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Title: Two Conceptions of Unionism
Author: Jon Bekken
Date: 1997
Language: en
Topics: trade unions, anarcho-syndicalism, Libertarian Labor Review
Source: Retrieved on 27th January 2021 from https://syndicalist.us/2013/10/23/two-conceptions-of-unionism/
Notes: From Libertarian Labor Review #21, Spring 1997

Jon Bekken

Two Conceptions of Unionism

The ongoing struggle to unionize the giant U.S. bookstore chain, Borders

Books (operating under the Borders, Brentano’s, Planet Music and

Waldenbooks names), illustrates two utterly incompatible ideas of

unionism. While the United Food & Commercial Workers holds to the

AFL-CIO model of business unionism — seeing the union as a social

service agency, relying on a professional staff to ‘service’ workers who

buy its services through payroll deductions — the Industrial Workers of

the World adheres to a more traditional model of unionism, one which

sees the union as a body of workers coming together to gain through

their collective action the better conditions they can not hope to win

alone. Under this model, which has long since been abandoned by the vast

majority of labor organizations, a union does not rely on government

certification or Labor Relations Board proceedings. Rather, unions rely

upon workers’ own power, recognizing that government “protections” are

at best a means of compensating workers long after the fact for the

violation of their most basic rights — when after the union itself has

been crushed. (More often, they serve to frustrate workers’ efforts, and

to divert them into endless bureaucratic channels.)

Unfortunately many workers have fallen for aspects of business unionism,

even within revolutionary unions such as the IWW. Thus, Wobblies at one

retail outlet in the San Francisco area recently decided that while

their fellow workers were ready for a union, it would be too difficult

to win a majority to the IWW. So instead they formed an organizing

committee of IWW members and tried to organize their fellow workers into

the UFCW. (Bay area Wobblies have also mounted several organizing

campaigns in their own right in recent years, including an ongoing

campaign at the giant Wherehouse Entertainment music and video chain.)

Leaving aside the fact that the UFCW is a particularly disgusting

example of business unionism with a long history of selling out its

members and signing sweetheart contracts with the bosses (it is so

ineffective at defending its members’ interests that the first pay hike

tens of thousands of UFCW members saw in recent years came with the

recent increase in the federal minimum wage), such tactics are

incompatible with basic union principles. (They are also ineffective;

UFCW bureaucrats and the Wobbly committee inevitably dashed on strategy

and the drive was defeated.) For these tactics are based on a faulty

premise — that a union exists by virtue of government certification.

The result of such mistaken premises are disoranizing campaigns urging

workers to vote for union “representation,” meanwhile setting their

grievances aside until their representatives are certified to deal with

them. When, as in this case, the election is lost workers are left

defenseless (ideologically and organizationally) against the bosses. Yet

in this workplace there were several Wobblies committed. to fighting for

better conditions. Had they had the courage of their Wobbly convictions,

they could have established an IWW branch on the job and begun

mobilizing their fellow workers to fight for better conditions. At first

they would have been a small minority, of course, but as they agitated

and organized they could have established a living, breathing, fighting

union presence on the job — one much stronger because it was based upon

the workers themselves, rather than a scrap of paper from the government

or a bunch of high-paid bureaucrats in an office across town.

In contrast, the IWW drive at Borders culminated years of IWW organizing

efforts among low-paid service, educational and retail workers in

Philadelphia. And at least some Borders workers turned to the IWW

precisely because of its broader social vision. But the Borders

campaign, too, was afflicted by symptoms of business unionism. Although

this drive was conducted under IWW auspices, Philadelphia Wobs sought

the “easy” road of government certification eventually trimming their

sails in a desperate scramble to hold on to a majority of voters as

managers chipped away at their initial majority with threats and

promises. They narrowly lost that vote and, barred from from going back

to the National Labor Relations Board for another year and without any

apparent realization that the 20 workers (of 45) who had voted for the

IWW could act as a union regardless of government certification, the

workers lapsed into depressed apathy.

Management seized on the situation to crush not only that drive, but

also fledgling IWW efforts at other Borders stores across the country.

Suspected union supporters were interrogated, threatened and harassed

and on June 15, 1996, Borders fired Miriam Fried, one of the most active

Wobblies in the Philadelphia store.

By then, most Wobblies in that store had despaired. Some were looking

for other jobs, others turned to the UFCW. When FW Fried was fired there

was no organized reaction from the Wobblies on the job. But an IWW

organizer who had been working with the Borders drive put out word of

the firing over the internet and it was quickly picked up by Wobs. On

June 17^(th), two members of the Boston IWW Branch entered the downtown

Boston Borders and demanded to speak to the manager. When she insisted

that Borders’ firing of a worker for supporting the union was none of

her concern Wobblies set up a picket line in front of the store and

began leafletting customers and passersby. Picketing continues to this

day, and has been taken up by Wobblies at dozens of Borders outlets

across the country (including in Philadelphia).

While the UFCW responded to the firing by promising to file a piece of

paper with the government begging it to protect workers’ rights to

organize, the IWW responded with direct action — hitting the bosses

where it hurt. There is no evidence that the paperwork has had any

effect on Borders, but Borders managers have been frantically working

the phone lines and spreading corporate disinformation to counter the

IWW’s efforts. Far from defending workers’ rights against Borders’

flagrant imtimidation the UFCW has asked Wobblies to take down the

picket lines in several cities, and has even taken to calling people and

urging them to cross the picketlines and patronize the union busters.

Nearly 40 Borders stores from Portland, Maine, to Los Angeles, and from

Miami, Florida, to Tacoma, Washington, were picketed December 14^(th)

and 15^(th) in a national protest to increase the pressure on the chain

Tens of thousands of leaflets have been distributed to Borders customers

informing them of the dispute. Sales reports since the campaign began

show that Borders is losing ground to rival Barnes & Noble.

Whether or not the campaign is able to build an IWW presence at Borders

or get Miriam Fried her job back, it has shown that the IWW’s relatively

small membership is fully capable of mounting a solidarity campaign that

puts much larger unions to shame. Within a few days of the firing, IWW

members were sharing leaflets on the internet, creating web pages about

the dispute, picketing Borders stores across the country, and putting

the company on notice that it could not act against workers with

impunity. While it continues to threaten and intimidate workers, Borders

has not fired any union activists since the campaign began and has

retracted and apologized for a warning issued to another IWW supporter

for discussing working conditions and the need for a union with her

fellow workers. Workers across the country have seen evidence that the

IWW is still fighting the bosses.

The campaign has provided a nationally visible focus for IWW activities

– the first time in many years that the IWW has organized around a

common project. In the early stages of the campaign, an IWW member was

quoted by a newspaper saying that the IWW was too small to take on a

national campaign and so would have to defer to the UFCW. But while a

few IWW members have followed that defeatist logic, more have recognized

that numbers only count if they are mobilized; that a huge membership

disorganized into a business union can not begin to match what can be

accomplished by a genuine union, one which turns to its members to act

for themselves in accordance with that venerable principle, An Injury to

One Is An Injury to All.