Labor History Assignment
Here is an assignment in Labor History for you to complete. You have four weeks. Format your paper in any accepted style. Download assignment
Michael McGrorty
Here is an assignment in Labor History for you to complete. You have four weeks. Format your paper in any accepted style. Download assignment
Michael McGrorty
Modern readers viewing the New York Times account of the 1876 wage suit in the previous posting come away wondering what the outcome might have been. I cannot say—the available information doesn’t contain any decision by the courts.
The purpose of the posting was to illustrate a larger problem of the era, which the case of Mary Leonard does quite well. The matter was doubtless reported by the paper because of its conflicting details and counter-accusations of “bad character.” The important lesson of Leonard v. Van Waran Wilde is what it shows about the rugged relationships of wage-earners to wage-payers before the enactment of minimum wage laws.
What you see in this case is that workers’ sole recourse for redress of unpaid wages was the courts of law. What this meant in practical terms was an eternal flood of such cases and overflowing dockets. Until well into the twentieth century, workers were considered to have entered into a contract with their employer: so much work or time in exchange for a certain payment. The flaws inherent in such a system become clear in conflict: these agreements are either oral or tacit, and often change during performance according to local conditions. Reconstructing these circumstances and determining compliance is very difficult, and generally comes down to a weighing of accusations and denials—hence the additional claims as to the character of plaintiff and defendant.
As much as anything else, minimum wage standards solve a good deal of this difficulty by eliminating one of the unknown elements of the total equation. Under the federal standard embodied in the Fair Labor Standards Act, workers must be paid at least the minimum wage for all hours of work; under state laws, the minimum is often determined by a previously-paid rate of pay, which may be higher than the statutory minimum. In either event, the argument is cut down to a decision on the question of how many hours or how many pieces of work.
Apart from this, minimum wage laws also contain enforcement provisions which remove these disputes from the crowded arena of the courts, placing them in the hands of specialists—people who deal with these issues exclusively, and whose experience means quicker resolution. FLSA Section 204 establishes the Wage Hour Division, which is given the job of enforcing the Act. The FLSA also requires that employers keep adequate records of wages paid—another measure which speeds the process of clearing cases. Most state agencies have similar record-keeping provisions.
Taken together, state and federal wage laws comprise a package of requirements and enforcement which prevent nearly all wage cases from going to court—though the newspapers and the public are now deprived of the more interesting details.
Michael McGrorty
The reader is requested to review the following account of a court case, after which we will discuss the issue.
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A Curious Suit For Wages
Affidavits of a remarkable character submitted to the court.
New York Times, March 2, 1876
Judge Sedgwick, in the Special Term of the Superior Court yesterday, denied a motion to vacate an attachment heretofore had against the defendant in the case of Mary Leonard against William Van Waran Wilde. The action was brought by the plaintiff to recover $140, which she alleged to be due to her as wages from the defendant, in whose employ she had been. The latter, in his answer, averred that he had paid her her wages, and further, that her name was not Mary Leonard, but Mary Haberkorn. The plaintiff, making an affidavit that the defendant was about to leave the country and remove his property, obtained an attachment against the latter which the defendant sought to have set aside. The affidavits then submitted to the court were somewhat remarkable.
The defendant made affidavit that he never intended to leave this country. He further averred that the plaintiff’s claim had no foundation except in her own willful perjury, she being, he alleges, a woman of bad character. He says her name is Mary Haberkorn, and that at various times she assumed the aliases of Leonard and of Mary Gautzert. The true story of the difficulty, he says, was that she was in his employ as cook between July, 1875, and February, 1876, when he sold his business to his brother John, the latter employing him afterward as manager of the business, which consisted in the keeping of a restaurant and boarding-house. He then says that his brother John, hearing of the plaintiff’s bad character, discharged her and, as alleged, she thereupon stole from him his bank-book and refused to return it unless he would pay her a certain sum. The defendant’s brother corroborates the statements in this affidavit, and alleges that he has begun an action for slander against the plaintiff. Otto Grabow and George A. Clausen also make affidavit that the plaintiff is of bad character, and that she told them she had been paid her wages by the defendant. The affidavits on the plaintiff’s side represent things very differently. The plaintiff herself alleges that she was induced by offers of marriage on the part of the defendant to give up her own business and go into his employ; that he offered to pay her wages in addition; that she was seduced by him under promise of marriage, and that he gave her the bank book, telling her to draw the money but she was not able to do so without a written order from him which he refused to give; that the defendant’s brother John is of bad character, and formerly kept a house of ill fame; that Clausen, who makes affidavit against her, is in the defendant’s employ, and that she never heard of or knew such a person as Otto Grabow. She also offered the affidavits of Joseph Liekam, John Johnson, Ferdinant Weissenfels, Antoine Kothe, Emilia Wolfe, and Klemens Ertel, who swear to her good character, to the bad character of the defendant, and to the general statements of the latter.
