Q: What is the “renegade union” of the book’s title?

Phillips: Local then District 65 of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union AND of the Distributing Processing and Office Workers AND of the United Automobile Workers AND of the Distributive Workers of America. It changed its affiliation several times throughout its history.

Q: What was the biggest problem the union faced in organizing its workers?

Phillips: Fitting in within the larger labor movement. It always held great appeal to the workers it organized but had to organize so differently from other labor unions that an
almost constant tension existed between it and the larger labor organizations with which it attempted to affiliate.

Q: Is there something about New York City–vs. other large cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, etc.–that made the creation of this union possible? 

Phillips: New York, especially Manhattan where the union’s organizers started, wasn’t a manufacturing or meatpacking center like Detroit or Chicago. New York’s businesses and shops were relatively small and diverse compared to big auto or steel plants more typically associated with union organizing in the mid 20th century. That meant that District 65′s organizers had to develop different strategies to pull in the people it organized.  Not only were they incredibly low paid, they worked in small 10-15 person shops and warehouses.  Some packed merchandise, everything from clothes to toys to costume jewelry. Others worked in wholesale shops stocking merchandise and doing other odd jobs. Few worked for the same “boss,” in the same warehouse, or in the same industry but they all faced similarly degrading work conditions and within a few blocks of one another and that’s what the union’s organizers were able to tap into.

Q: How many people were in the union at its peak? 

Phillips: 40,000 people working in 1000s of different shops and establishments under 1000s of different contracts.

Q: Did it eventually join forces with a larger union organization?

Phillips: Yes, it was affiliated through most of its history with the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) which was an AFL-CIO union.

Q: Was there anything unique about District 65 that still makes an impact today? 

Phillips: Its history is key to understanding how labor organizers work today in a service and distribution-oriented economy. There are more and more people working in small retail and wholesale establishments and in warehouses in the service and distribution industries than there are people working in large manufacturing-based settings so the union’s strategies are incredibly instructive for what’s happening today with American workers.

Q: What was the most interesting thing that you learned while researching the book? 

Phillips: It was fascinating to learn about how people from such different backgrounds (men, women, black, white, Puerto Rican, Jewish, Italian) and working for different people could create a sense of camaraderie and come together to try and pressure their bosses to improve their working conditions. They didn’t have strength in numbers the way auto workers did to shut the plant down and walk out. They didn’t have a common “boss” to despise. None of that but a collective sense of pushing their “collective” employers to improve conditions in the whole of segment of the industry in which they worked. What an undertaking!

In The Haymarket Conspiracy, Messer-Kruse thoroughly debunks the dominant narrative through which most historians interpret the Haymarket Bombing and Trial of 1886–87.

Here is Dissent‘s dissenting book review, and Messer-Kruse’s response.

Last week, as the strike was suspended, he participated in a round table on Chicago Newsroom. Watch the episode here.

This week Professor Ashby was interviewed by University of Illinois’s News Bureau business and law editor Phil Ciciora.  He discussed the outcomes of the strike,

“The union got a 7 percent raise over 3 years, instead of the original offer of 2 percent. . . .

The union won the hiring of 600 additional teachers in art, music, physical education and other subjects. . . .

The board agreed to put it in the contract that textbooks will be available to students on the first day of school. . . .

The union sought but did not succeed in pressuring the Chicago Public Schools board to reduce class size. But the contract would maintain limits on class size.”

He also talked about strategies the union used to educate and mobilize not only its members, but the Chicago public. Read more of the interview here, and read more about an earlier successful union negotiation in Illinois in Staley: The Fight for a New American Labor Movement.

Archie Green celebrates one of the most revered folklorists and labor historians of the twentieth century and captures the many dimensions of Green’s remarkably influential life and work.

Sean Burns is a teacher, musician, and gardener. His research and teaching interests center on the history, culture, and politics of progressive social movements. His band, Professor Burns and the Lilac Field, is rooted in Berkeley, California.

