This will warm your heart...The UPS driver who delivers to my workplace is a helluva guy and we have had long conversations on the 'State of the Unions' over the years...He's super savvy on all the deets of the upcoming strike and union interworkings at UPS...Last week they did a 'practice protest' run outside of the hub where he works...Holding signs...doing the chants...Just kind of 'breaking the ice' so to speak for if and when the strike happens it will feel less 'unfamiliar'....
Anyhoo, the hub is in an industrial park area and not on a major thoroughfare...But he said HUNDREDS of cars drove by in those 3 hours, honking their horns and enthusiastically showing their support...Like I say, they had to DELIBERATELY drive into this industrial park so the honking wasn't just from random people who just HAPPENED to be driving by
People are fucking PAYING ATTENTION to this upcoming potential strike...I'm so used to apathy that I have to wonder what happened!
What a lovely turn!
So, this is CLEARLY somthing that has the public's attention and support
It's gonna be interesting...The new President of the union has said that he will NOT kick the can down the road, so after Aug 1, no contract, no work...Thing is, UPS needed to agree to the contract and have it ALREADY in place earlier this month at the LATEST...So even if the new contract 'goes through' it STILL has to be voted on by union members... which wouldn't happen until AFTER the Aug 1 date...So Mr O'Brien will have to navigate that 'promise'
Say, remember when Lina Khan observed that it might not be good for "society" to have vertically integrated companies that are worth a trillion or more, and are close to being able to charge consumers whatever they want, and are able to pay workers whatevet they please, and can crush a potential competitor by winking at them?
And remember when Larry Summers wrote a NYTimes editorial calling her a populist simpleton?
I’m a proud Teamster, Hollywood 399. Seems an easy expansion for us would be to include our entry-level folks (in my field that’s casting assistants) in the union instead of only higher-level workers. Certainly worth discussing with leadership.
Back in the late 90s I read an article in Musician magazine (long since defunct) about a membership drive by the Los Angeles local of the AFM (musician’s union) that was apparently having some success recruiting younger musicians. One member was quoted as saying that prior to the campaign “the average age of our membership was ‘deceased’.” There were glowing descriptions of ventures such as building a low-cost studio for new members to record in, and how new and younger members were the driving force behind the projects, new energy, better-attended meetings, etc.
There were also quotes from skeptical EX-members with tales of how the AFM of prior eras had gone out of its way to be hostile to younger musicians, with sarcastic comments like “I think it’s real swell they’ve figured out that there’s kids with long hair coming over from England.”😅
And that’s sadly been the story I’ve seen of unions in my lifetime (GenX). Yeah, I love what unions have done and continue to do for workers. And yeah, I want very badly to support them in the face of unrelenting attack from greedy bastards. But it seems that too often, younger cohorts of workers have gotten the shaft - either from getting “grandfathered out” of benefits older workers took for granted, or simply being thrown to the wolves.
If labor is to ever truly rise again as a genuine force for the good of all, then ALL need to be included and ALL must be fought for. No half measures.
I'm a former member of the AF of M and I would argue that musicians have faced the same sorts of deleveraging conditions that the autoworkers faced with automation. Recorded and sampled music have replaced live musicians across many categories of music employment.
Listen to the music of an old black and white cartoon. That's an orchestra you hear playing incidental music behind Mickey.
I played a wedding in New Jersey one night in the 80s (ordinarily considered a shit gig) and to my surprise, Steve Marcus of the Buddy Rich band and trumpet emeritus, Pauley Cohen were in the horn section. They had had to move down the food chain to stay employed.
No doubt. I’m old enough to have watched a lot of that happen. The thing is, the AFM (like most unions) was founded at a time when there were actual employers to bargain with, and that world is gone now. We’re almost all required to employ ourselves to work at all as musicians (which I’ve done, but less of it and longer ago).