A report released today by the Pew Center on the States reveals that the U.S.has passed a significant milestone in the fight against unemployment. According to the report, one in every hundred Americans is now in prison.
The numbers as of the first of this year include 1,596,127 in state and federal prisons and 723,131 in jails; that’s 2,319,258 out of 230 million adults.
The report goes on: “For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling. While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine.”
I would say that this should be viewed as a boon in the black community, lowering competition for the few jobs which exist in the nation’s ghettoes. At this rate it will only be a few years before there are only a couple of dozen black men around; their scarcity will make them very valuable as token employees and all of them will be billionaires. Our system works slowly, but left undisturbed, it gives everyone what they need.
Michael McGrorty
Building Trades Work: Entry and Success
At any given moment there are many millions of people working in union construction jobs throughout the United States and Canada. Union construction workers are paid more than a third better wages than their non-union counterparts in the same industry and have superior benefit programs as well. These facts, long incorporated into the common fund of public knowledge, provide a strong lure and keep a steady stream of applicants knocking on the doors of union hiring halls.
Nothing is more common for a union business agent to be asked, ‘How do I get in?’ The answer is simple: you apply. After that the situation gets complex.
There are two main pathways to becoming a union construction worker: apprenticeship and direct hire. Of these two, apprenticeship is the more common method. Union apprenticeship is most usually not a function of a particular Local but a training program operated by both labor and management through an apprenticeship council. This council typically maintains a training facility for apprentices, who are also dispatched to work on job sites. Most often apprentices work during the day and attend classes at night or on weekends.
The requirements for the various trades naturally differ, but most will require some combination of a written examination followed by an interview, both of which will be scored. Successful applicants will be scheduled to attend class and assigned paid work. This all seems simple and direct, but many applicants discover that the end result is closer to that experienced by the allegorical guest in Matthew 22:
And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few chosen.
The majority of those taking the initial test (written, multiple choice or both) do not receive a passing grade. These tests usually consist of non-trades related questions; the tests generally require only the same level of reading and comprehension that will be required to complete class assignments and follow the sort of directions given on work sites.
Apart from this, most of the trades will also require that candidates possess math skills at about the level of first-year algebra. The reason for this is that much of the instruction (not to mention the work in the trade) will involve practical math of this sort. Construction work is not merely installation but adjustment of materials to a given design. Mathematics is essential for success at all levels. In some trades it is common for applicants to be asked to prove that they have either taken one year of college algebra or two years of that subject at the high school level. This represents another hurdle (and often an insurmountable one) for apprentice candidates.
Finally there is the interview process. This is a further screening and a necessary one, given that there are only a limited number of openings and these are almost always exceeded by the number of applicants.
Candidates who pass the exam process and the interview are placed in classes, generally at the start of a years-long process whose end product is a journey-level worker. But here, even as in the earlier phases, failure removes many from the ranks—not so much from lack of aptitude but from failure of effort. Most apprentices who fail are not eliminated academically but are terminated from the programs due to poor attendance in class—Monday Night Football and cold beer win out over a future of high wages and benefits.
The figures on apprenticeship completion are not impressive. In 2006, only 43% of construction apprentices enrolled in joint labor-management programs completed their training; the figures were much lower for non-union programs.
Completion Rates for California Construction Apprentices, 2001-2005[i]
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Mean
Union 52.76% 49.75% 46.95% 43.53% 30.08% 43.65%
Nonunion 34.64% 33.33% 26.11% 30.19% 25.55% 29.61%
An interesting comparison to these figures can be made with the percentages of completion for four-year colleges. According to a UCLA research study, only 36.4% of college students completed degree requirements in four years; the figure rises to 58.8% if six years are allowed.[ii]
One important difference between college and construction apprenticeship is that apprenticeship programs have fixed advancement and completion requirements; college students may simply take a lighter course or stretch out their classes, but apprentices cannot.
By way of summary, the requirements of construction apprenticeship, from initial testing through academic attendance and work performance, are fixed features, created with reference to trade requirements and regulated by state and federal laws. Over the years the completion rates for these programs have fallen. The problem breaks down into halves: candidates too often lack the requisite skills and knowledge, and active apprentices often fail due to lack of application and attendance. If it is assumed that half of the initial applicants passed qualifying examinations (an optimistic assumption) the final figure for program completion would stand below 20% in California.
Construction Work and the Community
Construction projects are highly visible operations. The building of a high-rise office or a new factory is a public spectacle. Everyone sees construction workers plying their trades. Even young children know that something is being made, somebody is at work, and that people are being paid to assemble the structure. The best advertisement for employment in the trades is this visible presence of active trades workers.
