> Maybe they should have called it Union-Busting Memorial National Airport, > instead. > > That would have more appropriately highlighted one of Ronald > Reagan's most notorious achievements, the decision to fire 1,800 striking > air traffic controllers early in his first term. Congress's decision to > name Washington's airport for Reagan dishonors working people across the > country. > > Want a sense of how bitter the memories are? Here's Randy Schwitz, > executive vice president of the National Air Traffic Controllers > Association, the successor union to the broken PATCO: "I'd rather have a > hot poker in my eye than have an airport named after him [Reagan]." > > The air traffic controllers' firing was about much more than the > men and women who help guarantee air traffic safety. Although it wasn't > the era's first large-scale firing or permanent replacement of striking > workers, it certainly was the most prominent. Reagan's action sent a > message to employers that they could act against striking or organizing > workers with virtual impunity. And it sent a message to workers that they > struck or sought to organize at their own peril. (The administration > backed up those messages by appointing members to the National Labor > Relations Board who had little apparent interest in enforcing the nation's > labor laws.) > > A series of bitter labor conflicts over the next decade and a half > would drive that message home: Hormel, Continental Airlines, Eastern > Airlines, Caterpillar, A.E. Staley and many others. Occasionally unions > were able to resist successfully with aggressive and innovative tactics, > public outreach and unflinching solidarity -- as at Pittston Coal and more > recently UPS -- but these labor victories have been the exception. > > Big business has capitalized on the new political and cultural > climate which Reagan helped create -- as well as enhanced power from > increased capital mobility, foreign competition, downsizing and rapid > technological change -- to wage full-scale class warfare against working > people. Employers use threats of plant relocations to bust unions; they > rely on weak or non-existent unions to permit downsizing; they capitalize > on technological change to speed restructuring and to shift production > abroad. Many workers are so intimidated that they fear unionizing or even > asking for a raise. > > Here is how bad things are: The most comprehensive study done on > plant-closing threats in union organizing drives found that employers > threaten to close the plant in more than half of all union-organizing > drives. > > The study's author, Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor > education research at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, > found that, during unionizing drives, employers regularly refer to NAFTA > and Mexican maquiladoras to prove how easy it would be for them to move > operations. She reports that one company in Michigan even parked flat-bed > trucks loaded with shrink-wrapped production equipment -- accompanied by > signs reading "Mexico Transfer Job" -- in front of the plant for the > duration of a union organizing drive. > > Plant-closing threats are regularly accompanied by a host of other > ruthless (and often illegal) anti-union measures. In union organizing > drives from 1993 to 1995, Bronfenbrenner found that more than a third of > employers discharged workers for union activity, 38 percent gave bribes or > special favors to those who opposed the union and 14 percent used > electronic surveillance of union activists. > > Sixty-four percent of employers in union election campaigns used > more than five anti-union tactics, ranging from holding captive audience > meetings where employer representatives lecture employees to threatening > to report workers to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. > > Most astoundingly, where union organizing drives are successful, > employers do in fact close their plant, in whole or in part, 15 percent of > the time. > > All of this cannot, of course, be attributed to Ronald Reagan. But > he did more than his share to help bring it about. It is the shame of the > U.S. Congress that it decided to "honor" such a legacy. > > Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime > Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based > Multinational Monitor. > > (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman >
