What makes a good union?
By Rob Rooke, Workers Strike Back. Published March 16, 2023
The recent, enormous increase in the popularity of unions has been driven, in part, by the employers' constant drive to ruthlessly squeeze more out of workers. We have watched as the wealth of the billionaire class continuously grows at our expense. The bosses ultimately won’t be happy until we are working day and night for pennies – while being grateful for our jobs too.
So for the almost 90% of workers who are currently not in unions in the U.S., the idea of having some kind of wall of defense against worsening job conditions makes a lot of sense. Workers know that on their own, up against their bosses and managers, they are at a huge disadvantage in their workplace. The workplace has never been a democracy. We may have some legal rights, but no-one is really enforcing those rights.
Workers also instinctively understand that there is safety in numbers. But while a group of workers complaining to the boss about job safety or pay is better than individuals doing it, it does not measure up to having an actual organization of those workers, a union, to do it through.
Unions are Boss-Free for a Reason
Stepping out of the non-union world into the world of collective organization is a hugely important step. But, once in a union, the next question is what kind of union do we want, and how can you shape the union into what we need it to be?
Unions are essentially independent organizations of workers. They are a place where the employer has no right to stick their nose in. In fact, employers and managers are banned from attending union meetings. If an employer could attend a union meeting, then that is no longer really a union.
The union, by its nature, is an adversary of the employer. The union’s fight is to win higher wages, more benefits, and better working conditions. Those gains don’t fall from the sky: they come directly out of the employers’ pockets and profits. So no boss, however liberal they might paint themselves, wants their workplace unionized. Corporations will ferociously fight against all efforts at unionization, as we have seen with Amazon’s and Starbucks’ union-busting efforts and workplace firings.
While the boss is banned from union meetings, that does not mean that the bosses don’t try to influence the direction of the union or its leaders. We live in a society run by the bosses, where corporations buy off our politicians. Big business spends billions during campaign season to maintain their control over the Democrats and Republicans. Through their monopoly of movies and media, big business continuously attempts to tug workers away from their natural inclinations towards solidarity, and towards the bosses’ value system of self-centered individualism.
No union exists in a bubble. Every union has enormous pressure on it to go with the flow and not upset the employers. The goal of a good union is not to pick a fight with bosses everyday. But, to be effective, a good union must recognize that the employers are not our friends, that they are against us and that picking a fight with them will ultimately be necessary.
If a union leadership misunderstands this and thinks the bosses or their political servants are our friends and collaborators, then they will get everything else wrong. And that will cost us in terms of weaker contracts.
What Makes a Bad Union
A union that sees itself as a team player with the employers will inevitably be drawn into working with the bosses, which inevitably brings it into conflict with the members of the union. Such union leaders, or union bosses – as the corporate media cynically labels them – pay themselves $200,000/year or more, live in the same wealthy neighborhoods as management, and see themselves as part of some kind of community alongside the employers.
Almost all workers would support the demand that worker leaders be paid only the same wage as the workers they represent. The result of union leaders taking home six-figure salaries is that they become completely out of touch with the day to day struggles of the people they’re supposed to represent.
The logical conclusion of union leaders that don’t see an alternative to big business’ domination of society is to make the unions more like corporations. And that has played out, particularly in the last two decades. Many of these leaders see themselves not as serving union members but as managing them.
This works against the members interests on many levels. Rather than fight for the highest wages they can, mobilizing the members to make the greatest impact on the employer, the union sees their role as getting the workers the minimum that they can so as to keep them from getting engaged to fight back. These union leaders increasingly see themselves as responsible partners with the employers and are generally very hesitant about strikes. Strikes reveal the power the workers have to stop production. This type of union leader would rather not stir the pot with the bosses.
So having a union leadership that is constantly accommodating itself to management costs the members real gains in terms of wages, benefits, and improved working conditions.
Another side effect of the corporatizing of union culture is that members themselves have less power to shape policy in the union. Over the past twenty years as the union leaders increasingly avoided conflicts with the bosses, the democratic rights of members were continuously undermined.
Just as big corporations downsized in the 90s and 2000s, union locals merged into bigger and bigger entities, sometimes spread across entire regions. Attending a union meeting became more complicated. Workers felt more removed and it fed into the idea the union is a service as opposed to a membership-based organization. Union meetings these days are often run by professional union staff who were never union members. These professionals can play the role of policing union members to ensure that the existing leadership maintains their control.