Nor are wage figures a mystery. The public have the impression that plumbers become millionaires; at least they figure that the work brings a good paycheck. In fact it does. With the ubiquity of construction projects and some knowledge of the compensation involved, people become interested in the work from an employment standpoint: individuals and groups want a piece of the pie. Over the past few years, local groups have often approached construction unions and their signatory contractor associations, asking or demanding to be let into positions. They are often surprised (but by no means mollified) to discover that the programs are open to any applicant—that in fact, nobody is barring the path—that the bogey of the Old White Guy doling out union cards to his friends is a ghost from the past. Today in Los Angeles County, entering apprentices are majority minority; people of color predominate, and their proportion is rising.
Union apprenticeship is a set of processes, tests and decisions whose functioning is heavily affected by government regulation. Over the years, court rulings and administrative decisions have pushed apprentice programs away from the direct influence of unions into a middle-ground of fixed standards; the process gained in fairness but lost considerable flexibility, and with that, much of its ability to further social equity. It was no longer likely that only the sons of tradesmen could gain entry, but it also became more difficult to promote the interest of any other group or individual. The system is basically neutral; it cannot be easily manipulated for bad or good.
The most significant problem of union apprenticeship is one affecting all parties: the diminishing proportion of candidates completing apprenticeship.
Union apprenticeship programs spend many thousands of dollars in recruiting; many thousands more are expended in training qualified candidates. The true cost is not the dollar figure for a journey-level worker’s schooling, but the entire sum of expenses divided by the number who complete and enter the workplace. Money spent to attract unsuitable candidates is wasted dollars—and much is being wasted now.
Apprenticeship standards are not likely to become less stringent in the future. Automation of processes leads only to increased responsibility and the need to comprehend more of the theory behind the mechanisms in use. Air conditioning journeymen study physics; electricians learn calculus; carpenters master trigonometry to accomplish their work. Construction remains vigorous, but there is very little “grunt work.” There is no profit in arguing that current standards are too high.
The truth is that most candidates lack the preparation to succeed, and often, the desire. The most likely reasons for this follow.
Reasons for Failure
Despite the fact that apprentice programs require a high school diploma or equivalent, many applicants do not possess the reading comprehension or arithmetic skill necessary to pass entry exams—the majority of which are pegged below the twelfth-grade level.
Even with a system of monitoring and progressive discipline, many apprentices simply fail to attend classes, accumulating more than three unexcused absences in a semester, which constitutes sufficient grounds for dismissal.
The reasons for this have to do with our school system, and also with the nature of modern society. Our schools are focused almost exclusively upon academics, though the vast majority of students will never achieve a four-year degree. Vocational programs have fallen by the wayside. Once they provided both a filter and a practice-ground for future construction workers; there is nothing similar to take their place for the great mass of high school students.
Remedies
Obviously, the construction industry can do nothing about the nation’s schools or the attitudes of its young people toward work. For that matter, the nature of the work and the requirements of the law dictate most of the standards of apprenticeship. What remains is the bare ground between the applicants and the programs.
The best fix for the current problem appears to be some variety of pre-apprentice training, ideally duplicating the work/classwork situation of construction apprenticeship. Pre-apprenticeship provides both a taste of the construction environment and a practice round of studies before the real game begins, with all its attendant stresses. At present there are quite a few pre-apprentice programs being conducted at various sites around the country, though by no means enough to satisfy the need. These programs are generally targeted at the unemployed, and/or at specific groups in the local community—especially women and minorities. Without a doubt these programs should be maintained and expanded where possible, ideally with formal or informal linkages to local apprenticeship programs.
Programs such as these provide can provide multiple benefits: for the apprenticeship programs they offer a more motivated pool of candidates who have some concept of the work of construction and therefore, a better chance of success.
Barriers and Ladders
There are no barriers to establishing programs to assist people in entering the building trades. The difficulty lies in gaining the support of the trades, both in terms of action and funding, and equally important, in ensuring that the trades recognize the value of the candidates produced by these preparatory programs. The trades have to give recognition if not preference to candidates from these programs or the programs will fail. What this means is that strong links have to be established with local unions, contractors and their associated joint apprenticeship committees. The goal is to convince the people who do the intake that a student of the XXX Trade Prep Program is a superior investment—a candidate who can succeed and who will not waste the money or time of the program.
In this project, appeals to brotherhood, humanitarian impulses or even simple fairness will carry little weight. Absent some demonstration of value, most unions will grant only lip service and not commit to action or expenditure.
Michael McGrorty
[ii] Degree Attainment Rates at Colleges and Universities; available at http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/darcu_pr.html
Percentage of Women in Building Trades Occupations, 2006
Total employed / Percent women
• All construction and extraction occupations 9,507,000 3.1
• First-line supervisors of construction trades workers 976,000 2.6
Brickmasons, blockmasons, and stonemasons 244,000 1.6
Carpenters 1,843,000 2.4
Carpet, floor, and tile installers and finishers 279,000 2.4
Cement masons, concrete finishers and terrazzo workers 107,000 .7
Construction laborers 1,693,000 3.7
Operating engineers / construction equipment operators 451,000 1.7
Drywall installers, ceiling tile installers, and tapers 295,000 2.9
Electricians 882,000 1.9
Painters, construction and maintenance 713,000 7.7
Pipelayers, plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters 662,000 1.8
Roofers 242,000 1.1
Sheet metal workers 125,000 3.1
Structural iron and steel workers 59,000 2.2
Helpers, construction trades 132,000 6.2
Construction and building inspectors 102,000 8.8
Highway maintenance workers 103,000 3.8
Note: In 2004 the figure for women in these occupations was 2.5%.
