IV. Labor's Response
With capital's assault on labor costs and the organization of the working class as a backdrop, then, we turn to the conditions confronting workers in the Northeast and the South, and will examine...
...It is all too clear that the employers are still trying to cut wages and speed up work, but where are the unions and what are they doing...
...In most cases, however, only one organizer was assigned per plant, and two at most...
...It reported that the union has only 178 organizers in the field nationally-and is hoping to add fifty more in 1977...
...The on-going decline in union membership accelerated drastically: The ILGWU, for example, lost 28,000 members between 1974 and 1975 alone...
...32 Within eight days a new contract was negotiated by the ACWA and the Manufacturers' Association, the CMA, considered one of the best contracts won in years, however far below the demands of the rank and file, and not addressing the issues they found most important...
...This down-grading can be instituted by changing from one type of material to another, or from a man's suit to a woman's...
...NACLA interview with ACWA official, December 1976...
...Therefore, the ACWA recommended that the deficit in the fund be solved by workers foregoing their pay raise (one dollar over 3 years) from June 2 to September 28, 1975, and that the money be turned over to the fund, a loss of approximately $150 to $200 per worker...
...In February 1974, Farah finally succumbed to 22 months of militant pressure and agreed to negotiate a contract...
...They did not go back...
...In general, the opposition has been stronger among the skilled workers than the operators...
...But as one organizer put it, "His workers get $69 a week average take home pay...
...5. Ron Radosh, "The Corporate Ideology of American Labor Leaders from Gompers to Hillman," Studies on the Left, Vol...
...They were committed to and fought militantly for the central right of union recognition and the guarantee of the closed shop...
...Strong ties were forged with the larger Chicano movement, as Farah workers and United Farm Workers formed joint picket lines and held joint rallies...
...23 On top of this, the cutters are also undercut by the recent proliferation of what are called "cut-up" shops, existing predominantly in the women's wear industry...
...Bureau of International Labor Relations...
...Now they are exceedingly low, standing below those of any organized sector of labor...
...Militants within the ILGWU charged that, while union officials apparently had ceased to struggle, "the struggle goes on in the shops between the workers and the bosses and has never ceased...
...It mobilized tremendous human and financial resources behind the Carter campaign for the presidency...
...After several weeks the wildcats ended without changing the contract...
...Some unions even made loans from their general funds to help their employers during hard times...
...Tarriff barriers cannot stop the flow of capital to areas that offer far more favorable'conditions for accumulation and profit maximization...
...Just remember, there are no guarantees...
...The anger and militance of the workers often smolders and is unhappily contained by the divisions, fear and fragmentation of the work force...
...Since that time, many workers have analyzed that the gains were less than the ACWA led them to believe and that the struggle for decent wages and working conditions has not yet ended...
...With capital's assault on labor costs and the organization of the working class as a backdrop, then, we turn to the conditions confronting workers in the Northeast and the South, and will examine the role of the two major unions in this industry: How have they responded to capital's assault on wages and working conditions in the Northeast...
...emphasis in original...
...We shall keep this in mind as we review the activities of the unions representing workers in the apparel industry...
...if we are going to have to give up our hard won gains, then we might as well just pack up and move South with the companies because the advantages of unionization will pretty much have disappeared...
...6 Thus, militant strikes and collective bargaining notwithstanding the unions early on began painting themselves into a corner by buying the strategic notion that the health and efficiency of the industry had to be maintained at all cost...
...But the ACWA is also capable of putting out leaflets warning not to buy Hong Kong suits, because "they'll give you the Hong Kong flu...
...Bureau of the Census, "General Statistics by Industry Group by Selected Counties," Census of Manufacturers, Area Series...
...And will it denounce the brutal reign of Pinochet only when Chile starts exporting apparel to the United States...
...Neither union has made political education of any sort a priority-much less in the sense of raising the internationalist consciousness of their membership...
...ACWA has recently expanded its El Paso operations to 22 people and has targeted some 20 shops in the Southwest for a major organizing effort...
...46 Both the ILGWU and the ACWA are currently pushing for a variety of more stringent measures to protect endangered jobs in the industry...
...Workers know that the company wasn 't willing to budge before...
...The workers still did not go back...
...Conditions of political and economic oppression that keep wages in Haiti or Taiwan at subsistence levels or below are totally ignored, as is the complicity of the U.S...
...What happens as a result of this process...
...1-2 (Spring/Summer 1976), 172...
...Since she was paid on the piece-rate system, she would often return home with little or nothing to show for it.22 Another device used by employers is the re-organization of production, changing operations slightly and then slashing the wage rate...
...Are there measures which they could have taken to better protect the interests of their members...
...NACLA interview with woman operative, 5 years experience, ACWA member, Philadelphia, January 1977...
...If changes were not immediate and effective, the workers were reminded by their unions that Cohens might have to close the Philadelphia plant and rely solely on the newer, automated Virginia plant...
...The history of capitalism is the history of the struggle of the working class within capitalist relations of production for higher wages and better working conditions and sometimes against capitalist relations of production themselves...
...support...
...Union policy is to convince workers that there will be no strikes once the union is recognized, that strikes are for other unions...
...Blacks, Latins, Asians and women have little representation especially at the higher levels...
...imperialism's support of Pak 32 deterioration of conditions has been extremely dramatic and rapid...
...In late 1968, the idea of a union spread among workers in the shipping and cutting departments...
...5 Yet the notion of solidarity between the classes only served to obscure the essence of the principle, which was that "the success of business is something which both the employer and the union consider of first importance...
...The long and bitter experience of the trade union movement demonstrates that trade unions can realize their sole legitimate purpose-fighting for the interests of workers against those of capitalists-only through the implementation of two basic principles: 1) organizing the unorganized, and 2) building the unity and class consciousness of the organized...
...But this time there was optimism: for the first time, the ILGWU was organizing in more than one plant at a time, to prevent the company from shifting production from one plant to another or threatening to shut down...
...Or put another way, the union was to run a "speed-up school" for the employers' benefit...
...It would seem apparent that the ILGWU should be aggressively trying to organize these shops and bring the wage level up to union levels...
...The more skilled jobs can be kept largely for white men and the less desirable for minority workers who are predominantly women...
...It uses every opportunity to remind workers that the plant building is owned by the municipality and only leased by the company...
...The purpose of the trade union should be the pursuit of the common interests of the working class, interests which are not only different, but which always and everywhere contradict the interests of capitalists...
...Only ten people came to the next meeting...
...The first of these difficulties, however, is not inherent in the task itself...
...that if the union comes in, the company can just pack up and leave...
...Despite the realities of capital's fierce resistance to unionization, anti-labor laws and the fact that union budgets may not compare to corporate resources, several26 questions must be posed concerning the effectiveness and tenacity of current union efforts to organize the South...
...Rank and File Committee (of ACWA) Newsletter, "Mr...
...He surrounded his plants with barbed wire, telescopic cameras, armed guards and unmuzzled attack dogs...
...Until very recently, the ILGWU constitution was not even available in Spanish...
...The first involves the fact that, for a variety of reasons, many trade unions have adopted strategies which deny the contradictory interests of workers and capitalists...
...After thirty-one years of service, retirement benefits are only $25 a month-averaging out to 80 cents per year of service...
...In the ~ortheast, where the apparel industry was born, and where the degree of unionization is highest, the fi New York demonstrators picket the south Korean consulate to protest U.S...
...These questions are decided, as we have seen, by the capitalists on criteria of anticipated profitability...
...40 In 1976, all fourteen plants run by Vanity Fair Mills were non-union...
...She explained how, in her case, down-grading, no up-grading and flat-out wage differences between white and black workers were not fought against by the ACWA...
...From the examples discussed above, it does not appear that either the ILGWU or the ACWA is pursuing such a long-term strategy...
...Between 1968 and 1974, ILGWU's Southern membership rose by 30%, from a low base of 30,000 workers to just under 39,000...
...But critics of the unions' organizing efforts, particularly among rank-and-file groups in the Northeast, say that the unions could be doing much more...
