Ok, here’s the situation: Butchers and bakers are in a single bargaining unit; candlestickmakers are their own bargaining unit. Bakers have a philosophical falling out with the butchers, and start making noises about preferring to be in their own bargaining unit, or possibly hooking up with the candlestickmakers. Butchers outnumber bakers in the current butcher-baker unit by 3 to 1, and as a consequence, the leadership of the union representing butcher-bakers is dominated by butchers.
The butchers vote to bolt from the butcher-baker union, but any reconfiguration must be approved by a govermental agency charged with the responsibility of resolving such matters. Before a decision is made, the leadership of the butcher-baker union is afforded the opportunity to address the goverment agency on the advisability of allowing the the bakers to split off. The butchers’ financial interests, of course, would best be served if the bakers were forced to remain. (After all, under the status quo the union enjoys all those dues collected from the bakers, but the bakers are so small a minority within the union that they can never influence union policy.) Would enlightened and progressive union leadership nevertheless say, “We’d prefer the bakers stay with us, but we think it unfair to force them”? Or, given that the “union as a whole” would be harmed financially by the loss of the bakers (or more correctly, by the loss of revenue derived from bakers’ dues) would the leadership be obligated to oppose the bakers’ departure?
What, if anything, have the great labor leaders of the past had to say about such a situation?
Great labor leaders of the past and present say that this type of craft union organization was a failure and prevented the organization of the large mass production industries while the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was the dominent labor organization in the USA.
The Rise of the Committee for Industrial Organizing (CIO) in the 30’s challenged that strategy. The CIO organized all workers within one industry into one industrial union, which eliminated the splintering and divisions present in the old craft union structure. The strategy was summed up as: “One industry, one union, one contract.” It was very successful and had it not been for government repression and anticommunism, the US would be a very different and much more pleasant place to live today.
Thank you, Galen, for such a thoughtful and historically-based response. I was less curious about the great leaders’ thoughts respecting the wisdom of the bakers’s decision to go it alone, as I was on their views regarding the fairness of denying them that choice.