A new (but old) perspective on the Boeing move
The production shift to South Carolina is about more than political will or corporate double-dealing. It's a story of economic freedom that dates to the American Revolution and, finally, so-called "right to work" laws.
Cornell University Kheel Center Labor Photos
Boeing’s recent decision to increase production in South Carolina over Washington state has caused much anxiety and soul-searching. Most commentators have responded either by blaming unions for not giving in to Boeing’s demands or, alternatively, accepting that Boeing’s decision was preordained and trying to figure out how to attract new investment to the Puget Sound region. In short, we have tended to blame ourselves. But few have asked why we have unions in the first place, and whether the real problem is in South Carolina rather than in Washington state. To ask the question this way is to probe the meaning of American freedom itself.
One of the greatest mysteries is why British colonists, members of the most powerful and wealthy empire in the world, would declare independence in 1776. If we assume that they acted from economic motives, their actions makes no sense. But to American patriots freedom meant more than money. It meant not to be subject to another’s will. To be dependent on another’s will, the patriots argued, was to be a slave. Colonial Americans did not oppose taxes; they opposed taxes being passed by people other than their own representatives. From their perspective, such taxes, made without the consent of colonial legislatures, reduced them to slavery. Only when one is the author of the laws and rules by which one is governed — that is, when one can consent to those laws and rules — can one be said to be free.
Following independence, these ideas about freedom transformed American society. Throughout the states, more and more Americans demanded the right to vote. For white men, property restrictions were reduced so that by the 1830s Americans had the widest suffrage in the history of the world. To all these Americans, freedom meant being the author of one’s own laws.
These ideas shaped how American workers responded to industrialization in the first half of the 1800s. As small artisan shops gave way to factories, workers increasingly found themselves becoming wage earners with less control over their work environment. More and more, workers were dependent on the money and whim of employers. In short, workers discovered that they were in a situation similar to their forefathers in 1776! Without some influence over the conditions of one’s workplace and the terms of employment, workers were effectively slaves. Just as America’s patriots rebelled in 1776 against the tyrannical rule of Britain, workers formed associations to protest being governed in the marketplace without their consent.
These early labor unions met much resistance from America’s elite, who argued that the “free market” should determine wages and working conditions. Workers responded that a market in which the terms of work were set by more powerful employers without the consent of workers was no less a tyranny than a government in which taxes were imposed without popular consent. Freedom depended on consent in the market no less than in government. Without consent, individuals were reduced to slavery, subject to the will of another. In a country where enslaved African Americans continued to be a large part of the workforce, slavery was not an abstraction. Workers knew what it meant to be a slave and they fought against it.
Ever since these early efforts by workers to make good on the American Revolution’s promise, workers and employers have argued over the meaning of economic freedom. To employers, the right to hire and fire at will and to have total control over wages is the essence of freedom. To workers who invoke the legacy of the American Revolution, however, freedom is to be free of the arbitrary will of another, whether a king or an employer.
Following the American Civil War, conflicts between laborers and workers became violent, leading to all-out war from the forges of Pennsylvania to the coal fields of Colorado. Not until the New Deal did the federal government step in to grant laborers the right to organize and to restore the balance of power between workers and employers.
Soon after, however, the New Deal’s accomplishments were undermined by the 1947 Taft-Hartley act that authorized so-called “right to work” laws. Taft-Hartley prohibited closed shops, meaning when an employer agrees only to hire union members. It also allowed states to prevent union shops by passing so-called right-to-work laws. Union shops, unlike closed shops, allow employers to hire anybody but require all employees to join the union or to pay a fee. By allowing states to prohibit union shops, Taft-Hartley weakened unions’ bargaining power relative to employers by preventing workers from pitting their collective strength against the collective strength of corporate investors. It allowed corporations but not unions; or, put another way, unions for investors but not for workers. Twenty-two states, including South Carolina, have so-called right-to-work laws. Corporations like Boeing love these laws because they promise not just cheaper wages but greater control over workers. They promote dependence rather than freedom.
As we ponder the fate of Boeing in the Pacific Northwest, there are two options. The first is to accept that South Carolina will underbid Washington workers. This is about more than money. It is about the level of control employers can exert over their employees. In time, foreign countries with cheaper wages and draconian working conditions will underbid South Carolina in a never-ending race to the bottom.
The other option is to pressure the federal government to create uniform rules by repealing Taft-Hartley’s prohibition on union shops and by stepping up enforcement of existing labor laws in order to enable workers to protect their economic freedom — the actual right to work — whether they live in South Carolina or Washington state.
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Comments:
Posted Fri, Nov 27, 10:23 a.m. Inappropriate
Good for you, Johann, for speaking the truth. The right-wing trolls will attack, so get your flak jacket on.
The case for right-to-work laws is based, plainly and simply, on "them as has, gets." The corporations, having achieved "personhood," and the economic leverage that goes with being the principal or sole sources of employment in many communities, want, expect, and demand "freedoms" that they would deny to their employees, as you have demonstrated.
Freedom of assembly? Nah! Freeedom of expression? Nah? The right to choose their bargaining representatives, or even to HAVE bargaining representatives? Nah, it's Communism. Never mind that even Alexander Hamilton probably would reject their position.