Michael McGrorty
All in Fun: A selection of recent EEOC sex discrimination cases from the construction industry
Here are some cases whose outcomes indicate the cost of sex discrimination and/or harassment against women in the construction trades. No effort has been made to create a comprehensive listing; these were simply the easiest federal cases to locate. A search of state cases would doubtless lead to hundreds more. The lesson here is that prevention is cheaper than cure.
The Seattle District Office filed a Title VII sexual harassment suit against a leading manufacturer of custom cabinets. Seattle alleged that management at the company's main production facility in Spokane, Washington failed to take appropriate action after charging party, a female cabinet maker, complained about constant lewd remarks, gender epithets, and sexual conduct by her male coworkers. The district office also alleged that defendant's failure to take remedial action under the guise that the sexual harassment was "all in fun" resulted in the constructive discharge of CP, who felt compelled to resign when no effort was made to stop the harassment. In accordance with a consent decree spanning three years and three months, defendant agrees to pay $100,000 to CP. Defendant will provide 4 hours of anti-discrimination training to the managers and supervisors at the Spokane facility and agrees to impose discipline upon any supervisor or manager who engages in sex discrimination. Defendant also will revise the supervisor appraisal process to include as an element the supervisor's handling of EEO issues and will include a "commitment to equal employment opportunity" as a qualification criterion for supervisory positions.
http://www.eeoc.gov/litigation/settlements/settlement07-04.html
The San Antonio District Office filed this Title VII lawsuit charging U.S. Contractors, a staffing firm supplying temporary and long-term employees to chemical manufacturers in the Gulf Coast Region of Texas, with sex discrimination, sexual harassment, and retaliation. Defendant assigned the six female claimants to a construction project adding new production units to a Formosa Plastics plant in Point Comfort, Texas. The women who were assigned to positions such as crew foreman, runner, boilermaker, and boilermaker helper were subjected to hostile environment sexual harassment, disparate treatment in the terms and conditions of their employment (e.g., having their breaks interrupted and being required to work late to finish projects), and discharge because of their sex and in retaliation for complaining about sexual harassment. Neither defendant nor Formosa Plastics took corrective action after the women complained about their treatment. Under the 3-year consent decree resolving the lawsuit, defendant will pay a total of $530,000 to six claimants, in amounts ranging from $40,000 to $124,000. The decree enjoins defendant from engaging in sex discrimination and retaliation under Title VII.
http://www.eeoc.gov/litigation/settlements/settlement12-04.html
In this Title VII lawsuit, the Chicago District Office alleged that defendant Gurtz, an electrical subcontractor, and defendant Pickus, a general construction contractor, subjected female workers to a sexually hostile work environment. The complaint alleged that Pickus and Gurtz permitted sexually explicit and offensive graffiti about women in portable toilets and in other areas of the construction site and ignored sexually offensive remarks made to charging party, a female electrician employed by Gurtz, who was an explicit target of some of the graffiti. In March 2003, the claims against Gurtz were resolved through a consent decree which provides for payment of $50,000 in compensatory damages to the charging party. Gurtz also agreed that it will not engage in any employment practice which discriminates on the basis of sex. In June, Pickus agreed to a consent decree which provides for payment of $29,750 in compensatory damages to two female claimants ($23,750 to charging party and $6,000 to another female claimant) and permanently enjoins the company from engaging in any employment practice which discriminates on the basis of sex. Gurtz and Pickus also agreed to adopt revised sexual harassment policies that specifically prohibit sexual graffiti and Pickus agreed to provide a copy of the revised policy to each of its subcontractors at the time it signs a subcontracting agreement.
http://www.eeoc.gov/litigation/settlements/settlement06-03.html
The Los Angeles District Office alleged in its Title VII complaint that defendant failed to hire women as laborers for a 2-month British Petroleum turnaround project at defendant's Carson, California oil refinery. Defendant advertised for 300 laborer positions starting January 15, 2003, stating in the ad that refractory experience was helpful but not necessary. Charging party applied for a position through a referral from the United States Veterans Initiative. She successfully completed all prerequisite training, testing, and physical exams, but on January 6, 2003, was told by a United States Veterans job developer that he had been informed by defendant's hiring official for the project that defendant was not hiring any women. A temporary employee working under defendant's hiring official told the Commission that the hiring official said that defendant would not be hiring women because it did not get the contract for the fire watch position, a subcategory of laborers for which defendant normally hired only women. Defendant did not hire any women for laborer positions on the project.
