Density
I ran across the concept of union density in an online paper entitled Democracy, Density and Transformation: We Need Them All. Excerpts:
The debate over the future of the AFL-CIO has taken a wrong turn. The original argument offered by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to increase labor’s bargaining power by increasing union density (the percentage of organized workers in a particular industry or sector of the economy) has largely disappeared from the discussion, replaced by a less than visionary debate over how much to cut dues to the national AFL-CIO. SEIU’s use of an antiquated concept of union density has gone substantially unchallenged....
I’ll argue that the drive for union density in particular industries and sectors of the economy needs to be supported—although expanded and updated....
Stephen Lerner’s article, “An Immodest Proposal: A New Architecture for the House of Labor”, printed in New Labor Forum in the summer of 2003 escalated a much-needed discussion within and around the labor movement.(It can be found at http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/newlaborforum—the pages referenced here are from the hard-copy original) His dramatic proposal for structural change along industrial/sectoral lines challenged the status quo when it certainly needs to be challenged....
Higher union density, which Lerner defines as “the percentage of the total workforce, sector of the economy, industry or labor market that is unionized”, clearly helps a union’s bargaining power....SEIU is right about this basic point....
[D]ensity alone, as CWA Executive Vice-President Larry Cohen has pointed out in his paper “Collective Bargaining and Organizing Rights”, does not guarantee power for workers to improve their working lives. This can be said of most formulations if you single out one particular factor in building the labor movement. Cohen points to the political strength of labor in France compared to the relative weakness of labor in Mexico, despite much high union density in the latter country. Can workers have power over their jobs through their unions, if they do not have power within their unions? I would hope that this question answers itself....
The heart of the “density” argument of the SEIU needs to be embraced and improved, not rejected or ignored. But building industrial/sectoral density, if taken in isolation or even in opposition to other elements of labor’s necessary reform such as union democracy and political transformation, does not accurately define our task, and is wrong....
Municipal workers in New Bedford, Ma. gain no bargaining power by being in the same union as municipal workers in Boise, Idaho. State workers in Iowa are not automatically disadvantaged simply because they are in the United Electrical workers instead of in AFSCME, like their cousins in neighboring Illinois. They work for different employers. In the case of these public employees, the impact of “industry” and “sector” of the economy bears no similarity to the sectoral organizing in auto in the 1930s, when public employees were not a significant factor in organizing drives and were not allowed collective bargaining under the law. Where in the public sector is the equivalent of the Flint, Michigan General Motors assembly plant in 1937 that, if shut down, can close similar locations across the country, or even across the street? Sectoral density is not equally urgent or powerful in all sectors and industries of the economy....
There is no way to deal with a corporation like GE without taking into consideration corporate density, as odd as that may seem to those of us brought up on a strict CIO model as industrial trade unionists....
Lerner recognizes the need for geographic density in a reference to “movement building” as in “building excitement” for an organizing campaign with community support (p.24), but minimizes geographic density in favor of industrial/sectoral density in places where his fundamental analysis does not fit.
Finally, various proposals such as the Teamsters’ emphasis on political investment in “red states” and the proposal by Houston CLC leader Richard Shaw on investment in the South have introduced what can be called political density....
the other examples above suggest two alternatives for manufacturing unions, neither of which involves merging with another union in a similar sector. UNITE left its disappearing base to contribute to organizing workers from the same strata of the working class in a different economic sector. The IUE sought a merger with a non-manufacturing union, which had the resources and program and political will to organize in one of the IUE’s traditional bases, General Electric.
Another factor in determining a merger match, then, that Lerner ignores or downplays in addition to geographic and corporate density, is the capacity and strategy of the union in question to take on an organizing task, regardless of the sector or industry of the union or the organizing target. This was in fact one of the features of successful organizing in the 1930s, when miners helped organize steelworkers, for example. Some of the facts on mergers for manufacturing unions, at least, indicate that mergers with unions specifically outside their core industries may offer the most promise....
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