B
ill Fletcher, Jr. — who went to work as a ship-
yard welder after graduating from Harvard
University — has spent most of his adult life as a
labor activist, working as an organizer and educa-
tor at United Auto Workers, National Postal Mail
Handlers Union, Service Employees International
Union, the AFL-CIO, and presently at the Ameri-
can Federation of Government Employees. Now
he’s authored a book, “They’re Bankrupting Us:
And 20 other myths about unions.” Published by
Beacon Press, it’s due to arrive in bookstores this
month. Northwest Labor Press associate editor
Don McIntosh spoke with him by phone Aug. 7.
Author interview: 21 myths about unions
Who is this book for?
This book is for people who know very little
about unions, and particularly for people who
watch too much Fox News.
Your book lists 21 myths about unions.
What do you consider the top three?
That they bankrupt us, that they’re all corrupt,
and they were good once but are not needed any
more.
That last one — that unions
were necessary back in the
day, but are no longer needed
because laws protect workers
now — what do you think of
that?
The reality is that for most work-
ers in this country, there is no pro-
tection for their basic rights in the
workplace. In a workplace, you
have no freedom of speech, no right
to assembly, no right of individual
protest.
And when people say “unions
were needed once,” they are often
referring to the days of the sweat-
shops. The problem is those sweat-
shops are coming back. If you look
at growing industries in Los Ange-
les, it’s not auto plants and aero-
space, it’s light electronics, textiles
and garments. It’s small shops that
are incredibly oppressive and very
easy to shut down by the owners
when they feel threatened. And who
is there to protect all of these work-
ers? In light electronics, they’re
largely Latino and Asian immigrant
women. So there’s been a reemer-
gence of things that people thought were gone.
[Partly it’s because] we’re still dealing with the
ideology of Reaganism, the ideology of get rich,
go on your own, collective action
is useless. This is an ideological
problem we have to face up to.
When people go into a work-
place and say, “this is horrible,”
their first impulse is not to organ-
ize but to get out. The idea that
collective struggle pays is an idea
that we have to win people back
to.
What about the idea that
unions bankrupt us: Want to
address that?
The main thing I wanted to get across is that they
said in the report [of the President’s Commission
on Organized Crime, in 1985] that unions that
have a healthy culture of democracy
and activism tend to be the unions
that have less mob influence.
And I wanted to make a distinc-
tion between corruption and the
mob. We’ve got to put it in perspec-
tive. Very few people decided after
the Bernie Madoff scandal that we
should end capitalism. I didn’t hear
Fox News come to that conclusion.
But when there is a problem in a
union, the right wing will seize
upon that to make sweeping allega-
tions about unionism.
B ILL F LETCHER J R .
In the public sector, the notion
that unions bankrupt us looks at how much money
is spent on salaries and benefits, but it does not
look at where the public sector should be getting
its money or why there’s been a decline in the
contributions by the wealthy. So instead of hav-
ing a discussion about how we fund the public
sector, we discuss how you cut costs, and you in-
evitably get to the question of contracting out,
capping wages, eliminating benefits, cutting serv-
ices. Unions often go on the defensive, in some
cases trying to accept cuts in order to show that
we’re understanding, or in other cases trying to
show that we don’t cost that much. What we don’t
do many times is go on the offensive and say lets
talk about where the money lies, and how to raise
the money. How do we raise the money so that the
University of California system, for example, can
be what it once was?
Your book debunks the idea of “union
bosses.” I always thought of that phrase as
an age-old slander that the real bosses and
their lackeys use, but lately I’ve been see-
ing the term used even in news articles in
newspapers. What’s wrong with the term?
Many things. When people see the term, it
brings to mind an autocratic regime, and it con-
veys that there’s no difference between a leader
of a union and a leader of a company. It’s defam-
atory, because in any other part of society, you
wouldn’t hear, for example, the president of
AARP being called a “boss” or the person that’s
the head of United Way. [The fact that union lead-
ers are elected] is ignored with the term labor
boss. And the other thing about the term is there is
a very subtle suggestion of the mob. It’s a term
that we should forbid.
And the idea that unions are corrupt?
Some union people are going to be very upset
with me for having broached that subject, but I felt
this book needed to be
credible, and we all know
that at different points in
time there’s been corrup-
tion and there’s been the
mob. So let’s deal with it
directly and also dispel
myths. It’s largely a histor-
ical question. There’s been
a lot done to clean this up.
Your book focuses on union myths that
are believed by people who are not in
unions. Are there also myths that union
members believe about unions?
Oh yes. That there’s no point in trying to
change anything because the fix is in, that there’s
a leadership group and it’s never gonna change.
That the union has googobs of money. That the
union exists to take care of me as an individual.
And that I don’t need to do anything, because the
union will take care of it for me.
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF
LETTER CARRIERS BRANCH 82
PAGE 20
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
AUGUST 17, 2012