union, and negotiated adjustments to the displacement effects of technological change. The small scale of the construction industry, by contrast, makes systems of grievance adjustment and wage structures rela- tively simple. The only major undertaking in rationalization produced by the construction industry has been the scheme for the settlement of jurisdictional disputes. An environment, as in the apparel industries, structured by competitive labor-intensive and small-scale enterprise and by casual and seasonal employment generates pressures for the formula- tion and enforcement of uniform labor costs. Unions tend to carry over into the conduct of their affairs the styles which they absorb from the managements with which they deal. The railroad unions are run "according to the book" very much like railroad management. The Bell System's highly rationalized management has undoubtedly influenced the systematic bent of union management in the CWA, the major union of Bell Sys- tem employees.

The displacement effects of technology constitute another environ- mental element from which rationalization programs emerge. In one variant, impending manpower retrenchment brings about programs to cushion the displacement effects. For example, the Armour program m- cludes severance pay, retraining, relocation and vocational counseling, and a tripartite study committee to investigate approaches to adjustment. In another variant, potential displacement arises out of moderniztion of



54 JACK BARBASH

manpower utilization. This is met, as in the West Coast longshore industry and in Kaiser Steel, by a plan for sharing the gains of moderni- zation through income and employment guarantees.

The temperament conducive to rationalization depends on whether unions or managements or both have been able to move from outrage to analysis in respect to their labor problems, and this is not necessarily a function of time. East Coast longshoring is an example of an industry which has not been able to make the transition in any permanent way while West Coast longshoring has finally been able to do so.

Receptivity to rationalizing efforts is likely to vary with the distance of the union leadership from the workplace. The closer the union is to the workplace, the greater are the human pressures and passions which interfere with rational plan-makling. The farther from the workplace, the greater is the union's capacity to command the aggregative view essential to analysis, and the greater also are its capabilities for coping with the technical and financial demands of rationalization. By way of example: Programs to settle jurisdictional disputes in the building trades are for- mulated by the national unions and violated by the locals. Adjustments to technological change are consummated in national negotiations but, not infrequently, are rejected locally.

Craft unions find accommodations to technological change more diffi- cult than industrial unions. The industrial union can offset losses in one sector of its jurisdiction with gains in other sectors, but no such option is available to the more narrowly based craft union. The only adjustment, other than resistance, it can make to radical changes in technology is ultimately extinction as a craft union. The unremitting struggles of the crafts in the newspaper industry, in the airline industry by the flight engi- neers, and in the railroad industry by the firemen are traceable to this union fear of extinction.

RATIONALIZATION, IDEOLOGY, DEMOCRACY AND DYNAMISM

The origins of unionism in all societies were interlocked with socialist movements which were seeldng to transform the social order by abolishing or reforg capitalism. Accordingly, the unions have been tested not only by their ability to defend worker interests but also by their conformity to socialist values of rank-and-ifie rule, uncompromising militancy, com- mitment and egalitarianism. However, by its very nature, rationalization in the union demands substantial compromises with these values. In collective bargaining, rationalization means accommodation with the employer, and hence the dampening of unrestrained militancy. It means too, as noted earlier, displacement in varying degree of local rank-and-file rule by paid staff, by supra-local agencies and by professionals.

In most direct encounters between ideology and rationalization, it is the




former which invariably gives ground. To take an extreme case: Bridges, who has never hidden his and-capitalism, is nevertheless engaged in one of the most ambitious experiments in rationalized class collaboration, in which the union trades off improved manpower utilization by management in return for guarantees of job security. Ideology may even facilitate rationalization, for ideology brings with it a total view of things essential to rationalization. As Lewis Lorwin (then Louis Levine) said about the early stabilization efforts of the ILGWU, "Their very habit of contemplat- ing a great and radical change in the future made them see the possibility of change under . . . capitalism and the value of industrial experimen- tation."9

Unions have not, however, abandoned ideologies; they have simply put their ideologies in special compartments. Many union leaders still talk publicly about their union as an army under siege, or as a fellowship of independent spirits, instead of what it needs to be, in large part at least: a businesslike organization which can carry out its representative functions only by functioning like a business organization.

