By Richard Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer, AFL-CIO
Collective bargaining is one of the most important economic
mechanisms for sharing prosperity in our economy. The AFL-CIO
Strategic Approaches Committee, which I chair, has been looking at the
current state of collective bargaining and we are worried. Collective
bargaining is under attack as never before in our history.
Many employers embrace their bargaining relationships as a
strategic competitive resource and as a guarantee of quality in
delivering services or products. But many more have abandoned their
commitment to bargain in good faith. Even employers that respect their
existing bargaining relationships often resist new organizing efforts,
including campaigns by unions that have long represented their
employees.
The AFL-CIO should and can play a central and proactive role in
supporting the collective bargaining efforts of affiliated unions.
Individual unions, of course, must formulate their own bargaining and
organizing strategies. But all affiliated unions have the
responsibility to assist and support each other in individual
bargaining efforts.
The Strategic Approaches Committee reached the conclusion that we
should expand our mission to help unions respond more effectively to
aggressive employers bent on marginalizing or breaking unions. We will
take on an expanded role to monitor, analyze and anticipate collective
bargaining trends, develop collective bargaining strategies, tactics
and language that benefit the entire labor movement and provide a
forum for affiliates to discuss collective bargaining issues.
The AFL-CIO also can deliver resources that can be beyond the reach
of even the largest unions or that can be organized and delivered
effectively through the federation. These resources include
coordinating our broad geographical reach, mobilizing the
international labor movement, tapping into our political influence at
all levels of government and harnessing the positive relations we have
established in the business and investment communities.
Unions are using many successful bargaining strategies to defend
their wages and benefits. Union strategies vary across occupational
groupings, companies, industries and regions.
As unions become more sophisticated, their strategies also become
more complex and comprehensive. Unions challenge management authority
from the workplace to the boardroom, from individual work sites to
entire industries and from local communities to the international
economy.
But the rapidly changing economic and political environment confronts
unions with new and fundamental challenges. And the role of the
Strategic Approaches Committee must change in response to these new
conditions.
Traditionally, the Strategic Approaches Committee played a reactive
role to help affiliates in collective bargaining struggles when
assistance was requested. In today's anti-union atmosphere, devising
better ways to help unions react in particular bargaining struggles is
still necessary, but it is not enough.
Many employers are big and powerful and getting bigger, more
powerful, and more aggressive, every day. They are more and more
willing to take us on and to engage in all out war with us.
They spend time, energy and money trying to concoct new and more
efficient ways to defeat or even destroy us. Many are developing
global operations and connections and moving to nonunion areas of the
U.S. that make it easier than ever to undermine and escape us.
Bargaining is clearly the responsibility of individual unions and
will always remain so. But stopping aggressive employers committed to
weaken or destroying unions is a challenge to the entire labor
movement.
As part of the expanded mission of the Strategic Approaches
Committee, we will focus on two critical goals:
1. Take the best of our experience in planning and executing
comprehensive campaigns, to disseminate this experience throughout the
labor movement and work with affiliates to fight better and smarter.
2. Develop forums and procedures for exchanging critical bargaining
information, strategies and tactics, especially in situations where
unions can leverage their combined power against employers.
The key to making our collective bargaining power stronger is to
ensure that all affiliates understand that collective bargaining
success depends primarily on a well-planned, well-executed
comprehensive contract campaign that capitalizes on all possible
sources of leverage.
Many unions have developed successful comprehensive contract
campaigns. So, it only makes sense for the AFL-CIO to share our
collective bargaining knowledge and expertise. Information exchange
and coordination of efforts are indispensable to building collective
bargaining power. Many unions bargain with the same employer. But not
enough exchange important information and coordinate our bargaining
strategies and tactics to maximize our strengths.
The policy of the United States, as stated in the preamble of the
National Labor Relations Act, is to encourage and support the
development of collective bargaining. But globalization, mega-mergers
and deregulation have seriously eroded our collective bargaining
rights. Fiscal austerity and privatization have altered the way
governments at all levels seek to deliver public services. In both the
public and private sectors, employers seek to enhance the bottom line
by weakening unions and undermining job security, wages and benefits.
Until the political climate develops for labor law reform, the
labor movement must rely upon ourselves to protect and enhance our
collective bargaining rights. Labor has proven our ability throughout
history to overcome adversity and hostility, whether from company
goons or hostile politicians. We seek to lead employers along the high
road of economic development. But we are also prepared to fight for
our rights so that all working families have the opportunity to
improve their lives through collective bargaining power.
Reprinted from AIL Labor Agenda, March 2000.
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