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4.0 out of 5 stars
An exploration of anti-unionism in American culture, January 16, 2009
This review is from: Union-Free America: Workers and Antiunion Culture (Working Class in American History) (Hardcover)
The book begins with a survey of common American views of unions throughout history. Before the New Deal, organized labor was often believed to be made of immigrants who threatened the social disorder and infected the body politic with left wing ideas. Richards begins his citation of primary sources--popular magazines, journals of opinion, movies, etc.--when he moves to discussion on how views of organized changed during the Great Depression. Businessmen fell into disrepute during the Depression. Organized labor came to be viewed no longer as a menace but a champion of the underdog. Unions came to be accepted as part of society but Richards shows that at the same time negative connotations became attached to unions. Richards cites one Gallup Poll in the early 1940's where close to three quarters of Americans agreed with the statement that "many" union leaders were racketeers. Moreover organized labor came to be seen as having achieved such gains that unionized workers were close to being in the upper echelons of American society. Richards quotes a Saturday Evening Post article which stated that the days of union workers getting beaten bloody in the streets by cops were long past. Mass circulation journals like the Post, Reader's Digest and Life magazine carried stories about the luxurious offices of exceedingly overpaid union bosses. Unions had brought an end to Dickensian labor in the US but now they threatened the rights of other groups in society. Unions were increasingly seen as narrow special interest groups who pursued better wages and better conditions no matter what the costs to the health of their employer or the needs of consumers. Richards notes that both the New Republic and National Review made fun of a United Auto Workers strike in 1967, declaring that Reuther's boys were exceedingly well paid and had nothing serious to complain about. Union demands were said to contribute to inflation. Conservatives and even a liberal publication like the New Republic cited the allegedly tyrannical power unions gained through closed or union shop contracts. Conservatives tended to believe that workers were far less enthusiastic about unionism than union leaders. Such thinking, Richards observes, was behind the provision in the Taft-Hartley bill requiring a supermajority vote among a collective bargaining unit to approve a union shop contract. Of course, as Richards notes, 97 percent of union shop contract were approved, which congressional reactionaries did not expect, and so this union shop provision was deleted from Taft-Hartley in 1951. Nonetheless, Richards cites a number of polls throughout the years where Americans had strong opposition to union security arrangements. After enjoying modestly strong approval in public opinion from the 30's through the 60's, Richards cites polls which show that Americans increasingly saw unions in a negative light and did not want to associate with them. However Richards notes in his conclusion that in recent years, circumstances seem to have been pushing the public toward a more positive view of unions.
The second part of the book (and its best part) presents three case studies of groups of workers who rejected unionization. The first case is that of an AFL-CIO affiliate at the Frank IX and Sons textile plant in West Virginia. Richards examines the literature put out by unions and management, internal company records and his own interviews with employees to flush out the reasons why employees rejected unionization. He also looks at the vain effort of the union to address the negative views, especially those propounded by the company, about unionization. Some opinions voiced by the company were threats to fire unionized employees or the claim that the company would be forced to shut down by the labor costs that would be demanded by the union. Many workers also investigated wages, benefits and conditions at nearby blue-collar establishments, including textile factories and concluded that their bosses were giving them standards of treatment more or less at prevailing rates. They didn't think the company could afford to pay them more. They didn't see much use for a union and were seemingly affected by management propaganda that unionization would bring in work rules and grievance procedures that would disrupt the family atmosphere at the business. African American employees at the plant seemed likelier to support unionization than their white colleagues.
The last two cases involve white collar workers, one being clerical library employees at NYU in 1970-71 and the last case deals with teachers in the National Educational Association and the American Federation of Teachers. A lot of the same issues raised by the textile workers appeared in the case of the NYU library employees. Richards explores how the NEA and the AFT attempted to position themselves amidst the anti-union currents of American culture. The NEA in particularly tried to portray itself as not really a union but a professional association of selfless public servants devoted to child welfare and who wished for a cooperative relationship with school boards. Only in the 1960's did the NEA start putting on the trappings of a collective bargaining agent. Its hated rival, the AFT, beginning in the 1970's tried to get rid of its reputation of being exclusively concerned about wages and benefits. The AFT concerned itself with professional standards, certification and such things that the NEA had long prided itself. In the 1970's and 80's, as the AFT and the NEA competed for allegiance from America's teachers, they both hurled anti-union stereotypes at each other. The two groups accused each other of being un-democratic in structure and process, of being strike prone. The NEA had some success in portraying the AFT as led by a bunch of reactionary, racist white guys. A big current of opinion that runs through the NEA to the present time, Richards points out, is that it does not want to merge with the AFT because it doesn't want the blue collar label attached to itself. This phobia against being consider blue collar is what has hindered organization of white collar employees in this country.
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