Under the 18-month consent decree resolving this case, charging party and similarly-situated rejected female applicants will receive $165,000 in monetary relief to be divided amongst them at EEOC's discretion. The decree enjoins defendant from discriminating against women in hiring and requires it to increase diversity in its workforce by undertaking recruiting activities and hiring practices to promote equal opportunities for women. The decree sets goals for hiring women into laborer positions at the greater of: (1) 13.6%, (2) the industry standard, or (3) the qualified female applicant flow. For projects with fewer than 100 employees, defendant is required to submit monthly reports which include information on applicants and hires, by gender, and explain why hiring goals were not met. For projects with more than 100 employees that include more than 50 laborers, defendant is required to hire Progressive Management Resources as a consultant, with responsibility for developing and implementing nondiscriminatory recruiting, screening, and hiring procedures; developing an applicant log and recordkeeping procedures; maintaining all application and selection documents; and otherwise insuring compliance with the consent decree and Title VII.
http://www.eeoc.gov/litigation/settlements/settlement10-05.html
The Philadelphia District Office alleged that defendant, a New York/New Jersey area construction firm that specializes in interior renovations for large businesses, subjected charging party, a project manager in its Jersey City office, to a sexually hostile work environment. Defendant promoted charging party to project manager in June 1999. Starting in December 1999, and continuing throughout charging party's employment, defendant's vice president subjected her to unwelcome sexual conduct, including sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, degrading comments, and offensive touching. Defendant had no written sexual harassment policy. Charging party complained to defendant's chief operating officer (COO) after egregious incidents at the company's 1999 and 2002 Christmas parties. The COO reported charging party's 1999 complaints to defendant's president/CEO and defendant made the vice president apologize. However, the vice president told charging party that the president asked him (using crude language) if he was having sexual relations with her. This led charging party to believe that the president had not taken her complaint seriously. The harassment continued until April 2003, when defendant closed its New Jersey office and laid charging party off.
Under the 2-year consent decree resolving this case, charging party will receive $125,000 in monetary relief. The decree provides that defendant will not engage in retaliation as defined in Title VII. Defendant has established a sexual harassment policy that includes a procedure to report violations of the policy to individuals in identified job categories.
http://www.eeoc.gov/litigation/settlements/settlement07-05.html
The New York District Office filed a Title VII complaint alleging that defendant, a construction company not currently in operation (but not bankrupt), subjected the three female charging parties to a sexually hostile work environment through remarks by a male supervisor about their menstruation and sexual activity; limited them to cleaning and loading duties while assigning jobs requiring more skill, such as demolition and operating electrical machinery, to male laborers, causing charging parties to receive less work than similarly situated men; and retaliated against them for complaining about discriminatory treatment at the worksite by causing subcontractors to deny them work and refuse to rehire them.
Under the 5-year consent decree resolving the matter, the three charging parties will receive a total of $355,000 in monetary relief. The decree contains a number of injunctive relief provisions that will apply if Trataros (or a successor in interest) resumes operations. One provision requires Trataros or its successor to partner with the National Association of Women in Construction (Greater New York Chapter or Long Island Chapter) or a similar organization that has a stated goal of increasing the number of women in nontraditional industries such as the construction industry. Trataros must submit for EEOC approval a contract or partnership agreement to use the organization for at least 2 years to recruit, train, develop, and retain women in Trataros' workforce.
http://www.eeoc.gov/litigation/settlements/settlement03-05.html
The Philadelphia District Office filed this individual Title VII case alleging that defendant Dan Lepore & Sons Co., a Philadelphia area masonry contractor, subjected charging party to a sexually hostile work environment and retaliated against her for complaining of the harassment, and that L.F. Driscoll Co., which manages construction projects in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, disciplined charging party because of her sex. From July to November 2001, charging party, the only female stone mason in her local bricklayers' union, worked at defendant Lepore's University of Pennsylvania construction site. At that site, charging party's male coworkers subjected her to unwelcome and sexually offensive comments, which she asked them to stop. In November 2001 defendant Lepore transferred charging party to its Kimmel Center site. At this job site, charging party's male supervisor and coworkers subjected her to pervasive offensive sexual comments. On November 27 charging party told the supervisor to stop making the comments. Two days later, a safety inspector employed by defendant Driscoll evicted charging party from the job site for a safety violation (failure to wear safety goggles). Men who engaged in the same infraction were not warned or disciplined. After being evicted from the site, charging party complained to Lepore's president about the sexual harassment she had experienced. She thereafter applied to Lepore for work on numerous other projects, but was hired only once and was laid off after 9 days.