...28 Finally, and importantly, little attention is given to internal education on the nature of trade unionism...
...A firm can easily play hide-and-seek, pretending to close down entirely only to reopen under a new name in the South...
...How much can one person do...
...The union had lost there four years before, by the very same margin...
...Union organizers (for non-unionized situations) know little of the problems confronting union managers, business agents, shop chairpersons (for organized shops...
...UNION MEMBERSHIP IN THE SOUTH Specific data on union membership in the South is very difficult to obtain...
...The company seizes the opportunity to stir up racial antagonisms: while black workers usually get the worst jobs in the plant, it's not uncommon during an organizing drive for the company to suddenly shift black workers to better jobs...
...The only way to combat this strategy," said an ACWA official, "is to spread the organizing to each and every plant-an impossibility given the union's limited financial base...
...20 Soon the woman no longer had down-time alone to object to...
...Moreover, the threat of foreign competition has been posed in terms of foreign workers stealing the jobs of American workers, as opposed to foreign and domestic capitalists alike producing abroad to profit from extreme conditions of exploitation...
...But it took several decades from the first articulation for that strategy to be cemented...
...The growth of multi-plant firms, according to the ACWA, is another obstacle to effective organizing...
...Meanwhile, major sectors of U.S...
...The ACWA's public stance against the war in Vietnam demonstrates that its leadership does not see positions of this sort as outside their legitimate realm of activity...
...Does their strategy base itself on the militance and unity of the workers or does it attempt to contain these factors in order to appease the anti-union stance of employers...
...The purpose of a trade union is to defend the interests of workers against the encroachments of capital...
...Many workers say that VF has given them everything they have...
...The international leadership is increasingly distinct from the membership...
...Grievance procedures, seniority systems and even clauses against19 "runaway" shops seemed to protect workers from the excesses of their employers and represented hard-won advances for the unions...
...They are often unaware of their rights and guarantees under the union contract or the union constitution, a situation the unions do little to remedy...
...Protectionist measures of the sort proposed for the apparel industry are not looked upon kindly by foreign governments, and retaliation could easily ensue...
...Moreover, ceilings have been set so high that they are not even being filled by the signatory countries...
...According to figures provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 1960 and 1974, the ILGWU lost close to 10% of its total membership, while the ACWA lost approximately 7% in the same period...
...By denying the antagonistic interests of capital and labor, they place themselves in a distorted and restrictive posture, one which prevents them from formulating a response that minimally would educate their members to the cause of the problems they face and that, optimally, would protect and defend workers' interests...
...The Chicano movement had surged forward in the early 1960's with the founding of La Raza Unida party, followed by Chicano student organizations and the United Farmworkers Organizing Committee in 1965...
...Four years later, an official from ACWA's New Ymk headquarters reminisced: "We weren't ready for a strike for another two or three years...
...Repeal would detract considerably from the advantages of off-shore production, since duty would no longer be paid solely on the value-added by foreign labor but on the value of the entire product...
...The two unions combined had a membership of 75,700 in the South-out of a total apparel work force of 594,100...
...Yet the Wall Street Journal recently estimated that only 55 per cent of the work-force under the ILGWU's potential jurisdiction was organized in 1976...
...The company is only one subdivision of a giant in the rag trade: the VF Corporation, ranked 18th in sales in fiscal 1975 and recording profits of $26.5 million...
...And until the necessary connections are made between the support of the U.S...
...25 As a reward for this worker's struggle to enforce the contract, he was blacklisted by the union and was out of a job for over a year...
...Even the most militant workers can begin to backslide...
...If there's a story about a strike in the union newspaper, they don't let us pass it out...
...The second largest shirt manufacturer in the United States-Phillips-Van Heusen Companyhas evaded unionization...
...New York Times, June 4, 1974...
...government in their perpetuation...
...But all ILG contracts have no-strike, no-lockout clauses...
...We have seen also that this competitive struggle among capitalists gets translated into deteriorating conditions for workers in what is already the nation's lowest-wage industry...
...The number of employed workers in the industry shrank to its lowest level since the 1930's...
...4 Existing legislation has clearly been ineffectual in curbing the flow of imports...
...Supervisors ride them, sending back garments time and again, finding miniscule "mistakes" that workers aren't paid to correct...
...Collective Bargaining Agreement, op...
...39 That is under 200 organizers to organize half an industry made up primarily of small scattered shops...
...Minimum pay at the plant is $2.30 an hour, the federal minimum, and $2.40 for average piece-rate yields...
...But workers don't want to hear a song...
...Members of Local 139 Speak Out...
...I, No., 1 (February 1974...
...Organizing the unorganized is their only alternative to dying a slow death, yet neither union has mounted a massive organizing campaign in the South-of the scope necessary to do more than slowly lessen the tremendous gap between unionization rates of 80-90% in the Northeast and 20% or lower in the South...
...35 Taking into account the 9,000 Southern members claimed by the United Garment Workers in 1974, we arrive at a unionization rate for apparel workers in the South of approximately 14...
...The fallacy in the argument appears when piece-rates are cut just as the majority of workers have speeded up enough to be making a decent wage...
...Amaroso Whom Do You Represent...
...Many of these programs were paid for partly or entirely by employer contributions, which was highly innovative for the time at which they were instituted...
...And the attempts of manufacturers in the Northeast to expand their profits at the expense of the workers are goaded by competition from the South and abroad.25 THE SOUTH: ORGANIZING THE UNORGANIZED We have seen the effects of capital's offensive on wages and working conditions in the Northeast, the effects of its struggle to compete with capital abroad and in the low-wage South...
...And anyway, so the argument goes, some workers like it because it rewards more pay to those who work fastest...
...They argued that "anything we give up now will have to be fought for all over again later on...
...They were all fired or forced to quit before reaching that ripe old age...
...Much was made of the minimum wage increase of 23.5% over three and one-half years, but inflation has been proceeding far more rapidly than that...
...THREADBARE DEMOCRACY Adoption of such measures including the non-enforcement of contracts and the undercutting of the grievance procedure must also reflect the internal state of the union...
...This was the only ILGWU organizing drive in process in Alabama-a state that employed over 50,000 workers in the needle trades in 1974...
...Yet these agreements set only voluntary quotas and cover only a handful of nations, while imports continue to pour in from countries not included in these negotiations...
...But, in general, the Local 10 leadership is literally looking the other way...
...Why should it concede anything after we win recognition...
...That the determined struggle of Farah workers was one of Mexican Americans is no coincidence...
...The ACWA, perhaps in recognition that internal opposition was more serious and organized than three years earlier, seized the initiative...
...Bankruptcies, plant closings and production cutbacks beginning in the winter of 1974-75 made official unemployment among apparel workers nearly double that of the labor force as a whole...
...What happens when this type of grievance is presented to the union representative...
...Industry Wage Survey, Work Clothing, 1972...
...A rank-and-file petition for a general meeting to explain and discuss the contract before ratification was denied...
...In plants producing work clothes, predominantly located in the South, approximately half the Southern work-force was organized by 1972.37 But giants in the field, such as Levi-Strauss and Bluebell (producer of Wrangler jeans) are still predominantly non-union...
...They developed a platform of demands for wage and benefit increases, changes in the union election by-laws and focused on the central right for national ratification by secret ballot...
...But the American public has not bought the purely chauvinistic argument behind the "Buy American" campaign...
...J.H...
...This dual aspect of union policy was apparent right from the beginning in the so-called "Protocol of Peace" signed by the ILGWU to end a general strike in the cloak, suit and skirt industry in 1910...
...Its meetings are held fairly regularly and business agents do show up at the shop...
...cit., 195...
...bch time the NLRB ordered Farah to reinstate the fired workers, he appealed the case to higher and higher authorities...
...Surrounded by four bosses, she was asked to explain her problem, then and there, to the business agent...
...emphasis in the original...
...No information about the contract was available to the rank and file before it was signed...
...One of the chief instruments available to workers in their struggle for an improvement of their status under capitalism is the trade union...
