by various unions. If Charlie Hughes, implausibly, reminds me of a circuit-riding preacher from the New South, I am more amazed by the crowd of 20 aspiring union busters. These personnel people aren't stern old men with steel-gray hair, About a quarter of those present are young, attractive and in their early 30s. There is also a stocky black man from a New York brokerage firm; a gray-haired women who is the president of a Catholic college in Massachusetts; two men from Puerto Rico's electric utility; and a black woman from the New York Visiting Nurse Service. This promises to be the least festive gatherng I have ever attended. Like Puritans closeted at a peep show, the 20 people stare wide-eyed straight ahead, jot a few notes, but raise hardly any questions. They scoot out at the end like Buns escaping an opium den. The first day's topic is how to prevent the union germ from ever entering our businesses. Hughes puffs gravely o. a cigarette. "I would suggest that the term 'labor' be forbidden in the company." His voice chugs like a locomotive: "Management-labor, manage MOTHER JONES ment-labor. It's teaching them the clas- In fact, during this first day of helping potentially competing unions. Pink-Collar Unionism Hughes sketches a hump-shaped graph that charts labor's rise during the Depression and its slip ever since. It is a sorry testimony to organized labor's complacency. At the end of World War II, 35 percent of America's nonagricultural workers carried union cards. That figure has since dropped to only 26 percent. Yet, paradoxically, Charlie Hughes plays on the fear of creeping unionism. "The banks are getting knocked off one after another," says Hughes in a somber tone reminiscent of documentaries about the rise of the Third Reich. "Hospitals are dropping one after another." But the scariest specter is the rebellion of America's secretaries. Since women make up 45 percent of the labor force, but account for less than 25 percent of union membership, union drives now focus increasingly un women. As a result, women are becoming the prime target of New Pinkerton strategies. "The '80s will be the era of pink-collar unionism," Hughes warns. It is interesting to note that the New Pinkertons emerged with the shift in labor organizing from the manufacturThe answer is partly revealed as ing sector to the service and white-collar Why are the New Pinkertons so preoccupied with words and symbols when their forebears preferred the short end of a club? Why are so many of them behavioral psychologists like Charlie Hughes? The "NUCLEAR PLANT" is a member of the heralded Spiderwort family, the same genus and species that scientists have called "the most excellent test system ever known for low level radiation. The "NUCLEAR PLANT" is a beautiful, flowering house and garden plant, that sprouts from seed in about two weeks, and requires little care. The "NUCLEAR PLANT" package contains everything you need to grow your "NUCLEAR PLANT**: seeds, special growing containers, and full instructions. Just add water and watch it grow. OWN YOUR OWN NUCLEAR PLANT TO ORDER send $2.89 plus .65 postage/handling per package 10: CONTEMPORARY GIFTS CORPORATION employment sectors. Assembly line work separated workers clearly from management and, thus, bred class consciousness. But many workers in postindustrial society are intermingled with their supervisors. Office politics makes workers even more susceptible to psychological manipulation. It is this mind control in which the New Pinkertons specialize. The Hughes Gospel Stripping off his jacket and lacing a microphone around his neck, Charlie Hughes sits on three stacked-up chairs, so that he looks like a nightclub comic on a stool. He leads us on a magical odyssey through Union-Free America, during which he reminisces about his days with IBM's antiunion SWAT crew, the Commando Squad. "When the red telephone would ring, you'd jump and go," says Hughes. At the troubled plant, he continues, "we'd find some little mouse with 'UAW' or 'Machinists' written on the side. We'd be equipped with an elephant gun-but we always got the mouse." Hughes then recites an honor roll of companies-Texas Instruments, the Johnson Wax company, Delta Airlines (nonflight personnel), McDonald's MAY 1980 that have proudly made "union-free" their stated policy. One of the major ambitions of the New Pinkertons is to restore to respectability an antiunion attitude in the upper echelons of American business. Hughes wants us to proclaim this dogma in our ads, tell it to new employees and act as a mecca for union-hating workers and supervisors. "At McDonald's, all of those store managers know they better not have a union or they're on the streets," says Hughes. Losing to a union at IBM, he continues, "puts the kiss of death on your career" and leads to exile in "IBM Siberia." The rise of the New Pinkertons signals an end to 30 years of postwar collaboration between Big Labor and Big Business. During the postwar boom years, many of the newly organized workers came from "push-button" unionism-automatic recognition by large corporations of closed union shops. Union membership figures swelled; business leaders, in exchange, got union leaders to deliver a well-policed workforce. High union wages helped consolidate monopolies in many industries as Big Business gleefully saw that its smaller competitors couldn't meet union wage scales. Big Business has used the union movement to crush small business, and though Big Labor is slow to wake up to the fact, Big Business is now getting to work on crushing the unions as well. Big Business is much smarter than it has ever been before. Hughes, for instance, has little patience with companies that pay bottom wages; he advises that salaries either lead or lag the community average by five percent. He knows that you can