Labor's Trump Card AFL-CIO LEADER RICHARD TRUMKA GIVES INSIGHT INTO THE NEW RELEVANCE OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT by Donald R. Caplan image courtesy of AFL-CIO During the nineteenth century, two ideas about historical writing competed with each other for dominance. On the one hand, there was the Marxist interpretation of history emphasizing that history was nothing more than a competition between social classes. Marxist historical writing emphasizes groups of people bound together in class struggle. Writing history thus emphasized the removal of focus on any one particular person acting as a causative agent of historical change. Instead, those individuals singled out as great historical actors were merely products of historical circumstance. The Marxist interpretation's competitor was the Nietzschean. In his essay, "On the uses and disadvantages of history for life," Nietzsche wrote that historians should focus on the great personalities of history like Napoleon or Beethoven rather than focus on mass movements. The value of grand biographies, in the Nietzschean sense, would be to show how individuals can prod historical change because of their force of will or ability to shape their historical circumstances. These two ideas were not inherently at odds with each other, but they had motivations and implications that often collided. Today the issue of whether historians should focus on the "great" figures of history or on analyses of mass movements is largely moot. Academic and non-academic discussions tend to focus on which figures -- male, female, white, or person of color, etc. -- or which groups -- American, Tibetan, African American, etc. -- historians should study. When you read this interview, keep these issues in mind. The history of organized labor is about mass movements of people -- Jewish cigar manufacturers, hospital locals, and Southern textile workers. At the same time, it is about Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor, John Lewis, leader of the Committee of Industrial Organizations, Walter Reuther, long-time leader of the United Auto Workers, and César Chávez, organizer of the United Farm Workers. These groups and leaders led struggles against the odds to make businesses and the government attentive to the daily needs of working people. Below is an interview with Richard L. Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, and in many ways one of the actors caught in the mix of mass movement and historical individual. This issue may seem academic, but I think it is important for your consideration. So ask yourself as you read this: Is history the consequence of mass movements or massive personalities? Richard L. Trumka was born in 1949 in Nemacolin, Pennsylvania. He attended Penn State University and worked his way through college by working the night shift as a coal miner. He attended Villanova Law School and went on to be active in the labor movement as President of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) from 1982 until his election as Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO in 1995. At the UMWA, Trumka led two major strikes against the Pittston Coal Co. and the Bituminous Coal Operators Association that resulted in significant advances in employer-employee cooperation and the enhancement of mine workers' job security, pensions, and benefits. In 1995 Trumka ran on a historic ticket for the AFL-CIO's leadership that set out to revitalize the labor movement. It was the first truly contested election in the history of the AFL-CIO, pitting an old-guard leadership against an insurgent group that sought to emphasize the movement's need to recruit more workers into unions. Trumka's ticket, the insurgent group led by John J. Sweeney, who ran for president, and Linda Chavez- Thompson, who ran for executive vice president, also emphasized the importance of making labor a proactive force for change with regard to the rights of women and minority workers. Trumka's ticket won the election and has since made its impact felt with a tremendous investment in organizational and political activities. Here are some of Richard Trumka's thoughts and observations about the present and future of the labor movement: DRC: Jesse Jackson commented in his speech at the Democratic National Convention last year that the great social reform and protest movements that changed this country in the 1960s worked not from the top down, but from the bottom up. How will the AFL-CIO activate a younger segment of the population that statistically remains the least politically active? RLT: Well, the teach-ins are a part of that. They are there to teach you not to forfeit your right to have a say in the work place. They are there to teach about stagnant wages and the difficulties college graduates are feeling now, because they, too, are feeling the pinch. Our goal is to connect and educate college students. Labor in 1996 didn't tell people who to vote for; it asked union members what issues were important to them. The people gave us a list -- Medicare and Medicaid, health care, attitudes towards unionizing, education, occupational safety. We activated more people this way, and we turned out more union voters than we had in the previous two [election] cycles. Meanwhile, there was Union Summer in which 1500 college students volunteered to work around the country to help organize activities. We had 3500 applicants, half had parents in unions. They came from 45 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and six foreign countries. 