Recently I have seen references in Denver museums to the United Farm Workers Union. I imagine the curators pleased that they tie together Denver labor history, Hispanics and immigration. The curators ignore the material conditions for this union’s relative success, boycott. When Cesar Chavez started the farm workers union Saul Alinsky, with his usual overbearing confidence, told him it was hopeless. The one advantage the new union had was that farm workers were not covered by labor law.
Current
labor law is designed to suppress unions. The companies are fined and unions can
go to jail. Corporate law exists to avoid responsibility. The process of
collective bargaining and rules surrounding it explains why only 11% of
American workers are union, with most of those in the public sector.
The
three strongest union weapons, wildcat strikes, boycotts and new trade unions
are illegal. Chavez brilliance was realizing that since the farm workers
weren't covered by the law, they could boycott. The farm workers' victories,
fleeting and difficult as they were, proves the power of boycott. Imagine what other
unions could accomplish with boycotts. As well as wildcat strikes and trade
unions.
Wildcat
strikes, abrupt unannounced work stoppages, sometimes rolling across companies
and industries caught employers unaware and made reprisals difficult when
workers returned. It was then the owners who were impeding production.
There
was an attempt in the sixties to organize a data entry trade union that was
squelched as restraint of trade. Given constant automation, unions must be
allowed greater opportunities. It is unfair to allow investment monopoly and
forbid it to unions. Notice that “libertarians” never stand for union
deregulation.
DOGE
the Dept of Labor.