Since you’ve been an AFM member and I haven’t: do you think the AFM is capable of evolving to be a capable fighting force for musicians’ interest in the current state of the business? Or should we let it die and figure out another way?
Other strange anecdote. Years ago, I installed the version of ms windows that had the native music player with pre-loaded MP3s. THE very first thing I heard when I booted the player up was my friend's band playing one of their tunes.
Naturally the first thing I asked my guy was "did the company that built their business model on the concept of intellectual property offer to pay you anything for your intellectual property?"
Seems that they "hadnt put aside any budget" for this and had to be negotiated into paying up.
I cant really say. The union is still important for orchestra and studio musicians I guess. But as you say the nature of the work has changed a bunch. I resigned from the union when i moved from NYC to Seattle and found very little union work.
The long list of events that led the business side of the business to implode include recorded music (replacing live music), the sampling which in conjunction with keyboards allows a cheap-ass employer to do a whole film score with no other instrumentalists. The other biggie was music sharing (Napster) and later legit streaming which caused royalties to collapse.
On the (i guess) positive side, recording has become super cheap relative to the old days, and the internet and social media have given every musician access to the market. (A bunch of folks at record labels lost their jobs over this turn of events as they have become irrelevant.)
So today we are solving a different kind of problem: how to generate interest when your floating in an icean of musical product. And at less than half a penny per stream, that'd better be a lot of interest if you want to buy groceries.
"We are fighting for the very existence of the middle class." Here I was thinking that the point was to empower the *working* class, or even to abolish class altogether!
Even if the US unions get their way with AI, studios will just run amuck with it abroad in non unionized territories. Theyve already been exploiting cheap
Labor and vulnerable workers abroad, now they will just accelerate it. And as long as US media keeps quiet, most people
In the US have no idea that it is happening. Visit our page to see more @apacha194
I also want to comment on the larger point of this article, which concerns organizing. Sweeney asked unions to commit 30% of their budgets to organizing, and in subsequent years, some unions tried to rise to that challenge. In addition to awful labor law (and its administration), they had a big internal problem. At least 80% of their resources are devoted to grievance handling. Workers have an expectation of individual rights under the contract and expect full service support on the job, as opposed to self-advocating at the workplace. This is antithetical to the collective power of unions. Some unions have turned to "internal organizing" to build worker power to handle their own grievances, but that's still organizing money spent within the organization rather than outside.
In the early 2000s, some internationals decided to consolidate locals that were not doing organizing, and to impose lower skilled grievance handling mechanisms, like call centers. The first led to monster internal battles that were damaging and expensive; the second led to workers who felt like their grievances were being outsourced to unskilled customer service agents.
I note this to say that unions have tried many alternatives to their current model in order to free up resources for organizing and it has had the opposite effect of tying up money and staff in bullshit. The actual problem is a political and legal problem: the current system is designed to not only prevent unions but also counter-organize against labor. Unions know that, which is why the PRO Act and Employee Choice Act have had brief turns in the legislature. Until the Dems put it at the top of their to do list, things aren't going to change too much.
First of all thanks for the comments which are very thoughtful. I think though that it is just not the case that major unions today have tried and failed to dedicate adequate resources to new organizing. Apart from a relative handful of unions, there is little real commitment to spending what it would take. This is one of the facts that has spurred the reform movements inside unions, which are still spreading. Clearly law is slanted against unions but we have to organize in the reality we have until we can change it. We've failed to change it for 70 years or so so waiting is not a real option.
I’ve read your old critique of no-strike clauses and generally agree it’s a lot of power to give away in a CBA. This strike summer has me thinking about the issue again and whether no-strike is net good or bad for the overall labor movement. An expiring contract creates a helpful deadline and some leverage, of course, but also frames every union dispute with management as a business negotiation. And obviously no-strike clauses really neuter union power during the term of a contract. Anyway, curious if those thoughts resonate and/or if you have updated thoughts on no-strike.