This disparity between ideology and practice is at the root of many union problems in democracy and administration. The idea of members' rights as against those of union officers, for example, has had to be im- posed, for the most part, from without because the good intentions which served well in lieu of constitutional guarantees when the union was a fellowship became unserviceable when the union evolved into a large- scale orga ni on. The same sort of "cultural lag" is seen in the hard time which the unon "management" has given to the unions formed among its staff. The union management has been unable to understand why its necessary businesslike administration of internal union affairs has, in an important degree, reoriented the outlook of union staff from mis- sionaries to employees.

Rationalism in the union is not inherently incompatible with democracy. It need not mean, and in the union does not mean, a takeover by the professional expert. In fact, rationalization in the form of rules and organizational devices is the necessary, even if not the sufficient, condition for democracy in large orgaations. Nor does rationalization preclude the union from acting as an instrument of workers' special interests. Ration- alizaton simply prescribes the rules and channels by which the workers and their unions assert these special interests. In one respect, however, rationalization in its preference for more certain, short-run, piecemeal gains over less certain, long-run, reform goals does alter the union's view of its special interests. Thus the union no longer feels that it needs to question the legitimacy of private management. To put it another way, the union interests now include a large area of common purpose with management: as for example, there is a consensus that some optimum profitability is essential both to viable unionism and viable enterprise. The

'Louis Levine, The Women's Garment Workers, New York, 1924, p. ix.



56 JACK BARBASH

ILGWU put it succintly: "The urgency of revolt has diminished as life in the shop has become more civilized."' As the president of the Dutch trade-union federation put it more recently, "In the old days we regarded workers and employers as representatives of classes locked in an implacable conflict of interests; since then we have come to appre- ciate the positive aspects of the employer's production methods.""1

Rationalization within unions is not so far advanced that it has produced a ruling stratum of experts which is above politics. There are professional experts in the union but they are numerically insignificant, are without policy-making iMuence for the most part and, in any event, are politicized to the extent that their tenure depends on their political acceptability. Closer to the classical model, in effect if not in form, are the elected and appointed officers who are not experts as the term is commonly understood but who are, nevertheless, so well entrenched as to be above or une to politics. In good times this situation prevails among national union leaderships. During times of uncertainty, in collective bargaining or in the economic situation, not even the strongest bureaucrat of this type is proof against defeat in office or rejection of contracts. In the local union, where turnover in elected office is common and poltics are intense, bureaucracy in this sense or any other hardly exists. In any case, the pervasiveness and effective- ness of the current wave of rank-and-file unrest suggests that rank-and-file pressure is sufficiently regularized, formally and informally (as noted earlier), as to constitute an essential check on leadership power in trade-union government. Rank-and-file pressure is perhaps most operative when collective-bargaining issues are at stake.

Rationalization seems to be compatible with union dynamism and up to a point, may even be directly associated with it, as the CIO's organizing drive of the 1930s in mass-production industry suggests. John L. Lewis's genius in the launching of the CIO consisted of three insights. First, he conceptualized industrial unionism as a more rational union form for workers in modem industry; second, he divorced industrial unionism from its traditional revolutionary context; and third, he activated an adequately financed, large-scale scheme in the CIO for organizing. The organzing committee, which was the CIO's major structural adaptation, combined central direction and financing with par- ticipation by the native union leadership of the industries to be organized. Of course, there was much more to the CIO effort than rationalization. There were also the galvanizing quality of Lewis's leadership, the missionary zeal of the CIO adherents, the Magna Charta that was the

'Olnternational Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, Report and Record, Conven- tion Proceedings, 1959, p. 39.

"A. H. Kloos, "The Frontiers of Trade Union Power," Free Labour World, December 1965, p. 9.




New Deal, and the will to unionism on the part of the mass-production workers.

RATIONALIZATION: A COMPARATIVE VIEW

The discipline of collective bargainig has been the main force impelling the union toward rationalization. The discipline lies in its rigorously defined terms, the intricacy of knowledge and adroitness of mind re- quired from its practitioners, the definiteness and measurability of its results and the need for organization to make it operative. The "coer- cive evidence" that forces the union practitioners to treat collective bargaining as a discipline is the need to survive the hypercritical scrutiny of the membership and the employer. Collective bargaining is not all discipline, however. Since the union is also a political and mass movement, the imponderables of personality, drama, slogans and ideology will also be influential in affecting final outcomes, at least for the short run.

