[Book Review, Tell the Bosses We’re Coming: A New Action Plan
for Workers in the Twenty-First Century, by Shaun Richman. NYU Press,
2020.] [[link removed]]

‘TELL THE BOSSES WE’RE COMING’  
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Eric Dirnbach
November 16, 2021
Organizing Upgrade
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_ Book Review, Tell the Bosses We’re Coming: A New Action Plan for
Workers in the Twenty-First Century, by Shaun Richman. NYU Press,
2020. _

Workers, picketing outside Health Systems Cooperative Laundries
today, show they are united behind efforts to win a fair contract.,

 

The ongoing debate about reviving the U.S. labor movement tries to
grapple with the devastating decline in the union membership rate from
one-third of the workforce in the 1950s to less than 11% today
[[link removed]]. In this
discussion, occasionally a book comes along that is a great
combination of labor history, thoughtful analysis of union organizing,
and suggestions for ways forward. Shaun Richman’s _Tell the Bosses
We’re Coming: A New Action Plan for Workers in the Twenty-First
Century_
[[link removed]] is
such a book.

Richman is the Program Director of the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of
Labor Studies [[link removed]] at the State
University of New York Empire State College. He brings the unique
perspective of a veteran organizer who stepped away from union work to
rethink organizing strategy and the legal framework in which unions
operate. His willingness to question many core beliefs of the labor
movement is in the recent tradition of Jane McAlevey
[[link removed]] and Joe Burns
[[link removed]].

PROBLEMS FROM THE BEGINNING

The early chapters of the book give an accessible
laugh-so-you-don’t-cry tour through labor history that reveal
several important trends. One is that the labor relations framework we
have today began in 1935 when the authors of the National Labor
Relations Act
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(NLRA) decided to base it on the Constitution’s Commerce Clause
[[link removed]],
rather than more fundamental Constitutional rights. This made
preventing obstructions to commerce the main reason that workers
should have the right to organize. This theory paved the way for
decades of conservative court decisions that chipped away at union
power and freedom. Moreover, union practice evolved not as a
deliberately planned strategy by brilliant organizers back in the day,
but as responses to the changing legal environment and other
circumstances, all while under sustained assault from anti-union
forces.

The list of bad court cases since the NLRA is long, and Richman gives
us a sample. Why can bosses permanently replace striking workers? The
Mackay case of 1938. Why aren’t sit-down strikes protected activity?
The Fansteel case of 1939. Other rulings have held that intermittent
and partial strikes are unprotected. All these restrictions on strikes
are an outrageous obstruction of workers’ rights to concerted
activity. But then we remember the NLRA is supposed to minimize
disruption.

Another important issue: Because of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947,
bosses can conduct coercive captive audience meetings
[[link removed]] to scare workers
trying to organize. Richman reminds us that unions were allowed equal
time to counter these meetings until the General Electric & McCulloch
Corp case of 1966 ended that practice. Unions were thrown the bone of
the Excelsior List (employer provides a list of workers before a union
election) from the Excelsior Underwear case of 1966. Is that a good
tradeoff? No. It’s better for unions to build their own worker list,
and captive audience meetings are very effective for employers. So we
can see how the environment for unions worsened over time.

THE PRICE OF PEACE

Then there’s union practice. Why do nearly all unions have
multi-year contracts with no-strike and management rights clauses?
Richman spends some time on this, and we can essentially trace this
back to the pattern set by the United Auto Workers (UAW) “Treaty of
Detroit
[[link removed]]” in
1950. The union agreed to an extended “labor peace” in exchange
for a ton of money, and gave up on trying to participate in
“managerial” decisions. Unions made these kinds of moves that
perhaps seemed reasonable at the time, but restricted the areas where
they could influence corporate decisions.

The UAW also negotiated health and pension benefits, continuing the
trend started by unions during WWII when benefits were exempted from
wage controls. Sounds great, and it was. But this was intended to
persuade the federal government to move on national health care, which
of course never happened. Now we have the disastrous situation that
about half of Americans
[[link removed]]
get inadequate health insurance through their employer, and private
sector unions have become wary guardians of their expensive
“Cadillac” health plans for less than 7% of the workforce.

The reduction in union scope and power over time was sometimes enabled
by opportunistic union officials, as more militant forms of unionism
were eliminated. Toni Gilpin’s _The Long Deep Grudge_
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tells the story of how the radical and direct-action-oriented Farm
Equipment Workers union was taken over by the UAW, and the United
Electrical Workers union was nearly destroyed in the 1950s through
raids by other unions, often in collaboration with employers. And
union leaders have often been hostile to oppositional left and
rank-and-file movements in their unions.

But mostly unions did fight hard, and this is a long drama of union
organizing and strikes, with many wins and eventually more losses.
Unions did tremendous organizing and striking in the 1950s through the
1970s. An average of over 500,000 workers
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voted in union elections each year in this entire period, about 1% of
the workforce annually. Over 300 large strikes
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workers) started each year in that era, nearly one per day. But after
the PATCO strike debacle
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union activity started to plummet, as union busting ramped up
dramatically.

This post-NLRA history has led to the evolution of a fairly unusual
set of characteristics for a U.S. union workplace. As Richman says,
“the combination of exclusive representation, mandatory agency fees,
no-strike clauses and management rights are the foundation of our
peculiar union shop.”

