Is Bureaucracy "Best" For Unions?

KIM MOODY is director of Labor Notes, an independent monthly labor magazine advocating greater union democracy, independence and power. Labor Notes will publish a handbook on union democracy later this year. He is also the author of Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy (Verso 1997) and An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism (Verso 1988).

THE 1995 LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE IN THE AFL-CIO and the victory for the New Voice team of John Sweeney, Linda Chavez-Thompson, and Rich Trumka helped bring contemporary organized labor back into the focus of the intellectual and academic communities. A near blizzard of teach-ins, books, anthologies, and at least one new organization reflect the renewed interest in and contact with unions in a corner of society that had at best looked at this aspect of current working class life from a distance for decades -- a situation labor leaders tended to encourage. The new organization is Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice (SAWSJ). From its beginning SAWSJ developed a working relationship with the new AFL-CIO leaders that gave the project credibility. One of the founders of SAWSJ was labor historian Steve Fraser. So, Fraser's article, "Is Democracy Good for Unions?", that appeared in the Summer 1998 issue of Dissent, on the nature of unions and their leadership is of some consequence for the debate and discussion that has unfolded in intellectual circles.

The Dissent article is unique in that it presents a view of organized labor that is usually confined to the verbal corridors of the penthouse of labor. It is a view that incorporates assumptions shared by most high level union officials, but seldom spoken and almost never committed to print. It is remarkable, too, becuse it dispenses with all the sociological decoration of the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" and the evolutionary niceties of 1960s "maturity" theory to praise bureaucracy and bureaucrats as the right and proper form of trade union organization and leadership. Fraser's arguments are corridor classics. He starts off by noting that it seems to be the left and the right who are most concerned about union democracy and membership rights. The coupling of the right and left as advocates of union democracy is a longstanding classic, as is the careful distinction he makes between the motives of the two: the left good if naive, the right bad. Still, like the lawyer's inappropriate jab in a TV courtroom drama it is well designed to leave a bad taste in the jury's collective mouth even after the judge rules, "objection sustained."

The difference between the left and right views on union democracy isn't just one of motive or intent. The right's flirtations with procedural democracy and membership rights flows from the belief that the majority of union members, at least the white ones, are, like themselves, social conservatives. Give this "silent majority" half a chance and it will reign in leftist social engineers like Walter Reuther and perhaps stop unions from endorsing liberal Democrats. Or so they believe. While advocates of union democracy on the left understand that social conservatism, including racism and sexism, runs as deep in labor's ranks as in any class of this society, we reject this simplistic liberal leader-conservative ranks thesis. Instead, we see again and again that movements for greater union democracy create a broader and deeper social consciousness and bolster leadership skills among new rank and file leaders.

Another group in which the majority shares the right-wing view of the rank and file as social simpletons unable to negotiate the complexities of power or overcome their prejudices is, of course, the labor bureaucracy. Its distrust of the ranks is one side of the bureaucratic equation -- one reason for all the layers of insulation from member influence or power. The backwardness of the ranks is enough to justify this. The myth of its own forward-looking social vision makes bureaucracy a virtue.

Unfortunately, not all labor leaders are practicing social progressives (wannabe labor leader Junior Hoffa comes to mind), while the record of liberal or social democratic leaders on civil rights within their own unions, for example, is abysmal. In recent decades, as Herbert Hill has pointed out in New Politics and elsewhere, few have ever used their bureaucratic power to rectify racist practices in the unions. While union leaders are usually more liberal than business people or Republicans, the image of them standing far ahead of the entire union membership is largely a social prejudice.

The rank and file is not some monolith, neither all backward nor all a "virginal" mass, as Fraser characterizes the left view of union members. Labor's ranks have a range of opinion and practice on just about any question. There are white supremacists and white racial liberals, Black militants and accommodationists, feminists and right-to-lifers, etc. Unions can play a role in shaping the social and political views of members. A few more democratic unions, such as the United Electrical Workers and the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers, actually try this. Bureaucratic unions discourage discussion and debate, so there is little real political life or education in most unions these days. While the new AFL-CIO leaders have encouraged some level of debate, it has yet to filter down even as far as most International Union affiliates.

MOVEMENTS FOR UNION DEMOCRACY PROVIDE PRECISELY the kind of political life and education once provided by the better unions. Conventions, conferences, and schools held by groups like TDU, UAW New Directions, REAP (in the United Food & Commercial Workers), or the Caucus for a Democratic Union in the 42,000-member California State Employees/SEIU Local 1000 are far more educational and interesting than those of any AFL-CIO union or of the federation itself. To these must be added the schools and conferences of allied organizations such as Labor Notes, the New Directions' Workers Education Center, the Black Workers for Justice, and the Transnationals Information Exchange.

