1980-1986 Hanging On-
Labor in the Reagan Era
Ronald Wilson Reagan had held the office of president of the United States for just seven months when he officially launched his head-on assault against unions. In 1981, American organized labor’s centennial year, President Reagan fired approximately 12, 000 striking Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization members and ordered nonunion workers hired to permanently replace them. The tone for the ‘80s was set.
Following Reagan’s lead, companies began to invoke an up-till then rarely used court ruling handed town shortly after the landmark National Labor Relations Act of 1935 was passed. The ruling allowed companies—barred from actually firing striking employees—to permanently replace them. Over the next few years, thousands of striking employees were permanently replaced by Magic Chef, Phelps Dodge, International Paper Company, Continental Airlines, Colt Firearms and TWA.
With the threat of strikes greatly muted, management moved into high gear to win back labor’s many victories. According to an article entitled “Unions on the Run,” appearing in the September 14, 1981, issue of U.S. News and World Report, “The phenomenon of’ unions giving back hard-won wages and benefits is occurring [in the early ‘80s] with a frequency troubling labor leaders.”
Ruthless, hard-nosed managers seemed to be making it big in the ‘80s. Flamboyant antiunion corporate raiders like Frank Lorenzo picked up where Reagan left off—busting unions and destroying the lives of’ countless working people. Business Week‘s labor correspondent Aaron Bernstein, in his book, Grounded, Frank Lorenzo and the Destruction of Eastern Airlines, writes, “Lorenzo represented the get-tough approach to management that Ronald Reagan had revived when the president fired striking traffic controllers in 1981 ...[H]is uncompromising style had brought about an apparently miraculous turnaround at Continental [now bankrupt] and set him up as a shining example of a business leader willing to fight labor to create a lean and successful company. Wall Street celebrated the renewal of a dying breed of tough managers.”
But we know now that the “miraculous turnaround” at Continental’s parent corporation Texas Air, and at other corporate conglomerates, was first based on employee givebacks, and then based on staggering amounts of corporate debt. Junk bond king, Michael Milken, and the emergence of the leveraged buyout ushered in the Age of The Deal. And organized labor paid the price.
Labor found itself hit not just in the economic sphere. With antiunion pressure from the White House, legislation designed to protect workers, unions and consumers simply wasn’t being enforced. The National Labor Relations Board continued to carry out investigations and make judgments as the law requires, but it often took so long to do so that the rulings handed down years later were virtually meaningless. The Reagan administration stuck to its belief that “government” was bad—Congress was singled out as the worst. And for the most part ethics and concerns for those less fortunate were ignored.
More...>
Page 1 of 6
Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5 | Page 6
1980-1986 Hanging On - Labor in the Reagan Era |
Ralph A. Leigon, International Secretary 1976-1985, here addressing the 1982 Tenth District Progress meeting in Chicago.
Sign of the times; a Local 5, Pittsburgh, 1985 Labor Day Parade float.
1981 Fifty-two Americans, held hostage in Iran 444 days, were flown to freedom. President Ronald Reagan wounded in an assassination attempt in Washington, D.C. Postage rates increased from 15 cents to 18 cents. Federal air traffic controllers began nationwide strike after their union rejected the government's final offer for a new contract. Most of the 13,000 striking controllers defied the back-to-work order and were dismissed by President Reagan.
|
