Re: [Marxism] MTA threatens to eliminate check-off

[Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To add to what has already been said and perhaps place this issue more in
context, the dues check off is not simply a matter of administrative
convenience or the lack of it. Having the stewards go round to collect dues
would would make terrific sense, even in large enterprises, because  it
would allow them to regularly pass on information, hear complaints and
grievances, take the pulse of the members, and make the union seem less
remote to the members. So Bob Montgomery is right on this count.

But, alas, I can't imagine Farrell Dobbs or any of the other pioneering
industrial unionists would have proposed that unions be responsible for
collecting their own dues without tying it to the "closed" or "union" shop,
which is what they were aiming at. As everyone knows, this makes employment
conditional on membership in the union. In the circumstances of a union
shop, you don't have the problem of free riders because even the most rabid
anti-union types don't have any choice in the matter;  no union card, no
work. No payment of dues, no union card.

The check off, which is the norm today, is is a compromise between the
closed shop favoured by the unions and the open shop favoured by the bosses.
In the latter, of course, there is no requirement for workers to pay dues,
even in the rare circumstance where there may be a union and a contract
applicable to the whole workforce. It's strictly voluntary, and appeals to
solidarity don't count for much. In Canada, the check off compromise came to
be known as the "Rand formula", after the judge who arbitrated an end to the
historic Windsor auto strike immediately following World War II. He rejected
the UAW's demand for a closed shop but required the company to collect dues
for remittance to the union as a condition of employment.

The closed shop is a powerful weapon, and the failure of the industrial
unions to extend it beyond certain industries was another of the factors
which weakened the labour movement in the postwar period relative to its
earlier militancy. It's significance lies in that it is the foremost way to
enforce strike discipline because it neutralizes the threat of scabbing by
the threat of expulsion from the union and consequent automatic loss of
employment afterwards. In its absence, there is no deterrent to scabbing
except picket line violence, which many workers shy away from and which
leads to the direct intervention of the state.

The imposition of the Rand formula and the pattern it set for other newly
organized jurisdictions, especially in the public sector, weakened the
unions by depriving them of this weapon at the same time it gave them "union
security" clauses in their contracts requiring every employee, even those
declining to become members of the union, to pay dues in order to work. In
practice, most new dues-paying new hires are surprised to learn they're not
part of the union, and it's not difficult to get them to sign a union card
as a result. But getting them to join the union in these circumstances is
mostly a formality which while necessary, lacks punch if it is not directly
tied to the continued employment of the workers.

This is why the early industrial unions fought so hard for the closed shop,
but the distinction between it and the check off - especially the
implications in terms of union power - were not always easily understood. My
late father-in-law is a good case in point. He led the postwar organizing
drive at his food processing plant in Toronto in the postwar labour upsurge
but broke with the leadership of the CIO -affiliated Packinghouse Workers
Organizing Committee (later Union) over this very issue; he wanted to settle
for half a loaf, the checkoff, and didn't understand why the strike was
continuing for a closed shop. This was one of those situations where the
ranks, even the militants among them, were not always right against the
"bureaucracy".

Anyway, this is maybe the first time I've seen WL and RR unite so quickly
around an issue and a rare instance of a discussion wholly devoid of sarcasm
and flaming - a good illustration, it would seem, of how much easier it is
for people to come together and resolve differences when they're dealing
with practical issues informed by their own experience rather than with more
abstract ones of a theoretical nature where this is not always or even
mostly the case.




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