When thousands of students fled to their respective homes last spring I decided Syracuse wouldn’t miss me much and stayed in Buffalo. With it being my final chance to spend the warmer months in the Queen City, I was eager to discover what this booming metropolis had to offer (surprisingly a lot, but that’s a different story). I still had bills to pay, so I decided to leave my job as a cook to work full-time at Frank’s Landscaping and Drainage in Tonawanda. Not only did I want to work outside, but I wanted to experience hard physical labor—you know, gain an appreciation for the education for which I pay so generously. Most of my fellow co-workers, however, were not university students on summer break trying to make some extra money for college. This job was their life, their sole source of income, and if the work ran out at the end of the summer, tough luck.
This is one of the reasons why labor unions are so important to people throughout the nation. Job security, benefits, and guaranteed raises are some of the basic reasons to join a union. The guys at Frank’s swore they would never subscribe. If we were trying to get a job finished by the end of the day (which often extended to seven or eight p.m.) and someone took a break, they ran the risk of being heckled with phrases like, “Do you think you belong to a union?” Some of them had first-hand experience with unions while others had to work alongside people who were protected by them. Whatever the case, the attitude amongst most of the Frank’s laborers was that union workers were lazy and over-paid.
Despite the sentiments of my colleagues, I still cheered when the United Auto Workers (UAW) union fought for their rights and went on strike against General Motors. People here in Buffalo walked off the site Monday, September 24 when an agreement between the UAW and GM was not reached by the 11 a.m. deadline. The last time the UAW issued a nationwide strike was in 1970. It lasted 67 days and prompted lay-offs in the steel and parts industry. GM eventually conceded to the workers and provided a 13 percent wage increase.
This time around, the setting is very different. GM is no longer the automobile powerhouse it once was. In the last two years, GM has lost 12.3 billion dollars, putting them in a much worse bargaining position. The major issue that president of the UAW Ron Gettelfinger stressed was the need for job security. As the number of corporations outsourcing jobs increases, more and more Americans have been losing their jobs in manufacturing due to cheaper production costs in other parts of the world. The UAW recognized the problem and chose to take action. This time, GM couldn’t afford to hold out like it could in 1970, and two days after the strike began, the opposing sides came to a “mixed” agreement, ending the strike and sending workers back to the assembly line.
It’s no secret that unions have been losing influence for decades. The number of work stoppages in the US has decreased from over 400 in 1975 to only 20 last year. In 1952, 650,000 steel workers went on strike after the Supreme Court ruled government seizure of the industry unconstitutional. In 1983, 675,000 union workers went on strike against AT&T. This type of widespread response just isn’t prevalent in our society today. Last year, the number of disgruntled workers that went on strike reached a whopping 1000 people. The sepia-tone photos of thousands of people toting signs on the picket line are nothing more than a fading memory.
The UAW’s rebellion should be reassuring, yet I can’t help but feel like it’s the final throes of a dying beast. What, then, can be done to ensure that the average working man still has a voice in the workplace? Well, we do as our forefathers have done before us, stand up against injustice. As John Adams was famously quoted, “VIVA LA UNION!” Little known fact, John Adams always spoke Spanish.
Jon Davenport
Assistant Features Editor