Getting rid of no strike clauses would definitely give workers more power than keeping them. At the same time I'm not naive about what a big lift it would be. In most cases it would require a strike just to get rid of a no strike clause. It's a good long term ideal to have. In the meantime yes expiring contracts create a natural deadline and the more unions use that the better.
No strike clauses are the union's only real concession in a CBA, along with its cousin, the grievance procedure. Grievance procedures gained traction during WW2 so that strikes would not shut down necessary manufacturing/transport industries that were needed for war efforts. They enable economic growth and labor peace, which are theoretically an interest that unions and employers share. Employers are now in breach of their part of the bargain - they don't share in the economic growth that their workers' labor produces. While ending (or more likely, limiting) no strike clauses would make labor more powerful, it would be against US public policy favoring labor peace and economic growth, and would likely be a short term solution, since workers also need those things. Full disclosure: I'm a former union attorney, now labor arbitrator.
It's not true that the no strike clause is the union's only real concession in the CBA. The primary thing that the union is giving the company is: their labor. The CBA sets the terms of that. Nothing in the essence of a contract for work in exchange for compensation necessitates having a no strike clause. I understand the argument, but I think as soon as you buy into that premise you make it virtually impossible to ever get out from under the no strike clause. I think it's better to see the CBA as a contract in exchange for work, and the right to strike as absolute. (Of course when workers strike they lose something else: their income.)
I don't disagree with you; I'm just noting what has been historically the case. Unions concede all the time. The larger truth is that in a non-union workplace, absolutely every term and condition of employment is a management right. The only right that non-union workers have that is better than a union worker is a Section 7 right to strike (or withhold labor). So union workers give that up by agreeing to no-strike clauses. US labor policy has always put labor peace above worker rights. I'm not defending. It's just not a great use of energy to put a lot of political hope in getting rid no-strike clauses.
This will warm your heart...The UPS driver who delivers to my workplace is a helluva guy and we have had long conversations on the 'State of the Unions' over the years...He's super savvy on all the deets of the upcoming strike and union interworkings at UPS...Last week they did a 'practice protest' run outside of the hub where he works...Holding signs...doing the chants...Just kind of 'breaking the ice' so to speak for if and when the strike happens it will feel less 'unfamiliar'....
Anyhoo, the hub is in an industrial park area and not on a major thoroughfare...But he said HUNDREDS of cars drove by in those 3 hours, honking their horns and enthusiastically showing their support...Like I say, they had to DELIBERATELY drive into this industrial park so the honking wasn't just from random people who just HAPPENED to be driving by
People are fucking PAYING ATTENTION to this upcoming potential strike...I'm so used to apathy that I have to wonder what happened!
What a lovely turn!
So, this is CLEARLY somthing that has the public's attention and support
Love it. The Teamsters are next up on the strike list.
It's gonna be interesting...The new President of the union has said that he will NOT kick the can down the road, so after Aug 1, no contract, no work...Thing is, UPS needed to agree to the contract and have it ALREADY in place earlier this month at the LATEST...So even if the new contract 'goes through' it STILL has to be voted on by union members... which wouldn't happen until AFTER the Aug 1 date...So Mr O'Brien will have to navigate that 'promise'
This is my understanding per my UPS driver friend
Say, remember when Lina Khan observed that it might not be good for "society" to have vertically integrated companies that are worth a trillion or more, and are close to being able to charge consumers whatever they want, and are able to pay workers whatevet they please, and can crush a potential competitor by winking at them?
And remember when Larry Summers wrote a NYTimes editorial calling her a populist simpleton?
BTW Amalgamated Transit Union member working without a contract since January.
I’m a proud Teamster, Hollywood 399. Seems an easy expansion for us would be to include our entry-level folks (in my field that’s casting assistants) in the union instead of only higher-level workers. Certainly worth discussing with leadership.
Out of curiosity, will you still be contributing to 'In These Times'?
Yes.
I appreciate your writing.Thanks for your work.