...Hence, both unions have formally recognized the need to engage in direct organizing activities in the South, and have resurrected the battle cry of the sweatshop days: Organize the Unorganized...
...Both the ILGWU and the ACWA estimate job losses directly due to imports in the tens of thousands...
...But we only have one organizer assigned to a plant, until the union sends in afew reinforcements around election time...
...Texas Observer, December 29, 1972...
...Does the overall practice of these unions in organized shops, North and South, convince the unorganized that the struggle for unioniza- tion is worth the risks involved...
...Cohens, a fairly large manufacturer of men's suits, sports jackets and vests, employed close to 3,000 workers in its Philadelphia plant in the early 1970's, as well as operating another plant in Virginia...
...The most dramatic answer to these questions can be seen in a recent contract negotiated by the ILGWU for knit goods workers...
...Both the ILGWU and the ACWA have tremendous resources at their disposal-most importantly their membership-to add to the struggles of foreign workers for democratic rights and decent economic conditions...
...Even though conditions are so bad, workers are plagued by the fear of losing the only jobs around...
...3 (Winter 1976...
...It has been a struggle for political rights (e.g...
...It is this activity that we will examine...
...Additional questions have been raised by the examples cited above concerning the Southern orga- nizing strategy of these unions...
...Enforcement of those provisions, however, says more about the nature of the union than the nature of the bargain...
...In the Mid-Atlantic States alone, for example, the two unions combined lost over 145,000 members between 1968 and 1974--a decline of 34% for the ACWA and 14% for the ILGWU...
...First in San Antonio, then in El Paso, eight Farah plants and 20% of the work-force joined the strike...
...First and foremost, the Farah victory demonstrates that even the fiercest employer resistance to unionization can be overcome-by militant and massive organizing techniques...
...41 An ILGWU organizer described conditions and the course of organizing at one plant in rural Alabama: The plant has 350 workers, 98% of whom are women...
...The ILGWU had made only piecemeal efforts at organizing in the past, and had never won an election...
...After 20 years on the job, the official maximum pension payment is a meagre $100 a month...
...Now these workers must work for forty hours at standard pay-that is, when there is even a full week's work to do...
...That the only way to keep jobs in the Northeast is to minimize demands...
...We have also seen the unions' efforts to keep capital alive and well in the Northeast-by bargaining away the wages, benefits and rights of their members...
...But the domino theory of one break-through leading to a string of others contradicts the past history of organizing in the South...
...Remember that 44% of the industry's employment is concentrated in the South...
...that they are as fearful of rank-and-file militancy in the South as they are in the North...
...It represents class collaborationism-the sacrifice of the interests of the workers to those of the capitalists...
...In addition the union agreed to hold seminars at the Fashion Institute of Technology to give instruction to manufacturers on how to increase the efficiency and productivity of their shops...
...Vanity Fair Mills is currently appealing the ruling on that election by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).BREAKING THE CACTUS CURTAIN: VICTORY AT FARAH Willie Farah swore he would let his machinery rust before he surrendered to unionization...
...As a result, spontaneous wildcats broke out in several areas of the northeast, strongest perhaps in Pennsylvania...
...13 Through a series of work stoppages the air conditioning was restored, but otherwise the company won out...
...The Cutters' Voice (publication of United Cutter's Welfare League, an ILGWU rank-and-file group), Vol...
...They come from low wages, long hours of hectic work and poor, in many cases dangerous, working conditions...
...26 Until the early 1970's, the bylaws of their constitution forbade the formation of internal political caucuses until three months prior to the convention, essentially making it impossible to organize a rank-and-file caucus that could develop a coherent and continuous program...
...And, second, fabric is regularly sent to non-union cut-up shops, regardless of the contract provision...
...Domestic apparel manufacturers that are threatened by off-shore competition support repeal, while those with production facilities abroad have lobbied ferociously against it...
...Additionally, this kind of procedure reinforces the racial and sexual divisions of the work force...
...This is because a nomination must be seconded by 25% of those attending, and the membership is simply afraid of the repercussions: without a secret ballot, the nominations become elections...
...Women who left to have babies were rarely rehired...
...22...
...For example, dressmakers made more than auto or steel workers shortly after World War II...
...Until they take a strong stance in opposition to governments everywhere that outlaw unions and legalize sweatshops, the victories won at home will always be temporary...
...In recent years, organized opposition has been somewhat stronger in the ACWA than the ILGWU, in part due to the somewhat less constricting control of their constitution and the greater possibilities of unity presented by the larger shops...
...Organizing at Farah began several years before the big strike...
...The Rank and File Committee is a group of workers from Philadelhia, members of the ACWA...
...The positions and propaganda of the ILG will not only fail to forge solidarity with workers abroad, but actively undermine that solidarity by setting worker against worker...
...According to participants in the strike, the ACWA initially opposed the strike, and tried to get workers at the San Antonio plant to quietly return to work...
...The results, however, after decades of organizing in the South, have not been glorious...
...The difficulties faced by rank-and-file apparel workers in the North are both real and severe...
...By the spring of 1975 rumors spread that Cohens was on the verge of bankruptcy...
...IV, No...
...Moreover, it was the solidarity of clothing workers in Hong Kong that added strength to the Farah boycott...
...The ACWA has a slightly better record...
...Most jobs require little training, but some jobs are significantly better than others and have correspondingly better rates tied to them...
...Justice (ILGWU newspaper), June 15, 1976...
...How can we say we'll come through on our promises, unless we're prepared to fight for our demands and even strike...
...Many are employed in small, dispersed shops...
...In New York, the ACWA International headquarters was picketed...
...As well, they became noted over the years for their pioneering success in raising wages and in securing non-wage benefits such as unemployment insurance, health programs, disability and vacation pay, pension plans and union-subsidized housing projects...
...By looking at the emergence of some rank-and-file upsurge, we will be able to see more clearly what kind of conditions prevail for workers in the North, as well as the union's response to it...
...Solidarity with the Farah strike spread to the international scene as well...
...We figured it would last two or three days, and then they would quietly go back...
...cit., 74...
...They simply are vague numbers hovering up in the sky and trade is being carried out pretty much according to the market conditions...
...ILGWU propaganda shrieks that baseball is nowan un-American game, because baseballs are made by un-Americans...
...In particular, the ILGWU campaign against imports has come under sharp attack for its blatantly chauvinist and racist content...
...And that implies a coherent strategy of solidarity with the struggles of workers abroad...
...And, as we will see, the unions are still committed to this same "time proven" strategy as the prerequisite to their survival and the job security of the work force...
...And discontent there has been-both to the lack of democratic procedures within the unions and to the implementation of the larger strategy...
...And while El Paso businessmen, bankers and city officials lent Farah their financial and political support, the U.S...
...But the long-term strategy of a trade union must be aimed at strengthening the position of labor vis-a-vis capital...
...Other sections of the contract raise more questions than they answer, even though there are some advances as well...
...Within any given factory, the shop chairperson can make a great difference in how democratically the shop is run...
...2 Issues such as class-wide solidarity or the nature of capitalism are never raised.24 RANK AND FILE DISCONTENT Nonetheless, union leadership does remain vulnerable to worker discontent...
...The prospects for either the establishment of mandatory import quotas or repeal of 807.00 appear very dim...
...Wages or fringes due to them often find themselves in someone else's pockets...
...Between April 1975 and September 1976 alone, close to 35,000 apparel workers were certified by the government to apply for special unemployment and retraining benefits, as victims of unemployment specifically related to import penetration...
...The unions do advance the argument that the unor- ganized must be brought into the union fold...
...The company does all it can to foster those fears...
...NACLA interview with cutter in New York, thirty years experience, ILGWU member, January 1977...
...Collective Bargaining Agreement between Dressmakers' Manufacturers Associations and the Dressmakers' Joint Council of the ILGWU, February 1, 1976, 17...
...manufacturers from exporting jobs abroad...
...ORGANIZING IN ALABAMA WITH THE ILGWU The ILGWU is the fourth richest union in the United States, with assets of $147 million in 1976...