Under the 3-year consent decree resolving this case, defendants will pay $75,000 to charging party: Defendant Lepore will pay $45,000 and defendant Driscoll will pay $30,000. Defendant Lepore will reinstate charging party into a stone mason position on a Princeton, New Jersey project starting in spring 2005, and will guarantee her at least 1 year's work as a stone mason on that project or, if the project lasts less than 1 year, on other projects.
http://www.eeoc.gov/litigation/settlements/settlement02-05.html
Michael McGrorty
On September 24, 1965, then-President Lyndon Johnson signed Executive Order 11246. The Order prohibited federal contractors and federally assisted construction contractors from discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The Order also required that employers take affirmative action to ensure that applicants and employees were treated without regard to any other characteristic other than their ability to perform the actual work at hand; and also to implement plans to increase the participation of women and minorities in the workplace. These plans were required to include an analysis of the current workforce, the establishment of goals and timetables for increasing employment opportunity and specific action-related programs to address problem areas.
President Johnson’s Order is now over forty years old. EO 11246 has had a great impact upon many areas of private industry and the public sector subject to its provisions; every industry that provides any service or product to the federal government has been affected. More than that, the society itself has been changed by those strokes of Johnson’s pen: the gates to employment burst open for millions of people who would not have had the chance to work in particular fields or at higher levels of certain jobs. There is practically nobody working now who remembers a time when the feds didn’t care about the exclusion of African-Americans from the companies that their tax dollars paid to do the public work of the country.
The government drew the definition of “contractor” very broadly, so that the Order would cast a wide net. Universities with research contracts are included, as are janitorial firms, consultants and medical clinics receiving federal funds. And then there was the impact upon that group specifically named in the Order, construction firms.
For generations in America, construction had been an almost private club, the practically exclusive domain of white males. Every European ethnic group had managed to pass through the portals of the building trades, climbing the rungs on that ladder to and beyond the middle class. In construction, on the other hand, women found not a glass ceiling but a glass door, an invisible obstruction that they could not penetrate, no matter how hard they pushed. Following EO 11246, the figures for women in construction spiked upward from a fraction of a percentage to a single point or two, but then froze in place. There were two reasons for this: the nature of the Order itself and the resilient nature of discrimination in the construction world.
A glance at the Department of Labor’s website shows the essential workings of EO 11246. The agency’s explanation is as follows:
“The numerical goals are established based on the availability of qualified applicants in the job market or qualified candidates in the employer’s work force. Executive Order numerical goals to not create set-asides for specific groups, nor are they designed to achieve proportional representation or equal results. Rather, the goal-setting process in affirmative action planning is used to target and measure the effectiveness of affirmative action efforts to eradicate and prevent discrimination. The Executive Order and its supporting regulations do not authorize OFCCP to penalize contractors for not meeting goals.”
Goals, Timetables, and Good Faith Efforts, available at: http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/ofccp/aa.htm
The numerical goal set nationwide for the employment of women in the construction industry nationwide was set in 1978 at 3.1% for the first year, 5% for the second year, and 6.9% thereafter, where it remains. Out in the real world, the percentage of women in construction stands at less than half that figure.
Obviously the language of standards such as EO 11246 is not such as to make the average contractor quake in his boots; the regulation is less a demand than a suggestion—in operation merely a paperwork tiger. In effect the regulation requires contractors to do little more than document the fact that they have gone through the motions of compliance with a toothless law.
Given this set of facts, EO 11246 is a weak opponent indeed to set against the traditional structures of the construction world. Minority men are, after all, men—it was and is easier for them to be accepted into that milieu than it has been for women. This situation is self-perpetuating in that the lack of women means a lack of examples for other women to follow; the few who accomplish the task aren’t enough to make much of a dent in the problem. And so it goes.
The proportion of women in the construction world is unlikely to change unless and until the robust discrimination which characterizes the industry is met with real opposition—when our laws require more than paper compliance. Until that time, the glass door will prevail over both good intentions and the women who wish to enter the lucrative world of construction work.
Michael McGrorty
When I was a kid growing up, I often would lie awake in the darkness of my bedroom, listening to my parents talk about the day’s events. My father was a school teacher and my mother was a theatrical wardrobe worker. Their jobs had only one thing in common: both of them were members of unions. Even so, their unions were also very different—Dad’s was a public employee association and Mom’s was a private-sector entertainment union.
None of that means anything to most people. The average person knows very little about how unions work, where they come from or the differences between them. This goes for union members as well. Sometimes when I’m at the supermarket I’ll ask the cashier how things are going with the Retail Clerks. She usually looks at me as though I’ve asked about the Queen of England. If I was really a fool I’d ask about their last contract.
As a kid I could have told you where my mother was on the book or when the contract with the Pantages was going to expire. Those things were important to us. They meant the chance to earn money versus going without—how much money per performance, by the week, by the hour, with or without overtime. We planned things around two important facts of life: 1. That my father got a regular salary only during school months, and 2. That my mother only got paid when a show was in town and she was backstage when the curtain went up. My parents did not hide the economic facts of life from us; a new bicycle depended upon extra hours doing show laundry or the possibility of summer school hours at the local high school. And we were made to understand that these rewards, or the lack of them, depended upon what happened with the union, itself a sort of extension of my parents’ will and action.