kill a union with a little kindness, but this doesn't include excessively high salaries: "The stupidest thing you can do is be the highestpaying company around, because people who hate your guts can't afford to quit," he says. During breaks, my fellow union busters are abnormally tight-lipped: there is no bubbling chatter over the coffee urn. At lunch, the elderly woman from the Catholic college concedes that the Vatican supported the rights of workers to organize in the late 19th century. But she says that unions have gone overboard and, reluctant to speak it aloud, half-whispers behind her napkin that she is "absolutely opposed" to unions at her college. At a pathetic little cocktail MOTHER JONES party to close the first day, only five people even bother to come for the free drinks. Capitalism Past The headliner of our second day at the Sheraton Centre is Al DeMaria, a New York labor lawyer. After the barbered aplomb of Charlie Hughes, DeMaria looks very New York and corporate in his three-piece black suit. He kids about the union-buster label. "I left my brass knuckles home today," he laughs. Yet DeMaria comes across as a street fighter, a rabbit puncher, a scrappy urban hustler who can teach us how to jab below the belt while the referee isn't looking. Since DeMaria is with a Manhattan law firm that specializes in retail union busting, I am afraid he will see through my cover. At coffee breaks I avoid him and I choose another table at lunch. But I relax when a steady bleep sounds from the attaché case of a young man from a nonunion construction company. "There's the union spy!" cries a woman from Pfizer Inc. 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Pre-cut home kits in select, treated and hand peeled Northern White Cedar or. Lodge Pole Pine logs priced from $5900. Use your custom plan or select one of ours. We manufacture kits for any log structure. Send for New Full Color Plan Book with 40 designs $4.50, or a Dealership information Package with Plan Book $7.50. * "EXTRA" Insulated Log Homes ⭑ Wilderness Log Homes Route 2-MRJ50 Plymouth, WI 53073 MOTHER JONES notes-a veritable transcript of the twoday session. In fact, as a Small Businessman, I get reverent attention from the stage; I am the Spirit of Capitalism Past. Several times Hughes and DeMaria nod toward me and say, "Now, you'll find in retail... DeMaria outlines for us the Three Great Taboos. To comply with the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, employers cannot issue threats ("We'll shut down the plant if the union wins"), make promises ("If you vote against the union we'll give everyone a free car") or engage in interrogation of employees as to how they will vote. Clearly, unions could still be routed with ease if there existed no such curbs on employer "free speech." But DeMaria teaches us how to "stretch the free speech concept" while staying, usually, within the letter of the law. For instance, when our young construction manager inquires whether new workers, told of a firm's "unionfree" policy, can later be fired for organizing, DeMaria springs out from behind the lectern. "We've got a yellow dog!" he exclaims, pointing at the quailing sinner. The young manager seems a little embarrassed to learn that "yellow dog contracts"--which made workers sign no-union pledges as a condition of employment-were banned back in the 1930s. But it is clear that DeMaria yearns to bring back the yellow dog contract. He tells us how Charlie Hughes tried, unsuccessfully, to develop a "validated screen-out" questionnaire that would betray the prounion proclivities of job applicants. This sort of de facto blackballing tantalizes the New Pinkertons. One consultant from 3-M allegedly coaches employers on how to weed out prounion people by quizzing them on their involvement with liberal and consumer groups or their "sympathy for the underdog" attitudes. Dirty Tricks Suppose, says DeMaria, you see organizers circulating literature in the company parking lot. "Can we kick the bums out? Can we call the cops?" The answers are yes, but DeMaria urges the posting of No Trespassing signs to facilitate police work. He also advises "a nice solid contribution to the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. It helps." Long before a union organizer shows his or her face, he continues, we should MAY 1980 ban solicitation of employees during work time or the distribution of literature in work areas. We should even promulgate a no loitering rule so the first shift cannot hang around to organize the second. "You force the union organizer out into the hotels and bars, joints and dives to do his organizing," says DeMaria with a boyish smile, as if he were talking about fraternity pranks. DeMaria goes on to teach us how to exploit every defect of the labor laws and movement: He refers us to clipping bureaus, Chambers of Commerce and trade associations as treasure-troves of dirt on unions. He tells us of a service that can produce "the criminal record of anyone in the labor movement, going back 27 years." DeMaria says he cannot make public the names of the people who purvey this information. "But if you write 'Criminal Information' on your card, I'll have them call you back. When you score on that information," he says, shaking his head with wonder, "you can really hit it big." • He encourages us to ransack union bylaws for "juicy provisions" showing how autocratic the union can be. Union chieftains often take a cavalier attitude toward union democracy and dissident rights. All the New Pinkertons zero in on this issue. DeMaria has yet another trick. He suggests that we have workers fill out a questionnaire with the following ringer slipped in: "Many of my co-employees would like to see a union here--true or false?" "Psychologists tell us that people are really answering for