...When foreign-speaking workers are aware that they are being cheated, they can be more easily intimidated...
...The answer is that they have not accepted it...
...The current campaign being waged by the newly merged ACTWU*, to organize textile workers at J.P...
...3 PERSPECTIVE ON TRADE UNIONISM "Do you want to fight for higher wages, shorter hours and better working conditions or do you want to keep your job...
...Its thirteen Southern plants and two in Puerto Rico are all non-union, despite what the ACWA describes as 20 years of active organizing...
...According to these estimates, Southern apparel workers accounted for only 10.6% of ILGWU's national membership in 1974, and 11% of ACWA's membership...
...It's crucial to speed the pace of organizing...
...Without such support, workers can be easily intimidated by the boss, especially because the work-force is so atomized by the number of small shops, language barriers, racism, craft divisions and fear...
...By mid-1973, Farah's sales were down 15% from the previous year and profits were $43,000 compared to $6 million in 1971...
...Instead, picket lines were maintained day in and day out for two years...
...We should be making broadcasts about employer bluffing on plant-closings, or about pay differentials...
...Most of them don't know what a union is or does, and it's pretty hard to talk union to farm families...
...If the company can make a bigger profit at our expense who really thinks they will just give it up when business conditions improve...
...The threat of bankruptcy or a shift to production elsewhere has become as important as the actualfact of it...
...late spring/early summer, 1975...
...Although there is little hesitancy to down-grade a job, up-grading is another story...
...The example of J.H...
...Two Steps Forward, One Step Back The tensions that arose between an overly cautious union leadership and militant rank-and-filers during the organizing campaign were exacerbated by post-strike developments...
...The more divisons created, the less unity there will be and the happier the boss...
...However, they are doing neither, given their complicity in undermining the rate in unionized shops...
...The ACWA, too, introduced "standards of production" under which the union guaranteed that a specified amount of work would be produced...
...High profits come at the expense of the working class...
...New Politics, Vol...
...This intensified drive may offer a clue to the timidity of ACWA in dealing with Farah...
...There is no moral or political rectitude involved in saving American jobs against those of foreign workers...
...But unless we convince them that they union will protect them from illegal firings, unless we begin organizing all over the South so that companies have no place to run to, we're caught in a hopeless contradiction...
...plants are now functioning at below capacity, while work is subcontracted to shops across the Mexican border...
...A massive organizing presence in the South has yet to be achieved by either the ILGWU or the ACWA...
...Meanwhile, the union pours millions into its media campaign, broadcasting cute jingles over the radio that talk about looking for a union label...
...First, because "temporaries" are not included in the calculation of the work load of the shop, work can be sent to "cut-up" shops even though in-shop workers are idle...
...Under the new ILGWU contracts, no work is to be sent out to any outside contractor unless there is sufficient work for the "in-shop" cutters, including up to five hours of overtime a week, and no work at all is to be sent out to non-union shops., 2 4 However, this contractual provision is contravened in two common ways...
...In 1974, the ACWA was recognized as the bargaining agent for Farah workers and negotiated its first contract...
...18 LOOKING THE OTHER WAY: NON-ENFORCEMENT OF CONTRACTS It is possible that the provisions in any given union contract may reflect the best bargain that the union-operating within the constraints of the industry-can achieve at that moment...
...Quote from letter from cutter to Sol Chaikin, January 1976...
...But the company sets quotas so high that only half the workers make production, while the others take home about $18 a day...
...In order to protect American jobs and the American standard of living, they declare, consumers must carry the banner of protectionism in their pocketbooks and refuse to buy all foreign-made apparel...
...Small spontaneous work stoppages occur frequently over the piece rate determination or work conditions but they remain uncoordinated and isolated to a particular shop...
...THE UNIONS AND THE RECESSION The unions' strategy, always weak, becomes even more starkly so in times of recession...
...In addition, the ILGWU retirees have banded together to expose the "social benefits" program on which they simply cannot survive, and were instrumental in recently raising the pensions up from $75, although many receive below that amount to this day...
...36 The Southern membership of both unions represents but a ripple in a vast pool of unorganized workers...
...Efforts to repeal Item 807.00 of the Tariff Schedules are directed more specifically at preventing U.S...
...Cohens is illustrative of many points, first of which is the fact that, given its greater mobility, capital can and will move when it wants, playing off region against region, plant against plant...
...Both are actively engaged in organizing efforts and are encoun- tering stiff employer resistance...
...At the first mass meeting called by the in-plant committee, fifty to sixty people showed up...
...Southern Exposure (Chapel Hill, North Carolina), Vol...
...Why then should the working class accept the burden of providing the capitalist with a profit...
...The ACWA has actually lost ground in the South where its membership declined by 16% in this N a six-year period...
...In 1971, they won approximately 38% of the vote...
...They are overwhelmingly white, male professionals brought in from the outside, not rising out of the ranks...
...6 (November-December 1966), 79...
...that the limited scope of organizing heightens capital's ability to move elsewhere...
...Give them a living wage and he can keep his sweet rolls...
...Firms such as Phillips-Van Heusen, branded by the ACWA as "a refugee from economic and social justice, " have used every intimidation tactic in the book to block unionization...
...A worker asked to speak with the business agent when he came on his weekly visit to her shop about not getting paid for down-time...
...Organizing the unorganized is therefore a never-ending task...
...The union contract says workers can't be moved around indiscriminately from one machine to another, and instead of layoffs, work can be distributed equally among all...
...In the framework of partnership, the union leaders' main concern is the capitalists' profitability, which is usually voiced as a concern for the survival of the industry...
...The pressures of piece-work27 never let up, and people look a lot older than they really are...
...Capitalists in the U.S...
...As long as capitalists have control over the means of production (as long, that is, as capitalism exists), trade unions will be constantly on the defensive...
...It pays its president $52,000 a year plus expenses and a chauffered limousine...
...industry, far more strategic in economic terms and more powerful politically, are intent on maintaining easy access to foreign markets...
...As things stand now, whatever up-grading exists is based on favoritism...
...Union meetings are conducted exclusively in English...
...The ILGWU dress contract functioned as the pacesetter agreement on which the subsequent contracts in women's outerwear were fashioned.21 Moreover, it pits worker against worker, old against young, in the scramble to intensify work, and functions to break the unity so necessary and difficult to achieve in these small scattered shops...
...8. New York Times, September 1, 1975...
...The formula for arriving at the rate is quite complicated, but ILGWU president Chaikin explained: "If the system of production is such that with the same amount of effort and sweat a worker can produce more, we'll take a little less, provided the workers can share in the benefits of efficiency...
...An ACWA official explained, for example, that capital has been going South because of an "insufficient labor supply" in the North, which seems highly improbable given the high rate of unemployment in that region, and which is a classic example of blaming the victim (the worker) for being the cause of his/her own unemployment...
...The spirit of the protocols also highlighted the role of the union as a rationalizing force in a very chaotic industry...
...Rank and File Committee (of ACWA) Newsletter, "Rank and File Speak Out," 1971...
...Nothing but bargaining as required by the law, a law which states we do not have to agree to any specific proposal or make any concession...
...INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION OR SOLIDARITY The dramatic rise in apparel imports, documented in Part II of this Report, has had a ravaging effect upon the job security of workers in the industry...
...Did they quiet the Farah workers and dilute their demands in order to disarm the opposition of other employers to unionization...
...Strikes Are for Other Unions We show workers a copy of union contracts in other Southern plants...
...The Rank and File Committee* fought the changes and charged the union with "selling them down the river once again...
...Quite simply, piece work is just an effective mechanism for speed up...
...government bought Farah pants for Army commissaries...
...In general, non-English speaking workers are kept in the dark by the union as well as the employer...
...Although this is explicitly prohibited by contract provisions ("The new piece rate shall maintain the average earning of the employees prevailing at the time the operation was changed"), 21 in most shops union representatives simply ignore it...
...By focusing on one area and one firm, we can more closely examine this process, and the role of the unions within it...
...Capitalists driven by keen competition do not often honor such non-aggression pacts with labor...
