> Unfortunately not just in the U.S. The most powerful unions in
> Germany, like the metal trades union IG Metall, are completely wedded
> to the German export-oriented "beggar thy neighbour" economic model.
> One of my standard tropes is that even if the Leninist concept of a
> "labor aristocracy" is problematic, it almost seems like it was made
> to conceptualize contemporary Germany (and come to think of it, it was
> probably also Wilhelmine Germany that Lenin was thinking about as
> well...) According to this OECD page on union density
> <http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=UN_DEN>, Germany had a
> union density in 2008 of 19.1%, while the U.S. had 11.9%, Meanwhile,
> France had a paltry 7.6%, but which country's labor movement would you
> prefer? France's, right? I like the arrangement in the Latin
> European countries of having different trade union confederations
> according to political orientation. I'd love to see something like
> France's SUD/Solidaires or Italy's Cobas in Germany.. Fuck, in truth,
> I'd be happy to have even the CGT or CGIL. So union density really
> tells us nothing about the militancy of any particular working class
> movement. Oh, and I like what Shotwell has to say. Fuck the
> pie-cards, they've always been an obstacle. It's just more apparent
> during a vibrant social movement.
I totally agree about preferring the French over the German labor movement any day of the week.
But some caution should be injected here. First of all, these figures aren't comparable - at least between France and the U.S. If you take the average American's common sense conception of what it means to be a "union member" and use that as your definition, "union density" in France is more than 90%. In other words, for most Americans, being a union member means (1) a union collectively negotiates your wages and working conditions; (2) there's a "union presence" in the workplace (e.g., where you can take grievances); and (3) union representatives have direct contact with you about politics and mobilizations. This describes more than 90% of French workers, but only 12% of American workers. There is a separate statistic called "bargaining coverage density," which the OECD also puts out; it refers to the % of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements. For America it's identical to "union density," for France it's more than 90%, for Germany I think it's something like 60%. I don't know how much of a "union presence" exists in Germany for "covered" workers who aren't members.
Second (and I'm sure you know this, but it's worth making it clear), the differences between national labor movements are mostly the result of institutional (and therefore historical) differences. In other words, if you can find some way to change the institutions, the "culture" of the labor movements would change too. That's a tall order, of course, but it's worth remembering, because there's always a risk of essentializing these differences, as if things were this way because German union leaders are "bad" and the French leaders are "good," etc. I find this one of the really intellectually liberating things about reading labor history. You find out that there have been moments when conditions changed, and the most conservative union leaders have done 180-degree U-turns and become radicals; and likewise (and this is often the sad story of U.S. labor history in the first 40 years of the 20thC), the most fiery, radical, labor-fakir-hating insurgents, once they became leaders, under dismal institutional conditions, were forced to become the conservatives they despised.
So while it's true that union density may not be a good index of militancy *at a moment in time*, a surge in union density will usually go along with a surge in militancy.
SA