Editorial from the Industrial Worker about the push by the Trump administration to dismantle the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Last week Trump fired two members of the National Labor Relations Board, leaving the body without quorum and the ability to process cases. Many unions are wallowing in despair because they are so reliant on the government, but there is an elephant in the room here nobody wants to address. Why is the labor movement so dependent on the government in the first place? Can we afford to be in a situation where one orange man can suspend the union process? The moment has opened our imaginations to what labor organizing would be like without the NLRB.
After being fired, NLRB General Council Jennifer Abruzzo said, “if the Agency does not fully effectuate its Congressional mandate in the future as we did during my tenure, I expect that workers with assistance from their advocates will take matters into their own hands in order to get well-deserved dignity and respect in the workplace, as well as a fair share of the significant value they add to their employer’s operations.” This is interesting because ‘taking matters into your own hands’ is something labor law was designed to prevent.
Taking Matters Out of Our Hands
In the early 1900s, workers across the U.S. faced low wages, long hours, and unsafe working conditions, which were made even worse by the Great Depression. Workers responded with militant strikes and sabotage. For example, in 1919, over 65,000 workers in Seattle launched a general strike, and in 1934, the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike brought the whole city to a halt. It was in this context that Congress created the legal framework for ‘collective bargaining’ that eventually consolidated into the National Labor Relations Act in 1935.
The purpose of the act was to derail militant labor activity into more polite bureaucratic avenues. For the government, workers’ self-activity was too uncontrolled. It interfered with “the free flow of commerce” and risked revolutionary destabilization of the class system. If employers would just recognize unions and engage in bargaining away from the shop floor, capitalism could be made more stable and efficient. It also became obvious to those in power that labor organizations were going to exist whether they liked it or not. What is a government to do? Since they could not beat labor out of existence, the next best thing was to take control over what it meant to be a union. Unions were enshrined in law and given an “acceptable” avenue to express themselves. Union structure and practice were molded to promote ‘industrial peace,’ thereby defanging labor’s more radical tendencies.
Trump’s Childish Statecraft
In this context, Trump has pretentiously sabotaged his government’s own mechanism for containing worker militancy. But it remains to be seen if a dysfunctional NLRB will lead to unions “taking matters into their own hands.” If that were the case, it could be the revival of the labor movement we are looking for. We do not need more of the same labor movement. We need a different direct action movement that operates beyond the control of government – on our own terms – for a world that meets human need and not the profits of the ruling class. Labor’s strength has always been grounded in its control of production, not these arenas of ‘collective bargaining’ we are funneled into by the NLRA. The shopfloor is where class war is waged, while the bargaining table is where labor goes to be tamed, integrated, and defeated.
So however disappointing a dysfunctional NLRB is, it is healthy for labor to think outside the box. Do we even need to be recognized by the NLRB? Are polite negotiations the only way to win? If the General Council of the NLRB can think of an alternative, then we sure as hell better be able to. Although, I stress this should not be a secondary strategy we use when our dear NLRB flounders. It is the only direction that guarantees our power. Regardless of Trump’s shenanigans, the winning strategy for labor has always been to abandon the state’s polite bargaining framework.
Old Habits Die Hard
Taking matters into our own hands will require a great transformation of the labor movement’s habits. In the nine decades since 1935, unions have been shaped to rely on the NLRB. Union leadership will be reluctant to go down any other path; Indeed, that could mean eliminating their own careers since their job is to serve the NLRA’s style of unionism to workers. For this reason, it will be key to develop other kinds of unions, like the IWW, where rank & file committees have control instead of comfy union officials.
Further, most unions have bargained away their ability to ‘take matters into our own hands’ by signing contracts with no-strike clauses; The law does not allow for direct action if the NLRB can’t make quorum. So the heavy legal consequences remain for workers who have signed away their power. Obviously, the government will be more than willing to use the NLRA to protect capitalists from any contract violations. Again, the contract framework provided by the government is more about maintaining the class system than helping workers. It would be great if labor took action overnight, but due to these contractual traps, undoing labor’s habits is more likely a long term project. Unions need to be rebuilt from the ground up, by the rank & file, in a way that preserves the freedom to strike. Then we will have the freedom to move in situations like this.
It is not just the contract or the larger union apparatus that is so dependent on the NLRB, but workers themselves. Workers are trained to ask their bureaucrat, to file the grievance or ULP. Even in the IWW, a union that favors direct action over contractualism, we get starry-eyed new members itching to file for recognition without building a functional committee. They arrive to us miseducated by the NLRA regime, the labor press, and general approach of mainstream unions. The NLRA’s culture has weaseled its way into the very intuition and habits of the working class: “Where are you, bureaucrat? Have you seen the form I filed yet? What can you do on my behalf?” So it is not enough to exclaim workers will just do it themselves. Yes, we must, but it will be difficult to change our habits. Like a smoker attempting to quit cigarettes, people will not immediately claim their power. They will crave the old way of doing things, especially if there is no clear understanding of the problem at hand, and no effort to break the dependency. It’ll take a lot of intention and discipline.
We are at a point in history where the government may not need to channel the labor movement into the NLRB. Labor’s militancy has become so degenerate that Trump can sabotage the board and leave unions hamstrung. The potential absence of the NLRB is a very different scenario compared to the situation prior to the NLRA. Back then unions were more wild and capable. They were just beginning to be led into a cage and still possessed wild traits. But now a sudden removal of the NLRB avenue is like depriving cattle of the farmer’s feed. Perhaps this is giving Trump too much credit, because I doubt the blathering fool is aware of the history of social control, but look at it from the enemy’s perspective: there is a good chance that tossing a softened, polite animal out into the wild will just result in their death. He senses labor’s weakness.
Perhaps a dysfunctional NLRB will cause rank & file workers to get upset, adapt, and take a different direction. However, once things get rowdy, the government can simply open the floodgates of the NLRB and channel labor into its normal avenues. They’ll remember how to dangle the carrot in front of us. Even Trump will realize his mistake and learn that the NLRA is the most sophisticated technology of capitalist rule. At that point, workers may feel inclined to come home to roost, for their bodies have not forgotten what it’s like for ‘someone else’ to do it. Will any new habits be strong enough to resist old temptations?
Trump’s gutting of the NLRB is timely. It’s happening at a point where the tameness of the working class is at an all time high, and union membership is rock bottom. It makes sense for them to sabotage the NLRB until unions prove they can ‘take matters into their own hands.’ It’s like a test to see if social control is even required anymore. Perhaps labor is so domesticated everyone will slave away without disrupting anything. But I know we can shake things up.
Image by L. Pham from Pixabay