Rationalization in the American union is best understood in the set- ting of an advanced collective-bargaining system functioning in a highly developed economy. Several features of the American economy have enhanced the efficacy of collective bargaining. A long-run scarcity of labor has strengthened workers' market power. Rising productivity and real wages have made possible a high payoff for collective bargaining. The diffusion of education gave workers the skills and confidence to run their own unions and hence enabled them "to develop only trade union consciousness,""' without substantial dilution or displacement by intellectual revolutionary consciousness. The absence of engulfing social questions allowed the working class to concentrate on economic interests. It is too early to tell how this last generalization will have to be modified for the present period by the Negro "revolution."

The unions in the developing societies owe their impetus as much to the struggle for nationhood and independence as to the struggle for improved working conditions. After independence, the unions have been continually pressed to subordinate their sectional workplace interests to the "national interest" in economic growth and national self-consciousness. The result is a unionism which partakes more of the mass movement and the angry crowd than of the organization.

In these societies, the workers who make up the unions are recent migrants from the countryside, poorly paid and barely literate. When they associate themselves with a union, their status is more like followers than members. Dues are paid irregularly if at all, and when the union needs money it taps its sponsoring political party or passes the hat.

The strike in these situations is frequently an act of protest, with demands only remotely related to the achievement of concrete gains from the employer. The agreement ending the strike is usually a brief memo-

"V. I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done? New York, 1929, p. 33.



58 JACK BABASH

randum adjusting a specific grievance rather than a contract of specified duration applicable to a prescribed unit of employees. The agreement marks only a temporary armistice or cease-fire in a permanent cam- paign of guerrilla warfare in which neither employer nor union concedes the legitimacy of the other party's function or existence.

In relationship to the government, the unions are instruments either of the ruling political authority, in which case the union is managed so as not to threaten the power of the rulers or their goals for economic development, or else of an organized opposition committed to undermin- ing the ruling authority, in which case the unions are outlawed or ob- structed or suppressed. The idea of unions being flexibly free to support or oppose the government on issues, as the interests of the members are interpreted, has little standing and is alien to the experience and theories of the unions and their principals.

The union in this milieu is usually led by middle-class leaders, politically involved either for or against the government, who use the union pri- marily for social power as well as to wrest economic gains for the workers from the enterprise. Everything else about the union flows from this use of the union. The organization is only structured enough to get the masses out in the streets on instructions of the leadership. Constitutions, con- ventions, regular meetings, strike votes, checks on the power of the leaders, diffusion of power through committees and all of the other hall- marks of structured governments or organizations are, for the most part, absent.

nhe beginnings of unionism in the Westem societies show points of similarity. Aside from important cultural differences, there is a considerable element of ideology, millenialism, cultism and pageantry in every beginning workers' movement as it responds to an eruption of indus- trialism.

It is the pace with which unionism moves from outrage to rationalizn- tion that is the interesting question and on this, history offers no firm answers. Even in the Western world we observe all varieties in the pace and present stage of development. Sweden appears to have moved the fastest and achieved the highest level of rationalization. The United Kingdom and the United States, starting at generally the same period, seem to have arrived at different stages. The British labor movement is in the throes of breakthrough to higher levels of rationalization. The American movement is ahead of the British, but it still has a long distance to travel before it reaches Swedish unionism. France and Italy, with movements younger than the U.S. and U.K., have not even, for the most part, begun to break away from unions as instruments of political ideologies.

Business unionism is a meaningful characterizaton of rationalized American unionism in the sense that the American union has necessarily taken on a businesslike mode of behavior in the management of its affairs. Business unionism is meaningless when it is used to represent an over-




riding comitment to orthodox capitalism: first, because there are no American unions which espouse socialism or anti-capitalism and, more importantly, because this connotation of business unionism has no rele- vance whatsoever to union policy in action. There are, it is true, union leaders who are more insistent than others in proclaimig their allegiance to the free-enterprise system, but these can be precisely the men who in their union capacities participate in the most thoroughgoing penetration of the employment function of their free-enterprise employers.

The hard lesson of our times is that businesslike behavior as a condition of survival is demanded not only of private-enterprise business but that adaptation of means to goals makes businesslike behavior indis- pensable to all large-scale organizations, including unions.



Documents

American Unionism: From Protest to Going Concern