In principle, workers' thinking of themselves as "professionals" is not necessarily contrary to their unionizing, nor is trade union consciousness the same as class consciousness, though they have similar components like ethics of solidarity. As a matter of fact, today, workers in such occupational groups as "education, training, and library occupations," who tend to be more encouraged to think of themselves as professionals than retail workers at Wal-Mart and the like are, have the highest rates of unionization: "Among occupational groups, education, training, and library occupations (37.7 percent) and protective service workers (36.1 percent) had the highest unionization rates in 2003" (Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Union Members in 2003," January 21, 2004, <http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf>).
"Among the major occupational groups, sales and office occupations had the lowest unionization rate -- 8.2 percent" ("Union Members in 2003," January 21, 2004). That doesn't mean that retail and office clerks have less class consciousness than teachers, librarians, fire fighters, police officers, and other groups who are more unionized than them. It basically comes down to the fact that many of the workers in "education, training, and library occupations" and "protective service" occupations are in the public sector, so it is easier for them to get organized than for retail workers, most of whom are in the private sector, to do so:
<blockquote>Employers know that wages of unionized workers are on average one-third higher than those of nonunionized workers, so they have a strong financial incentive to try to stop an organizing campaign by picking off a few ringleaders and paying the minor back-pay penalties. Indeed, as labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan has written, "An employer who didn't break the law would have to be what economists call an 'irrational firm.'" A study conducted by Harvard Law professor Paul Weiler found that one in 20 union supporters were fired during election campaigns, while the AFL-CIO puts the figure at closer to one in eight. The fact that public-sector unionization has grown in recent years, while private-sector union representation has plummeted, can surely be explained in part by the fact that public employers don't fire union organizers but private employers commonly do. (Richard D. Kahlenberg, "Labor Organizing as a Civil Right," The American Prospect Online, <http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=5416>, November 30, 0002)</blockquote>
Also, governments, unlike corporations like Wal-Mart, can rarely afford to totally close down unionized shops (though they can try to privatize and outsource the work done by some unionized workers).
Higher rates of unionization in the public sector than the private sector do have consequences for the labor movement in particular and class struggle in general:
* Labor laws that govern the public sector are more restrictive than those that govern the private sector when it comes to bargaining and striking. See Michael H. Cimini, "1982-97 State and Local Government Work Stoppages and Their Legal Background" (_Compensation and Working Conditions_, <http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/archive/fall1998brief3.pdf>, Fall 1998) for more information.
* In the United States, public-sector workers are essentially service workers rather than industrial workers, which also impacts how the public see workers' actions (for instance, seeing them in terms of their impacts on public service recipients).
* Wages for public-sector workers come from tax revenues, while wages for private-sector workers come from profits, which leaves different subjective impressions as well as objective impacts on the public.
* State and local governments by law may not run deficits. During a severe recession, state and local governments are almost compelled to cut services unless the public succeed in forcing the federal government to extend financial assistance to state and local governments.
* When police officers and prison guards are more unionized than other workers, more resources are spent on state repression of the working class than on services such as education and health care that benefit the working class: e.g., "CCPOA [California Correctional Peace Officers Association] political activity exceeds that of other labor unions. It outspent CTA [California Teachers' Association] in the 1998 and 2000 election cycles with only a tenth of the membership. CCPOA contributions go to both Democrats and Republicans and reach all three branches of government -- Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. The CCPOA spends on bread and butter issues as well as on tougher crime legislation" ("Political Power of the CCPOA"). Cf. <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/01/when-cops-are-more-unionized-than.html>.
* Trade union struggles of public-sector workers, who don't produce surplus values (though they contribute to creating conditions for surplus value extraction), don't have the same immediate impact on the capitalist bottom line as trade union struggles of private-sector workers. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>