[lbo-talk] Solidarity for Sale: UNITE'S Garment Gulag

Jim Devine jdevine03 at gmail.com
Fri Mar 10 09:46:35 PST 2006


Yoshie: >>> I have not finished reading Robert Fitch's Solidarity for Sale yet (I have one more chapter to read), but one thing that the book makes clear to me is that it is NOT true that even bad unions are always better than no unions.... <<<

me: >> yes, but it up to the workers themselves (with our help, if it's wanted) to fix this situation. Just as workers in Franco's Spain were able to use the existing system of government-run unions to improve their lot, worker here can and should use the existing structures to create real unions. <<

Yoshie, now: > Turning to existing unions and trying to reform them from inside is not always the correct path. Sometimes, new organizations have to be created when the existing ones are not serving workers or even doing disservice to workers. ...<

right. But it's up to the workers to decide such matter. That was my point. I should have made it clearer that the Spanish case was only an example, not the rule. However, if I were "on the ground" with the workers, I would advise that they _start_ with the existing union rather than immediately jumping to a competing union or dual unionism. (BTW, I don't see the latter as a dirty word.)

Yoshie:>>>... This point becomes clear in the chapter entitled "UNITE's Garment Gulag," where Fitch compares union sweatshops in New York (where workers' wages rarely rose to the federal minimum wage) and non-union shops in California (e.g., American Apparel Co.) that pay much higher wages ($13.00 an hour plus benefits on average in the case of American Apparel Co.) than them. <<<

me:>> I haven't read Fitch ..., but this comparison isn't[*] quite fair. Labor-market conditions (including those outside of union control) differ between New York and California. << [* typo corrected]

Yoshie, now: > What conditions beyond the union's control exist in New York and California that should make sweatshops in the garment sector more numerous in New York -- the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour division showed that "UNITE shops in the city [of New York] were predominantly sweatshops -- three quarters of union shops were in violation of overtime, minimum wage, or safety regulations" (p. 192) -- than in California? What does it mean that many of the union shops do not even pay the minimum wage? What's the point of having a union in that case? <

I don't know enough about the two cases to say anything. But the higher the minimum wage and the better the available public assistance, etc., the easier it is for a union to do its job. (I don't know how these differ between states.) Fitch's comparison should have been union vs. non-union (or union #1 vs. union #2) in the same general labor market, not in different markets. Maybe his book does have this kind of comparison. -- Jim Devine / "There can be no real individual freedom in the presence of economic insecurity." -- Chester Bowles

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