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Subject: jhurd_dsa-doc: Kate Bronfenbrenner On Organizing To Win
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>From the Current Edition of Disgruntled:
http://www.disgruntled.com/bronfenbrenner998.html

A Conversation With Kate Bronfenbrenner
On Organizing To Win

    By Daniel S. Levine

There's not a lot of academic brainpower that goes in to researching issues
important to unions and union members. That's
not because of any lack of need or interest, but an economic reality about
the way universities function.

Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research for the New York
State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at
Cornell University is helping to change that.

Bronfenbrenner in 1996 led an effort to set up an academic conference on
labor organizing. Now, along with AFL-CIO
economist, Director of the Labor Studies program at Cornell Richard Hurd,
AFL-CIO Director or Economic Research Rudolph
Oswald and Associate Dean of the Industrial and Labor Relations School at
Cornell Ronald Seeber, she has edited a collection
of the papers from that conference called "Organizing to Win" (Cornell
University Press, 370 pp.)

Like the title suggests, the book is a mix of case studies and quantitative
analysis of organizing drives to see what works and
what doesn't when a union tries to organize a workplace.

The volume is well timed because it comes as union leaders have acknowledged
that the future of the labor movement
depends on massive new organizing drives today. The outcome of this effort
will not only effect union members, but workers
throughout the nation.

As the editors of Organizing to Win argue, all workers have suffered from
the economic impacts of the decline of unions. "As a
vast academic literature attests, unions raise wages. Unions also reduce
wage inequality, increase equity (through the
principal of equal pay for equal work), reduce gender- and race-related pay
differentials, and tend to reduce age- and
tenure-related pay differentials," they write. "In a nation in which the
constitutional right of free speech does not extend to the
private-sector workplace, unions are also the only true vehicles for
workplace democracy and the only means through which
workers gain an independent voice regarding their daily working conditions."

Disgruntled recently talked to Brofenbrenner about the need for unions to
revamp their organizing styles, about the problems
they encounter and how their goals can best be met.

Q: One of the most interesting things about this book to me is that it
exists at all. Have you found in academia there's
been much interest in looking at unions in this way?

A: Part of the reason for the 1996 conference was to try to push other
academics to start doing research in union
organizing. There had been a handful of people like me who had come out of
labor and gone into academia and were
doing research, but there was just no research on organizing.

This was a very aggressive process where we set out proposals with ideas for
research, called people up and said "listen,
why don't you do research." We advise them what it would take, helped them
find people to connect with and in some
cases helped them find funding. The problem is there is no automatic source
for funding this. There's no support system
within universities...

Q: No corporate sponsorship?... (laughter)

A: (laughter) No, no corporate sponsorship -- and no real foundation
sponsorship either. Also, to do the kind of research
that needs to be done on the current state of the labor movement, you need
to understand the labor movement. You
have to understand workers. You have to understand work and unions. And you
have to have the trust of workers and
unions. Not all academics have that, to say the least. A very small number
of academics have that.

Q: There is a perception among people outside of the labor movement that
unions are dying and that workers don't
much want them these days. What's your view of this?

A: I think a lot of what pollsters have captured -- they think they are
capturing that workers don't want unions -- I think
they've captured more of the mass resignation by American workers that they
can't get there. They want protections.
They want better work situations, but what they have to go through to get
there is just too hard.

"Do you believe union workplaces are better places to work?" -- overwhelming
majority. "Would you yourself vote for a
union?" -- it drops down to 40 percent and that's because of fear.

There's the chapter Tom Juravich and I wrote about the public sector and
that provides the evidence for it. In the
private sector we have this constant win rate that is stagnating around 50
percent, but in the public sector where,
there has been no or very little opposition, the win rates are above 85
percent, the victory margins are above 85
percent. Where you don't have to literally risk your job, workers freely and
readily vote for unions.

Q: Looking at the material, employers have clearly stepped up the
aggressiveness with which they fight organizing
campaigns. What's happened along those lines?

