Just Us vs. Justice For All: A False Choice

“Organize the unorganized”—a slogan and a necessity, as the gains made by any group of workers are always in jeopardy unless they become gains for all. Over the past dozen years, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has attempted to put this slogan into practice, restructuring and centralizing to give organizing a much higher priority than servicing current members. An approach union leaders justify with the argument that the needs of the unorganized majority should take precedence over the needs of the already organized minority – and was initially expressed through confrontational tactics and progressive politics. It is an approach, however, increasingly implemented through corporate political alliances and corporate-friendly organizing that concedes basic union rights. Concern over the impact of such deals, concern over the lack of internal union democracy that allows SEIU national leaders to make them, has galvanized internal opposition.

Opposition demanding, in the words of Sal Roselli, president of the 150,000-member United Health Care Workers-West local, “a movement of workers, governed by workers for workers … in control of their relationship with their employer, to be in control of the political direction of their union.” Backing this up, the local offered resolutions – all defeated – at SEIU’s May National Convention, calling for more local control of contract negotiations, finances, organizing decisions, and for direct membership election of national union officers. SEIU’s leadership, in turn, accuses its critics of advocating “just us” unionism concerned only with the narrow needs of local membership, as opposed to the “justice for all” unionism of organizing no matter the cost. The growth-at-any-price strategy is further defended by the argument that U.S. labor has to increase union density (percentage of organized workers in an industry) as the necessary precondition for increasing bargaining and political power.

Yet matters are not so simple, the identification of union density with union strength is far from automatic. Less-organized French workers, for example, have been better able to defend themselves against neo-liberal assaults than better-organized British workers. Of course, the difference between the two countries requires explanation beyond the numbers—but that’s the point. The percent of workers organized, while significant, does not by itself indicate how well a labor movement is able to defend overall working-class interests. A lesson U.S. history tells too, union strength in membership and density was greatest in the 1950s, a time of rising wages and living standards. It was also a time of union political defeats on issues ranging from labor law to social insurance. Critically, these were also years when workers lost job action rights as no-strike and management rights clauses became standard contract language. In contrast, unions from the mid-1930s through mid-1940s, initially small and strained, were able to grow as part of a vital movement that expanded workplace, union and social rights.

Here is where SEIU’s leadership believes its “justice for all” unionism is relevant, as it could be if union growth didn’t occur at the expense of worker rights. The temptation to make such bargains is great, especially given the enormous difficulties organizers face. Issues of rights, however, are issues of power and thus union rights are as indivisible as union strength – when negotiated away in one place, all suffer. SEIU is not alone in making that kind of compromise – the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), a union known as militant in a country with a less repressive labor environment than the U.S., has signed a “framework of fairness” agreement with a large auto parts chain (Magna) similar to some of SEIU’s recent corporate agreements. CAW gains recognition at a few plants and those workers gain wage increases, but this comes at the price of a strike ban, no steward structure and complete management control over workplace organization. That SEIU and CAW, politically engaged unions committed to organizing, functioning in different countries in different industries, should each sign similar corporate-partnerships, reflects a profound pessimism about labor’s capacity to adjust to our current world.

SEIU’s mistaken policies are partially due to the impossible search for a quick solution to labor’s weakness. Union strength, though, will only be regained through worker self-activity, the role of union organization is to provide a framework for that to be protected and a direction for its expression. Instead of a false dichotomy between “just us” and “justice for all” unionism, workers ability to act for themselves and in solidarity with others needs to be linked in policy and action. No other path will be able to overcome parochialism that divides, no other path will prove capable of organizing the unorganized.