Power

"The way to have power is to take it."

Well, I wasn’t expecting to initiate this journey by talkin’ union, but I can’t say I’m particularly surprised. The thing about the labor movement is that, when done right, it makes clear what everything is all about—that being: power. We talk about power a lot, or rather, we talk around power a lot, but we don’t really talk explicitly about power. Power, in its most basic definition, is the ability to get something done. Electrical power is demonstrated in the ability of the generator to rotate the crankshaft, for example. I have power over my children when I tell them it’s bedtime. Everyone knows that politics is all about power, but what does that actually mean? Let’s start with the UAW picket line I walked Thursday morning at midnight at John Deere Harvester Works in East Moline. If you don’t understand what’s going on with the UAW & John Deere—if you don’t really understand what a strike is—this will be for you. The last time workers went on strike against Deere was two years before I was born (1986), so it’s no surprise that many folks my age & younger don’t really understand what’s going on. Then we’ll continue talking about power.

At midnight on Thursday, October 14th, members of the UAW Locals 281, 79, 434, 186, 74, 472, 94, 838, 865, 450 and 2366, employed by John Deere & Co., refused to show up at their place of work. Instead, they congregated outside of their jobsites in public right-of-ways (i.e., sidewalks) carrying signs stating that they were on strike. A strike is the collective choice of a workforce, usually organized by/into a union, to refuse to do the work that they are employed to do. Employers employ people to do work for them, which they sell to a buyer to make money. In the case of the UAW members at John Deere, the company employs most of them to literally build the equipment that Deere sells. It takes a lot of steps to turn raw materials (steel, cotton, etc) into a combine and that’s why John Deere employs a ton of people. Some are in the research & design process, some are cafeteria workers who feed the R&D people lunch, but all fundamentally contribute to the final product: a combine. A portion of Deere’s workforce are the folks who take all of the individual parts of a tractor (i.e., windshield, nut/bolt, quarter panel, engine, etc) and assemble them into the final product—the combine that farmers buy, to continue with my example. These workers are organized by/into the UAW, which stands for the International Union of United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America. They are on strike.

Unions, in their most basic legal definition, are non-profit organizations. They are recognized in federal law as a legal entity similar to a philanthropic non-profit organization, like the United Way, but they’re a separate type of non-profit. Charitable organizations are typically referred to as 501(c)3s and labor organizations are 501(c)6s. The point being, legally they are a non-profit organization chartered by the state with some kind of leadership structure (i.e., board of directors, trustees, etc). Just like charitable non-profit organizations, there are a variety of types and styles of labor organizations; some are old, some new. Some are very well financed and some can barely keep the lights on. Some are honorable, some have questionable priorities.

A way to think of a union is similar to a trade association; groups of businesses and interests come together to fund an umbrella organization to benefit them in some way (i.e., purchase commodities in bulk, lobby for preferable legislation, etc). A union is a collection of workers that organize together for their own betterment. Unions started out small, the result of employees coming together within an individual trade (i.e., carpenter, boilermaker, etc) or a single employer. Over time, however, groups of employees within different trades or employers joined together to create larger-spanning unions. When unions started growing, there was a need to differentiate the different employers, geographic locations, trades or interests of workers within the union so Locals were created. Locals are subdivisions within a union, kind of like how cities are a subdivision of a state in the United States. Cities have no legal existence outside of a state’s constitution (if the State of Illinois were to disappear as a legal entity, the City of Rock Island would too, as the State Constitution grants the authority of a city to charter itself). In similar fashion, the Constitution and bylaws (which all non-profit organizations are required to have, per the state laws that allow their legal existence) of the UAW allows for the creation of Locals.

Getting back to the current situation at Deere, several UAW Locals are on strike. This is because there are several physical locations that Deere operates, such as the Harvester Works plant in East Moline, IL where combines are built, the Seeding Group plant in Moline, IL where planters are built and other locations in Davenport, IA; Milan, IL; Denver, CO; Ottumwa, IA; Atlanta, GA; Dubuque, IA; Waterloo, IA; Des Moines, IA and Coffeyville, KS. Each plant location corresponds to a Local, meaning that the unionized workforce that works for John Deere at their Harvester Works location in East Moline, IL are organized by/into UAW Local 865.

It’s important to note that the entire workforce at these locations are not unionized, only certain trades (sometimes called “work/job classifications”) or departments are. Additionally, management or supervisory employees employed by Deere are also not included in the union. This is due to the entire purpose of unions: working people banding together to further their interests. To that end, unions will negotiate, on behalf of their members, with their employers for things like pay raises, but also for protections against things like discipline. Have you ever worked for an asshole boss that just had it out for you? Did they single you out for the worst shift? Or always force you to take overtime? A union would fight against that kind of treatment. This is why supervisors are not included within the group of workers that organize into/by a union; while supervisors are employees of an employer, just like the rest of the employees, they maintain a position within the company that distinguishes them from other workers (i.e., authority). However, multiple trades within a jobsite can be organized into a single union and Local; for example, the assembly workers building the tractors are UAW members, but so are the cafeteria workers that feed the assembly workers. I’ll get more into that later. Now that we know who is on strike, we need to understand what that means and why they’re doing it.

