>>1. The movement toward small firms (often welcome by liberals and populists
>>who are hostile toward big corporations) creates unhospitable environment
>>for union organizing.
>
>What movement towards small firms? Isn't this just a lot of New Era hype?
>McDonald's and Wal-Mart have killed countless small retail operations.
McDonald's operates on the franchise basis, so each retail outlet is a nominally separate entity. Ditto for outsourcing - the "independent contractors" might be controlled by the parent company, but nominally they are 'separate' firms. That was, among others, a lesson learned by living wage activists here at Hopkins. After presenting President Brody with a demand for a living wage for all Hopkins employees, including janitorial workers, Brody replied with a straight face that ALL Hopinks employees receive such a wage. Janitors are employed not by Hopkins but by an "independent" contractor (set up and controlled by Hopkins).
If you have to organize unions on the firm rather than industry basis that balkanization of corporate operations can pose a serious obstacle to union organizing.
>There's been a movement towards more outside suppliers in manufacturing
>(see point #2), but those are typically far from small operations. And with
>just-in-time inventory and integrated production systems, the big guys are
>very vulnerable to a well-timed, well-planned disruption.
Correct. But in order to organize such a well-planned disruption you first need to have an organizational infrastructure in place. In other words - you have to unionize the balkanized firms. The smaller the firm the more difficult it is to unionize because of personal politics Michael Burawoy wrote about in "Manufacturing Consent."
>
>>2. Low wage workers cannot generate sufficient resources for financing
>>union 'realpolitik' campaigns. That in, turn, may push unions toward
>>making spectacles instead of real changes.
>
>From what I've heard, this is one reason the UAW has shied away from
>organizing auto parts suppliers - the workers aren't paid enough to justify
>the dues income. So they'd rather whine about Mexico and Japan taking away
>their jobs - when the UAW's more pressing problem is the nonunion suppliers
>in Ohio.
So we still have a resource problem, no? Fighting the bosses who have superprofits at their disposal is a costly business, thus resource mobilisation is a nontrivial matter in union organizing.
>
>>3. Unionization will cause job flight from urban centers (union
>>strongholds) to the hinterlands that are hostile to unions.
>
>That's ancient history by now, isn't it?
But still kicking. Baltimore is urban wasteland by most standards, but we still have employers who take advantage of "empowerment zones" and "workfare programs" and then fiercely fight unionization by using all dirty tricks on the books, from racism to threats to move production elsewhere.
Disorganized poverty is to capitalist entrepreneurs what shit is to flies -- you see them swarming anticipating a bonanza. But as soon as you start organizing, they will move on to another pile of crap. The leasson is that you cannot organize at one place only, one firm or one city, you have to organize nationally or even globally.
Wojtek