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Scabby The Rat
The decline of the American labor movement has continued despite the rise in power of the Democratic Party.
From the Detroit News:
The nation’s unions lost 400,000 members in 2012 as the percentage of U.S. workers represented by a labor union fell to 11.3 percent, its lowest level since the 1930s – declining by 0.5 percent over the last year…
he Bureau of Labor Statistics said the biggest hit was in public sector unions, where many states and cities have cut back on their unionized workforce.
Among public sector workers, 35.9 percent are in a union – down from 37.0 percent in 2011, as the public sector shed nearly 250,000 union workers.
In the midst of this crisis a top AFL-CIO official has come up with a plan to revamp the union’s image – dump Scabby The Rat
Sean McGarvey, president of the 2-million-strong AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department, tweeted, “Meeting with our Presidents and state councils. Issued a call to retire the inflatable rat. It does not reflect our new value proposition.”…
McGarvey and many other construction union leaders favor taking a “business-friendly” approach rather than adversarial approach to relationships with management. The council states on its website, “We will prove to contractors and owners that a partnership with North America’s Building Trades Unions is the best investment they will ever make.” Construction union leaders often publicly stress the value that their unions bring to companies, pointing to the fact that union projects are more likely completed on time without cost overruns.
In this context, abandoning Scabby the Rat appears to some union members like a call by such leaders to work out deals with management nicely, quietly and behind-the-scenes, instead of confrontationally, such as by placing giant 16 foot inflatable rats outside of corporate offices.
A sad and familiar refrain among the now fading trade unions – foregoing confrontation for illusory accommodation. There is perhaps no dumber talking point than that of the “value proposition” or the idea that union labor is of higher quality therefore brings more value to a job than non-union. First, there’s flimsy evidence to support that being true and second, no one cares anyway.
Labor unions, especially trade unions, were not developed because of a lack of job training, they were developed to ensure fair compensation for workers. The “value proposition” makes no sense for an employer or developer – they care about profits, that’s their value proposition. If globalization has proven anything it is that cheaper unskilled labor is considered more valuable to capital than more expensive skilled labor (see Walmart for details). Which makes complete sense – the honor is in the dollar. Even if, for some odd reason, there was higher quality and less cost overruns with union labor why the hell would management care if they have to pay more than the difference in wages and benefits?
This accommodation strategy is essentially Third Way economics, pretending labor unions are somehow both good for Capital and Labor – news flash: they aren’t. That’s why Capital has been trying and succeeding at crushing Labor for the past 30 years. They don’t want to pay higher wages and provide benefits they want to cut those costs so they can have higher profits.
Playing Capital’s value game hasn’t been working for Labor so far. Maybe it was Scabby’s idea to leave the AFL-CIO, rats know how to leave sinking ships.
Photo by Roy Smith under Creative Commons license
22 Comments
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Guess someone thinks this is now the mop-up phase, and they don’t want any pesky large, visible, and easily understandable symbols getting in the way.
And union members quoted in the article seem to think that Scabby has had an important role in bringing the press to labor disputes, and generally keeping the negotiations from being nice little quiet room deals that cut the membership out.
Not just the press, the public too.
And if you compare it to previous labor tactics it’s pretty tame.
Funny thing … this:
https://twitter.com/ScabbyTheRat
Has been around for almost 2 years .. and as you can imagine .. who ever runs that feed is on fire today
Ah, yes, I remember my first Scabby sighting, from a train window leaving Chicago years ago. Might have been the original, bespoke model. My memory might be faulty, but seems to me it was over 16 feet, clearly visible over a two-story roof, or maybe it was floated up a few extra feet on tethers.
That one was in place for months. One does get the message, but in a humorous way. Can’t have that! The twitter feed’s pretty good. Wonder if that value proposition is multi-pronged.
The 1% must be enjoying champagne and strawberries.
Lucky we have the minimum wage to fall back on.
*tsk, tsk* Scabby is memorable and to the point of the problem of corporate rule. Management and owners are a pack of rats.