My parents came from a class of society, and certainly from a generation whose values were shaped by the labor movement. I have a black-and-white picture stored away, a crinkly print which shows a file of women walking a picket line. On the back is written, “On strike, first job, age 19.” My mother is there in that line, thick glasses and all, having walked out when the boss of her sweatshop refused to pay the correct rate for the piecework. Because of that little spree she was blacklisted from the local garment industry. When my father was just back from the Second World War, he and a couple of his pals got into a physical disagreement with a mounted police officer who was clubbing some picketers outside the General Electric plant in Philadelphia. This resulted in his deciding to attend college out in California instead of remaining in town to face felony charges.
Mind you, I had no idea about either event until my folks were in the ground. To them it wasn’t any big deal. Both of them came from working-class backgrounds and had seen the development of unionism come to its fruition. They were simply participants in that along with millions of other similar people. Serious participants, mind you. My folks didn’t belong to bowling leagues or lodges. They did union stuff: ran their organizations, walked precincts in elections—our house was ground zero for Democratic political candidates. I have plenty of pictures of me standing next to some California politico in our kitchen. I spent weekends among other kids at union picnics and fundraisers. That was all part of the business.
My father helped establish a union among his fellow teachers because their pay was so atrociously low that many had outside jobs—not only in the summer, but during the school term, just to make ends meet. I grew up around teachers who also were plumbers or gardeners—one was a bartender and another, a lifeguard. None of those activities were hobbies.
Over the years I’ve run into a lot of people who for one reason or another don’t like unions. They are often surprised to find that I don’t like them either. I’ve been a member of a few along the way and earned my living working for a few more. Every contact, every job, every day of working with unions makes me wish I could be doing something else.
In case you never gave the issue any thought, let me digest the situation for you: unions didn’t spring up because working people wanted to walk behind a banner on Labor Day. Unions are not an initiative; they are a response: a shield; a counterpunch to an assault. They are a remedy, a medicine, a bandage—and certainly not a cure.
Business came first; with that, the paid employment of people to do work. Human nature being what it is, it followed that abuses would occur; the marketplace being what it is, it figured that workers would become just another cost element to be manipulated downward. Ordinary human drives and goals create commerce; the need to survive to make profit drives the habit of exploiting workers. Against these hard facts the existence of unions, or something very much like them, seems to be inevitable—at least in civilized lands.
Unions exist to ameliorate the worst excesses of the inequality of bargaining power and control in the workplace. They are given a very limited range of operation—they can’t deal with capitalism, can’t challenge ownership of the firm, can’t erode management’s right to run the place—all they can do is negotiate over wages, hours and other conditions of work. That’s it: there isn’t anything more. To hear some people talk, you’d think they had control of the nation’s industries and were driving us all down the road to socialism. If only.
Unions operate nowadays with only a small fraction of the nation’s workers as members. How is that? Well, most of what they needed to do they did generations ago. Unions—or the threat of them—brought about all those minimum wage and overtime laws, Social Security, 40-hour workweeks and the idea that ‘retirement’ was a payment rather than whatever you had left when the company had used you up.
The Wagner Act was actually a great bargain for business: it got unions into the mainstream of industry but also kept them from using their best tools—the ones that would have permitted them to win the game, rather than just scuff away at the fringes of the profit system. The dinosaurs who wouldn’t have anything to do with unions were succeeded by guys who understood the new rules as the cost of doing business, and the band played on. Anybody who tells you otherwise has no grasp of history. Along came this huge movement, made legal after a long struggle, and there was nothing to do but negotiate the terms of capital’s surrender. But labor surrendered too: they gave up a lot of power for that recognition, essentially turning themselves into agents for the system they’d fought against and had sworn to defeat. The workplace absorbed them; they went from being an avalanche to a fixed feature of the landscape.
It didn’t take too very long for business to get around the rules they couldn’t just get used to. Organizing got tough when firms learned from their mistakes and found out ways to mount their own campaigns. And the cumulative effect of the unions’ success stole much of their thunder. By the end of the Twentieth Century, the government was the guarantor of workplace standards—a whole raft of watchdog agencies stood ready to correct the errant firm. The difference was, and is, that the correction applied to cases, and generally to single individuals, even within protected classes. Getting discrimination or unpaid wages fixed didn’t return any control to the worker. It just made things square, as square is defined in the narrowness of the law, which merely forbids.
As the new century dawned, unions in the private sector found themselves owners of a great and proud heritage, and practically no membership to speak of. Public sector unions remain large, but then, there were never any pitched battles in the street over whether city clerks should be able to negotiate with the town’s personnel department. The public employer never had any great beef with his people anyway—it was, and remains the taxpayer’s money to lose.
