May 2006. I initiated a process to establish union representation in my workplace, which at that time was in a newbie,
fiberoptic-based telecommunications company, based in the 'research triangle' of North Carolina, with a fielded
workforce of about 30 technicians covering a number of residential construction sites, mainly in Florida but in various
sites in the Southeastern US.
The company was being run by some small-time North Carolina country-bumpkins, with big dreams from being stoned off internet communications technology like VOIP and Video over IP.
A 21st century playback of the Andy Griffith show, they were unrepentant red necks with the Southern drawl and a
dash of geek-speak, -- a Barney Fife here, a Gomer Pyle there, the whole 'Mayberry RFD' gang at work, that's pretty
much summed up their narrow-minded philosophical mindset. Except I found them to be even more openly racist and
bigoted, particularly with Hispanics. A strategic blunder for a service-oriented company that has targeted about 75%
of their business here in Florida, with residential sites even higher in proportion of Hispanic populations. Moral: just
because you are a computer geek doesn't mean you have the intelligence and prudence to respect other ethnic and
cultural groups.
I felt there was sufficient grounds to build a local chapter of the CWA (Communications Workers of America). A lot
of favoritism, discrimination, the aforementioned bigotry and other issues could not be resolved by addressing them to
management independent of a worker's organization. After all, they were originating the problems to begin with.
To be sure, the CWA is not known as a historically-strong union, and even if it was, I did not expect any major
concessions to come from my effort as the company had relatively decent benefits in terms of its insurance and other
side benefits. But I felt it would help to produce a more positive environment in the workplace and for equitable
treatment for all the workers. By federal labor law, I only needed 30% support in the workplace to bring in a vote.
Which in this case would only be a couple of permanent hires.
They had to act quickly. By early August, three months from the day I first began openly organizing in the workplace
for the CWA, the company conveniently found grounds to terminate me. "Disclosure of company information to
non-company personnel" was one of their excuses. It was just as well, the company was already making big promises
to its customer-base, like it could really support everyone with a '1000 Mbits/sec. guarantee', using old technology of
copper wire and T1 switches for the head-end routing. Also, their hi-tech version of POTS was a joke, the GFI trips on
the garage outlet, and you loose voice connections on your telephone service - that's one guarantee they will actually
deliver on.
(Note: a very large percentage of their home sites are located in Florida's well-known "Lightning Alley" corridor,
which extends across Tampa and through Central Florida and the central East Coast of Florida. This certainly
increased the probability of lightning strikes which may trip the GFI to the power outlet of their BBU or battery
back-up unit, which supplies voltage to the "ONT", a plastic box of circuit-boards that bring in voice/date/video
signals from the fiber cable connecting a communications network to their residential 'head end'. The end result is that
you can lose a critical telephone signal during an emergency situation.)
In any event, they pushed me into a corner for my union-organizing but I wasn't going to back down from what I felt
was the right thing to do. Although in the end I didn't remain employed in the telecommunications industry after this
experience, coincidentally within a week, I found myself enrolled into a completely different job, albeit as an
apprentice in the Iron Workers Union Local #808 here in Orlando.
The Iron Workers Union #808 has been a part of the commercial development of Central Florida since before Disney.
In fact, they helped build Disney, Epcot, MGM and many other of the well-known attractions here. They built the
area's electrical power plants, NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and all those large-scale structures that you
might be familiar with here, and they still are called on to maintain those sites.
http://ironworkers808.com/
There is a constant and never-ending focus of maintaining safety in the workplace, and all apprentice ironworkers are
enrolled in safety classes beginning on Day 1. Not only is iron work physically demanding, it has occupational hazards
second to none and there are in some unusual cases serious injuries on the job. It is not as dangerous as it used to be,
thanks only to the Union!
The one thing that personally impressed me most in this union was the fact that there are local journeymen who have
been in the system all their working lives, and their fathers were also journeymen ironworkers here. It's no
exaggeration to state that this particular union represents a real family tradition firmly rooted in Central Florida. Also
to my amazement I ran into one journeyman ironworker who went to the same high school that I attended over 30
years ago. In fact, he even knows some of my old surfing buddies although he was in 10th grade and we were in 12th
grade at the time. I have never had this happen to me before, in all the dozens of different jobs I held in the last 20 years.
Although you might imagine that iron work is a man's job, there are in fact a few women who choose to work in this trade. They are not slackers and have the same "can do" attitude that the men have.
A THEORY BASED ON MARXIST ASSUMPTIONS
Note to the reader: at least some knowledge of the "scientific"socialist economic values (i.e., based on dialectic materialism) will be used here.
(Surplus) labor power of the union worker is initially controlled by the local union hall, which begins the process by arranging the employment contract. It has to be exploited to a certain extent by the wealthy owner, otherwise there is no net profit. The owner agrees to contribute some financial concessions to the union worker (via negotiations of the contract by the union hall). These are above average wage-rates, compared to free market conditions within a non-union shop, and typically this will also appear in the form of pensions and safer working conditions. I would term this a positive symbiotic relationship, or more specifically, "mutualism" which is any relationship between two (species of) organisms that benefits both. The owner of the business is hoping have better trained and more experienced workers, more quality where it affects costs in some way or another.
From the biological meaning, a negative symbiosis is known as parasitism.
With a mutualistic association taking place within capitalism, I can not see any substantial growth of class antagonism leading toward open warfare against the two economic classes (union worker and petty bourgeoisie) per the class struggle as embedded into classic Marxism. A revolution is averted and a "free" civil society is maintained.
The biologist Lynn Margulis contends that symbiosis is a major driving force behind evolution. She considers Darwin's notion of evolution, driven by competition, as incomplete, and claims evolution is strongly based on co-operation, interaction, and mutual dependence among organisms. According to Margulis and Sagan (1986), "Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking." As in humans, organisms that cooperate with others of their own or different species often out-compete those that do not.
References
* Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors. Summit Books, New York, 1986. ISBN 0-520-21064-6