This is a good example of why unions are failing institutions.
Until the unions start calling for general strikes, national walkouts, sit ins and other corporate rabble rousing their member numbers will shrink until they are TOTALLY INSIGNIFICANT if not already. However better late than never!
That “minimum wage” is less than half of Australia or France, and they have real social safety nets in addition.
Value proposition THIS, you spineless weasel.
Unions will have a great resurgence as austerity continues to be the PTB’s solution to their “how can I have more” problem. They will keep taking til the people feeding them finally revolt.
We should hang on to that inflatable scabby and after the revolt it could replace the bull on wall street.
There was once a union boss here, forget which one, but he spent his time decrying the fact that all the little people here weren’t “active” like he was.
So I looked up his salary. When you’re paid $180K per year, and have a huge staff to boot, it’s pretty easy to be more “active” than the unpaid (and probably starving or are you not quite there yet?) people posting here….
The union bosses are negotiating one thing only. A place inside the plutocrats stockade whenever the time comes.
US society is well and truly eating itself now. It won’t go on much longer.
Reply to BSb @11
You win the internet, LOL!!!
Boy we would all be rich here at FDL if there were cash prizes for being cleverly cynical and sarcastic. :)
McGarvey and many other construction union leaders favor taking a “business-friendly” approach rather than adversarial approach to relationships with management.
Isn’t that called a “company union”?
McGarvey is doing it all wrong.
You have to be more subtle like Trumka or O.
Tell the base what they want to hear, and then do whatever you want for the bennies. Later … F it, you have the bennies, take the money and run.
McGarvey, Trumka, O, and all those like them, are nothing but traitors. It’s like the black slaves who would help their white masters against their own kind. For O, he’s a traitor to black people (although he did cash in very well for stabbing African Americans in the back … how’s that AA unemployment doing?). Trumka and McGarvey are just business men selling their unions to some corporate master. (Of course Trumka also cleaned up well for betraying unions, … 500k a year for betraying his own union brothers and sisters, and don’t you know, he’s always invited to the swank parties, by golly gee the pres even takes his call, and I hear he’s got a nice gig lined up at some nice corporate store or maybe even CoCommerce.)
I know, but all joking aside it is a wretched situation. The scales are not tipped in the workers’ direction, and as with all tipping points, once everything starts to slide…..
I wonder what would happen if the members of the subdued unions tore up their cards and all joined the Wobblies. Just like I wondered what would have happened if all those who held their noses and voted for the LOTE had gone Green, instead.
If you want to send a message, send the damn message.
Union Boss is a right wing term. Labor management is the legal term.
You forget his name but remember his salary. Where did you look his salary up?
“What the workingmen of the country are profoundly interested in is the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, the enslaving and degrading wage-system in which they toil for a pittance at the pleasure of their masters and are bludgeoned, jailed or shot when they protest — this is the central, controlling, vital issue of the hour, and neither of the old party platforms has a word or even a hint about it.
As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class”
- eugene debs, 1900
DING!!!
Unemployment for long periods of time, kills union membership. you can’t pay dues when out of work for over a year. Furthermore target funds were abolished, where they collected money to use to augment the bidding process so they could do more with less bid. Union pride and getting people working is all that is needed.
The rise in power since 2010 has belonged to the Republicans, not the Democrats. Republicans control more state governments than Democrats. It is at the state level that unions come under attack through the passage of right-to-freeride laws and attacks on public sector unions.
What unions need to do is to educate the public on the strong correlation between union membership and the rise and fall of the middle class. Unions didn’t do themselves any PR favors in past decades (pre-1980) when they abused their power with featherbedding practices and wage increases that were not tied to increases in productivity. Also damaging was the infiltration to some unions of organized crime.
I think work on the PR front does need to be done to turn public opinion in favor of the unions, so being seen as more business friendly is a good thing. If you are ever going to reverse anti-union legislation, then you need to reverse anti-union attitudes and opinions.