Again, a strike is when an employer’s workforce, usually organized by/into a union, refuses to do the work they were hired to do. If the folks that Deere pays to assemble a combine don’t assemble combines, what combines does Deere have to sell and, therefore, make money? Strikes cut both ways: Deere doesn’t make money, but neither do the striking workers. If I simply refuse to do my job, my employer has no obligation to pay me. So, strikes are incredibly scary for the workforce, too, as they know they won’t be receiving a paycheck until whatever issue that prompted them to go on strike in the first place is resolved. It’s effectively a game of chicken: who will blink first? History is rife with successful and failed strikes in the United States; sometimes the workers win and the company gives in to their demands but there have been plenty of times when the strike is “broken” and the employer is able to get enough of the workers to come back to work (or replace them altogether) to keep production going.

Let’s further explore how workers win strikes. When I was on the picket line, the workers were discussing how much inventory they know or suspect Deere to have at hand, before the strike started. Just because a company’s workers walk out the door doesn’t mean the company will start losing money on day one—if they’ve built up enough inventory to be able to coast for awhile. The workers know this, too, so they’ve got to calculate how long they’ll need to go without wages before it’ll start digging into Deere’s revenue, too. Then, even if they get to the point where they start running out of inventory to sell, can the company keep producing new inventory without the striking workers? This is when things start getting ugly.

Deere is reported to have initiated its “customer service continuation plan,” which is, effectively, how the company hopes to be able to stay in business while 10,000 of their employees stand outside their gates. This includes a variety of tactics, such as the use of other portions of Deere’s workforce (management, sales, etc) that aren’t part of the unionized production employees to do the work of the striking workers or the hiring of temp workers through labor brokers (like Sedona Staffing in Moline, IL). These workers that do the work of workers currently on strike are what is referred to as “scabs.” From the UAW members currently on strike’s perspective, these are fellow workers that are willing to stab them in the back, helping the company keep production rolling, while they remain on strike trying to force the employer to meet their demands. Scabs and their relationship to employers and striking workers has a long—and often ugly—history. It was (and on rare occasion, still is) common that scabs were assaulted or intimidated to deter them from crossing the picket line and scabbing. Again, from the strikers’ perspective, they’re risking it all; to watch a fellow worker undermine their strike is a slap in the face and spells disaster for strikers. Employers know this, and so do their politicians, so much attempt has been made to facilitate strikebreakers; in some countries, scabbing it straight-up illegal. In the USA, governors have gone so far as to employ the national guard in factories to keep production going and undermine strikes. Research American labor history—it’s not been pretty.

This is why a common rallying cry during a strike is “don’t cross the picket line.” Picket lines aren’t a literal line, but it’s the area outside of an employer’s property where striking workers will gather, usually at the entrance to a plant for a manufacturing employer (like Deere). If you drive along River Drive in Moline, for example, you’ll see a handful of strikers—they are gathered around the different entrances to the John Deere Seeding Group plant. The intent is to draw a visual “line in the sand” where anything that goes past the strikers is understood to undermine their effort. This includes salaried employees who have been re-assigned to work on the production line, as mentioned, but it also includes things like delivery trucks coming & going. Again, the whole point of a strike is to grind production down to a halt and force the employer to negotiate with the employees; all aspects of business is fair game. The UAW members build the combines, but truckers haul them away to be sold at a dealer. What if the truckers that hauled the equipment away refused to pick up combines until the strike was resolved? When you start thinking like this, you start thinking about power.

Posting “solidarity” on your favorite social media platform is nice, but workers win strikes by wielding power. Everything else is performative. Marches, rallies and protests have their place, but they are generally a performative act. Again, it’s nice to indicate one’s solidarity with a cause through performance, but to actually secure one’s aims one needs power. AOC can wear a dress calling to tax the rich, but the rich still aren’t taxed enough. Getting back to the strike example, workers have power (by withholding their labor), but they’ve got to be damn sure it’s enough power to force the employer to negotiate.

I’ve been reading William Foster’s book American Trade Unionism, wherein he recounts his experience being a union organizer and communist politician in the late 19th & early 20th centuries. At this time in American history there was a push from craft unionism to industrial unionism. Craft unionism is the theory that each trade should be organized into their own individual unions, such as a carpenters’ union, a plumbers’ union and the like. Industrial unionists argued that entire industries should be organized into a single union, regardless of employees’ craft, so as to prevent employers from playing workers against each other. If the carpenters’ union were to go on strike, the strike could be easily broken if the employer were able to convince the roofers’ union to take over their work. Unfortunately, this has often happened and continues today. Therefore, industrial unions began to amalgamate (or: combine) separate crafts that worked in a single industry within a single industrial union. The UAW is, to much extent, an example of an industrial union: the intent was/is to organize all workers within the automotive, aerospace and farm implement assembly industries to more effectively challenge the power of the companies that dominate these industries. This is why, at Deere, the UAW represents workers from cafeteria workers to technical workers and skilled workers. The more workers that walk off the job, the fewer remain to scab for the boss. If truckers picking up combines struck with the assembly workers, it would further encumber Deere’s ability to make money and outlast the workers.

