The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Worker's Movement

by Stanley Aronowitz

The decline of the American union movement—and how it can revive, by a leading analyst of laborUnion membership in the United States has fallen below 11 percent, the lowest rate since before the New Deal. Labor activist and scholar of the American labor movement Stanley Aronowitz argues that the movement as we have known it for the last 100 years is effectively dead. And he explains how this death has been a long time coming—the organizing and political principles adopted by US unions at mid-century have taken a terrible toll. In the 1950s, Aronowitz was a factory metalworker.In the ’50s and ’60s, he directed organizing with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers. In 1963, he coordinated the labor participation for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Ten years later, the publication of his book False The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness was a landmark in the study of the US working-class and workers’ movements.

Aronowitz draws on this long personal history, reflecting on his continuing involvement in labor organizing, with groups such as the Professional Staff Congress of the City University. He brings a historian’s understanding of American workers’ struggles in taking the long view of the labor movement. Then, in a survey of current initiatives, strikes, organizations, and allies, Aronowitz analyzes the possibilities of labor’s rebirth, and sets out a program for a new, broad, radical workers’ movement.

Genres: History, Labor, Politics, Nonfiction, Economics, American History

174 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Stanley Aronowitz (1933–2021) was a professor of sociology, cultural studies, and urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center. He was also a veteran political activist and cultural critic, an advocate for organized labor and a member of the interim consultative committee of the International Organization for a Participatory Society.

In 2012, Aronowitz was awarded the Center for Study of Working Class Life's Lifetime Achievement Award at Stony Brook University.

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Workers’ Movement
By Stanley Aronowitz
Verso
987-1-78168-138-1
$26.95, 192 pgs

Okay people, I’m about to make some of you very uncomfortable. It is past time to sacrifice some sacred cows around here. In the land of bootstraps and Horatio Alger all you have to do to persuade great numbers of people to vote against their own self-interests is to wave a flag at them and say, “God.” Horatio Alger is a rare phenomenon, an anecdote and a poor substitute for public policy and the bootstraps have gone missing – new models of footwear don’t come with that feature. Please empty your heads of preconceived notions to the extent possible (no knee-jerk reactions to the name “Marx”) and don your thinking caps.

What if capitalism in the form currently practiced in the United States is no longer tenable? What if declining union membership and influence are not simply a concept whose time has passed but rather are the result of unions having been co-opted by the very laws that were supposed to be the answer to labor disputes? What if the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) precipitated an identity crisis by effectively transforming formerly radical unions into establishment collaborators? What if collectives are the answer to economic malaise, social challenges and environmental degradation? Are we witnessing nothing less than the death of Rousseau‘s social contract?

rad·i·cal: radək(ə)l/ adjective 1. (especially of change or action) relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; far-reaching or thorough.

In The Death and Life of American Labor: Towards a New Workers’ Movement, Stanley Aronowitz, author of more than two dozen books and Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Urban Education at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, seeks to answer these questions and provide a prescription for reviving the labor movement. Aronowitz believes that we suffer from a pathological failure of imagination and the fallacious assumption that the resolution of labor v. capital disputes (or any dispute, for that matter) must be a zero sum game. It does not have to be winner-take-all; we can all take some. We must learn to say “both, and” instead of “either, or.”

Aronowitz accuses unions of relying on electoral politics instead of direct local action to achieve their goals, all but abandoning organizing and having ignored entirely great numbers of professional workers, administrative workers and an ever-increasing group he christens the “precariat,” e.g., temporary, part-time and seasonal workers. He theorizes that holding a NLRB-supervised election is not the best strategy for a strong union and that “collective bargaining has become collective begging.” He believes we need to resurrect minority unions and return to shop steward positions filled by the men and women actually working in the shop, not lawyers and professional grievance handlers. Aronowitz posits that a contract should not be the goal of labor-management negotiations because it locks in the terms for as many as six years and removes the possibility of a legal strike or other action which are the unions’ most effective tactics. Penalties for violating a contract involve large fines and even imprisonment. How often does management go to prison for violating anything? But I digress.

You won’t read American Labor for entertainment – it is not light reading before bed. You will read American Labor for your education and for the fresh treatment of old ideas. I connected with it most strongly when Aronowitz discussed the larger contexts of politics and the social consequences of various economic practices. It can be a little dry in the straight history sections (although sometimes he quotes Rainer Maria Fassbinder) – lots of facts and figures. But the history of the labor movement is important and we need to know it. We need to remember that people died for the concessions we have now. And make no mistake that they ARE concessions – management did not grant basic benefits from on high out of the largess of its tender heart. We have dead people to thank for the eight-hour day, weekends, workers’ compensation, workplace safety, unemployment insurance and the prohibition on child labor.

Fassbinder was right: fear will eat your soul.

