Book review: U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition by Kim Moody

In U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition, Kim Moody argues that the decline of union strength is as much due to failures of union leadership as it is to the usual suspects: globalization, deindustrialization, and technological change. A founder of Labor Notes and a longtime activist in and around the labor movement, Moody takes pains to assess the consequences of the big economic trends on labor's strength, but he saves his most biting criticism for labor's top leadership and its history of business unionism.

Labor's start on its downward spiral, according to Moody, pre-dates many of the macro-economic trends he analyzes as part of capital's declining rate of profit. Labor's turning point "occurred before many of the industrial, economic, and demographic developments that further disoriented organized labor had unfolded. This strongly implies a failure of leadership and of the institutional framework and ideology on which that leadership rested." No surprise, then, that Moody looks for signs of hopeful energy and change in labor's restive base, among its new organizers, its immigrant workers, and through its broader alliances with movements for civil rights and social justice.

The first set of chapters in this sprawling, well documented study traces the sweeping economic and geographic changes over the past half-century that have "altered working life dramatically and disoriented organized labor." The book's second part, three chapters worth, documents organized labor's "retreat into concessions, partnerships, and mergers following the long period of militancy from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s. This was a retreat not only from confrontation but from new organizing - a retreat that laid the basis for labor's seemingly unstoppable decline."

The book's last section is the most relevant for UDR and $100 Plus Club readers who have lived through the history Moody retraces in the first sections. Here Moody deals extensively with the 2005 "top-down" split in the labor movement and with a variety of grassroots alternatives, especially bottom-up initiatives like the organizing taking place among immigrant workers. He comments critically on most of the important post 2005 labor struggles and shifts in political tactics adopted by private and public sector unions. These include the rise of the SEIU and Andrew Stern's controversial organizing approach, and "The Politics of the Deal" exemplified by the decision of Denis Rivera and New York's hospital workers (SEIU/1199) to back a Republican for governor in 2002. "The real choice," he concludes, "is not between two federations but between three types of unionism: the old business unionism, the new corporate unionism, or a democratic social movement unionism born of struggle with the employers."

Moody is especially critical of organizing efforts that sacrifice local union militancy for the "shallow power" of density and union size through mergers. His case in point is the Justice for Janitors movement of the early 1990s. After a highly successful campaign featuring a "well thought-out strategy" with a great deal of worker mobilization, "workers won the day." But after the victory, workers were clumped into a geographically sprawling local with over 25,000 members, many of whom were not janitors. Local members soon began complaining of "out-of-touch leadership." This perspective puts Moody squarely in the corner of veteran labor scholars, like Kate Bronfenbrenner and Tom Juravich, whose research finds that the most successful unions on almost any score are those which encourage active rank-and-file participation.

But what about situations where rank-and-file activism and union democracy are squelched? What recourse should union members have when their rights to democracy and due process are routinely violated by an entrenched and self-serving leadership? On this subject Moody is rather silent. Almost all his hopes for a rejuvenated labor movement are pinned on local activism and coalitions that progressive unions may make with other grass-roots movements (immigrant rights, environmental justice, anti-globalization, and others). He argues for a labor-based political party, and has nothing but scorn - often quite justified - for union efforts to elect Democrats. Indeed, government institutions appear in the book as obstacles to constructive change, but not the central problem.

In his analysis of NLRB representation elections from 1997 to 2005, for example, he argues that while the organizing climate was highly negative, the established major unions still did far less organizing than they should have: "While employer resistance and a negative political atmosphere pose real barriers, they don't explain the overall drop in attempts to organize." This remains a debatable point, especially for organizers who've won representational elections only to see their hopes languish at the NLRB. Perhaps the actions of federal administrators and bureaucrats and labor lawyers does not fit Moody's somewhat romantic view of labor militancy as essential to trade union progress. Nonetheless, the labor movement in the U.S., or any other nation, exists within a structure of laws and rules that are enforced, if at all, by agents of the government.

The book was published before the 2008 presidential election where labor played such an outstanding role and, which put labor in a position to halt, if not reverse, the pro-business, anti-labor aspects of Reagan Republicanism. This structure of laws and their enforcement is about to be challenged in Washington. At least for now there are real possibilities for labor legislation at the federal level that will encourage and support labor's organizing efforts. U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition provides valuable analysis of why top-down labor organizing strategies are likely to fail and why grass roots activism needs to be supported, but union democracy causes should also benefit from a new round of federal labor legislation, even if the results are likely to represent compromises that will disappoint veteran labor activists like Kim Moody.