“Fascinating and insightful. . . . Burns provides an absorbing account of Archie’s experience in student politics in the early Depression years. For example, he worked with his father in the Democratic Party campaign for governor of socialist Upton Sinclair.  By his senior year at Berkeley 1938-1939, Green’s activities in the Democratic Party had begun to reflect the New Deal ethos.  But it was the conflict between San Francisco maritime labor leaders Harry Bridges and Harry Lundeberg and Archie’s work life between 1939 and 1943 that seem to have been decisive in shaping his political outlook.”

“Messer-Kruse says he had tried in 2009 to correct a particularly misleading statement about the trial that claimed there was  ‘no evidence’ presented by the prosecution linking any of the defendants with the bombing.

He removed a line and provided an explanation in Wikipedia’s editing log, feeling that his research and published works on the trial provided him with a measure of expertise about the topic.

He says within minutes, his changes were reversed with the explanation that reliable sources must be provided in order to make changes to an article. Messer-Kruse says he cited documents to prove his point, including verbatim testimony from the trial.”

Q:  What was the main impetus for the strike at Boeing in 1995?

A:  In 1995, the company was enormously profitable, having just purchased McDonnell Douglass. Hundreds of orders for planes were outstanding. Yet the Company wanted concessions on wages, health care benefits, pensions, and work hours–including demanding rotating 12-hour shifts that are incredibly disruptive to family life. Knowing that the Company was flush, ordinary workers felt moved to strike, but their leadership cozied up with their employers to craft an unnecessarily concessionary contract. After surprising the Company, the IAMAW (International Association of Machinists), and the media with their rejection of a second bad contract offer, workers went out for 69 days and won nearly all of their demands.

Q:  How did the union negotiate the gulf between what the workers wanted and what Boeing was willing to offer?

A:  The IAMAW did not negotiate that gulf–its leaders stayed clearly on the side of the Boeing Company and was willing to basically accept what Boeing was offering without a fight. It took the workers independent action to force the IAMAW to act like the representative of the workers. This is an all too common practice on the part of mainstream union leaders across US industry since WWII. During this period union leaders, occupying an ambivalent position between worker and management operated on tacit agreements with employers not to strike in exchange for the assumption of job security. But employers violated that pact beginning in 1973–and the unions did not modify their stance accordingly, so that now unions bargain away the rights and wages of workers even when a company like Boeing is immensely profitable. 

Q:  There were dissident factions within the union that wanted the union to be more responsive to workers’ demands.  Is this type of dissent typical in union history or a more recent development?

A:  Democratic union agitators and organizations have always been present in the union movement pushing for greater accountability from their leaders and generating upward pressure on both union and company. Three notable examples are the efforts of postal workers in 1970 in a national wildcat (unauthorized) strike, the rise of the black-worker-led Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement in Detroit in the 1960s, and the rise of Teamsters for a Democratic Union in the 1990s. These countervailing pressures have always been necessary to hold union leaders’ and management’s feet to the fire, but are even more urgent now in the era of neoliberal privatization. Demands for an increasingly leaner, scattered, and non-unionized labor force have imperiled workers around the world. 

In this climate, union leaders have created and heralded “partnerships” with employers, enacting joint training and safety institutes. But as one of my informers warned me, the appeal to “jointness” means that “the employees are “getting the joint.” 

Q:  You spoke to Boeing workers in Wichita and Seattle.  Did you observe regional differences in how the workers at each location approached the strike?

A:  The only regional differences came from the fact that in the Puget Sound, there were many thousands more workers in the union in a closed shop–which meant that every worker in the plants there was in the union, effectively uniting them in the power of a strike. In Wichita, KS (a “right-to-work” state), the workforce was not uniformly unionized and pressure on union workers was high to keep fellow workers from crossing picket lines. The strength of the workers in Seattle bolstered the power of those organized in Wichita. In terms of organizing strategy, there were some differences among the groups I studied, but they generally aren’t regional differences. In the Puget Sound, the long-term vision of David Clay and his Machinists for Solidarity organization was more moderate than those of the Unionists for Democratic Change and the New Crew–the militancy of the latter combined with the systematicity of the former could make for a formidable presence.