...In June 1974, they broke their much-acclaimed 53-year "strikeless record," calling out 110,000 workers in the central industry of men's and boy's clothing, from 750 factories in thirty states...
...Nonetheless, the Bureau of Labor Statistics furnishes regional estimates from national figures provided by the two unions...
...The target was Vanity Fair Mills, the largest apparel manufacturer in Alabama and northwest Florida and a leading producer of women's lingerie...
...Then when these workers don't make their quotas, they're fired for incompetence...
...Presently the cutters' Local 10 sends workers out with instructions to ask for less than what other union members in that shop are making, thereby undercutting their own established wage...
...For those who realize that the company hasn 't given them a thing, that they've earned it all sweating behind a sewing machine for twenty years, the fear of losing their jobs is just as acute...
...The average campaign takes five to six months before an election is called, and that's way too long...
...Chicano power was visible throughout the region...
...Strike Willie Farah thought he was immune to unionization...
...When she complained about wage disparities, she was labeled a "troublemaker" by both the union and the boss, and she avoided being fired only because of the solidarity shown by a co-worker...
...Hall, op...
...Pension plans, too, used to be the pride of the apparel contract...
...These figures are estimates only and should be read with caution...
...Trade unions do not challenge the capitalists' ownership and control of the means of production...
...The lack of democracy in the unions can best be examined by focusing on such issues as union organizing, how language differences are used against non-English speaking workers, pursuit of contracts, union elections and other issues...
...Instead of a union hiring hall, a procedure prevalent in many unions, work distribution for cutters, for example, is handled by a business agent in the local...
...But then management sends out letters saying that unions promise everything but can deliver only what the company agrees to...
...And the ILGWU publishes figures according to Joint Board jurisdictions, which cross regional lines...
...The AAMA, representing approximately 50% of domestic manufacturers and some of the industry's largest multinational firms, has led the fight against any attempt to restrict the mobility of its membership...
...The possibilities for passage of world-wide quotas or repeal of the 807.00 provisions are remote at best...
...The result is that many workers in the same shop, doing exactly the same job, are taking home significantly different pay...
...This second difficulty is inherent in the nature of the task facing trade unions under capitalism...
...The repercussions of dedicating such slim resources to organizing were evident during a major ILGWU drive in 1976...
...Neither the practice of the ILGWU nor the ACWA reflects any strategy to develop united support among workers internationally...
...Racism also becomes a weapon in the company's hands...
...Put simply: as output rises, rates are lowered...
...and that the unions' practice of appeasing capital by limiting wage and other demands to a minimum has led workers in newly organized plants to become rapidly disillusioned with the union representation they fought to win...
...In almost all areas of union activity, the apparel workers unions are characterized by decentralized departments and centralized, top-down control...
...15 In general, the piece work system contains serious inequities, but it has been around so long that to question it at all appears to be sacriligious...
...The morning after, company spies had a list ofeveryone's name on the manager's desk...
...Or Why Does the ILGWU Continue to Decay...
...As one shop is being organized-or one industry, one region, one country-capitalists are moving on to another...
...These are small shops that only cut fabric but at a reduced price, well below the rates established in the union shops...
...Workers are supposed to be paid for "down-time"when a machine breaks down or the work flow * Actually, the ACWA contract does not guarantee a wage minimum other than the legal minimum wage...
...They argue that both unions are spending money in the wrong places...
...Most importantly, they point to lines of further investigation into a matter that currently affects the character of capital-labor relations in the industry as a whole...
...According to critics of the contract, the union watered down the demand for a 50 cents wage increase to only 10 cents...
...A history of civil rights struggle in the county has made black workers recognize the importance of strength through unity, and they are more prone to joining the organizing efforts...
...There's no sick pay, no vacation pay, no child care...
...Do they put up a fight to protect past gains...
...The union's president, Sol Chaikin explained, "It was absolutely justified by the nature and depressed state of the industry...
...YOU REFUSED TO LOOK AT THEM...
...Can you remain at your job without going to the soup-line...
...An explicit and not untypical example is offered by a situation in Philadelphia involving the ACWA...
...As always, the worker is expected to make sacrifices for the survival of the capitalist...
...Without these profits, individual capitalists cannot compete and will sooner or later be driven out of business...
...NACLA interview with former ACWA organizer, October 1976...
...A multilateral agreement covering all the apparelproducing countries would establish ceilings for each product, commensurate with protecting a pre-determined level of domestic production...
...In general, manufacturers tend to favor this idea, although some want higher quotas than others...
...He bussed 600 Mexicans across the border each day to scab...
...Secondly, given the fact that labor cannot prevent capital's movement, it is at a distinct disadvantage and faces an extremely difficult task which is never guaranteed success...
...Both unions plead poverty as the root of their low profile in the South...
...Both within the unions and without, the additional fear of deportation hangs over the heads of undocumented workers...
...Time is on Their Side Our biggest problem is time and under-staffing...
...What are they doing to counteract declining rates of unionization and to unionize the predominantly unorganized South...
...Now they make less than half of what those workers earn...
...In other instances, employers have used violence, camouflaged as community outrage, to intimidate organizers and pro-union workers...
...And, surprisingly enough, the company shut down its Virginia plant instead of the Philadelphia plant...
...In July 1972, a nationwide boycott of Farah pants was organized...
...Therefore, it was completely appropriate and necessary that both unions became strong adherents of industrial over craft unionism...
...Other types of payment are also chiseled away...
...In May, 1972, tired of still being on the defensive, tired of chasing Willie through the courts, workers at Farah decided to strike-with or without the union's backing...
...Morever, the fear for some of these foreign-born workers is heightened by their so-called "illegal" status...
...42 And who ever heard of paying Chicanas a decent wage...
...Whenever the work was slow she would have her work returned to her with instructions to re-do it...
...That way while training new operatives, the employer has only to pay them minimum wage, while an already employed worker would earn their average hourly rate...
...As one cutter wrote in an open letter to the union manager: "I pointed out to you two lots of piece goods ready for shipment to cut-up shops...
...Both the ILGWU and the ACWA attribute the slowness of gains in the South to stiff employer resistance, right-to-work laws and a generalized anti-union climate...
...Both unions have tried to mobilize support for their anti-import drive by appealing to the patriotic sentiments of the American public...
...Sure, workers in these plants are afraid of strike and stoppages, afraid of losing their jobs...
...A necessary first step toward improving the lot of Southern workers is to organize them...
...Wall Street Journal, October 18, 1976...
...The jobs are handed out one-by-one behind closed doors, a procedure that is intimidating to all and discriminatory toward dissident cutters or members not favored by the business agent...
...Pro-union workers come under an incredible amount of pressure, and especially the members of the in-plant committee (seven or eight people in this case...
...27 In the ILGWU the distribution of jobs, as well, is handled in a distinctly undemocratic fashion...
...Time always runs on the side of the company, allowing it to grind away at people's defenses...
...Many contractual provisions depend on the vigilance and active participation of the shop chairpeople and the business agents to be enforced...
...Instead she was subjected to "quality control" checks...
...The prevailing wage in the women's wear industry has always been higher than the pay scale stipulated in the IGLWU contract, and varies as much as $100 per week depending on the product line the goods are cut for...
...But it's a lot better than what these workers are getting from the company now...
...Fringe benefits mean a turkey at Christmas, just when the slow season sets in and workers start getting laid off...
...Workers in the Southwest are still predominantly unorganized, despite the Farah victory, because employers will block unionization wherever and whenever they can...
...As the strike gathered momentum however, the union reluctantly lent its support...
...In 1971, the ACWA negotiated a contract in the men's and boys' clothing industry...
...More often than not, the union will organize the employer (specifically jobbers) rather than the workers, arguing that this provides more stability...
...unions to otganize workers abroad, it is both in the interest of American workers and of workers everywhere to fight against political conditions that inhibit the growth of strong labor organizations...
...They need to know what the union is and does...
...By failing to attack the conditions that attract capital to the South and to foreign lands, the unions have undermined their own ability to protect the interests of their entire membership...
