Labor Unions Help Defend The American Way of Life

What would America be like if there were no minimum wage and no weekends? What if your boss required you to work seven days a week, 14 hours a day, in dangerous conditions? What if there were no health and safety regulations, no child labor laws, no protection for whistle-blowers, no recourse at all for mistreated, underpaid employees but to find another job? And what if every job you might find meant the same long hours, low pay and dehumanizing work?

Thanks to the long, bitter struggle of American labor organizers, most of us never will face such conditions.

But such conitions were common in this country at the turn of century, and workers in much of the "global economy" face similar conditions today. Without labor unions, employees - who comprise the vast majority of Americans and other human beings - find themselves isolated and overpowered, facing managers, owners and corporations that are extremely well-organized, well-financed and quite skilled at protecting their interests.

When workers get together to protect their interests, free-market purists cry "foul!"

Yet corporations are created by groups of stockholders who have come together for the same purpose. There is nothing about labor unions that is incompatible with a free market.

Among the forces that operate in a free market are the demands of employees. Just as companies may set any price the market can bear, and consumers choose to buy what they please, employees may refuse to work for a certain salary, and they may organize to increase their power.

Of course, in North Carolina, unions are about as powerful as the Carolina football team. It's technically legal to form a union, but collective bargaining, mandatory membership and strikes by public employees are all prohibited.

Forming a union without these tools is like playing baseball without a bat or ball. North Carolina is widely recognized as a vehemently anti-union state. Organizers in the textile industry were frequently fired, set up on false criminal charges and sometimes killed in cold blood.

Any threat to the ability of owners to enrich themselves at workers' expense was met with manipulation, legal tricks or brute force.

The housekeepers that keep this university's campuses livable have met with similar if less brutal obstacles. At UNC-Greensboro, housekeepers were prohibited from talking about union activities at work, even on their lunch break! Organizers were barred from all but the most remote locations on the Greensboro campus of the "people's university."

The housekeepers were being asked to perform impossible tasks, sometimes cleaning 20 floors a shift in buildings without air conditions during the dog days of summer.

And while the cleaning crews remained understaffed, new managers were hired straight out of business school to find more ways of cutting costs.

I don't mean to idealize unions or federal labor laws. The programs of the New Deal took a lot of steam out of the labor movement. Once the government mandated a minimum wage and maximum work week, many Americans felt that unions were no longer needed.

Striking - that is, refusing to work until demands are met - might seem noble and brave, but asking government to enforce demands with red tape and litigation smacks of Stalinism.

Meanwhile union leadership is often as corrupt and bureaucratic as any corporation, even cutting deals with bosses that help union executives but hurt workers. The big unions have come a long way from the days of Joe Hill and Mother Jones.

But UE-150, the union to which many UNC housekeepers belong, is still a true grass roots organization. In my many conversations with its members and leaders, it has become clear that these folks are angry about the way they are treated, that they simply want an honest deal and a living wage, that they care tremendously about their jobs and this school, and that they are certain organizing is the only way to maintain their dignity and a decent livelihood.

The housekeepers are mostly African-American women, a group of Americans whose voices have been silenced for half a millennium. They have tried to reason with our administrators, they have asked for student support, they have written letters and taken legal actions, all to no avail.

They are stonewalled, they are ignored and they are intimidated.

When the housekeepers finally spoke loudly enough to be heard, they were reprimanded and accused of rudeness. Rudeness is too polite a word for the attitude of university administrators toward their loyal employees.

We all owe these hard-working men and women our support as they carry on the battle to create a nation that meets the needs of all its citizens.

Daniel Brezenoff graduated from the UNC School of Social Work last May. He now teaches middle school in Durham. E-mail him at dbrezeno@email.unc.edu.