A: They have been emboldened by a conservative judiciary, a conservative
Congress -- not just Congress, but governors
and schoolboards. There's been a whole shift to the right and a sense of a
public tolerance for corporate violations of
the law. We all expect this. We all put up with it. American companies have
discovered that even when they are the
country's most egregious labor law violators, the worse they get is a slap
on the wrist. If they can keep a union out, why
bother [obeying the law].

The Sprint Corporation is a perfect example. They have a union-free policy
and it says -- a written policy that says, "the
greatest measure of a manager will be their ability to keep their operations
non-union. Now, if you are a manager of a
Sprint shop and you've got what's in that written manual, so what if you get
an unfair labor practice?

So when Sprint shut down La Connexion Familiar, their Hispanic marketing
division, rather than have a union come in,
they had a 50-count violation. But they knew after it went all the way
through the courts they would probably prevail.
The final decision said, "Yes, you are guilty of all these things, but
because there's a possible business reason for this,
you are off the hook."

Q: So what are some of the types of things employers will do today to combat
a union organizing drive?

A: First of all, all of them bring in consultants and the consultant is the
person running the company. The consultant is
able to say, "Our primary goal right now is not profits, not production, but
keeping the union out." Supervisors' vacations
are canceled. What they are supposed to do from that day, day in and day
out, is intimidate workers from joining, voting
for and being part of the union campaign.

Their whole goal is to create a climate of fear and conflict. The workplace
becomes so conflictual. They divide. They play
people against each other. Every day you are constantly brought in and
talked to by your supervisor one on one and
asked questions and told misleading and false statements about unions and
other workers. There are captive meetings
with the CEO on work time talking about the future of the organization and
your future with the organization depending
on it being union-free.

One in three employers fire workers for union activity. The majority
threaten to close the facility if the union comes in.
Companies are more likely to use electronic surveillance. We of course don't
even know the extent of that because it's
so invisible. Unions know about it probably about a tenth of the time it is
used. They use bribes. They of course suddenly
clean up their act. Money becomes available for things it was never
available for. They use outright intimidation and they
are allowed to lie under the labor law. Employer free speech is protected.
Employers can say whatever they want in the
context of an organizing campaign. They are not supposed to threaten, legally.

It is so extensive and so pervasive. They will set up a new quality program
and employee participation program and the
people active in the union will be completely excluded from that process and
treated like pariah. You are treated like a
social outcast and this is where you work.

Q: One of the more hopeful things in the book is that despite all of that,
what unions do on the organizing side will have
a greater impact on their success than what employers do to fight them. Is
that right?

A: What that reflects statistically is that employer behavior is a constant
thing. Employers in the private sector oppose
unions very aggressively. Obviously, if an employer was to recognize a union
without a fight, that would have a dramatic
impact, but employers are not doing that.

The one variable we see a great deal of variation in is what unions do. It
ranges from those unions that are putting in
enough resources and really training their organizers, which put in all the
time and effort and organize strategically, to
the majority of unions which are not putting in the resources, not training
their organizers, not putting in the time and
effort and not organizing strategically. If unions were doing everything
right and still losing, then there wouldn't be a lot
of hope for the labor movement to turn around. But since we find they are
doing everything wrong and they're losing,
that gives them the great possibility and opportunity to improve.

Q: (laughter) So the fact that unions are so fucked up is encouraging?

A: That's right. (laughter)

Q: In looking at what unions can do to organize to win, there are three
broad areas of organization, issues and culture
you talk about. Let's begin with organization. How can unions best organize
themselves and workers in an organizing
drive to win?

A: The first thing unions have to do is literally take an audit of who they
represent, how they represent them, where their
strengths and weaknesses are and where they are spending their money.

Bruce Raynor who's the vice president of UNITE and the regional director of
UNITE in the south has said, "They need to
look at real estate." What's the use of a big huge building if you have no
members to put in it. It takes just as many
union resources to bargain a contract for ten people as it does for 1,000
people, but those ten people don't bring in
dues or give you any leverage for other contracts.

So you have to make decisions to organize strategically, to organize within
your industry. What's the whole point of
organizing new workers? It's to build power. If you are just organizing
anything that moves and it has no inherent logic to
who you are organizing, then you are not strengthening your power.

