Labor: More Than A Paint By Numbers Project
As a former head steward for UAW 2865, and a now rank-and-file member, I’m deeply concerned about something I’ve seen present in most labor discussions leading up to, and since, the Janus decision. Throughout the process of bargaining and organizing my union has been particularly concerned with the legality of our demands, and of our actions. There seems to be a focus on what is legal at the expense of what is just — that the law has become the benchmark for good organizing and effective labor mobilization. Coming from other kinds of organizing, and the Black radical tradition, I’ve watched with dismay as legalistic language has protected white supremacy, the interference of outside forces with our union, and the demobilization of effect direct action.
Now, I’m not saying that the law in every instance is unjust. It’s important to recognize that legal precedent was won by those who came before us and established procedures by which we can demand things of our employer and the state. But the law, as any Black person living in the United States can tell you, is not neutral. It’s bound up in power — using it uncritically to justify the way labor is organized, or the actions of it’s leaders, is ignoring the history and power which dictate what is legal.
The law may be just, incidentally, but it doesn’t dictate moral or just action.
Janus plays a role in this legalistic tradition, in that it shows exactly how the United States government can shape the relationship between workers and employers. This specter has been raised in order to get us to pay attention to the fine detail of the law rather than to our power, which lies in our labor and in each other. We’ve become more concerned about painting in the lines, a union by numbers, than in building militant worker power.
Now, in my union there has been a false dichotomy between militancy and the building of membership numbers. Those of us who have argued that we have should build militancy have been accused of being against membership building. But particularly for those of us who are a part of the CLEW (Collective Liberation for Education Workers) caucus our argument is that militancy is precisely one way to build membership.
To really see the detrimental effects of legalistic interpretations of the labor movement, we have to turn to a key sequence of events in every present-day union’s life — bargaining and contract ratification. One area our membership had shown strong interest in was disarming and demilitarizing campus police. The union put together a working group (composed mostly of rank-and-file members) to create a presentation, gather research and materials, and draft the proposal language for the contract. But immediately the problem of legality came to the fore — can we demand things of another union in our contract (even though we already declared police unions weren’t really unions)? Can we really ask this of management, what if they think it’s not legal (when did management decide what we can ask for)? This language doesn’t look like contract language (this was the first time any union had written this kind of language).
Our Bargaining Team, particularly white and white-passing members, tried to orient our language towards a task force to discuss the problems of campus policing. Now, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Many of us on the disarm/demilitarize working group felt that we’d most likely end up with a strongly empowered task force on alternatives to policing at the end of bargaining. But why would we start bargaining at the place we hoped to reach? We believed we should start with the kind of language and contract we hoped to see in an ideal world, and then whittle it down through the bargaining process. But the task force was the most legal course of action, and it was the least likely to ruffle management’s feathers. What lackluster bargaining got us was a side letter saying there would be a single meeting between management and the union to discuss if police pose a threat to student-workers. This was touted as a groundbreaking win.
With such “groundbreaking” wins, the Bargaining Team decided to send our contract to a ratification vote. Although we had never discussed as a union what using an online platform for ratification might look like and the online straw poll which happened the week before was a mess — people who didn’t have access, didn’t get the email, or had it sent to their spam — we proceeded to use that same system (SurveyMonkey, y’all. We used SurveyMonkey) for our ratification.
The ratification of this vote was contentious. Many of the members wanted to continue the fight for a good contract, and felt let down by the loss of a number of protections and the few benefits we’d secured in this proposal. Our pay increase was no better than non-unionized workers, and isn’t expected to keep up with inflation. So we rallied to pass a NO vote on the contract — and here again we saw the use of legal language to dictate the moral and ethical actions of members and higher ups. Rank-and-file members put together a mass list of people to contact, and reached out as rank-and-file to argue their case.
Our union leaders and staff actively pushed for the YES vote, despite a near split in the straw poll taken to gauge how people felt about the contract.
We were told that what we were doing violated the union’s legal position and that we should cease and desist immediately; even going so far as to message members that our messages were illegitimate. But our paid staff, people who are not members, could and were expected to reach out and push a YES campaign.
“Paid staff influencing votes is legal.”
Throughout this process, from contract language till ratification there have been deeply unethical and immoral actions taken by people in leadership and staff positions. These actions represent collusion and interference by both the international and by management (intentional or unintentional). But, because of our focus on what is legal, we’ve fallen for the trap that what is legal is what is just.
I’d like to draw us back to the strikes of the 30s. To the strikes of the 70s. To the strikes of Black workers throughout American labor history. When our bodies and our work are criminalized, we cannot expect the law to represent what is just and right for us as workers. We had unions before the formation of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and we’ll have unions long after.
Our goal as a union should be our own abolition. We should be fighting not simply to continue our legal status, to maintain ourselves as an organization but to abolish the conditions under which we exist to protect workers from exploitation. Somehow we’ve forgotten that in our rush to defend ourselves from insolvency and threats of liability.
Let’s be better than the business that exploits us, that depends on the letter of the law to safeguard it from the strength of the oppressed.