In some respects, today's rank-and-file-based groups are also socially and politically well ahead of the liberals who head their unions. The leadership teams of today's union reform movements, from the Teamsters for a Democratic Union to New Directions in TWU Local 100 (NYC Transit) to the new reform leadership of SEIU Local 1000, are far more racially diverse and gender balanced than the leadership of almost any International Union. The "Right to Vote" reform movement that took over the Pennsylvania Federation of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE) in the 1980s abolished the de facto segregated seniority lists and Jim Crow locals still in existence. They convinced the white majority this would make a stronger as well as a more democratic union. The Teamster reform slate led by Tom Leedham and backed by TDU may be the most diverse such slate ever run for top national offices in the history of American unionism.

Another corridor classic Fraser offers is that reform movements never win. Fraser demonstrates an awareness that the intersecting dynamics of employer pressure and union bureaucracy tend to feed rank and file rebellion, but in his view "the crusade for union democracy seems interminable and interminably futile." Fraser's eyes are, of course, focused on top offices and electoral victories appear to be his sole measure of success. Even accepting this narrow criteria we would point to top level reform victories in the Steelworkers in the 1960s (one of the few Fraser mentions); Mine Workers in the 1970s, National Maritime Union in the 1980s, and the Master Mates & Pilots, Musicians, and Teamsters all in the 1990s. Only slightly down the hierarchy were major victories in the Steelworkers District 31 in the 1970s, the California Nurses in the 1990s, and any number of larger local unions in the UAW, SEIU, AFSCME, Steelworkers, Musicians, and Teamsters among others. We might also add the countless number of pro-democracy groups that won representation on local union executive boards across the labor movement. It would seem that successful electoral rebellion far from being the rare exception has been a regular, if not dominant, feature in U.S. unions since the 1960s -- interminable, as Fraser puts it, but not always futile.

Of course not all reform movements take off or win elections to high office. Some go bad while in office, many are limited by their own ideology, others are wrecked on the shores of industrial restructuring. But rank and file struggle for democratic unions arises again and again and where it is well organized and its message strikes a chord it frequently wins. When it does it makes a difference. That transformation of the Teamsters, while far from complete, is remarkable for the reduction in bureaucracy and privilege, the opening of political debate, the change in political direction, and the increased effectiveness in bargaining. Even a Hoffa victory will not reverse all of this. Looking further back, the example of the United Mine Workers presents another case of major transformation in the culture of a union. It was, to be sure, a partial and uneven process limited by inexperienced leaders and eventually battered by an industry in decline and crisis, but to imagine that the UMWA that fielded the Pittston strike of 1989 is the same as the union of Tony Boyle is absurd. Fraser imagines the whole process of union reform to be futile because he holds up an abstract standard of democratic perfection that he himself has no use for.

The improvement in bargaining performance cannot be stressed enough since it is the failure of old guard leaders in this area that produces most union reform movements in the first place. Unions that have been through a reform process or those that are more democratic tend to improve their bargaining performance, even under today's difficult circumstances. Of course, unions in which a reform movement either wins or stakes out some territory are often those, like the Teamsters, that had let their bargaining standards crumble over the years. Improvement usually involves getting up to standards set in the past or by others. But the deeper the process, the greater the willingness to risk mobilizing the members (who may well want more power as a result), the more likely the outcomes will grow over time. This was certainly the experience of the Teamsters, not only at UPS, where a new standard was set, and in the other big national or regional contracts, but in countless local bargaining units where the reformers took over.

In line with his assertions of doom for democracy, Fraser writes as if the question of union democracy and union effectiveness in the Teamsters ended the day "donorgate" surfaced. It didn't. The current election in the Teamsters will affect the entire labor movement, including the balance of forces on the AFL-CIO Executive Council. Every progressive should have lent vocal support to Leedham and the reformers. Most remained silent, some said a plague on both your houses, a few even backed Hoffa, but to their honor some spoke up for reform -- including some leaders of SAWSJ. By the time this is published, the election might be over. Likely Hoffa will have won. Hoffa has the name recognition, the loyalty of many remaining Old Guard local leaders, and the sympathy of the media and employers; but this election is a "ground war" in which money is limited and the largest organized force on the ground is TDU. At its November convention TDU members reported that Leedham seemed ahead in those areas where TDU was able to campaign. It was also true, however, that it was impossible for this on-the-ground campaign to reach a majority of the union's 1.4 million members across the U.S. and Canada. Still, as of mid-November both camps were predicting a close race.

But even if Hoffa wins, history does not end. There are dozens of locals, some very big and strategic, with reform leadership. Several of these reform leaderships were elected after news of the scandal broke, indicating a continued demand for democratic reform. There are tens of thousands of union members who have seen the material benefits of democracy at UPS and elsewhere. There is TDU. Hoffa in office will not be able to deliver to the standards already set in many jurisdictions or on much of anything to a membership that has come to expect results. His three year term is more than likely to end in leadership bickering over the trough and defeat.