Then, what are the barriers to organizing effectively. Do you have enough
money being put aside for organizing? Do you
have enough trained staff? What is your record? Do you have so many bad
contracts or decertifications or angry
members or newspaper articles about corruption that its just going to hurt
you? What's it going to take you to shift?
How are you going to get your members and leaders to support spending money
on organizing? Where can you take
money from? Those are the first steps.

The next step is choosing who you are going to organize -- learning to do
careful strategic research. When unions make
the decision to choose an organizing target, very often all they do is say,
"The workers called up. It's a hot shop. They
want a union." That's not how you make the determination. You've got to make
the determination that those workers are
ready, that your union is the right union for them and that you have the
leverage to get a first contract. Because if you
win an election, but you can't get a first contract, the victory is nothing.
Only then are you prepared to start organizing.

Q: Within the context of organizing, your research shows that a bottoms-up
approach is what works, right?

A: A bottoms-up approach that's coupled with the strategic research and
escalating pressure tactics against the
employer and a real focus on democratic representative participation.

Q: So reaching out to the people you are trying to organize and make them
active in organizing coworkers?

A: They have to. The organizers don't have access. The employers have access
day in and day out. You have to train
leaders and you have to train people to organize on the inside and you have
to use your own members to help with
organizing. First of all, it's a resource issue, right? You never have
enough money to hire all those full-time staff. But also,
who better to speak about what a difference the union can make in their
lives but your own members.

Q: Coupled with using the people you are organizing to organize co-workers
is the importance of building a group that is
inclusive of all of the various groups and interest among those workers?

A: Absolutely. The employer is going to try to divide people and the union
needs to bring people together. But also the
workers are going to be looking to the leadership of this organization
that's set up to see if they are going to have a
place at the table. If they see a staff-driven union with no rank and file
leadership, or they look at the leadership and see
all white men and it doesn't look anything like them, they are going to
wonder what's going to happen after the election.

Q: Another factor you found that effects the success of organizing efforts
has to do with how unions defined the issues
around an organizing campaign. The most successful unions weren't promoting
the types of bread and butter issues of
wages and benefits.

A: Well, if you frame wages as a justice issue, that's one thing. But if you
frame it as a more issue, it doesn't work.

Q: So around what issues did the most successful unions frame their
organizing drives?

A: The kind of issues they've been through all along. The kinds of issues
that only with a union can you win. Arbitrary
supervisor power over hiring or wages. The issues of discrimination and
harassment for women workers and workers of
color. Health and safety in the workplace, hours of work that kept changing
arbitrarily you never knew if you were going
to be 20 hours a week or 30 hours a week or full time or starting at 8 a.m.
or starting at 6 a.m.

Those kinds of things were the issues that really worked -- issues of
fairness and dignity. But if it was just "We want more
benefits. We want more money," the employers could always just give a little
more money and the campaign would fail.

Q: You also talked about one other difference that among the successful
unions was that they have a culture of
organizing. What do you mean?

A: The whole organization is focused on looking at "what can we do to build
the union" in everything they do. Whether it's
political action, whether it's bargaining, whether its grievance handling,
they are thinking about "how do we build this
organization."

That means that when they are doing political action, they are thinking
about how they can involve unorganized workers
in the process and focus on issues that would mobilize and motivate
unorganized workers. When they are doing
grievance handling, they are thinking about how they can mobilize their own
members to learn how to organize and put
pressure on their own employer so they can go out and organize other
workers. When they are bargaining, they are
bargaining for language that gives them paid relief time and time to go out
and help organize. They are thinking about
this in everything they do. And everyone from the top leadership to the
members understand organizing and why they
need to organize so that you do have member volunteer organizers so all
staff is trained in organizing and understands
why you have to shift the resources. It permeates throughout the whole
organization that organizing matters.

Q: Within the AFL-CIO there's been a large culture shift around the idea of
the role organizing...