In the construction trades, dominance born of solidarity was slowly sapped by ruling after unfavorable ruling, until the free market had freed its builders of the trouble of unions almost entirely. Today, construction unions hold on to membership in the low double figures. The result is low wages for non-union workers and an extreme shortage of new apprentices. Not many people want to work hard for the kind of money that non-union firms are paying.
Where are we now? We are in the future that the anti-union folks dreamed of. We are in a country where manufacturing has fled overseas, where service-sector workers can’t buy a home, and where the only right most workers have is the right to be paid whatever the minimum wage happens to be where they live. But not, most emphatically, to bargain on terms of equality with their employers. We are prepared to punish private firms for discrimination, make them pay for unpaid overtime, cite them for unsafe practices. But we don’t seem to want them to have to negotiate over the few conditions of work that affect workers most heavily: wages, hours, benefits, retirement. Our government makes sure that people of color and women can sue to get the same poor wages that white males earn—when they can find steady work.
That is where the unions find themselves as we begin this new century, and the rest of us along with them. The bargain that labor cut in order to gain legitimacy in the thirties ensured the enshrinement of a thin safety net and the demise of social movement which had been the engine of all that progress. Where we will go without that engine is anybody’s guess. As for me, I continue to work in the union fold, doing things I had hoped would not have been necessary at this point in time. Once I worked for unions, looking to the day when they wouldn’t have to exist. Now I work for them amongst a shrinking number of others, hoping to exert an influence beyond our numbers, trying to hold the fort until another generation can take over the watch.
Michael McGrorty
It is five-thirty of a January morning. Through my windshield, the line of cars ahead snakes its way around a curve to an off ramp and from there, to the stacks of office buildings that make up downtown Los Angeles. On the right side an endless trail of garnet tail lights cuts the darkness; to the left, a garland of white diamonds lines the road in pairs. Around me, a million people are going to work.
Within a couple of hours almost the entire adult population of the suburbs will have migrated for the day. At dusk the process will reverse: the red lights will be on the other side of the road, and everyone will go to that other building where they spend their time. This happens five days out of seven for most people. The main motivation is money, but there are a lot of other things involved; some of them are rewards, others penalties, and some cross between the two. Most people don’t spend any more time thinking about it than they do about breathing.
A visitor to the earth ten centuries ago would have found pretty much the same situation, minus the office buildings and automobiles. The main difference would be that the things we call work now have little direct connection to subsistence. None of the people in the big office buildings are making their own food or clothing or shelter—not in the literal sense. This is one of the wonders of our time, that so many people can be occupied at work that has nothing to do with survival, yet society thrives.
When I get to my own building, when I have gone up to my little warren on the correct floor of this particular concrete box, I sit down and begin a day of doing something that I hope will help other people survive—at least in the figurative sense. I work as an analyst in the area of labor and employment. What that means is that I think and write about work. Like the other people out there, I don’t do much thinking about my own work. If I had to put it in a sentence, my job is making sure that people understand work—their own and that of others.
Work is a place and an activity; it is how we define ourselves and how others define us. Jane may be a mother, but everybody considers her an engineer; Joe may be a fine singer, but his friends refer to him as an accountant. Work is a role and most of us have been typecast long ago. At least the plumber has a title that people understand; try explaining that you are an analyst without a half hour of spare time.
Mostly I tell people that I explain rules and laws. Not like an attorney, mind you, but in terms of the bigger picture—and the smaller one, too. This is as much philosophy as hard science. A lawyer would tell you that the minimum wage in Oklahoma is so many dollars per hour. I would read you the statute and suggest that you adjust your finances to match—or move. That, and I could give you a dozen reasons why you should stay in Oklahoma, or as many to leave.
I deal more in process than law. The law basically forbids certain behavior. Any fool can read the law, and a lot of them do. The important part is the process, what happens to you when you or your boss is in violation of the law—how the gears engage and what fuels that machinery. If the law was all that mattered, there wouldn’t be any murders because everybody knows that it’s illegal to kill somebody else. You want law, go to an attorney. I’m going to talk to you about work.
I started out in this business working as an investigator for the Department of Labor; I’ve continued as a private investigator, as a writer. It’s practically inevitable that analysts end up writers because that’s what you have to do to make yourself clear: you write down what you think has happened, and what should be done. If I had to write a memo to all the workers in the country, it would consist of the same instructions that referees give to boxers just before the fight:
“Obey the rules and protect yourselves at all times.”
It is not so much that work is like boxing—boxing is a much fairer sport. After all, the opponents are matched by weight and one of them doesn’t own the arena. Much of what I’m going to write about work involves ways in which workers—and bosses—can protect themselves. Truth is, the rules work for both sides.
I think I’ll start with a big topic: unions. That should keep us going through the early rounds.
Michael McGrorty