[Adam Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might be one of my favorite books thus far this year. Aronowitz covers a lot of ground in this book, recounting the origins, life, and decline of labor unionism in America, gleaning from this history how the destruction of the unions took place. His conclusion was that the death of American unions came about both because of assaults from the right and a self-imposed handicap by the unions themselves. They allied themselves with management and capital, walked away from the right to the general strike, and did not take into account the shifts of the economy. Unions kept focusing on traditional labor and industry while the labor ground shifted beneath their feet, moving into hourly service work in technology, food, and big corporate stores. This is how Wal-Mart and other conglomerates were able to escape the ire of the unions; they were focused on the trades and have not paid much attention to where the actual working class now exists. This is also why the working class has turned on unions and the Democrats.

And so in the last two chapters (worth the price of the whole book), Aronowitz offers profound, practical, and concrete ideas for revitalizing the worker's movement in a way that goes far beyond simply "fixing" the unions, and instead advocates for the cooperative commonwealth and economic democracy, and stark challenge to entrenched unions, and a comprehensive educational platform, while also challenging workers to think outside the box of federal government to own and manage their own businesses, to take factories and business locations away from capital and management in order to be run cooperatively by everyone. A beautiful book with an inspiring call to action in the last two chapters.

[David Buccola · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's no secret that Organized Labor is in serious decline in the United States with about half the union density we had during the Great Depression. Stanley Aronowitz does a fantastic job of detailing this decline as well as the ways in which working people might turn it around.

Early on he points out that essentially, "Labor law is, in brief, an invocation to class collaboration." That is, Union leadership collaborating with the so-called Masters of the Universe.

Union leaders have accepted this paradigm: "capitalism is the economy, legalism and electoralism in politics, and the sanctity of the contract in the workplace." In other words, organized labor has painted itself into a corner where over 90% of contracts contain no-strike clauses which essentially defang the labor movement of any power.

In response Aronowitz details a ten point thesis for organized labor and the working class in general, moving forward:

1. The contract is not helping us. We should move beyond it and rely on our collective power; particularly avoiding no-strike clauses.
2. Renew the fight for shorter hours.
3. A new fight for a guaranteed income for all.
4. Fight for Universal Health Care
5. We should be allying ourselves with consumer and community activist groups and creating co-ops.
6. The Rank and File should demand the right to create minority unions.
7. A renewed fight against discrimination in the work place.
8. A need to organize the growing body of precarious workers.
9. The Rank and File need to continue to fight for Union Democracy.
10. We need to truly make the Labor Movement a global phenomena.

Aronowitz argues that we should call such a movement a "Cooperative Commonwealth." He goes on to point out it is "descriptive as well as prescriptive...It signals what a self managed society would look like: antibureacratic, anticapitalist, truly democratic."

The name aside, the core virtues are things most working people would agree on. The contract is killing organized labor, particularly with the no-strike clauses; a renewed fight for shorter hours, guaranteed income and health care for all while we reach out to the workers who have been ignored for too long by organized labor would be a great way to invigorate the movement and move it to it's global aspirations. Meanwhile, within our individual unions radicals can continue to fight for more democracy.

There's a lot to love about Aronowitz's work. No author is going to get it all right or have all the answers. But in an age when working people are constantly under attack, Stanley Aronowitz does us all a great service here. I hope more of my rank and file union brothers and sisters will read this book.

[John Mihelic · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was reading this short book quickly, as Aronowitz is a good writer, and I mostly agreed with his descriptions of the weakness the the labor movement in America. I wanted to give it to my Democratic friend who works for SEIU to show him that he’s leading himself down a dead end, with a glee that was not comporting with my friendship and respect for the man.

But it was in the second part that I was lost. He lays out a manifesto for the labor union (168-170), which several are already planks of a party, but one that grows internal to the labor movement that he just spent the rest of book decrying. If there is to be mass change for the workers and citizens of the world, I don’t think that his manifesto would work because it seems to accept the irrelevance of the power of the movement (Item one emphasizes that contracts aren’t necessary) but also want to use the movement. Unions need work as the percentage of the labor force in them make them almost irrelevant now what with the neoliberal ideology pervasive but they are held up as what is bad since the main concentration is in government. Perhaps it is time to let labor die and grow a new mass movement where the key identifier is not as worker (since who knows how much longer any of us will actually continue to be full time employees) and instead look at making larger changes where our identifier is as citizen.

[gabriel morales · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book working with a labor union in Texas back in 2015. The moment I put the book down, I immediately started organizing my coworkers. We wanted a voice in the organization's strategy and an emphasis on building real worker organizing committees in offices. When our boss the organizing director found out about our staff union committee, we were smashed. He purged us all.