Back in the late 90s I read an article in Musician magazine (long since defunct) about a membership drive by the Los Angeles local of the AFM (musician’s union) that was apparently having some success recruiting younger musicians. One member was quoted as saying that prior to the campaign “the average age of our membership was ‘deceased’.” There were glowing descriptions of ventures such as building a low-cost studio for new members to record in, and how new and younger members were the driving force behind the projects, new energy, better-attended meetings, etc.
There were also quotes from skeptical EX-members with tales of how the AFM of prior eras had gone out of its way to be hostile to younger musicians, with sarcastic comments like “I think it’s real swell they’ve figured out that there’s kids with long hair coming over from England.”😅
And that’s sadly been the story I’ve seen of unions in my lifetime (GenX). Yeah, I love what unions have done and continue to do for workers. And yeah, I want very badly to support them in the face of unrelenting attack from greedy bastards. But it seems that too often, younger cohorts of workers have gotten the shaft - either from getting “grandfathered out” of benefits older workers took for granted, or simply being thrown to the wolves.
If labor is to ever truly rise again as a genuine force for the good of all, then ALL need to be included and ALL must be fought for. No half measures.
I'm a former member of the AF of M and I would argue that musicians have faced the same sorts of deleveraging conditions that the autoworkers faced with automation. Recorded and sampled music have replaced live musicians across many categories of music employment.
Listen to the music of an old black and white cartoon. That's an orchestra you hear playing incidental music behind Mickey.
I played a wedding in New Jersey one night in the 80s (ordinarily considered a shit gig) and to my surprise, Steve Marcus of the Buddy Rich band and trumpet emeritus, Pauley Cohen were in the horn section. They had had to move down the food chain to stay employed.
No doubt. I’m old enough to have watched a lot of that happen. The thing is, the AFM (like most unions) was founded at a time when there were actual employers to bargain with, and that world is gone now. We’re almost all required to employ ourselves to work at all as musicians (which I’ve done, but less of it and longer ago).
Since you’ve been an AFM member and I haven’t: do you think the AFM is capable of evolving to be a capable fighting force for musicians’ interest in the current state of the business? Or should we let it die and figure out another way?
Other strange anecdote. Years ago, I installed the version of ms windows that had the native music player with pre-loaded MP3s. THE very first thing I heard when I booted the player up was my friend's band playing one of their tunes.
Naturally the first thing I asked my guy was "did the company that built their business model on the concept of intellectual property offer to pay you anything for your intellectual property?"
Seems that they "hadnt put aside any budget" for this and had to be negotiated into paying up.
I cant really say. The union is still important for orchestra and studio musicians I guess. But as you say the nature of the work has changed a bunch. I resigned from the union when i moved from NYC to Seattle and found very little union work.
The long list of events that led the business side of the business to implode include recorded music (replacing live music), the sampling which in conjunction with keyboards allows a cheap-ass employer to do a whole film score with no other instrumentalists. The other biggie was music sharing (Napster) and later legit streaming which caused royalties to collapse.
On the (i guess) positive side, recording has become super cheap relative to the old days, and the internet and social media have given every musician access to the market. (A bunch of folks at record labels lost their jobs over this turn of events as they have become irrelevant.)
So today we are solving a different kind of problem: how to generate interest when your floating in an icean of musical product. And at less than half a penny per stream, that'd better be a lot of interest if you want to buy groceries.
"We are fighting for the very existence of the middle class." Here I was thinking that the point was to empower the *working* class, or even to abolish class altogether!
Even if the US unions get their way with AI, studios will just run amuck with it abroad in non unionized territories. Theyve already been exploiting cheap
Labor and vulnerable workers abroad, now they will just accelerate it. And as long as US media keeps quiet, most people
In the US have no idea that it is happening. Visit our page to see more @apacha194
"I didn't escape an oppressive regime to put up with this shit" is my favorite strike sign ever.