Richman describes this as the trap that has gradually ensnared unions,
because it appears to be impossible for them to organize at scale and
grow in this environment. I’ve taken a look at the data
[[link removed]]
that shows how unions that organize really well actually do win most
of their elections. But Richman argues that even excellent
comprehensive organizing in this environment has not been enough to
grow the labor movement. It’s simply too slow and resource
intensive. Indeed, the labor movement has been shrinking as a
percentage of the workforce for the last 60 years.

Now I have a caveat similar to Richman’s: current union practice
does a lot of good and has brought improved wages, benefits and
working conditions to tens of millions of workers over the decades.
It’s often life-changing for workers to form a union, and I
wouldn’t advocate ripping up all contracts and starting over with no
labor law.

SO WHAT DO WE DO?

In the second half of the book, Richman outlines a number of new ways
of organizing and legal changes.  He favors a lot of the usual labor
law reforms folks have been talking about for years – getting rid of
“right to work [[link removed]],”
restoring the right to conduct secondary boycotts
[[link removed]],
outlawing permanent replacements for striking workers, and increased
penalties for union busting, among other changes. But he’s also dug
deeper, and argues for making it easier for “professional”
employees to join the same bargaining unit as other workers, giving
unions the ability to go to court faster, and expanding the
definitions of employees (to cover all workers) and employers (so they
can’t subcontract or franchise their way out of obligations).

Richman is at his best when discussing how unions should fight for
“just cause” employment
[[link removed]]
for everyone. Non-union private sector workers generally have
“at-will” employment, which means they can be fired for any or no
reason, aside from illegal forms of discrimination. That needs to
change. This is a key part of a Labor’s Bill of Rights
[[link removed]] he has
previously published, which is included in the book’s Appendix.

He spends some time discussing industrial labor boards
[[link removed]]
and works councils [[link removed]]. He
hasn’t convinced me yet, but I appreciate his willingness to make
these cases for major changes. Furthermore, he rightly argues that
these shouldn’t just be technocratic meetings for lawyers, but new
arenas for organizing that bring non-union workers into the action.

Another suggestion from Richman is that unions should try to reclaim
more rights though relentless filing of unfair labor practice charges
on captive audience meetings, permanent replacement scabs,
[[link removed]]
and other issues. He’s absolutely right. This reminds me of the
strategy of the National Right to Work Committee which filed more than
1,000 cases
[[link removed]]
over decades and eventually won the Janus v. AFSCME
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decision that extended “right to work” to the entire public
sector. Unions also need that kind of relentless long-term effort on
core labor rights issues. Unfortunately, some union court cases may
eventually die a painful death at the current Supreme Court, but we
have to try.

WE NEED MORE WAYS TO ORGANIZE

The important point here is, how can we provide unions with more
freedom to organize in different ways and more tools to enable the
tens of millions of non-union workers
[[link removed]]
who want a union to organize and win gains, without their necessarily
falling into the trap of standard organizing? At the current rate of
union organizing it would take 1,000 years
[[link removed]]
to reach all the workers who want a union. Clearly we need to
experiment with other ways of doing this.

Richman rightly brings up Charles Morris’s _The Blue Eagle at Work_
[[link removed]],
which argues that the NLRA should allow groups of workers to form
minority members-only unions of their choice, and demand that their
employer bargain with them. These small unions could form a base for
further organizing.

There is a similar way of organizing involving members-only unions
that has been used primarily by the Industrial Workers of the World
for over 100 years – solidarity unionism
[[link removed]].
This kind of organizing involves groups of workers coming together and
fighting for improvements at work, while avoiding union elections and
formal contracts. UE and the Communications Workers of America have
also experimented with similar members-only unions. This has been the
main organizing strategy promoted by the Emergency Workplace
Organizing Committee
[[link removed]],
a joint project of the Democratic Socialists of America and UE.

This kind of organizing deserves critical engagement because it tries
to avoid the trap that Richman outlines. It generally doesn’t seek
exclusive representation or mandatory agency fees, and won’t sign
no-strike and management rights clauses, because there’s no
contract. It has its own challenges, because all organizing is
difficult no matter how we do it. But its great advantage is that
it’s immediately available to all workers to use now, and they
don’t have to wait forever for unions to come around and show
interest in their workplace.

Indeed, as unions have been unable to organize any huge corporate
employer
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in many decades using the traditional workplace election strategy, a
members-only, direct action approach may be the best way forward in
those cases. The problem of course is that most workers need
organizing training and assistance, and the labor movement should be
much more open about providing that, as I have discussed
[[link removed]].

If Richman can be chastised, perhaps it would be that in his
enthusiasm he makes it all sound a little too easy, but I prefer that
to cynicism. Many of his proposed reforms are legislative changes that
are difficult to achieve, and the labor movement usually gets major
change when it’s large and disruptive enough to force it
[[link removed]].
So we’re in this situation where we’re organizing within the trap
that Richman describes, while hoping for a legislative way out of the
trap that we are too weak to get. The current hope is some version of
the PRO Act
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which would certainly be helpful.

Overall this is a really worthwhile book from someone who has thought
deeply about these issues. I like Richman’s call for a full
reexamination of how we do things:

_“We should be crystal clear about which parts of our peculiar union
shop and routine of collective bargaining work for us, and which parts
are in management’s interests. Where the system works for them and
not for us we must be willing to try, to resist, to experiment, and to
generally blow the system up.”_

_==_

Eric Dirnbach is a labor movement researcher and union activist in New
York City. He has published in Jacobin, Labor Notes, New Labor Forum,
and Organizing Work.

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