USW Local 2-232

formerly PACE 7-232

Representing  employees at Briggs & Stratton Corp. and Strattec Security Corp. in Milwaukee, WI

Labor Day message

Labor Day in the 21st century

by David Newby, President, Wisconsin State AFL-CIO

           Our first Labor Day in the 21st century finds the labor movement in Wisconsin-and across the entire nation-at a crossroads.

          For twenty-five years (at least!) we’ve been hammered by corporate and political forces that want to destroy us. They’ve tried to destroy our unions. They’ve moved production to low-wage areas of the United States and especially to second and third world nations where workers are forced to toil for only cents-per-hour (which, of course, has destroyed millions of family-supporting jobs in the U.S.). Even when they haven’t moved production, they’ve used the threat of plant-closings to frighten workers into accepting contracts that don’t meet family needs. Corporations have poured unprecedented amounts of money into the political system in order to stop us from making any gains for working people through the legislative process.

          And as we’ve started to fight back by intensifying our organizing efforts, corporations have gotten increasingly vicious in their attempts to destroy organizing campaigns.

          Until recently, the corporate offensive against unions has been successful. From the mid-1970’s till about 1998, the purchasing power of the average worker’s wages was either stagnant-or actually fell. Each year-until 1999-while the number of union members remained about the same, the percent of union members in the workforce fell: from a high of 36% in 1956, we had dropped to 13.9% in 1998. These two developments have not been unrelated: the decline in the percentage of the workforce that is organized into unions is unquestionably related to stagnant or falling “real” wages (in other words, the value of wages adjusted for inflation). Add in the pressure on wages from unfair rules of international trade and the fate of working people in the later part of the 20th century becomes perfectly understandable.

          But notice that I said these were the trends until about 1998 or 1999. Just as the 21st century approached, we began a turnaround. In 1998, the purchasing power of workers wages began to increase (even though only by a small amount above inflation). And in 1999, our intensified organizing efforts stopped the decline in the percent of the workforce that is organized: we gained enough new members so that we stayed even at 13.9% of the workforce having a union card.

          It is the labor movement in American that created middle-class incomes and working conditions for working people in the period after World War II when the union movement was strong and growing. It is the labor movement today that is our only means of protecting these advances. And it is only the labor movement which has the potential to transform low wage-no benefit service sector and industrial jobs into family-supporting jobs through intensified organizing drives.

          On this Labor Day in 2000, we are truly at a crossroads. Can we actually start to increase the portion of our workforce that is organized? Can we successfully counter the power of corporate money in politics by mobilizing union members in support of pro-working family candidates for office in the November elections?