I also want to comment on the larger point of this article, which concerns organizing. Sweeney asked unions to commit 30% of their budgets to organizing, and in subsequent years, some unions tried to rise to that challenge. In addition to awful labor law (and its administration), they had a big internal problem. At least 80% of their resources are devoted to grievance handling. Workers have an expectation of individual rights under the contract and expect full service support on the job, as opposed to self-advocating at the workplace. This is antithetical to the collective power of unions. Some unions have turned to "internal organizing" to build worker power to handle their own grievances, but that's still organizing money spent within the organization rather than outside.
In the early 2000s, some internationals decided to consolidate locals that were not doing organizing, and to impose lower skilled grievance handling mechanisms, like call centers. The first led to monster internal battles that were damaging and expensive; the second led to workers who felt like their grievances were being outsourced to unskilled customer service agents.
I note this to say that unions have tried many alternatives to their current model in order to free up resources for organizing and it has had the opposite effect of tying up money and staff in bullshit. The actual problem is a political and legal problem: the current system is designed to not only prevent unions but also counter-organize against labor. Unions know that, which is why the PRO Act and Employee Choice Act have had brief turns in the legislature. Until the Dems put it at the top of their to do list, things aren't going to change too much.
First of all thanks for the comments which are very thoughtful. I think though that it is just not the case that major unions today have tried and failed to dedicate adequate resources to new organizing. Apart from a relative handful of unions, there is little real commitment to spending what it would take. This is one of the facts that has spurred the reform movements inside unions, which are still spreading. Clearly law is slanted against unions but we have to organize in the reality we have until we can change it. We've failed to change it for 70 years or so so waiting is not a real option.
I’ve read your old critique of no-strike clauses and generally agree it’s a lot of power to give away in a CBA. This strike summer has me thinking about the issue again and whether no-strike is net good or bad for the overall labor movement. An expiring contract creates a helpful deadline and some leverage, of course, but also frames every union dispute with management as a business negotiation. And obviously no-strike clauses really neuter union power during the term of a contract. Anyway, curious if those thoughts resonate and/or if you have updated thoughts on no-strike.
Getting rid of no strike clauses would definitely give workers more power than keeping them. At the same time I'm not naive about what a big lift it would be. In most cases it would require a strike just to get rid of a no strike clause. It's a good long term ideal to have. In the meantime yes expiring contracts create a natural deadline and the more unions use that the better.
No strike clauses are the union's only real concession in a CBA, along with its cousin, the grievance procedure. Grievance procedures gained traction during WW2 so that strikes would not shut down necessary manufacturing/transport industries that were needed for war efforts. They enable economic growth and labor peace, which are theoretically an interest that unions and employers share. Employers are now in breach of their part of the bargain - they don't share in the economic growth that their workers' labor produces. While ending (or more likely, limiting) no strike clauses would make labor more powerful, it would be against US public policy favoring labor peace and economic growth, and would likely be a short term solution, since workers also need those things. Full disclosure: I'm a former union attorney, now labor arbitrator.
It's not true that the no strike clause is the union's only real concession in the CBA. The primary thing that the union is giving the company is: their labor. The CBA sets the terms of that. Nothing in the essence of a contract for work in exchange for compensation necessitates having a no strike clause. I understand the argument, but I think as soon as you buy into that premise you make it virtually impossible to ever get out from under the no strike clause. I think it's better to see the CBA as a contract in exchange for work, and the right to strike as absolute. (Of course when workers strike they lose something else: their income.)
I don't disagree with you; I'm just noting what has been historically the case. Unions concede all the time. The larger truth is that in a non-union workplace, absolutely every term and condition of employment is a management right. The only right that non-union workers have that is better than a union worker is a Section 7 right to strike (or withhold labor). So union workers give that up by agreeing to no-strike clauses. US labor policy has always put labor peace above worker rights. I'm not defending. It's just not a great use of energy to put a lot of political hope in getting rid no-strike clauses.