#8
Late July, 1981
Two union delegates just spent all day in meetings. Now it’s off to a quiet corner of a noisy bar for them.
“I don’t think he’s bluffing.”
“We’ve got him over a barrel, of course he’s bluffing.”
“I don’t think he’s bluffing, Gene.”
“What are they gonna do, put the janitors in the towers? There’s no plan B, they need us, I say we strike.”
“Gene, think for a second. You’ve seen Anderson. You’ve seen MacLaury. You know they’re not playing. These men sleep with their account ledgers. They made a calculation, they wrote down a number, and that’s all there is to it. No wiggle room.”
“Schweiker’s a good guy.”
“Schweiker
is a good guy. And he’s the reason we have this deal at all.”
“So what happens in your version of events? He bankrupts the airlines?”
“I don’t think he gives a shit about the airlines. He’s not your typical Chamber of Commerce type Republican.”
“We can’t take this deal as it stands, Mike. This is a pay cut for 5,000 guys.”
“This is what we asked for. We wanted a 32-hour work week, we got it. We wanted a 20-year pension date, we came close to that. The majority of guys are going to see the same pay or even a raise, and the rest will catch back up soon enough.”
“Five years before the new guys are making what they were making last month, if we take this deal. Five years!”
“Hey, I’m one of those new guys. This deal is better for all of us in the end. We’re getting money for automation, we’re getting the increase in training capacity. This is a good deal.”
“It’s that pay cut, man. If it were even just net zero at this point I might say yes, but I just can’t stop my guys from voting down something that’s gonna take money from their pockets.”
“I get that.”
“End of story.”
“I get it. It’s tough telling someone they gotta wait for the next at-bat. But we’re in this position because we can handle those tough calls. There’s a bigger picture here. You know? We need a win. Not just for us, but everyone who punches a clock. Us union guys...we’ve been losing ground, you know? For a generation now. Maybe two. We need a victory. This guy Anderson, he’s remaking the entire economy. You seen this stuff coming out of Washington? The tax bill and all that? The rich thought they were gonna bilk us again on tax day and he made 'em pay their fair share. All those loopholes closed for yacht refurbishment and whatever they get up to. The balance shifted back to the middle class. We’ll be able to get a decent mortgage again, even with less pay. But this is all just what these Washington types think we need. We need to show them ourselves, or else they’ll just keep dictating terms. And this deal’s as close as we’re gonna get to showing them what we want.”
A big sigh from Gene. No, even bigger, think bigger, the king of all sighs and it goes on and on. Mike speaks up again:
“Come on. I’ll do the talking. Just tell me you can nod when I need you to nod.”
Gene looks at him, takes a moment, and nods.
----
Corner of 7th and Euclid. Home to both Al’s newsstand and Hashim’s falafel cart.
“EXTRY! Air traffic controllers reach deal with government! Compromise on pay rises and pensions for shorter hours and increased workforce! EXTRY!”
“Why do you do that? Nobody’s sold newspapers that way for 40 years.”
“Hey, you enjoy your hobbies, I’ll enjoy mine, okay Hashim?”
“Could you at least pick a more interesting story to shout at people?”
“The people deserve a wide variety of news.”
“You’re not the town cryer, Al.”
“And you will not stifle my first amendment right to freedom of the press, Hashim. EXTRY! Reds sweep Dodgers! Up ten games going into the All-Star break! EXTRY!”
----
1991
Mother Jones
Excerpt from an editorial on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the PATCO strike.
The legacy of the PATCO strike resolution is difficult to assess in terms of the labor history of the United States. At the time, both the government and the union tried to spin it as a victory, though the government’s effort was more successful than the union’s when one looks at the opinion polls. From an AP poll taken in August of 1981, 46% of respondents believed the government had gotten the better deal; 22% said PATCO; and 25% believed the compromise was roughly equal.
In the short term, union membership did increase after the strike’s resolution, driven almost entirely by strong growth in the public sector. In this sense, the strike was a success, as it gave government employees a prime example of how collective bargaining with the state could produce results that were at least democratic, distributed, and perceived as fair.
But this did little to help the private sector. Private sector union membership continued to slip as the economy reoriented itself away from heavy industry, saw increased automation, and as factories moved to states with weaker labor cultures. The rate of decline did markedly slow in the early 1980s, as private enterprise grew wary of the Anderson administration’s no-nonsense Justice and Labor Departments. But there’s little evidence that the PATCO outcome itself had any bearing on their attitudes.
With the stagnation of private sector union membership and the rapid increase of public sector membership, one might think that we could reasonably lay at least a partial victory at the feet of the PATCO strikers. But the truth is that overall union membership had been on the rise throughout the Carter administration. When, in 1983, union membership surpassed 25% of all employed workers (a threshold last attained in 1964), PATCO took pride of place among the unions in the celebrations. But this actually represented a slower rate of improvement than was achieved during the Carter years.
We do not bring up these numbers to malign the legacy of the PATCO strikers, who after all performed their duty to each other and gave hope and example to their brothers and sisters in other sectors. And it’s certainly true that the growth in union numbers (though small) coupled with the upheaval in US politics meant that organized labor greeted the 1984 election cycle with a level of political power within the Democratic Party not seen in 20 years. PATCO deserves at least some credit for this.
Rather, we bring it up to interrogate the mythology that President Anderson was somehow a friend to labor. A common truism one hears today is that Anderson "unwittingly" saved the unions. When you ask the utterers of this nonsense how exactly he accomplished this, they usually cannot respond, or if they do it is with some vague platitude, such as, “He left them alone.”
At best Anderson was a minor antagonist, adding weight to those on the march of progress- if, one must grudgingly admit, not trying to push them off the path as previous Republicans had done.
But on several fronts he did unmitigated harm to organized labor. He increased the number of guest worker visas to untold levels, threatening the foundations of the United Farm Workers and other agricultural unions. He supported the movement of factory jobs to new locations, as long as they contributed to his “Small Town Revitalization Plan,” not concerned that these moves could erode private sector unions.
It’s true, later in his presidency he would develop some interesting theories on labor relations and the structure of the economy. But he never spent the political capital to turn those theories into policy. He was a dilettante of economics more than a friend to the worker.
As the GOP attempts to gain sway over some of our brothers and sisters in the more white collar unions, this is an important lesson to keep in mind.
This pleases me immensely. I was writing out these dry newspaper headlines to convey information and really wanted to find a way to do something more interesting. Thus were they born!