Bargaining in the Age of the New Pharaohs
By William Lucy
When our founding fathers had finished drafting our Constitution, Ben Franklin wrote that it promised to endure, but noted that “in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” He could have added “change.” The Constitution has endured, but since Franklin’s day we’ve felt the need to amend it 27 times.
Government itself has changed. The basic idea is the same, but government has become more complicated in dealing with such diverse concerns as financial markets, women’s suffrage, environmental quality, and public health.
The need for adaptation applies to just about everything humans do, including labor-management relations in the public sector (and private, too). It wasn’t all that long ago that political bosses called the tune; they decided who got hired and what they were paid. When that approach was no longer acceptable, civil service commissions took over. Then, as the labor movement grew, public workers formed unions, and wages, hours, and working conditions became issues to be settled by collective bargaining.
Management has changed, too. Forty years ago public managers’ main concern was to maintain public services: clean streets, garbage pick-up, safe water. Today’s managers tend to focus more on costs and budgets, inflation levels, and the labor market. One result is that a union can no longer win a negotiation by pounding the table. Today we have to be smarter than the boss.
A union has no choice but to become involved in public policy: budgets, privatization, tax structures — all the things that affect members’ pocketbooks. It’s no longer enough to know whether a worker is exposed to a toxic chemical. Today if there’s no applicable regulation, we have to be ready and able to lobby for one.
The more things change, the greater a union’s responsibility to keep the members informed about what’s going on. AFSCME was warning members about privatization 20 years ago. Members today have to be aware of MAI, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. This is a draft trade agreement that would give giant corporations and investors a free hand to do as they please anywhere in the world. If Congress okays the MAI, the unfairness of the North American Free Trade Agreement is going to look like a penny-ante issue.
The union has to alert its members to the fact that Big Business is robbing them blind and treating public treasuries like milk cows. Since 1990 corporate profits have totaled $4.5 trillion, but the federal government is currently laying out at least $125 billion a year in corporate tax breaks, incentives, and subsidies. At the same time, social welfare has been cut to the bone.
The same thing is happening in the states. Alabama gave Mercedes Benz — a German firm — $253 million in tax breaks and other subsidies for a factory that employs 1,500 workers. Every job costs Alabama taxpayers $169,000. Pennsylvania earmarked $307 million for Kvaerner ASA — a Norwegian firm — which promised to hire 950 workers and fix up the old Philadelphia Navy Yard. That’s $323,000 per job. General Motors squeezed $60 million in tax breaks out of Michigan with threats to relocate a factory.
The politicians’ rationale is always the same: We’re saving jobs. But in this decade the Fortune 500 companies that get most of the pork have cut more jobs than they have created, and corporate CEOs now confuse themselves with rajahs and pharaohs.
All told, the hundreds of billions that our governments are handing over to corporate fat cats are at the direct expense of essential public services, public jobs, and such “frills” as health care, education, housing, job training and social welfare.
Sixty years ago, the idea of AFSCME as a major national political force would have been laughable. Today it is fact, because over the years we have faced up to change. As long as AFSCME is willing to adapt to the nation’s and the world’s changing realities, we will continue to survive and grow.