Q:  Did the 1995 strike ultimately improve the plight of Boeing workers?

A:  The strike was an unmitigated victory, as were strikes in 2005 and 2008. The workers won a shorter contract term, which means that they are not stuck with any bad provisions for an extended period and can use their leverage more frequently to win improvements in wages, benefits, and work conditions. They won assurances of job security, although those have obviously eroded as the IAMAW continues speaking the language of the Company in terms of competitiveness–when in fact there is little to no real competition. They retained great health care plans and pension plans and cost of living raises for retirees, all of which were and are continually on the chopping block. To the extent that Boeing workers have had it good, it is because they have been organized and fighting. The decentralization of Boeing production in numbers of non-union facilities threatens this capacity to fight. Workers must attempt to organize every one of the facilities where Boeing operates; the IAMAW should make a great push to make this happen as well. 

Q:  What was the most interesting thing that you learned while researching the book?

A:  The most incredible thing is that you find people who sacrifice their money and time to make a difference, people who bear up under incredibly heavy workloads, exploitation, discrimination on the basis of race and gender, anti-gay harassment–and who still possess full consciousness of their interests and power as workers and who take risks to deploy that power. They are eloquent tellers of their own stories and powerful examples of how to fight. In other words, as we have also seen in Egypt, in Wisconsin, and across the US in the Occupy Movements, ordinary people can and do take their futures into their own hands. 

Q:  What advice would you offer future strikers at Boeing?

A:  1. To strike as long as it takes to defend short contract terms, job security language, cost of living raises for all employees and retirees, employee controlled health care plans, seniority rights, a wage structure without tiers, safety controls and all the rest. 

2. To push union leaders to distance themselves from the Company and to enable workers to fight.

3. To be suspicious of joint programs.

4. To work hard to overcome differences of race, gender, sexuality, and so on to craft the strongest possible solidarity.

5. Know your history. When they tell you you can’t fight and win, that is a lie. When they tell you the Company is struggling, that is a lie. When union leaders say that workers have to take concessions, that’s a lie. When mainstream media tell workers that it’s the unions’ fault that the economy crashed, that’s a lie. 

6. Build lasting democracy organizations inside unions that can weather the swells of activism. Make these organizations about growing numbers of class-conscious, critical rank and file members rather than run to win union elections, which are rigged, and which gets you ostracized, harassed, and threatened. Train up new layers of leaders so as not to burn out. Charge dues to cover the expenses of running an organization. Use that organization to agitate at every available moment about the Company’s profitability and the workers’ power, contract in and contract out. Go for numbers rather than exploiting legal loopholes.

7. Tell your stories to inspire others. Let scholars and activists know that you know that you are not ignorant of your own strength.

Q:  When and where did you first learn about Archie Green?

A:  In 2005, historian Paul Buhle came to UC Santa Cruz, where I was a graduate student, to speak about his newly released, graphic history of the I.W.W. To kick off the book event, Buhle introduced his long time friend and mentor, Archie Green. I had never heard of Green, but within moments he spellbound the crowd with vivid tales of I.W.W. organizing and poignant analysis of what the Wobblies should mean to the contemporary labor movement. I introduced myself to Green that afternoon. He encouraged me to come to his house in San Francisco for follow-up conversations. After a visit or two, and after discovering that no extensive study had been done on Green, I knew I had to write a biography on him. For months, I recorded Green’s oral history, and those interviews became the backbone of this book.

Q:  Why is Archie Green an important figure in American history?

A:  Green was an indefatigable champion of workers’ dignity, workers’ stories, and the importance of workers’ culture in a country that, for the most part, ignores and silences their voices. During his long life (1917-2009), from shipwright to professor to free-range cultural critic, Green found numerable, creative and politically effective ways to bolster our cultural appreciation for workers, and this profound body of work establishes him as one of the great 20th century public intellectuals. He is best known for his Herculean effort to help found the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, and the book places this success within the longer arc of his passionate commitment to document workers’ culture in all its forms.