The effort to amalgamate craft unions to industrial unions was/is an attempt to increase workers’ power over their employers. When workers go on strike, their employer doesn’t agree to settle because they sympathize with the workers, or because a threshold of #solidarity hashtags are posted on Twitter—they negotiate because they have to. When you force someone to do something, you have power. Again, I have power over my children at bedtime because, at its most basic level, I can force them to go to bed. They may try to appeal to my emotions or reason with me, but it only goes as far as I’m willing to allow it to go. At some point, I can put my foot down and force them to go to bed. If working people attempt a similar strategy of appealing to emotions or reasoning, without possessing actual power, those in power (the companies, politicians, bourgeois, etc) can ultimately simply “put their foot down.” Again, the rich are not taxed, no matter how many people tweet about it. Successful strikes require strategic and thoughtful reflection on power structures. Thinking about how to supplement workers’ wages while they’re on strike (i.e., crowd-funding strike funds has become a popular tool) is thinking strategically about power. Identifying pinch-points within the production process and organizing them (i.e., the truckers that haul the equipment away) is thinking strategically about power. This is how workers win.

It is of little surprise that the development of industrial unionism also birthed revolutionary industrial unionism, which included organizations such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), established in 1905. As the lines between crafts and industries began to blur, the concept of class became more apparent. The preamble to the Industrial Workers of the World’s Constitution reads: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” No longer were workers plumbers, or carpenters, or even workers within a certain industry, they understood themselves as workers—or of the working class—and they had power.

I know it’s a cliché, but we (workers) really do take for granted the incredible victories the labor movement of yore secured for us. They also didn’t win them by appealing to emotion or reasoning. They had power. They commanded entire industries and threatened to take them down unless workers’ demands were met. Reflect that during this period, America was an industrial economy. Workers could set off a national recession by identifying bottlenecks within the economy and leveraging their power there. For example, railroads were a primary organizing target in the late 19th century, since so much of the economy depended on being transported by rail. The President of the United States had to respond when the entire steel industry threatened to shut down. Compare this to today’s political exercises and we understand why FDR signed the New Deal while Bush invaded Iraq, regardless of the biggest anti-war protests on record. The US is no longer an industrial economy, on account of technology and NAFTA. Labor is not organized within the economies of 21st century America (the service industry, the knowledge economy, etc)—it’s no wonder things haven’t improved for workers for nearly a century. A lack of strategic thinking, with respect to power, is apparent.

I recently tweeted: “I've been an Alderman for 5 years & haven't come close to having the amount of power I'm seeing at the UAW picket lines.” The number one thing I’ve learned, being an Alderman, is that I don’t have much power. In theory, I can create laws, but I don’t have much power. A number of years ago, Modern Woodmen asked the City for permission to demolish the former First National Bank building in downtown Rock Island. My constituents showed up at City Hall and asked that I refuse them the ability to do so. I declined, and voted to give Modern Woodmen the permission to do as they wished.

Did I do this because I don’t care about my constituents? No. I did this because Modern Woodmen, being the largest property tax payer and major employer in Rock Island has an infinite amount of power over me. They have the ability to pick up and leave our community, taking their jobs and revenue with them, just like Case and International Harvester did back in the 1980s. The writing is on the wall: regardless of the fact that the 5,000 households in Rock Island’s 5th Ward democratically elected me to represent them, Modern Woodmen makes the rules. I don’t mean to pick on Modern Woodmen—this happens in all communities across the world with all different types of businesses. This is the way in our society is structured.

This is why those old revolutionary industrial unions grew with revolutionary political parties (Socialist Labor Party, Communist Party USA, etc) that aimed for the democratic ownership and control of industry altogether. It’s about power. They fought for workers’ power on the job, but they also did so in society, too. They understood power and once one understands society within the framework of power, one realizes that not even our elected officials have much power. What is democracy if our elected officials are subservient to capital? If the majority of residents within a community have to live by the rules of the major employer?

Too much of our politics is performance. I’m not just talking about the obvious stuff, like AOC’s dress; I’m also referring to when Mike Thoms says he’s running for State Senate to improve “economic development.” Economic development occurs naturally when an area’s natural resources (including its people) have sufficient economic value for a business purpose that justifies investment. The Weyerhaeusers began their lumber empire in Rock Island because we had a ton of trees. IH & Case opened their factories because we had access to transportation (river, rail) and an affordable workforce. It’s not because a community asks nicely. It’s not even because tax incentives are offered (even though that certainly helps grease the wheels). Being able to invest is power. Until a community has that same kind of power, it’s just for show.

That’s what intrigues me, so much, about strikes; Nowhere else do normal people come together to yield power. I don’t claim to fully understand what a society would look like where normal people have power. I am, however, overwhelmingly interested in accomplishing it.

To that end, my heart goes out to the UAW members standing outside of Deere facilities.

You are the torch leading us through the darkness.