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GUEST VIEWPOINT:
Union movement includes both liberty and justice
from The Register-Guard
As Labor Day 2009 approached,
I began to think about the origins
of my lifelong commitment to the union
movement and recalled a quote I used in my book ...
Appeared in print: Monday, Sep 7, 2009
Opinion: Editorials & Letters: Story
While driving the last few days, I have been listening
to conservative talk radio. Doubtless fueled by reaction
to the Obama administration’s response to the
economic crisis, several themes are being
passionately articulated:
a pronounced distaste for government playing
a substantial role in economic affairs,
and fears that personal freedom and
individual liberty are imperiled.
What I rarely hear in the conservative lexicon,
however, is the word “justice,”
even though it appears prominently in
the pledge of allegiance and the preamble to the
Constitution, two of our most compelling
statements of American ideals.
As Labor Day 2009 approached, I began to think about
the origins of my lifelong commitment to the union movement
and recalled a quote I used in my book about a 1930s labor activist:
“the union as the agency through which workers could get justice.”
It is this sentiment that has animated my loyalty to the union
movement, and I would like to reflect on both its personal
and social meaning.
I was first drawn to the labor movement nearly 40 years ago
when I learned about the injustices faced by migrant farm workers,
people whose labor put food on my table but suffered from abysmal
treatment and often could not afford the necessities of life.
For them, justice meant such basic things as cool drinking water,
rest breaks, toilets in the fields, and the elimination of the
short-handled hoe as a tool of labor.
Later, I worked on behalf of Southern textile workers.
For them, justice meant reducing the level of cotton dust that
their work produced and which caused far too many of them to
suffer from debilitating brown lung disease.
During the latter part of my union career, I helped nursing home
workers to organize unions. For them, justice meant increasing
staffing levels so they could provide their patients with
the quality care they deserved.
In spite of the different types of workers involved, unions played
a consistent and indispensable role: helping workers obtain justice
in the workplace and fulfill their quest for a dignified life.
The vocabulary of justice becomes especially important during
hard times. At the University of Oregon, workers believe they
are being unjustly asked to assume a disproportionate share of
sacrifices demanded by the state budget crisis and are seeking a
more equitable distribution of pain
through the collective bargaining process.
At a Chicago window and door factory last December,
workers sat in to persuade the Bank of America,
which had received taxpayer bailout funds,
to extend credit that would enable their company
to provide them with the severance pay to which they were entitled.
In each of these cases, workers have been represented
by strong unions, without whom their ability to obtain
justice would be seriously limited.
The role of the union movement in raising questions of justice
also appears in arenas outside the workplace. Unions and their
members have been quite vocal in framing the debate over health
care reform as a matter of justice, insisting that quality health care
is a basic social and human right that should be available regardless
of ability to pay. They have fought to hold accountable those institutions
— banks, insurance companies, mortgage lenders — whose irresponsible
and unjust behavior has caused millions of Americans, frequently
through no fault of their own, to lose their homes, their retirement
savings and their livelihoods.
This broader civic role of unions in seeking to ensure a fairer distribution
of resources and place questions of justice at the forefront of social and
political decision-making enriches our public discourse, making it more
likely that working-class concerns will not be ignored at the expense of
interests whose wealth and power typically enable them to exert
overwhelming influence over the political process.
The belief in individual liberty and freedom that is at the heart of the
modern conservative creed certainly enjoys a prominent status in
our public discourse, as does its conviction that limited government
and free markets are vital to ensuring economic growth and prosperity.
But when it comes to making sure that there is not only “liberty” but also
“justice for all,” the union movement, although at times hesitantly and
imperfectly, has been one of our most reliable and effective social voices.
Its singular ability to speak the vocabulary of justice on behalf of those
who tend our young and old, educate our children, provide our food
and build our infrastructure sustains my faith that a more just and
secure future is surely within our reach.
Bob Bussel teaches history and directs the
Labor Education and Research Center
at the University of Oregon.
