
          Unions Must Move Past the Plant Gates
          By Raynor, BruceBruce Raynor
          Vol. 10, No. 2, 1988, pp. 22-23
          
          The subject of the economic_development of the South is never
complete without some talk of the role of organized labor. Despite
economic_development, despite tremendous gains in other parts of the
country, the South still trails the nation with the lowest wages and
worst benefits for our workers. We still trail the nation with the
fastest decline of high-paying jobs and the most rapid increase of
low-paying jobs. Faced with the lowest wage-benefit structure in the
country, the problems that Southern workers face are getting worse,
not better.
          You hear a lot of talk these days that new management strategies
have made unions unnecessary. I think it's important to point out that
despite the newest personnel policies, the development of human
resources as a theory and a science, progressive employment programs,
job training, and new styles of management (including Japanese
management), American management has always made unions necessary and
I don't see any change in that. A favorite story of mine involves a
Japanese plant that was put up in Macon, Ga. When we organized that
plant, the management hired American anti-union lawyers and used the
very American arguments to the workers about why they don't need a
union:
          You don't need a union because we don't want you to have the
union. In Japan it's different, those are good unions. In Georgia,
they're not good unions. If you support the union, we're going to fire
you.
          This version of Japanese management didn't work on the majority of
the workers in the Macon plant; they voted for the union. Then we set
out to bargain with the company, the American and Japanese
managers. The Japanese manager didn't speak very good English, but he
was able to communicate very quickly to the union that the few
Japanese things that they had imported to Georgia didn't work. Things
like sick-days. In Japan if the worker does not get sick, he does not
use the sick days. In Georgia we give sick days and if workers don't
get sick, they can still take these days away from work. Well, the
Japanese managers didn't want to do that. They wanted to change the
style of management and do away with sick days.
          What it comes down to is a division of power and money between
management and workers. Whether it's Japanese style or American style,
management will continue to make unions necessary.
          So how do we establish a strong labor movement in the 

South? Many
of us have been at work for our entire adult lives trying to do
this. It is widely understood that workers organize for better pay and
benefits. But, in my opinion, that's not why Southern workers or most
workers join unions. Workers join unions not primarily to get more
money and better benefits, but primarily to have a voice, some power,
on their job. For democratic reasons. Organizing a union is the one
time in our country where people actually stand up and put something
on the line to fight for a right to have something to say. You don't
put much on the line to vote for a candidate in a political election,
but a worker who wants to support a union in Georgia or South_Carolina
puts an awful lot on the line. And many times it is not for economic
benefits, but for the right to stand up and look the boss in the eye
and have some say. Even with a strong union, the bottom line remains:
The power belongs to the companies. But with a union, workers achieve
a measure of power. That's why Southern management opposes unions as
vigorously as they do. It comes down to the question of sharing
power.
          The other by-product of unionization is leadership. Unions create
leaders. Workers develop leadership skills and abilities in their
communities and their states. Political change in this part of the
country needs to be aided by the power of a strong labor movement. We
don't have a strong labor movement in any single one of the Southern
states, but I think labor with its allies has been able to achieve
some significant progress in changing the social makeup of the
South.
          What does this mean for non-union people? Labor unions have tended
to be our own worst enemy. The labor movement reflects society at
large. And, when the South has in it a tremendous amount of racism,
the labor movement has a tremendous amount of racism. When the South
has conservatism, then that's mirrored in the labor movement. You
cannot change the South, you cannot change the labor movement, without
changing the social makeup of our organizations and our beliefs.
          Some things that unions are doing in 1988 are different than what
has been done in the past. The only Southern state that has a law
permitting public employees to organize is Florida. Traditionally
labor has waited until it had the political power to achieve
collective bargaining laws before it attempted to organize public
employees. In Georgia, however, one of our service employees unions is
attempting to organize the state employees without a collective
bargaining law. It's a very innovative kind of organizing, yet it is
also the kind of organizing that unions did forty or fifty years
ago. This is an attempt to organize workers as we build the political
framework to change the law that would permit 50,000 Georgia state
employees to join a union. Imagine the force that this group could
embody with the progressive goals of affirmative_action, of equality,
of a just society. Such a union would become the single biggest force
for social change in the state. I think this campaign deserves and
needs the support of like-thinking people around the South.
          Another area where people are organizing across broader lines is a
campaign called "Justice for Janitors." This is an effort to win
recognition for the cleaning people in all the buildings in the
growing cities across the South. In order to gain support for the
janitors who clean the buildings for little more than minimum wage,
the Service Employees Union is reaching out to the everyday person who
uses the buildings.
          If unions are to be successful organizing in the South, they have
to move beyond the plant gates. Workers need to build ties with
progressive elements in the community with whom they share a vision of
a more just society. Millions of people here in the South have been
economically, politically, and socially excluded from sharing power. I
believe the labor movement offers an opportunity for people to break
the barriers that separate the disfranchised.
          
            Bruce Raynor is the Southern regional director and an
international vice president of ACTWU.
          
        