From the top down, union leaders moved at union national conventions to undermine workers' democracy and curb members’ rights within unions, allowing the leaders to run the union more like a corporation. Wages of top union officials skyrocketed. Members had their rights to elect staff or union representatives taken from them in many unions. Limits were put on the rights of what each local union could do if it were ever taken over by members opposed to the national or regional leadership’s vision.
Much of union leadership has also tied itself closely to the Democratic Party, funneling large amounts of money toward corporate politicians who don’t stand with working people, rather than toward organizing members to fight for their interests.
Another big downside of this process for the working class is that when workers began to demand union rights in recent years, the unions had often become so hardened to change that unions have become difficult for workers to join.
What’s a Good Union Look Like?
These are some of the fundamental problems that this type of unionism puts in the path of this recent, fantastic shift in support for unions. This unionism that prioritizes a good relationship with the boss over fighting to defend workers rights has been called business unionism. This type of unionism has helped lead to decades of union defeats.
Drawing up a list of things wrong with many unions, helps inform us of the things that need to change to make a union that workers really want and need.
Union leaders who understand that the bosses are against us and that we’re at a disadvantage if we don’t recognize that, put their members in a stronger position. Alongside this, misunderstanding the role of the two big business political parties, is a recipe for mistakes that will cost members.
The natural inclination of workers is towards values of solidarity and collective democracy. It’s impossible to avoid the alien influences of capitalism, of individualism, careerism, and divisiveness. However, a union conscious of fighting for a solidarity-based agenda gives a union a fighting chance of being a great, strong tool for its members and working people generally.
It’s in the interests of all unions to have an active membership. An active union is driven by having concrete goals that match the needs of union members: better pay, more rights at work, and a better society after work is over.
Every union should have elected representatives in every workplace. This strengthens the members’ power on multiple levels in a solidarity-based union. Through workplace committees and workplace elected reps, members are plugged into the daily life of the union, and members have a structure in which they can play an active role.
Such workplace-elected representatives or stewards are themselves, especially when they regularly meet as a body, a layer of the union that will always be more in touch with the moods and needs of the membership than any tri-annually elected Local union executive. Such workplace-based stewards should be elected regularly and be able to be replaced quickly by a simple majority vote of the members in the event that said steward goes against the interests of those they represent.
A Dynamic, Solidarity-Based Union
The local union meeting is the democratic body of the union and should be accessible to the members, geographically, in its time of day, by having childcare, and with language translations available for members. Local meetings should be actively built for, to try to involve as wide a layer of the membership as possible in the life of the union. The union meetings should formally vote on all internal business, such as finances or actions to be taken, but should not be weighed down in over-formality where new members come, get alienated, and never return. Ultimately the Local meetings need to be dynamic and focused on issues that really matter: a place to go that is relevant to your job life but also to find out what’s going on for working people in general.
Workers are busy, they have lives outside the union and will always be more active around contract time. During these periods the union should win over as many members into union activity by involving these freshly active workers in leading aspects of struggle around the contract.
A union is only as healthy as its politics, its internal life, and its membership’s level of activity. A solidarity-based union that has an active membership will want to engage on issues beyond their own union: housing, public transit, unionizing other workers. This will tend to bring workers towards the conclusion that politics should also be worker-driven and free of corporations. The need for an independent political party for labor and working class people will increasingly make sense in a healthy union that doesn’t misunderstand the role of the bosses at work and in society in general.
So, in a nutshell, the closer a union’s politics is to the employers, the less effective and more politically corrupt the leaders of that union will tend to be. A sell-out could be characterized as someone who once claimed to represent the interests of the working class and now takes money from the rich and powerful. Jeff Bezos is not a sell-out because he never claimed to seek to represent the interests of the worker. Union leaders who take inflated salaries, who play golf with the employers, who suppress the desires and discourage the active engagement of the members, they are sell-outs and they need to find a new home outside the labor movement.
A union with a fully active membership, educated in their union’s history, in their industry internationally, can be a fantastically attractive organization in a world where working class people seem to have no control and are looking to fight back. With all union leaders on a workers wage, and a democratic internal life, a solidarity-based union can grow exponentially. In outline, such a union represents the possibilities for a new society run by and for working class people. One free of exploitation, base greed, poverty, and bigotry.
