Nelson Lichtenstein: Why Everyone Needs Unions
[Nelson Lichtenstein teaches history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy. He is the author of “The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business.”]
So public employees are legally protected from managerial caprice. But as anyone who has dealt with a government bureaucracy knows, such rules require enforcement. You can hire a lawyer, but for the vast majority of low- and middle-income public servants, a union is far more powerful and effective.
The most famous public-sector strike in the 20th century demonstrates this. In 1968, sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., were public employees covered by civil service rules. But they were also all African Americans, humiliated on the job daily by white supervisors and other officials. A typical grievance: When it rained, they had no place to take shelter.q
One February day, two workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, had climbed inside a truck’s garbage compartment to escape a heavy downpour. An electrical malfunction put the hydraulic ram into action, crushing both men in the most gruesome fashion.
In response 1,300 black men in the Memphis Public Works Department walked off the job on Feb. 12, inaugurating an epic struggle that brought Martin Luther King Jr. to the city. On Mar. 18, before an overflow crowd of 10,000, King declared, “All labor has dignity.”
Three weeks later, an assassin struck down King in Memphis — but not before the sanitation men had given enormous momentum to the cause of municipal unions in their city and throughout the country....
Read entire article at Politico
So public employees are legally protected from managerial caprice. But as anyone who has dealt with a government bureaucracy knows, such rules require enforcement. You can hire a lawyer, but for the vast majority of low- and middle-income public servants, a union is far more powerful and effective.
The most famous public-sector strike in the 20th century demonstrates this. In 1968, sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., were public employees covered by civil service rules. But they were also all African Americans, humiliated on the job daily by white supervisors and other officials. A typical grievance: When it rained, they had no place to take shelter.q
One February day, two workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, had climbed inside a truck’s garbage compartment to escape a heavy downpour. An electrical malfunction put the hydraulic ram into action, crushing both men in the most gruesome fashion.
In response 1,300 black men in the Memphis Public Works Department walked off the job on Feb. 12, inaugurating an epic struggle that brought Martin Luther King Jr. to the city. On Mar. 18, before an overflow crowd of 10,000, King declared, “All labor has dignity.”
Three weeks later, an assassin struck down King in Memphis — but not before the sanitation men had given enormous momentum to the cause of municipal unions in their city and throughout the country....