What Can We Expect From The Unions?

Historically, it has been a basic premise for socialists that because the trade union constituency is composed of workers, unions must play a progressive role in society. This assumption was rarely challenged, especially since unions for many years did exercise their power in ways that benefited masses of people who had no other spokesmen. American radicals have always dreamed of the role unions might perform in our society. Even today, men with a deep commitment to basic social change believe that the civil rights movement, for example, must depend on an alliance with the trade unions in order to succeed. But with rare exceptions, the vision of the union role has always remained only that. Throughout their history, American unions have stubbornly resisted the call that they become more than the instrument of a special, although very large and important, interest group operating only within the confines of the social order rather than seeking to break through those borders.

One of the inescapable facts about the American trade unions is that it seems to make little difference what set of ideas a union leader brings to the bargaining table: inexorably, the process of negotiation within the system endows the contractual relationship with primary importance. Contract becomes king and, as a result, nearly all unions are indistinguishable from each other, at least in their relationship to the employer.

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