It's May Day, Time to Celebrate Unions

The closest person I had to a grandmother was a widowed Russian immigrant who, when her husband was alive, took my father in as a boarder shortly after he arrived in New York in early 1939. My father’s parents perished in Poland during World War II. My maternal grandfather passed away when I was around two years old. The only lasting memory I have of my maternal grandmother is visiting her in the hospital. She was resting inside an oxygen tent. She must have died shortly thereafter. I was about five.

Bessie Trachtenberg filled the void. She looked like a Jewish grandmother. She had grey hair pulled back in a bun. She was heavy set, with an equally heavy accent. She was a good cook. Like many mothers-in-law, even a pseudo mother-in-law, she waged culinary combat for the title of better cook. The battle with my mother raged over breaded veal chops. The victor—I, along with my brother and sister. We loved breaded veal chops.

My mother and Bessie would argue about all manner of food preparation, particularly when it involved Eastern European Jewish cuisine. The most vocal arguments, however, transpired between Bessie and my father. You see, Bessie was a card-carrying member of the ILGWU, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (you know, the group that sang “Look for the union label”). She was a staunch union advocate, an organizer. My father, on the other hand, was an entrepreneur, an apparel factory owner who employed dozens of Blacks and Hispanics. To my knowledge, he treated them fairly, thus avoiding any unionization drives.

When Bessie would visit they invariably bickered about the treatment of workers in general. Bessie would justify the need for unions. Dad would call her a Trotskyite. Bessie’s blood would start to boil. She would threaten never to visit again. All the while I could sense my father was merely teasing her.

I am reminded of these mock fights by the celebration today of May Day, the international workers’ day, and the recent bill passed and signed in Wisconsin by the Republican-controlled legislature and the GOP governor and would-be president Scott Walker. Wisconsin, once a bastion of the labor movement, has become a Right to Work state under the new law. Union power will be diminished.

I know some unions and their leadership have stifled corporate growth. Some have abused their powers. Others have been corrupt. Whatever the crime you can probably find a union or a union officer who has perpetrated it.

But the true and honest bottom line is that without unions the lives of most workers and their families would be sorrier, with fewer benefits and lower wages. Moreover, as union member income rose, so did the wealth of non-union workers and exempt employees. Unions helped build the middle class. It can appropriately be argued that the comforts of middle class life, and the number of households that can claim middle income status, have eroded since union power and membership have declined over the last 30-plus years. 

When I worked at The New Haven Register I earned $200 a week in 1974. I was one of six bureau chiefs, one of the better paid on a staff of 100. We voted in a union, the Newspaper Guild. The Register immediately froze our salaries. It took more than two years to negotiate a contract. I left The Register before an agreement was reached. Had I stayed, my salary would have jumped to more than $350 a week. Without the aid of a union The Register would have had to bump my salary 10% a year for six years to reach the Guild-achieved level. Doubtful that would have happened.

Unlike my father’s playful goading of Bessie, the decades-long attack by Republicans to weaken and eliminate unions has profoundly impacted the vitality of the U.S. economy to the point where even some members of the Grand Old Party are recognizing the perils of the resulting income inequality and may be willing to do something about it. 

It might well be too late for unions to be resurrected as a driving force of financial growth for the family unit and the national economy. But let’s not forget to acknowledge the contributions unions have made in our lives, from safer working conditions, to retirement benefits, to limits on child labor and the number of hours individuals may work without receiving overtime, to the election of progressive, mostly Democratic, politicians who have enacted legislation that has expanded the opportunities, freedoms and rights of all, union and non-union members.

Look for the Union Label

I never really knew any of my grandparents. My father’s parents perished in the Holocaust in Poland. I was barely two when my maternal grandfather died in New York. The only memory I have of my mother’s mother was a visit to a hospital room a couple of years later to see an old woman lying in a bed encased in a clear plastic oxygen tent. She died shortly thereafter.

The closest person I had to a grandmother was Bessie Trachtenberg. When my father came to America in 1939, he roomed with her family in Brooklyn for a while. She remained in his life, and ours, for more than three decades. We’d see Bessie every few weeks or so, usually for a Friday night or Sunday dinner. Though the meals were invariably at our home, Bessie would don an apron. She was a good cook. She made the best breaded veal chops. 

Bessie worked in a clothing factory. She was an active member of the ILGWU, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. And that, dear reader, led to more loud discussions at the dinner table than any other topic. You see, my father owned and operated a non-unionized clothing factory. By all accounts he was a benevolent boss, his workers never once even organizing for a union vote. Bessie, on the other hand, helped the ILGWU establish union locals. She had a much more jaundiced view of management. So they would argue over and over about the value of unions.

Which brings me to this week’s news from Wisconsin that Governor Scott Walker had beaten back efforts to recall him because of his anti-union stands. Let’s also not discount the votes in San Diego and San Jose on Tuesday to scale back benefits for unionized municipal workers, including police and firemen. It’s not an easy time advocating for organized labor. There’s no doubt some unions have acted in less than savory means. Some union executives have become as domineering and untrustworthy as corporate executives. But it is also true that without unions uniform and equitable working conditions, for all employees, would not be as safe and progressive as they are today. 

It’s become acceptable to blame teachers, emergency services personnel and other municipal workers for the skyrocketing public debt of many government entities. In the past, union workers made concessions on wage hikes to secure more golden retirement pension and health care benefits. The politicians who approved those contracts were only too glad to pass the expense on to later generations. 

Clearly something must be done to solve the solvency problem of government outlays. But let’s keep in mind that the workers we are subjecting to Draconian cutbacks many times are the foundation of our present and future. I’d argue teachers are no less important than parents in molding a child’s character and behavior, let alone the quest for knowledge. Are you ready to step outside each day to protect our safety from man, beast, the elements and other unknowns? How’s about riding on the back of a truck collecting garbage in the heat of summer, the frigid blasts of winter? 

We’ve become content with paying these essential workers, along with military personnel who guarantee our freedom and security at the risk of their lives, wages and now benefits that are not commensurate with the value they provide our society. A nurse in a unionized city hospital distributes more tangible, societal value than a hedge fund manager. A fireman contributes more human value than a stock trader. Even a janitor who keeps a school building clean has a job with more positive impact on society than someone crunching derivatives just to make money for money’s sake. 

Being a union member did not confer on them that pedigree. But it didn’t hurt, either.

I was a manager for more than 30 years in a non-union publishing company. I think I treated my editorial and sales staffs fairly, giving them above average salaries, incentives and bonuses to supplement and reward their efforts. I was under no obligation to do so. Indeed, many a year I had to fight upper management for the right to reward my editorial staffers with extra remuneration. 

When I began as a reporter at The New Haven Register in 1972, I earned $150 a week (that’s $7,800 a year for those mathematically challenged) plus a Christmas bonus of a 15-pound turkey, which priced out to about $7.50. After we voted in the Newspaper Guild two years later, my salary was frozen at its $200 a week level ($10,400 a year) during the negotiation period, which lasted more than two years. I left the Register before a settlement was reached. Under the terms won by the union, I would have earned $19,760 a year. Yes, some of that increase would have gone to pay union dues. But no one can convince me it was not the collective efforts of the Guild, representing union and non union workers, that brought financial dignity to the newsroom.