Or maybe the law should require that businesses with over 500 employees are automatically unionized? If you can't keep corporations small, make the unions a requirement. Obviously, this will take oversight.
As the attorney who represented the union negotiators of the Overnite contract, I found your gloomy analysis somewhat superficial. You overlook that the union organized some of Overnite's largest terminals which were part of an integrated nationwide operation requiring freight to be transported from terminal to terminal in a just in time system. Prior to the 1999 nationwide strike, we engaged in a series of intermittent strikes at the unionized terminals, which were beginning to impose significant economic damage. Unfortunately, the change in union leadership from the reformist Ron Carey to the "old school" Hoffa regime in 1999 resulted in an abandonment of this guerilla warfare approach in favor of the traditional "let's just shut down the complete operation" beat your chest approach that predictably doomed the organizing drive. Before calling this strike, Hoffa replaced me and the other Carey-appointed organizers and negotiators with his people, so we had to watch this debacle unfold from the sidelines.
I also was involved in a bitter dispute with Phillips Kimball, who masterminded the Caterpillar bargaining strategy you discuss when he later worked for CUNA Mutual Insurance in Madison, WI in which we were able to defeat him using a corporate campaign.
I welcome your insightful blog and hope you continue to critically expose what I fear will be a timid Biden NRLB.
Kurt, thanks for the response. I'm grateful to hear from an actual practitioner in this dispute, as my knowledge is culled solely from academic writing and journalistic coverage.
I believe I was fair to the incredible achievement of the Teamsters' initial organizing efforts, calling it an amazing accomplishment. I think we're also in agreement regarding the Hoffa team's tactics, as I pointed out how disastrous the 1999 strike call was. Regardless, this article was not meant to disparage the Teamsters in any way; it was to point out that Overnite's ultimate win was due to structural economic and legal advantages that it possessed from start to finish in the dispute. Perhaps the guerilla warfare would have worked in the end. You have much better knowledge of that than me. I simply have doubts that a nationwide contract was ever achievable when, five years into an all-out organizing effort, the union represented only a quarter of the workforce; the company had successfully stalled bargaining for several years; and success at least partially relied on bargaining-order approval from historically hostile courts. I certainly don't think any of this was due to the company having smarter lawyers or bargaining tacticians.
I imagine you are aware that UPS bought Overnite and agreed to a substandard national contract with the Teamsters to cover all of its locations. That doesn't quite fit your theory, but it was still a Faustian bargain for the workers.
Yes, I know of Overnite's fate; sort of ironic they ended up becoming UPS Freight and fully organized through card check. I foresaw this example as a rebuttal to my original thesis of "big = bad" for organizing, but I would of course respond that UPS was organized almost a century ago and is another legacy union shop like General Motors.
Or maybe the law should require that businesses with over 500 employees are automatically unionized? If you can't keep corporations small, make the unions a requirement. Obviously, this will take oversight.
As the attorney who represented the union negotiators of the Overnite contract, I found your gloomy analysis somewhat superficial. You overlook that the union organized some of Overnite's largest terminals which were part of an integrated nationwide operation requiring freight to be transported from terminal to terminal in a just in time system. Prior to the 1999 nationwide strike, we engaged in a series of intermittent strikes at the unionized terminals, which were beginning to impose significant economic damage. Unfortunately, the change in union leadership from the reformist Ron Carey to the "old school" Hoffa regime in 1999 resulted in an abandonment of this guerilla warfare approach in favor of the traditional "let's just shut down the complete operation" beat your chest approach that predictably doomed the organizing drive. Before calling this strike, Hoffa replaced me and the other Carey-appointed organizers and negotiators with his people, so we had to watch this debacle unfold from the sidelines.
I also was involved in a bitter dispute with Phillips Kimball, who masterminded the Caterpillar bargaining strategy you discuss when he later worked for CUNA Mutual Insurance in Madison, WI in which we were able to defeat him using a corporate campaign.
I welcome your insightful blog and hope you continue to critically expose what I fear will be a timid Biden NRLB.
I
Kurt, thanks for the response. I'm grateful to hear from an actual practitioner in this dispute, as my knowledge is culled solely from academic writing and journalistic coverage.
I believe I was fair to the incredible achievement of the Teamsters' initial organizing efforts, calling it an amazing accomplishment. I think we're also in agreement regarding the Hoffa team's tactics, as I pointed out how disastrous the 1999 strike call was. Regardless, this article was not meant to disparage the Teamsters in any way; it was to point out that Overnite's ultimate win was due to structural economic and legal advantages that it possessed from start to finish in the dispute. Perhaps the guerilla warfare would have worked in the end. You have much better knowledge of that than me. I simply have doubts that a nationwide contract was ever achievable when, five years into an all-out organizing effort, the union represented only a quarter of the workforce; the company had successfully stalled bargaining for several years; and success at least partially relied on bargaining-order approval from historically hostile courts. I certainly don't think any of this was due to the company having smarter lawyers or bargaining tacticians.
I imagine you are aware that UPS bought Overnite and agreed to a substandard national contract with the Teamsters to cover all of its locations. That doesn't quite fit your theory, but it was still a Faustian bargain for the workers.
Yes, I know of Overnite's fate; sort of ironic they ended up becoming UPS Freight and fully organized through card check. I foresaw this example as a rebuttal to my original thesis of "big = bad" for organizing, but I would of course respond that UPS was organized almost a century ago and is another legacy union shop like General Motors.