As the experience of the Teamsters has shown, the fight for union democracy is not about resurrecting the past -- the guilds or the chummy Carpenter Locals of old that Fraser mentions in Dissent. Nor is it about stifling leadership initiative or being nice to your opponents. Democracy can be rough terrain. What it is about is making leaders accountable and opening debates on the direction of unionism. Ultimately, it is about activating labor's greatest source of power. No, not the staff or the lawyers: the membership, their families, and communities. This is where the union's real power lies. Yes, the ranks need education, organization, and leadership -- things they do not get from the majority of today's union leaders. But they also need the power to change course, dump leaders who fail, and shape a leadership equal to today's challenges.

The complexities and conflicts of modern capitalist society do tend to foster and reproduce bureaucracy in large organizations, as Fraser argues. That is precisely why the fight for union democracy is so important. Fraser argues that there is a trade-off or opposition between power and democracy. Democracy has to be sacrificed sometimes to gain power. This, too, is an old argument, but one that obscures the actual sources of union power -- the union membership and their place in the economic order. It isn't the cleverness of leaders and advisers, the diligence of the staff, or the alleged orderliness of top-down organizations that will match, much less best today's corporate giants. The idea that a small clique of leaders commanding a large staff is the essence of power and effectiveness in the midst of a complicated, contentious world has reality upside down. It's like Soviet planning applied to unionism. Dealing strategically and effectively with a complex reality requires open debate, access to information, freedom to criticize, conflicting ideas, contesting leaders, in short a democratic culture.

FINALLY, THERE IS FRASER'S HISTORICALLY INVENTIVE ARGUMENT that the "rank and file is complicit in the creation of the bureaucracy; the bureaucracy is its legitimate offspring, at least in the case of strong CIO-like upheavals." Fraser isn't just arguing, as "maturity" theorists might, that the ranks go along with it in times of relative prosperity and stable bargaining relationships. He is arguing that rank and file upheaval like the formation of the new CIO unions is the cause of bureaucracy and that when this bureaucracy arises in "the Sturm und Drang of industrial warfare, it represents not the worst but the best the movement has to offer."

There is a quick sleight-of-hand on Fraser's part: the equation of the fighting organizations of 1934-1939 with the bureaucratic unions of later years. It goes like this: "A powerful bureaucracy often signals the strength of its anonymous creators down below. The fact that they were able to fashion an institution capable of standing up to an enemy whose overlordship went unquestioned for so long is an accomplishment, not a mistake or failing." In fact, the new unions that toppled giants like General Motors, Ford, General Electric, and even Big and Little Steel in those years did not bear much resemblance to the bureaucracies of today; if they had they most certainly wouldn't have accomplished what they did. For one thing, it was workers in motion, not some "institution" that beat GM and the others. If outcomes had been decided simply by some clash of institutions or structures, there is not much doubt that history would have taken a different and worse course. Indeed, so institutionally weak were many of the industrial unions at that time, they nearly collapsed when recession hit again in 1938. With the partial exception of the Steelworkers there was no "powerful bureaucracy" to speak of. The galvanizing event, the Flint GM sit-down strike, would most likely never have happened if the national leaders of the new UAW, who opposed any action at that time, had had in 1937 the legion of appointed reps and Administration Caucus dependents the UAW leadership used to terminate the 1973 sit-in at Chrysler's Mack Avenue stamping plant in Detroit.

No, the ranks did not create bureaucracy in the midst of the industrial warfare of the 1930s. They created fiercely democratic local unions knit together by more or less democratic and fragile structures. The ranks also found leaders. There is, after all, a distinction to be made between leaders and bureaucrats. The new CIO, of course, contained both, sometimes embodied in a single person like John L. Lewis or Sidney Hillman who brought their unions into the new federation. But in 1936, the heads of most new unions were leaders without much in the way of staff, bureaucratic insulation, cherished relationships with capital, or personal privilege. In most of these new unions, leaders and members fostered a rough and tumble democratic life, sometimes despite their intentions. It took years of effort to stifle that democratic culture. All too often the youthful leaders of the 1930s became the "mature" executioners of union democracy in the 1940s or 1950s. When they did so, however, it was not as rank and filers. Nor were they often open about their intentions.