Reading this book helped me think about what I actually believed about the labor movement, and it pushed me to go out and try to do something concrete about those beliefs. That's something all books like this should strive to do. Yeah, it got me fired from that job, but that's pretty cool too.

[Public Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

A breath of fresh air. Aronowitz spares no one in his unforgiving assessment of how American labor got to this very, very low place. His take on the Democratic party is brutally frank and so important to hear. I'm not sure I agree with all of his solutions, but we certainly agree on what's holding the American people back. One of the best books I've read all year - and I've read a lot of books this year!

[Anya gizis]

I know he died but a lot of the middle chapters could do a redo after Covid

[John Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing, especially the promise to look “toward a new workers’ movement.” Yet the book is worth a read since it brings up various questions and allows those who care about worker power to consider what should be done to turn around the decades old decline of the labor movement, a decay that has no end in sight.

Aronowitz best covers the struggles and failures of the labor movement including:
• The movement’s failure to organize in the South, including the UAW’s major losses on the ballot of the Mercedes Alabama plant (twice) and the recent 44 vote defeat at the Tennessee Volkswagen plant despite the company’s neutrality and access.
• Union’s continued over-reliance of political power when placing so many resources in this bucket have failed for decades. Even when President Obama led the auto rescue, the UAW took two tier wages, moving to $15-17 an hour for new workers versus the standard $28.
• Labor’s disappointing lack of vision and strategy. He rightfully points out that the sit-down strike of rubber in 1936 and the GM sit-down of 1936, the 400,000 strong textile strike where Roosevelt failed to support the workers and 7K strikers were blacklisted, how The Jungle in 1905, NYC garment workers strike in 1909, and the Triangle Fire in 1911 lead to major actions.
• How labor handled the 1980’s and ‘90’s with concessionary bargaining and allowing work to be shifted abroad with little resistance was a major setback for the movement and lead into longer term decline. He rightfully points out to the three and a half strike at Catepillar during his time that led to a six-year contract with pay freeze the entire time all while the company made nearly $5 billion worth of profits.
• Throughout the book, the author speaks about how exclusive representation rights and contracts with arbitration in exchange for a no-strike clause weaken the movement.

What was frustrating is that Aronowitz spoke of other strategies seemingly just from his own experiences and mild information and without talking about it from a way of impact. For example:
• Repeatedly he speaks about minority unions and their impact but he doesn’t speak about CWA’s decades long fight in Texas where they have made real progress despite not having union representation rights under law. He also hasn’t spoken about AAUP’s fairly – or sometimes – successful chapters where they do not have representational rights for contracts but add to the professor’s power and sometimes move to a collective bargaining status.
• He mentioned the 1997 UPS strike of 185K Teamsters that lead to 10K new full-time jobs at the mammoth company but failed to illustrate how other unions and working people who were not union members came to the defense of these workers who are always rushing but That struggle showed the potential power of non-union workers and the alphabet of unionism coming together to add power when workers at multi-national companies strike for justice.
• He also commented about Al Shanker and how the AFT represented the teachers but also spoke up for education. That could have been an entire chapter, speaking about his weekly columns in the NYT’s, his advocacy, and – most importantly – the teachers unions around the country who won by linking their demands with the concern they have for children they educate.
• Loss was how much – details – labor engaged in political action and just how little they received for their work, treasury, and decades’ long struggle. He had no facts and figures. Steve Greenhouse’s book had some very specific facts on what unions put forth to elect Obama then ran through how they loss – and didn’t gain, including once again, the failure of labor law reform.

Aronowitz’s book seemed to run out of energy, listing ten actions as a “ten-point manifesto” for a “new labor movement, modestly offered.” His entire “manifesto” took less than three pages near the very end of the book.

While Aronowitz’s book is good to start to think about how to put the movement back into the labor movement, it provided scant history and even less in ways of moving forward.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree that the end goal of labor organizing should not be contract unionism in its current form. I agree we need more whole worker organizing. The analysis is spot-on, but as a rank-and-file organizer in a contract-based precariat union, I don’t see a reasonable path to the suggested solutions, and concrete organizing steps for accomplishing the goals are not offered in this manifesto.

[Zack · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the author’s thesis is generally correct, labor needs to return to militancy and foster radicalism within its ranks in order to envision and build a just society for the worker. But he assumes the reader knows a lot of very specific details about American labor history and doesn’t really provide those contexts if you aren’t familiar.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

A Marxist who happens to be a Conservative too. A shallow work of apologetics in the Christian spirit of redefining the terms till nothing makes sense and than hopefully Aranowitz would seem reasonable.

[Jasmin.M ياسمين منصور · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a required read for my labor union grad class. I’ll come back again and write a proper review once I’m done with the course :)

[Charlie Rosenthal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty deeply freaky, at least partially because I don't see any of his policy prescriptions being implemented in my lifetime.

[Kris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overhyped.