Labor and the Intellectuals: Where is Social Work?

For the past two decades, the U.S. labor movement has faced serious difficulties. A concerted corporate attack on unions, combined with government policies that inhibit labor organizing, has diminished the percentage of the U.S. workforce represented by labor organizations. Furthermore, deindustrialization has eroded labor's industrial base, and the threat of global relocation has weakened its capacities for aggressive bargaining (Galenson, 1994). However, the U.S. labor movement is now showing signs of renewed vigor. During the past two years, labor increased its political presence in U.S. electoral politics, mounted a new aggressive organizing campaign, and won an important battle in the United Parcel Service strike. The AFL-CIO, under John Sweeney's leadership, is attempting to create a new labor movement that addresses the needs of a changing U.S. labor force. Labor is increasing funding for organizing and making efforts to recruit organizers and members who reflect the diverse workforce of women and people of color. Recognizing transformations in the labor market, labor also is shifting resources into organizing service sector and lower-skilled employees. After 15 years of government neglect and corporate assault, American labor is finally developing a strategy for growth and renewal (Wypijewski, 1997). Academics also have rediscovered labor unions. Intellectuals and scholars are returning to the study and support of labor issues. The 1996 labor issues teach-in at Columbia University, widely lauded as a success, was repeated at 20 other universities (Greenhouse, 1996). A new journal, Working USA, has been launched to provide a forum for articles that provide "new insights on labor and work." A recent book on the connection between the new labor movement and U.S. intellectuals offers similar essays from 21 notable scholars from a variety of academic disciplines (Fraser & Freeman, 1997). Missing from this academic effort, however, is social work. The aforementioned book includes not a single social work author, even for the article on labor unions and welfare reform. A search of Social Work Abstracts finds only 23 citations for the subject entry "labor union" in the period 1977-97. Of these, only 11 appeared in social work journals. Despite labor's new emphasis on organizing women, people of color, and low-wage service workers, social work seems relatively unconcerned with labor issues. Labor and Social Work's Forgotten History It has not always been so. Although incompatibilities existed between early guild unions and the Charity Organization Societies, by the 1890s common ground had formed between the industrial unions and the settlement house movement (Karger, 1989; Straussner & Phillips, 1988). From the 1890s to the 1940s, labor and social work shared perspectives on corporate power, child labor, the right to organize, and the need for adequate wages and cooperated in political movements around those issues. The Rank and File Association, a radical social work group, supported unionization among workers and fostered the unionization of social workers themselves. Bertha Capen Reynolds provided social work services to the Maritime Union, and union-based welfare positions became common (Karger, 1989). It has often been suggested that social work and labor unions have common goals, and a 1985 issue of Catalyst (the forerunner of the Journal of Progressive Human Services) was dedicated to articles discussing that connection. Overall, however, the sympathy of social work for labor evident in the period from 1890 to 1940 appears to have diminished in recent decades. What accounts for this changed relationship? Although several trends are responsible for this estrangement, three are most salient. First, the preoccupation with psychological and therapeutic issues among social workers transformed the profession from one oriented to social action to one oriented to personal change and growth (Specht & Courtney, 1994). …