The corporate absolutists have a far greater hold on this nation's economy than King George III ever did. Their liars for hire, like Scott St. Clair, keep coming on these threads and telling us how GOOD that is for all of us. Many of us, however, know better.
Thanks again for writing this. Keep them coming. Crosscut needs more new blood like this.
Posted Fri, Nov 27, 11:44 a.m. Inappropriate
I've worked in a union job. I never would have thought of equating it with the struggle for personal freedom and self-determination of our founding fathers. On the contrary, it was the most regimented, bureaucratic, cold and adversarial employment experience I've had. (Well, maybe it ties with the stint I spent working for a group of psychopathic software peddlers, but that's a close call.) The union and the company were forever fighting each other over me and my coworkers, but ultimately neither gave a damn about any of us except as chess pieces in their little game. That experience turned me off to union employment permanently. Your mileage may vary.
Posted Fri, Nov 27, 1:59 p.m. Inappropriate
Exceptionally well said, Mr. Neem, and quite courageously too -- especially for a professor in an educational system that is infamous as a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Business.
Nevertheless, the notion it will ever again be possible to "pressure the federal government...to enable workers to protect their economic freedom" is a classic example of the delusional thinking that props up the obscene Smiley Face with which the U.S. propaganda machine hides the greatest disenfranchisement in human history.
The now-undeniable betrayals of health care reform, Employee Free Choice and the restoration of the constitutionally guaranteed rights of free speech, free association and the secular independence of governance from religious fanaticism -- each implicitly a promise to restore the economic freedom of workers, each a promise subsequently slain by treachery -- all prove conclusively that “change we can believe in” was never anything more than a Big Lie.
Indeed were we not a Moron Nation conditioned to reflexive PollyAnna optimism, we would have acknowledged long ago what the United States has become: a one-party realm in which the labels Democrat and Republican are deliberate deceptions; a single-purpose plutocracy in which government and governance at all levels do nothing save perpetuate capitalism -- absolute power and infinite profits for the ruling class, total subjugation and bottomless poverty for all the rest of us.
Big Business has won. Technology has given the ruling class such unprecedented power, it cannot be overthrown save by environmental apocalypse. Future historians -- if after the depredations of capitalism there is any human future (and any allowable study of history) -- will no doubt mark 22 November 1963 as the date not only the American Dream was murdered but all humanitarian aspiration entombed forever.
As in the allegory of the Borg, resistance is futile. Welcome to the electro-chemical slave-pens of the neo-manorial economy, in comparison to which the mild tyrannies of George III are literally paradise lost.
Posted Sat, Nov 28, 10:37 a.m. Inappropriate
We all mature 'individually', but always within the context of an 'inter-dependent' society made up of varied community organizations, institutions, professions, trade groups, etc which provide for or serve everyone's basic needs in systems of cooperative exchange. While Rightwing ideology epitomizes 'individualism' as the be all end all, Leftwing ideologists valiantly defend the interdependent organizations as the essential building block of society and national identity. Corporations who move operations from one state to another, purely on the basis of cheap labor, are disloyal to the nation. Capitalism is class warfare.
Posted Sun, Nov 29, 9:28 a.m. Inappropriate
" Taft-Hartley prohibited closed shops, meaning when an employer agrees only to hire union members."
I don't believe that statement is true. Are you saying that if you work for (for example) General Motors you do not have to belong to the UAW? I believe you do.
Posted Sun, Nov 29, 11:17 a.m. Inappropriate
dbreneman comment editors choice!? My god editors that perspective completely misses the point of the article. Bureaucracy is just as rampant in our government and corporations as it is in organized labor. The autor was not dealing with the individual's view of the bureaucracy of the labor movement - dbreneman's narrow and myopic point. That this limited rant should be a comment worthy of "Editors Choice" is mystifying to say the least.
Editors, lay your prejudices aside and read the article again. You clearly missed some very insightful, big picture historical perspective on our socio/economic system.
Posted Sun, Nov 29, 11:18 a.m. Inappropriate
Kieth, read the article again carefully. Look for the definition of closed shop vrs. union shop. Therein lies your answer.
Posted Tue, Dec 1, 6:51 a.m. Inappropriate
I like the fresh perspective this article in digging into the history and intuitive reason for unions to exist in the first place. Working in a union position now, I have to say it's a good thing to have professional negotiators working on my behalf and staff lawyers helping keep the bargaining honest. My own personal wants may not be met with a union because, like any group, my opinions might be neutralized by other members with opposing interests who have just as much right to be represented as me. I'd say it is true that the union protects me from a slave-master sort of relationship. On the whole a union does help level the relationship between employer and employee espeically when there is good faith between managers and employees, and reasonable recognition of the symbiotic relationship.
Regarding Boeing, one positive aspect of unions comes out of their historical origin of the guild -- the social structure that supported apprenticeship, journey development and mastery of a given craft. This is an important aspect of unions in an aerospace industry in which management is increasing pressure to cut costs and outsource work to less expensive places: the union plays a real role in defending and insisting on quality and integrity of the craft. Where there is no union, individual employees have nothing to lean on but their backbones to counter management orders to costs by cutting corners without knowing better. This dynamic manifests in such real-world examples as using fasteners that don't meet specifications, to skip or ignore maintenance steps on machinery and product, to assign important tasks to unskilled workers and so forth.
For aircraft, this is an important benefit of union shops, because airplanes fall from the sky when they break.
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