...Cutting, Undercutting and Cutting up For cutters, the most skilled and best paid sector, wages have also been going down...
...This is the first time that most of the women have ever had a wage...
...4. Jesse Thomas Carpenter, Competition and Collective Bargaining in the Needle Trades, 1910-1967 (Ithaca: New York State School of Industrial Labor Relations, Cornell University, 1972), 56...
...All disputes were to be settled through outside arbitration...
...The contract was ratified but in most cases not by a membership vote, and strike benefits were never paid out...
...Since the recession had closed many shops and laid off thousands of workers, money for the fund, traditionally paid as a percentage of working members by the employers, was dramatically decreased...
...Instead of firing pro-union workers outright, it pushes them to the limit until they quit...
...On the other hand, however, the unions, once recognized as a legitimate force, immediately supported the principle of a "mutuality of interest between management and labor," as a way to protect the workers' interests, a principle which forms the bedrock of class collaborationism...
...NACLA interview with woman operative with 10 years experience in Philadelphia (ACWA), January 1977...
...21...
...The El Paso business community began to retreat from its active support of Farah, fearing an even greater political upheaval if the strike were allowed to continue and spread...
...The result is that conditions in the Northeast are approaching parity with the South...
...9 As we have seen, the union's strategy succeeded in tying the interests of the workers to the needs of the employers, but it could not tie the interests of the employers to the needs of the workers...
...But, when one worker was asked how the chairpeople were selected, she commented, "I don't know, they seem to be born into the job...
...People equate unions with strikes and trouble, while politicians, the church and the media do all they can to reinforce that image...
...Rank and File Committee (of ACWA) Newsletter, "Rank and file wages slashed city-wide...
...Farah claimed to have a retirement plan, but in the 53-year history of the firm, no worker had ever retired...
...But, finally, it is also clear that a labor strategy which accepts massive lay-offs and wage cuts can hardly be called a winning strategy...
...Workers are frequently shifted from one machine to another, taking home a lot less pay while they learn the new operation...
...3. The 1975 membership figure is taken from the 1975 ILGWU Census Report...
...trade policy in the post-war period has been in the opposite direction, toward trade liberalization and not protectionism...
...The National Association of Manufacturers, representing these and other industries, has testified at Congressional hearings against repeal of 807.00...
...7 Workers in a Philadelphia factory, 1902.20 Advances wrested from the employers have tended to fade away with the passage of the years...
...The prevailing wage has traditionally been the guide to determining what the ILGWU members ask for when the are referred to a job through the union...
...The question is posed not because capitalists are greedy (though many of course are), but because they must be able to make a profit, that is, they must be able to appropriate a part of the unpaid labor time of the workers...
...Nothing changes without the agreement of the company...
...And the ILGWU has purchased prime TV-time and radio spots to broadcast its message of "Buy American" to millions of consumers...
...Enforcement, however, a necessary corollary to the clause, is extremely difficult...
...Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, June 7, 1971...
...Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufacturers, 1972...
...The unions are thus purposefully out of touch with the rank and file...
...7. Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker 1933-1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1971), 75...
...Instead of strengthening the position of labor in its struggle with capital, these unions have taken the issue of foreign competition out of the arena of class antagonisms and into the arena of nationalist jealousies.CONCLUDING REMARKS We have seen that the apparel industry epitomizes cut-throat competition, both domestic and foreign...
...Rank and File Committee (of ACWA) Newsletter, "Long Hot Summer for Cohens' Workers...
...The Hong Kong Textile Workers Union refused to sew unfinished garments from Farah plants in Texas...
...4 The protocols, and similar agreements reached in the men's wear industry, were compacts between unions and employers attesting to the "ability of right-minded employers and trade union leaders to subliminate class conflict into integral class concert...
...Rather, the lack of a concerted drive to organize the unorganized in the South and even in the Northeast, to build unity among workers rather than divide them, and to raise the consciousness of workers concerning the contradictory interests of capital and labor have left the unions only one alternative: perpetual retreat due to chronic weakness...
...As such, up-grading is an important contract demand of the rank-and-file, and is essential to ending the racial and sexual discrimination built on plant-wide seniority...
...There will be limits, in any given situation, to what a trade union may hope to gain for the workers no matter how aggressively the union remains committed to its legitimate purpose...
...In essence, we would argue that the lack of internal democracy in the ILGWU and the ACWA (although to different extents) has become a necessary corollary to the unions' broader strategy...
...We will hear more from them later on...
...When Willie yelled uncle, the ACWA immediately lifted the boycott, waived the usual one-month grace period for negotiation, and negotiated a contract in the record time of five days...
...Five plants in Alabama were targeted for the organizing drive...
...The first is the prevalent use of "temporaries" instead of full-time cutters...
...Time, February 11, 1974...
...19 He went on to say that he was "more than ready to replace dissatisfied workers," which prompted the Rank and File Committee to ask: "We thought it was the bosses who lay us off, but now we find our Union rep THREATENING those he represents...
...After all, Farah pants employed one out of seven workers in the city of El Paso: 9500 workers, 95% of them Chicanos, 85% of them women...
...14 EVILS OF THE PIECE During February 1975, the ILGWU signed what was heralded as a "revolutionary" contract in the dress industry...
...As one worker said, "It would take Sherlock Holmes to find a copy of the contract," 3 and it was never ratified by the membership of any union local in the country...
...Rank and File Committee (of ACWA) Newsletter, "Stop the Rip-Off, Vote No," 1975...
...People were fired at Farah for such offenses as talking during working hours, takiig too long in the bathroom or refusing to date their supervisors...
...10 By 1974 this had fallen to 18,000 11 and, by 1975, to about 12,000.12 Part-time work, as well as overloaded work, prevailed...
...Additionally, two common practices, prohibited by the ILGWU contracts, affect the cutters...
...In 1972, multi-plant firms producing men's wear employed 35.7% of the work-force in the South-up from only 14.8% in 1963.38 Firms with a dozen or more plants can shift production from one to another until the union is beaten...
...According to Howard Samuels, Vice-President of the ACWA, "If all the quotas were filled, the exports of men's and boys' apparel to this country would be doubled...Quotas which are not filled generally cannot be considered as regulating trade...
...Neither can exist much longer, or maintain any kind of clout in the industry, if present trends of declining membership persist (see above...
...This is the question which capitalists everywhere pose to workers...
...and the key issues of speed and quotas remained untouched, leaving production standards to be set by the company...
...The idea behind the 1975 dress contract was to establish a "standard yield," calculated by union time-study experts as what the average worker is expected to earn under normal conditions, set at 25% above a fixed wage minimum...
...working class, capital will always have the option of raising profits by moving abroad...
...Massive demonstrations have been organized in front of large department stores selling apparel imports: the ACWA mobilized 25,000 workers in New York City alone to picket Macy's and Orbach's...
...To evaluate the practice of any given trade union, it becomes a question of determining whether the limits to the success of a particular action comes from the first or the second of these difficulties: from class collaboration or from the overwhelming power of capital in a particular situation...
...6 It remains to be seen how workers will share in the "benefits of efficiency," but, in the meantime, the contract simply means that the workers will have to work faster in order to earn less...
...Even if we win the election, we'll have to fight for every demand...
...All in all, the company, buoyed by the support provided by the union, was able to use the crisis to shake up the work force and lower the pay scale...
...But Willie Farah did surrender, after a five-year organizing struggle, a 22-month strike and a nationwide boycott that involved everyone from the Catholic Bishop of El Paso to clothing workers in Hong Kong...
...See, for example, Herbert Hill, "The Racial Practices of Organized Labor: The Contemporary Record," in The Negro and the American Labor Movement, ed...
...Show-up" pay-the guarantee of at least four hours pay per day-is not regularly enforced...
...The second difficulty comes simply from the fact that trade unions operate within a framework of capitalist relations of production...
...As we have already mentioned, militant strikes and extensive organizing activities gave birth and sustenance to both unions...
...No organizing at all had gone on for four years...