58 percent were women and 48 percent were people of color. DRC: What do you see are the advantages, or disadvantages, of the labor movement's new relationship with college students and intellectuals? RLT: Let me begin answering this by saying that the American labor movement would be absolutely nowhere without youth involvement. They are an integral part of our movement, because if we fail to ignite youth, our movement will fail. The same is true for intellectuals because they have so much to offer us. We happen to be at a phase in the labor movement when the leadership is pro-intellectual, and it is our hope that they will teach and educate not only the young, but women and people of color as well, about the importance of this movement. DRC: U.Va. has had some grumbling about graduate student unions. What is your opinion on the formation of these unions, and the implications this has on the relationship between intellectuals and the labor movement? RLT: I favor [graduate student unions]. I think graduate students are, in fact, workers. They're being used as teachers, and they have a right to have a voice in the workplace. In part, graduate students sometimes take on the jobs of professors; and they deserve to be adequately compensated for their work. DRC: It appears that there has been a concerted effort on the part of America's big corporations and the Republican party to distort or silence issues that the AFL-CIO raises in its concerns for working people. Distortion has also occurred with regard to last year's elections and the independent campaign the AFL-CIO ran, spending 35 million dollars -- that compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars Republicans received from big corporations. What needs to happen to end the campaign of lies and distortions? RLT: Corporate America is walking the planet towards the worst working conditions and lowest wages, and there are only two groups working against Corporate America's greed. The first is the American government, and we can see how the Republicans attacked "big" government in the last few election cycles. They say, "Get rid of big government, get it off our back." And these are code words that really say get those regulations off of our back, get rid of those environmental regulations, occupational safety regulations, minimum wage requirements. Now the other group is the labor movement. [Corporate America] attacked us because we woke up after 15 years. They didn't like what we had to say, and they ended up outspending us seven to one. They didn't like the truth we exposed. But, in fact, we won last year's elections because we were able to control the debate. We controlled the debate right down to Newt Gingrich's race because he used the issues that labor champions use to attack his opponent for failing to pay minimum wage and violating other regulations designed to protect workers. What are we doing this year [to fight the campaign of lies and distortion]? We are going to run a very large media campaign in order to define who we are. We are truly American workers' last line of defense from Corporate America. We are not going to allow the corporations and the Republicans to define us. Workers need a voice, and we are the voice of all workers. We will speak out for organized and non- organized workers, for women, people of color, and college students. We will be the voice for all American workers because that's what we're all about. DRC: Virginia is a right-to-work state. What efforts are the AFL-CIO undertaking to deal with right-to-work laws that oftentimes recreate sectional conflicts and internal class conflicts in the United States? RLT: Right-to-work laws have nothing to do with the right to work or the rights of workers. Let's assume that a majority of workers vote for a union, a small group can opt out of the union and they end up helping the employer hurt all workers in contract negotiations. They hinder the ability of the union to negotiate for a reasonable wage and good benefits. We have undertaken a campaign that recently was successful in the Navajo Nation where they voted to repeal right-to-work laws. We will continue to take that law to issue, because all of the states that have right-to-work have wages below the national average. Those states also spend less on education and have lower standards of living. The results speak for themselves because when workers are allowed to unionize, their wages are 30 percent higher than in workplaces that don't have unions. DRC: What advice do you have for college students preparing to enter the job market? RLT: Give the labor movement a good look. If you really want to have an impact with your life, the labor movement is an avenue to do something good for people. I would advise students to really understand what they want to do, and to do something they want to do. I also would warn them that the old rules don't apply. It used to be that you could graduate from college and work for a corporation and expect to stay with that corporation for your career. Loyalty isn't the case anymore. It isn't the case that you can expect to stay with a company because you've put in the time. Now corporations let all the workers fend for themselves. Mr. Trumka will speak at a teach-in for the labor movement, "Workers Rights are Civil Rights," tonight at 7 p.m. at the Chemistry Auditorium here at the university. He is anxious to interact with as many students as possible.

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