From: cwinkler@oregon.uoregon.edu (Celia Winkler)
Subject: Re: Caterpillar and the Issue of Unions
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: University of Oregon
Date: 17 Apr 1992 11:36 PDT  

Nigel, thanks for a good summary of the issues.  Maybe you or some
other knowledgeable person out there could answer some more
questions.

In article <1992Apr17.152249.152132@cs.cmu.edu>, goddard+@cs.cmu.edu (Nigel Goddard) writes...
> 
..
>Now the union has
>agreed to call off the strike and hope negotiations succeed.
>Cat refused to take the workers back the first couple of days,
>but now say they will take them all back next week, minus about
>10 "troublemakers" (probably union activists but I'm not sure).

Wouldn't this be an unfair labor practice?  Firing someone for
union activity?  (Of course, they'd probably try to cloak it
in some other language--the worker was fired for some other
reason.)

>Cat announced they will trim about 10-15% of union jobs by
>attrition (retirement, resignations) over the next year or so.
>According to media accounts, the business people see this as
>a big victory over labor, further weakening the already pathetic
>labor movement in the US.  The media say the Cat workers are
>very angry with Cat management and won't forget this; they are
>also angry with the union for having them strike for months only
>to call it off with a deal that they could have had several months
>ago.
> 
>My analysis: it's a setback for organized labor (and therefore
>for every working person), and I think is indicative of what
>the business leaders in the US want to see for the 90's, namely
>competing globally by squeezing the domestic workforce.  Not
>a pretty picture.  The trend is basically toward a Brazilian
>style economy: industrialized, but with a small and very rich
>elite, and a large and largely impoverished working population.
>The one positive sign was that there has been solidarity action
>by Cat workers around the world.  In South Africa they have held
>one-day strikes.  The only way the stick of "global competition"
>can be dealt with is by international organizing.

I read recently that a Swedish union won their demands through the
use of a one-day-a-week strike.  Of course, Sweden has a strong
right-to-work (different from the US) law--employers have to give
lots of notice and have a good reason to fire the employee.  Of
course, the employers could not get one-day-a-week replacement
workers.  Is there any reason that workers in the US could not use
this or some other type of strike?  Are sit-down strikes illegal?
Is the all-out strike the only type of strike allowed in the US?

We had a strike here in Springfield, Oregon.  Management hired
replacement workers, and eventually destroyed the union.  The
problem seemed to be centered in 1) high unemployment rate; 2) low
worker solidarity.

As you say, we need *international* solidarity.  How do we do this?

And it seems we have to come to recognize that productive labor
jobs are going to get more and more scarce, due to technology, and
more jobs will be in the "service" or reproductive labor sector
(which throws the whole categorization of productive/reproductive
labor into a tizzy--reproductive labor begins to create wealth,
through profit, etc.)  But does it create wealth?  What creates
wealth, really?  

In addition, more jobs are being done in isolation.  One can think
of software engineers as a new form of productive labor, but they
tend to be the least organizable--many truly believe that they
succeed or fail based on their own work, rather than on business
decisions.

What concepts will we have to rethink, what strategies?

Some folks look at TV and mass media as a cause of low worker
solidarity--really.  It isolates us from one another, and creates
a different form of "community."

In an interview on the TV news, one worker who was applying for a 
scab job said that his solidarity was with his family, not with other
workers.  Is this also part of the "family values" ideology--that
encapsulates "family" away from the rest of society, so that folks
end up with a "family" consciousness rather than a "class" 
consciousness?

Again, thank you for a fine post.  These are such difficult times.

Celia