I had some success. Students took what they learned in a collective bargaining class and used it to defeat the employer-friendly incumbents running their local. Then they forced their district union officers to abandon the mid-contract concessions they were going to grant to my students’ employer. I thought that maybe things were changing. As I would soon find out, they were. Michael Yates
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First, good essay. Second, I am glad I went to the link and read the whole thing. I went to Penn State in the mid-90s for a week of work in a bio-science lab. Our host prof was a young guy from the UK we had known at UCB and very together, very organized, and very good as a teacher. Instead of staying in his lab working, we went to his upper division class. The class was on the material we were working on. I was shocked it was almost empty. I thought these students are idiots if they didn't recognize a good prof and what I thought was a really interesting subject---intracellar signalling systems like Ca2+ and other small molecules... nevermind.
After class walking back to the lab, I asked, so T how come nobody asked questions and there was almost nobody there. He said, well, they show up around midterms. I complimented him on his teaching and asked him a question that occurred to me during his lecture. He answered it far beyond my ability to completely follow, but I got the general idea. Anyway, he said he had a lot of trouble activating the students to think and work on the material. They seemed to resist it. He told a story of trying to stir them up on the concept of turgor pressure by bringing a giant zuccini to class, mounted upright on a base on his lab table in front. No reaction. If a giant green penis didn't get any attention... We laughed, well what the hell...
I told this story, just to let you know, you were not alone and maybe the resistance was a more general phenomenon and not necessarily to do with economics.
Some other observations. My experience as an apprentice carpenter was great on the job, and absolutely terrible with the union (`68-70). From Sept-June we were required to attend night school two nights a week for 2.5 hours a night. The class was held at BHS wood shop. Most of the class were in their mid to early 20s. There was no talking, no lecture. The instructor locked the outside door at five minutes after the beginning and marked you absent if you were late. We were not allowed to bring projects to class or use the machines or shop. Instead he passed out little booklets which we had to buy and we studied our books in silence. Exams on the material were held downtown in the main union building. The instructor sat in front reading a paperback. I got so fed up with this, I stopped going to class. After a couple of weeks, the union sent me a letter ordering me to report to their downtown HQ or lose my card and my job.
I went to the meeting and explained the situation at night school. The rep was completely unmoved. I described what should be going on and what most of the students wanted, access to the shop with lectures on how to read blueprints and interpret them. Worse than zero, I was getting into an argument with this asshole. So I went back to class. Fuck this union was my basic thought. A couple of years later I had a much better experience with AFSCME. That's another story.
The general impression I got from the former experience was that the unions did themselves in with their relationship to the members and the internal structures of their organization. While the carpenters were probably not corrupt, it was really easy to imagine just how that would work since the leadership was completely closed. Sure we had elections. Vote for Dick X or Dick Y. They looked, acted, and seemed exactly like the big contractor bosses. I liked my boss better and I trusted him more. I knew where he stood. I knew his politics and why he was gung-ho for the war. (He was also racist to the core.) Big construction was booming here because of the war. He knew my politics and didn't give a damn, as long he could work my ass off. And I also knew the only reason I was earning a good wage was because somebody back when died making it so. If the union disappeared, we were really fucked. Without the union we would lose an almost reasonable work day (36/hr week), healthcare, pension, paid holidays and vacations. So I've always had an ambiguous view of unions.
CG