A: It happened about 20 or 30 years later than we might have wished. I don't
think there's a single international union
that would publicly say, "You don't need to organize." Even as recently as
eight years ago I heard international union
leaders say, "We can't organize without labor law reform. We have to wait
for labor law reform." I think everyone
understands now you can't get labor law reform without organizing.

Q: Are those changes at the AFL-CIO staying on track? Is it succeeding? Are
their problems they are finding?

A: There's progress. There's not enough progress. There's still a lot of
resistance to doing what it takes. Part of it is that
newly organized workers are a threat to the status quo.

If the only way you can organize is to develop rank-and-file leadership and
engage in aggressive action and be
democratic and participatory and inclusive and activist, that means that the
only workers who succeed in organizing are
natural leaders who've already learned how to fight, and who expect to have
a role.

And also of course the majority of newly organized workers are women and
people of color, so suddenly you have new
workers who actually know how to organize, think they should be able to be
leaders. They come into your organization
and they want to run for office, they want to be on the bargaining
committee. And that's tough for unions.

Theoretically they want the dues money from these new members, but they also
have to understand they can't just
organize people to be dues payers for the status quo. New people are going
to come in and they are going to want to
have a role, and not only that, but they are going to have the skills to get
to that seat at the table.

Q: Are unions learning this?

A: I think the unions that are growing are the ones who welcome it. The
unions that are not growing are the ones who are
uneasy about it.

Q: I was a little surprise to see Richard Bensinger, the organizing director
at the AFL-CIO who really seemed to
energize and embody this new attitude, ousted in June. Has that had much of
an effect on organizing at the AFL-CIO.

A: There's been a vacuum of information about it so it's allowed for a lot
of rumors and speculation about what it
means. Some people are saying it means a lack of commitment. Some people are
saying it means he burned bridges.
Whatever the AFL-CIO organizing effort, it's certainly bigger than one
person. Richard Bensinger was an extremely
positive voice for the AFL-CIO mission of organizing. He really got the word
out there. He was a great spokesperson on
the issue. In terms of the AFL-CIO's commitment to changing how people
organize and the strategies they use, I don't
believe it was abandonment to that.

Q: What do you think happens from here. Is all of this a last hurrah, or
does this represent some kind of turning point?

A: The shift has to be more than just organizing and I think we've seen it.
We're seeing unions getting better at running
strikes, and running contract campaigns. The steelworkers are a great
example of that. They have learned how to win
strikes and they are winning them one after the other. At the same time,
we're going to have to learn to do a better job
of political action. This year we saw two incredible victories -- defeating
Fast Track and defeating Proposition 226 in
California, but there still seems to be this tendency to support Democrats
without great question and even the disaster
we see with the Teamsters when unions start to think they should process and
act like a political party rather than a
union. The greatest shadow on the horizon is the Teamsters. If Jimmy Hoffa
Jr. wins it's an incredible step back. If he
wins, I'm less worried about what it means for the Teamsters than the
AFL-CIO, because that's a big block of votes.

Q: What about the notion of a Labor Party?

A: It's a very difficult process. The Labor movement has a very hard time
taking that leap away from the Democratic
party, even though the Democratic party screws them over and over again and
there's no better example than Clinton --
I shouldn't use the word screws with Clinton (laughter).

People look at Fast Track, but look at welfare reform, look at not taking a
stand on affirmative action, not taking any real
stands that are good for working people. The fact that they were able to
stand up to Clinton on Fast Track reflected the
ground work for that. The Labor party was saying, "You've got to focus on
issues, not candidates. "You've got to have a
platform." I think it pushed the entire political agenda in that direction,
but the price they are paying is that people are
saying we moved toward you so we don't have to go all the way. I think they
are still out there and still a force. The
question is what they do in the next election.

Q: And the future of the labor movement?

A: I think when we talk about the future of the labor movement I think its
important to remember fighting for the
members unions already have -- the UPS strike or the Bell Atlantic strike.
When unions fight for the issues that resonate
with their members and the public, unions make gains not just for
themselves, but the public sentiment believes in the
possibility of union power again.

You can order Organizing To Win through Amazon.Com by clicking on the title.



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