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By Patty Marsicano, Minnesota Public Radio
September 27, 2001
The state of Minnesota and its two largest labor unions are conducting contract talks under the shadow of the terrorist attacks earlier this month. Two labor scholars offer their views on how that national crisis may affect the negotiations.
Mario Bognanno, professor of industrial relations at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, says major world conflicts in the past have signaled a drop in strike activity in the United States.
"Between 1941 and '42, the number of strikes in the United States fell from approximately 4,000 to approximately 3,000," Bognanno said. "And the number of employees involved dropped precipitously - from 2.3 million workers to something like 840,000 workers out on strike."
Bognanno says the number of days each worker went on strike fell, as did the number of days of idled production. He says the same pattern emerged during the Korean War.
Bognanno believes as the unions and the state enter their last round of mediation to head off an employees strike, the national crisis could pressure the two sides to settle.
"I think there's a lot more public interest in seeing a settlement now than there was before the September 11 terrorist attacks," Bognanno said. "There is a sort of ring of patriotism that causes one to draw the inference we ought not strike. Particularly, we ought not have public employees strike during periods of this nature."
Macalaster College American history professor and labor historian Peter Rachleff said the tenor of the country clearly influences labor talks.
"I think national events always impact what happens in labor negotiations, and in this case, the events are both political and economic. The political pressures of the mobilization towards some form of war, and the economic pressures of a seeming recession - those are certainly apt to be pressures on the negotiations process."
But Rachleff also said the threat of war and the call for patriotism has been used historically to suppress labor activity. For instance, during World War I, he said Minnesota's governor ordered the city government of New Ulm replaced under the auspices of the Public Safety Commission, because it was comprised of members of a political labor organization called the Nonpartisan League - who'd passed resolutions calling for U.S. neutrality. He also said almost 20 members of the Minneapolis Teamsters Union were sent to jail on charges of sedition, for promoting strikes during World War II.
Rachleff questions whether corporate or government officials are being asked to share the personal economic sacrifice currently being asked of workers in the name of standing by their country.
"I think we will hear a lot about patriotism in the period ahead, and I think we have to continue to ask this question that I've raised about equality of sacrifice. Are the mediators and the bargainers on behalf of the state of Minnesota going to come to the table and tell AFSCME and MAPE that Jesse Ventura is taking a pay cut in the interest of economic difficulties and mobilizing for the war effort?" Rachleff says.
While a war or national crisis may have a short term impact on workers' willingness to strike, that willingness is not necessarily permanent, and loyalty to the country is not the only reason workers decline strikes.
Bognanno said during World War II, Congress passed a law designed to regulate labor-management relations, which had the effect of limiting strike activities during the war. But he also said that as the United States' fighting of World War II progressed, the strike numbers climbed back up - in 1942, '43, and '44 - although the number of days strikers were off the job declined.
"Strikes did occur during the war, but they were of very short duration because of these neutrals (government mediators) who were on top of the matter, and brought these to a conclusion," Bognanno said.
But after the war, things changed.
"In 1946, the year immediately following the conclusion of the war, strike activities reached their highest pitch ever in the history of United States labor relations. In 1946, there were 4,985 strikes and the duration per worker involved reached 25.2 days - compared to 6.8 days just two years earlier. The number of days idled due to strike were something like 116 million days, compared to a fraction of that in the years previous," said Bognanno.
It was this spike in strike activity, Bognanno said, that prompted the Taft-Hartley Act, which increased government intervention in contract disputes, and imposed new restrictions on unions' ability to strike.
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