themselves," says DeMaria, marveling at the cleverness. "So you have almost got an on-the-nose election of how the employees feel." Supervisors bear the brunt of antiunion campaigns. By indoctrinating these insecure, middle-level personnel with the notion that unions will usurp their powers, the New Pinkertons whip them up into a frenzied, gung-ho fighting force for management. The union vote in their departments is manipulated into a personal test of employee loyalty to them. DeMaria trumpets the supervisor tactic-"Your job is to show them that the skin is off their noses if the union gets in"-but he prefers dirty tricks. The seminar culminates with a slide show. Sipping a Coke and flicking slides by remote control, Al DeMaria is like a little boy on a hobbyhorse. A $13 bill appears on the screen. DeMaria smiles. This "funny money" is to be slipped into employee paychecks as a "visible, graphic way of really bringing home the dues thing." Before an election, many companies now give employees two paychecks: one for the future amount of union dues, the other for the normal salary minus that amount. DeMaria also tells us how we can bypass the government ban on "Vote No" committees by leaving baskets of buttons and other election paraphernalia in employee lunchrooms. (In North Carolina, businesses contribute to the Southern Employees Education Fund, which then recycles the dollars to antiunion committees.) To encourage voting at elections-low turnouts favor unions-DeMaria suggests that we raffle off a TV set on election day. For those who blow their union elections, DeMaria and his fellow New Pinkertons stand ready to profit from the next phase of the union-busting cycle: decertification. The number of such elections-which determine the fate of existing unions-has quintupled since 1965 to more than a thousand annually. One of the coming vogues in union busting is "management strikes"-staging an impasse in bargaining, forcing the union to strike and then mercilessly crushing it. Al DeMaria peddles a slim $50 book that he has written called The Process of Deunionization. "Employers are winning 76 percent of these elections around the country," hr says excitedly, describing the decertification explosion. "That's a terrific batting average, and I think you know we give the course on that." DeMaria winds up the afternoon with real showmanship. He holds up a little booklet he has created, entitled "What a Union Can Do for You." This Al DeMaria Special is filled with blank pages. "Zip, zip, zip," he says as he flips the pages for our amusement. Rejuvenating Labor In the past ten years, there has been a 250-percent increase in unfair labor practice complaints filed against employers. In speaking to union organizers around the country, I found a sense of gloom and defeatism in the face of the New Pinkertons. Some people thought labor should make a tactical retreat. The AFL-CIO with its new, monthly MOTHER JONES RUB Sheets-Report on Union Busters-has made a welcome start in disseminating information about consulting firm tactics, but their files are still sketchy. Nevertheless, there are hopeful glimmers. The AFL-CIO is finally shedding its phobia about using groups outside of the labor movement to aid in organizing drives. At St. Elizabeth's, organizers enlisted community religious groups in mounting an appeal to the archdiocese to stop the 3-M terror. The groups were instrumental in getting the hospital directors to drop 3-M a few months after the first election. There are also some indications that ardent unionists are no longer waiting for the sluggish labor bureaucracy to take action. In Boston last year, an organizer for District 65 of the Distributive Workers beat the "invincible" 3-M in an election of Boston University clericals (see box). In the last analysis, however, the only real answer lies in a total rejuvenation of the American labor movement. Under George Meany, many American unions became far more interested in feathering their own nests and perpetuating the "labor aristocracy" tradition than in organizing the unorganized. Now labor is learning anew that it cannot exist as an island of privilege in a sea of unprotected workers. For far too long, the American labor movement has spurned those very groups-blacks, women, immigrants-upon which its future now depends. Labor's leadership has also been far too smug about issues of union democracy and corruptionissues that now figure so prominently in union drives. Shorn of a social vision and action, many American unions have become the dues-collection agencies of conservative myth. Organized labor is, in short, collecting the wages of sin for a generation of stagnation. It can no longer afford to be blasé about its historic mission to recruit ell American workers. Labor is in trouble, and unions are only beginning to see that they must grow soon or they will die in the near future. The day that labor's zeal for organizing begins to match that of Big Business' for union busting, the New Pinkertons will find themselves out shopping for a union. Ron Chernow's last article for Mother Jones was "The Strange Death of Bill Woods" (May '79). MAY 1980 When Does More Management Become By Jack C. Doppelt ore than 30 years ago, three men left one of Chicago's burgeoning law firms to found one of their own. Henry E. Seyfarth, Lee C. Shaw, and Owen Fairweather hoped to prac tice a progressive brand of labor lawbased on mutual respect and coopera tion between unions and management. The mood in labor law at the time was anything but one of mutual respect. The Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act) of 1935, which had set up collective bargaining procedures and given moral and legal sanction to unionization, had survived the battles 30 STUDENT LAWYER 68-183 0-80--26 Illustration by John Sandford |