The imposition of bureaucratic rule has always required bureaucratic methods, including outright dishonesty. A recent example of this process is found in the attempt by leaders of the American Flintglass Workers Union, a small, relatively democratic union, to take that union into the United Food & Commercial Workers, one of the nation's most grotesquely bureaucratic unions. Merger might have made sense for this tiny union, but given the reality of the UFCW, it was clear the "Flints," as they call themselves, would lose some of their current democracy; e.g. the election of the union's ten national reps. To get it by, the pro-merger leaders called a special convention without making the terms of the merger available until the delegates arrived. Sensibly, the delegates voted the merger down by over three to one. In this case democracy prevailed over bureaucratic method.

The battle for bureaucratic unionism was won by the 1950s and the unions that emerged looked little like those that exploded on the scene in the mid-1930s. Reviewing in horror the transformation of so many unions, Sidney Lens wrote at the time (in The Crisis of American Labor) about the rise of full-time, appointed "reps" whose swelling numbers bolstered the domination of union politics by the top officials. There had always been authoritarian leaders, but for the newer industrial unions at least all of the armies of appointees were something new. This rising tide of bureaucratic business unionism brought with it the receding fortunes of the unions themselves. Four decades later, many of labor's friends and enemies alike assume that massive bureaucracy and top-down control are the natural state of the unions, possibly "the best" state.

What Lens and many others knew then to which Fraser seems oblivious, was that the insulation of the membership from union politics, and the practice of collective bargaining changes, is often meant to change the relationship of the top leaders to management. This latter relationship becomes closer in many ways, even when problem-ridden, than the relationship with the ranks. Bargaining becomes merely a service conducted by professionals meeting with professionals. The struggle for power on the job and in society gives way to a polite tug of war over the margins of a largely predetermined slice of the corporate pie. The trip from the "stable bargaining relationships" of the 1950s and 1960s to the cooperation schemes of the 1980s was not such a long one. Along the way, however, the unions' independence from the employers was increasingly compromised.

Putting aside one's interpretation of historical cause, effect, and timing, I would further point out that few of today's top labor leaders have seen much Sturm und Drang until quite recently and seldom up close and personal. For a couple of generations the American labor officialdom has been composed primarily of more or less adept politicians and negotiators, whose skills and outlook were acquired in inherited and well-ripened bureaucracies. Unlike the Hillmans and Reuthers of another era, whatever one thinks of them, the majority of today's labor leaders tend to be third generation "yes men" (yes, men) with only a fading clone of a social vision handed down from International Executive Board to International Executive Board. For decades the Sturm und Drang of industrial confrontation have been systematically avoided whenever possible by all but a few. Instead, the return of serious conflict has seen most labor leaders dive into "labor-management cooperation" with their predators no matter how often they kick them in the face. The level of denial is astounding.

Indeed, if we are to judge by the results of the last two or three decades, bureaucratic unionism has been a massive failure in politics, organizing, and even collective bargaining. The tale of decline and retreat is too well known to require repeating here. The recent successes have been too few to justify complacency about the lingering heritage of bureaucratic business unionism. Even these, such as the defeat of Fast Track and Prop 226, are defensive. (The biggest recent success in collective bargaining, UPS, came out of the reform process in the Teamsters.) So critical is this situation that some of the more astute practitioners of business unionism are attempting to modernize it from above. We appreciate the higher profile they have given labor. We would all like to see the "New Voice" effort to organize low age workers succeed. What we see, however, is that the process is bogged down in its own bureaucratic methods, limited by its contradictory business union ideology, and inevitably mired in factional maneuvers (as opposed to open debate) at the top.

Who will cut this Gordian Knot? The timid tiptop modernizers themselves? Not likely. For change to be more than marginal or superficial it will have to come from below. A TDU-style national opposition group is one way, certainly the most effective, but there are others. A movement or loosely organized current that captures large locals or a section of a union, like the BMWE reformers, will affect the internal life and policy of the International Union -- injecting democratic culture across the organization. A coalition of currents within a union can break the grip of bureaucracy and open the door to democracy.

Another way to look at this is that many of those who sit astride the ruling machinery of our unions will be gone in a few years -- a simple function of time. They can be succeeded by an even more stilted group of hand-picked yes men, and perhaps some women, trained in the art of retreat. Or they can be replaced by leaders with new ideas, a commitment to changing the aging bureaucratic structures of most unions, and deep roots in the ranks from which they came. It may just be that this new generation (whatever their ages) will not require six figure salaries, have a taste for cozy relations with top executives, or think that a union where the staff has more power than the members is an effective way to confront global corporations. Naturally, it takes more than changes in leadership to create a democratic labor movement, but when this leadership is linked to an active movement based in the ranks the potential is great.

We have a choice. We can tinker at the top telling ourselves all the while that things are getting better in the house of labor. Or we can lend a hand to those who seek a deeper change and are willing to put up with debate, political conflict, an informed rank and file, and the other facets of democracy because they know that ultimately that is where the power of the unions will be found.

Contents of No. 26