...Workers were to suffer from cutbacks on overall costs, which meant dimming or cutting off lights, and turning off the air conditioning (making work conditions unbearable in the steam-filled pressing room...
...In the course of its history the trade union movement has exhibited two fundamental difficulties in implementing these principles and, to the extent that these difficulties have not been overcome, has fallen short of protecting the interests of the working class under capitalism...
...Non-union companies are subject to no such constraints and are rapidly expanding their operations in the South...
...Unions, not employers, thus dragged Taylorism into the shop floor of the apparel industries...
...1 Although modest membership gains have been made in the South and other areas, they have not been sufficient to offset a steady overall decline...
...9. Wall Street Journal, October 18, 1976...
...With the creation of the UFW the Chicano people took their struggle inside the trade union movement and provided a militant leadership example...
...Their primary goals include the establishment of a world-wide quota on apparel imports and repeal of Item 807.00 of the Tariff Schedules of the United States (see Part II...
...Farah Strike Support Committees were established around the country...
...Many of the biggest manufacturers are renegades from unionization...
...Workers are caught in dead-ended jobs and the whole structure operates to keep them there...
...It was not long (1913) before the ILGWU was conducting time-motion studies of its own workers to promote a common piece rate price and help union firms increase productivity for the employers...
...The ACWA, for example, maintains that they keep no such figures...
...Both the unions and manufacturers see it as a reasonable demand: "We don't want to stop imports, we just want a fair share in the growth of the market...
...34 In the four areas where the rank and file had won the right to ratify, the union proposal was voted down...
...RESPONSE Since the 1960's, membership in both the ILGWU and the ACWA has dropped dramatically...
...Burton Hall, "Gingold's Law...
...In addition, these pockets of heightened rank-and-file activity-Philadelphia, Lehigh Valley, Pa., Buffalo, New York, and New Bedford, Mass.-also won the right to ratify all future agreements...
...Despite threats, firings and harassments from manage- ment, the cutters voted for ACWA representation in October 1970...
...The content of ACWA's efforts to forge an anti-import boycott is somewhat more palatable...
...We compare their wages to union workers making hourly rates of $5 or more, and overtime rates by the day...
...When the word came in they were walking out of the San Antonio plant we were astonished...
...stops-according to their average hourly earnings...
...Buck-a-Month" clubs raised money for the 29 strike fund...
...In the ILGWU the absence of internal democracy has been the most blatant and best documented...
...In fact, when a "cut-up" shop is nominally organized, the rates are not increased on a par with the original shops...
...He gave his workers free coffee and rolls at break time, provided free transportation to the factory and served hot luncheons in the cafeteria for 70 cents...
...Thanks to fancy lawyers, the company is careful not to make any flagrant violations of the law...
...Hearings before the Subcommittee on Trade, op...
...Yet the priority attached to organizing the unorganized is not reflected in the unions' deployment of resources, financial or otherwise...
...The union has a say in all this but in the words of one black worker: "The union sticks strictly with the company...
...Instead, union members are given classes in English, trips to the United Nations, lectures on how bad things are for the employers and why they should vote Democratic, and rationalizations for the sorry state of organizing in the industry...
...Between 1968 and 1974, ILGWU membership declined by over 50,000 and that of the ACWA by approximately 36,000...
...Other industries, such as auto and electronics, are more unified than apparel in their total opposition to repeal...
...Meanwhile, Willie began to build "Fortress Farah...
...For example, the leadership's candidates for business agent face virtually no other nominations...
...The ILGWU even requires workers to sign a letter agreeing to this "temporary" arrangement before they are sent out to a job...
...the weapons of strikes and slowdowns were forfeited in exchange for cumbersome grievance procedures...
...government for dictatorial regimes abroad and the conditions of the U.S...
...It took several more for the workers themselves to translate it...
...Eight-five percent of an organizer's time is taken up with house calls...
...substantive broadcasts...
...Even this limited victory for the workers was not long to be, and spotlights the tightrope the union is forced to walk, given its strategy...
...and the drive for profits is sometimes cited as the source of "unfair" competition-although that drive is attributed to exceptional greed on the part of individuals...
...And the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers Federation unanimously called for a worldwide boycott of Farah pants...
...33 The Philadelphia rank and file responded by picketing ACWA headquarters in New York, demanding an independent audit of the Health Fund, asserting the money come from the manufacturers instead of the workers, and asking, "How do we know the fund wasn't already broke at contract time and this whole thing wasn't planned by the Union leadership and the manufacturer just to get the strike over with and still keep any raise out of our pockets...
...As the Philadelphia plant's Rank and File Committee stressed...
...THREADS OF THE PAST The history of both major apparel workers' unions, the ILGWU and the ACWA, is characterized by two postures that appear as contradictory...
...But who will ensure the survival of the worker...
...Most of the workers live far away, in the countryside, and sometimes we only manage to see two people per day...
...But many white workers are afraid that blacks will run the union, and when an in-plant committee is formed, it's often the first time that blacks and whites work together...
...Support for your local capitalist, the retreat into "Buy American" campaigns, will never defeat the conditions of exploitation anywhere...
...You apparently knew already what they were and were deliberately averting your eyes...
...Only by changing those conditions can capital be outflanked...
...And they're right...
...While it is clearly not the task of U.S...
...NACLA interview with long-time union (ACWA) cutter in Philadelphia market...
...universal suffrage) as well as for economic gains...
...However, rather than moving one worker along the ladder from the worst jobs to the better ones, employers prefer to hire new people for the vacancies...
...Stevens plants throughout the South, clearly merits strong * The ACTWU is the result of the merger between the ACWA and the TWU (Textile Workers Union...
...2. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Directory of National Unions and Employee Associations, 1975...
...The new contract was supposed to establish a more rational system for piece-rates since the old contract was "honored more in the breach than in the observance...
...The unions say that the concessions have been based on a realistic evaluation of the situation faced by the industry...
...No one knows now...
...The only way to counter capital's mobility is for labor to identify its class interests, to consolidate its organizations behind those class interests and to fight to extend that unity to the working class as a whole, which, like capital's territory, knows no boundaries...
...and in 1969 the ACWA sent organizers to the El Paso plant...
...strategies which assert that trade union leaders, allegedly representing the interests of workers, have a "partnership" relationship with the capitalists for whom they work...
...Decades in which the unions struggled against runaways, lockouts, and the devastation of the 1920's and 1930's, and staged massive organizing drives...
...Such is the case with the recent recession which severely affected the apparel industry in the North...
...Justice, February 2, 1976...
...The negotiations of the contracts can spark a fire since they are the clearest expressions of the terms by which labor-power is sold...
...And, finally, during the busy season, especially in places such as New York's Chinatown, workers are often instructed to punch out at quitting time only to immediately return to work at regular, not overtime, pay...
...This contract traded away the 35-hour week, a hard-fought concession won in the 1930's, for a few cents immediate pay raise...
...In the Protocol, the union won the important right of collective bargaining, but gave up, in return, the right to strike...
...218 The general trend toward declining union membership, as a result of the industry's flight to the South and abroad, has been exacerbated by conditions stemming from the current economic recession...
...the 1971 contract is so bad that it did some good-good in the sense that it brought the membership together in protest for the first time in the history of the ACWA...
...Farah refused to honor the NLRB ruling and appealed it...
...Before long, however, the news spread of the agreements...
...But they also purged large numbers of militants in their own ranks, gave up the resistance to piece work and speed-ups, and guarded the health of the employers over that of the workers...
...Apparently, militant leadership in that local had refused to go along with what the company was instituting and what the Philadelphia local leadership had agreed to...
...Moreover, it took three months after ratification for workers to get through copies of the contract-in English even though 80% of the work force spoke only Spanish...
...XI, No...
...Two examples of organizing campaigns in the South will serve to highlight the questions raised by such criticisms...
...6. Quote from a 1941 ACWA booklet as cited in Kurt Braun, Union-Management Co-operation: Experience in the Clothing Industry (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institute, 1947), 55...