Archie Green and Sean Burns

Q:  What was the greatest challenge in researching the book?

A:  Green’s energy for life was boundless, and he poured it into his research, writing, organizing, networking, and advocacy for over seventy years. I couldn’t tell you how many thousands of people’s lives were directly inspired by his labors of love.  His published and unpublished writings are voluminous. I knew early on that I was not in a position to speak to the full range of his accomplishments, but what I set out to do was critically piece together and examine the development of his political and intellectual life as a worker-scholar-activist with the hope that it will inspire additional, focused studies on his contributions to folklore, ethnomusicology, cultural studies, and history.

Q:  Who should read the book?

A:  Readers with interest in the cultural and social history of the United States in the 20th century; people aspiring to live a life of critical thought and creative action in the name of cultural pluralism and egalitarianism; anyone who has worked! 

Q:  Your book draws on significant interviews with Green.  Tell us a funny story that came out of these sessions.

A:  When Green returned to San Francisco from the Pacific front of WWII, he teamed up with other liberal veterans to build the American Veterans Committee. Green’s main organizing partner at the time — we’re talking 1946-49 — was Timothy Leary. Years later, when Leary had become an international symbol of psychedelic counter-cultural, the two occasionally crossed paths. Leary would encourage Green to “tune-in” but Green would insist that he was already tuned-in.  It makes me smile to this day, to hear in my ear Green re-telling these encounters with Leary: “Tim, I am tuned in… and I’m not going in that spacecraft with you… “

In Guest Workers, Ness, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, exposes the corporate structures behind exploitative migrant labor programs.

From the introduction:
Much of the present debate on immigration policy revolves around the failure and unintended consequences of utterly inconsistent U.S. government policies to establish and regulate the flow of authorized and unauthorized migrants. Ineffectual regulatory policies have bifurcated migrant workers into two groups—undocumented laborers and guest workers. Focusing on guest workers rather than on undocumented laborers foreshadows the potential prospects and pitfalls of the program for foreign workers as well as U.S. nationals, and the potential influence of such a program on the broader labor movement and working class. This book shows that if government and corporate efforts to replace undocumented laborers with an established guest worker labor force succeed, conditions for all workers will significantly diminish.

Focusing on the United States as the world’s leading recipient of foreign workers, this book examines the intersection between labor, capital, and government policies in advancing corporate profits. As we have seen in past immigration bills, government programs are plagued with uncertainty and doubt. Can the federal government seriously address the status of more than twelve million undocumented migrants in the United States that most employers welcome in flagrant defiance of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) law? Since 2000, the AFL-CIO and most major unions adopted a policy for repeal of Public Law 99-603 of IRCA, which sanctions “employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers” (USCIS 2010a). But if a new comprehensive bill is enacted repealing the most harmful provisions of existing law for undocumented immigrants, most proposals have called on a new guest worker law that will institutionally marginalize temporary workers. Furthermore, if the new legislation moves most undocumented workers into a guest worker program, many unions that have grown by organizing low-wage service workers conceivably could suffer significant loss in membership.

The U.S. government propaganda machine and the media greatly exaggerate and overstate foreigners’ conviction that they will improve their living standard by working in the United States. To be sure, laboring in the hub of the empire might provide help to some workers, but only in the unlikely event that economic conditions improve soon; most migrants expect to return to their home countries. Why must global capitalists push, pull, shove, or force migrant workers to travel to the United States just for economic sustenance? The evidence in this book is that most unauthorized migrants do not enthusiastically go to the United States. Unlike some guest workers, the decision to migrate without authorization across the U.S. border does not represent a significant advance in wages but an economic necessity. Migrants risk life and limb in exchange for a job with low pay, low status, and lack of voice. It is not the job that degrades the worker but, rather, the powerless and poor conditions under which they labor.