...Historically, consumer boycotts have only been effective because they were based on moral or political issues: scab lettuce or Farah pants, for example, were boycotted because they came to symbolize extreme exploitation and anti-unionism on the part of individual capitalists...
...The apparel industry has continued its southward expansion, because the conditions for capital accumulation in the South are still more favorable than in the Northeast...
...In the ILGWU, a rank-and-file cutters group does exist in New York that is currently running an opposition slate for the elections in its Local 10...
...By the time the next contract rolled around, three years later, the Rank and File Committee in Philadelphia had done advance work, and had expanded the participation of operators as well as cutters, national minority workers as well as whites, and far more women...
...They do not make a case-they merely point to problems that flow from the basic ideology of the unions themselves, as well as problems posed by strong employer resistance...
...To prevent this, ACWA representatives explained, two whole floors would need to be phased out and jobs "consolidated" on the remaining floors...
...In short, what is the strategy of these unions to defend and protect workers from the effects of capital's movement in the post-war period...
...Although there is no such category stipulated in the contracts, outside of the first several weeks of a "trial cutting room, 191723 period," approximately one-half of the cutters in ILGWU Local 10 are permanently "temporaries...
...They were already addressed...
...A lot of the women are single heads of households or sole family supporters while their husbands hunt for work...
...Workers in both the ACWA and the ILGWU are often cheated out of contract guarantees such as the wage minimum*, overtime pay and holidays...
...Is the next step parity with Taiwan...
...the ban on trade union activity is denounced...
...And, if that were not intimidating enough, his response certainly was: "If you don't like your job, there are plenty of others who would be glad to take it...
...Ibid., 47...
...Besides, the other non-union employers of El Paso were depending on Willie to hold the fort...
...After all, as president Hillman of the ACWA argued, "We cannot wreck the house in which we expect to live...
...Working for lower wages and longer hours, poorer working conditions and higher productivity become essential to insure a level of profits high enough to guarantee the survival of a particular capitalist or industry...
...But at the local level, intimidation prevails...
...Wages are substantially lower, fringes are often non-existent and shops are still predominantly unorganized, The stated strategy of both unions is to improve conditions in the South and thereby remove capital's incentive to flee the Northeast...
...What is their strategy witn respect to capital's flight abroad and the growing problem of foreign imports...
...Nevertheless, the general thrust of U.S...
...By showing their willingness to trade decent working conditions for more jobs in the Northeast, these unions have effectively lost both...
...Disappointment with the contract negotiated by the ACWA, with negotiation and ratification procedures themselves, and with subsequent enforcement of the contract has grown since the original victory was won...
...At the present pace of organizing, the sickness may well outlive the patients...
...When we asked the regional director of organizing to hire more organizers, he said there were no more funds...
...In 1972 the Philadelphia market employed 28,600 production workers in apparel, a drop of 10,000 since 1967...
...Ibid...
...When work gets distributed, union sympathizers always get the shit work or no work at all...
...Tactical retreats in terms of wage and other demands may be necessary at certain conjunctures...
...The ACWA may decry the conditions of political repression in South Korea, but has it ever attempted to mobilize its membership and resources against U.S...
...This would tend to favor large firms over small, and many larger employers in the industry supported the union for this reason...
...aid to the Park regime...
...According to the union, the company has fired union sympathizers, threatened to close company plants if the union is voted in and carried out surveillance of workers' activities...
...Strong opposition to repeal, however, has come from sectors of the apparel industry itself and from30 other industries currently taking advantage of 807.00 provisions...
...Julius Jacobson (Garden City: Doubleday) 1968, or Florence Rice, "It Takes A While to Realize its Discrimination," in Gerda Lerner, ed., Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (New York: Random House), 1972...
...Furthermore, anti-runaway clauses respond to only half the problem of capital flight...
...Both the ILGWU and the ACWA have been around since the turn of the century...
...As was noted in Philadelphia...
...Meanwhile, management can get on the PA system in the plant and give a half-hour anti-union rap to 350 workers...
...apparel industry are no exception...
...Nor, except in the most superficial way, do they challenge the capitalists' right to decide whether to produce, what to produce, where to produce and how much to produce...
...For many workers the strike was too precious a weapon to relinquish...
...Both the ILGWU and the ACWA have incorporated anti-runaway clauses into most contracts, stipulating that firms moving to the South must take the union with them...
...They serve here to illustrate trends more than to represent absolute figures...
...Annual financial reports...
...Mention is made of political repression and economic exploitation abroad...
...It is rarely awarded fairly, however, or paid at all...
...It is, in fact, a betrayal of that task...
...Bilateral agreements, such as the Long Term Cotton Agreement of 1967 and the Multi-Fiber Agreement of 1973, have been signed between the United States and several apparel-producing nations...
...NACLA interview with woman operative with 5 years experience, ACWA member, Philadelphia, January 1977...
...Furthermore, despite a contract provision that prohibits subcontracting while plants are underutilized, Farah's U.S...
...Many union officials maintain that organizing is becoming increasingly more difficult, since workers in the South now have new sources of security such as federal minimum wage legislation and unemployment insurance...
...However, the ACWA has had more to worry about...
...17 The union won the possibility of cost-of-living adjustments, but also agreed to a rate reduction if the cost-of-living should fall (admittedly, a slim prospect...
...appendix a GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS NORTHEAST New England Connecticut Maine Massachusetts New Hampshire Rhode Island Vermont Middle Atlantic New Jersey New York Pennsylvania SOUTH Border States Delaware District of Columbia Kentucky Maryland Virginia West Virginia Southeast Alabama Florida Georgia Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina Tennessee Southwest Arkansas Louisiana Texas33 LABOR'S RESPONSE 1. Regional estimates tabulated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, D.C., October-November 1976...
...Solutions that identify the interests of workers with those of the capitalists, that undercut the organized by ignoring the unorganized, and that counterpose the interests of American workers to those of foreign workers are no solution at all...
...In the spring of 1975, the union announced that the Health and Welfare Fund was about to go bankrupt...
...Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufacturers, 1963 and 1972...
...Wall Street Journal, June 10, 1974...
...Out of the five plants involved in the organizing drive, one election was won, in Jackson, Alabama...
...This is currently one of the demands raised by the rank-and-file for the 1977 contracts...
...VI, No...
...These workers are not covered by any of the jobs' rights secured under the contract...
...31 As a result, where rank and file upsurge was fiercest, the membership actually got a copy of the contract for the first time and no one was fired for participation in the wildcat...
...And we'll need to flex some muscle...
...They adopt, in part or in whole, concerns which are properly those of the capitalists and on many occasions become the agents for those concerns...
...Moreover, their passage could only retard the shift of capital abroad by making it slightly less profitable...
...As the union clearly could become the largest and most stable force in the industry, it could wipe out the excessive profits of many small, scattered firms by enforcing a standard wage...
...While the ACWA spent upwards of $4 million on the Farah campaign, a fact which is certainly to their credit, the militancy of the organizing drive, the impetus to strike, and the national and international scope of the Farah boycott, derived predominantly from the pressures and efforts of rank-and-file workers...
...cit., 26-30...
...The course of the struggles for union representation at Farah, and then for a decent contract, raises several important issues...
...Real wages in unionized apparel plants, for some workers, used to be high in relations to other industrial wages...
...Most militant were the cutters who were especially threatened by a contract clause in which the union dramatically broke the barrier to worker protection regarding its position on the introduction, without restriction, of technology...
...Bureau of Labor Statistics...
...We can't exactly flaunt the figures on benefits-SOO-a-month pensions after twenty years, $5 a day sick pay, health insurance paid for partly by workers...
...Instead of the given rate being determined by the amount of work and the value of the garment across the board, the rates would now be set according to the efficiency of each individual plant and the income of the workers...
...The unorganized exist in other countries as well...
...Most of them lived on farms, and many still do...
...EPILOGUE In December 1976, ILGWU lost the election at that plant by a margin of 2:1...
...An underlying assumption was that the unions would have to organize the entire industry and all workers within it for the equalizing effect of standardized wages to operate effectively...
Vol. 11 • March 1977 • No. 3
