OCTOBER 1986 - VOLUME 7 - NUMBER 14

A Woman in the Fray

An Interview with Dorothy Healey

Multinational Monitor: Do you think workers in the United States view the relationship between capital and labor differently than they did in the 1930s? Dorothy Healey: It was a far less mediated conflict in the 1930s. The enormous violence that was being perpetrated against unorganized workers by the employers was of such intensity that there were few workers who didn't have at least some sense that their interests were not identical to that of their bosses. Few histories that have been written about the labor movement in the 1930s have focused on the intensity of the employer violence against the labor movement. Employers in the United States have historically been far more violent in their repression of the labor movement than employers in any other Western country. There was far more solidaritv between workers who were on strike, far more awareness of the meaning of the slogan "an injury to one is an injury to all." Monitor: Today labor is often looked at as merely an arbiter for wages and benefits. Do you think labor leaders today have defined the mission of the labor movement too narrowly? Healey: That is not new, that was started under Samuel Gompers who said that the purpose of the labor movement was "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work." But you can't separate the worker and the community. I think it is a survival question. The labor movement must awaken in its ranks and leadership a broader awareness. Workers need to understand what causes the export of jobs so they can unite to prohibit the export of jobs to places that do not allow workers to organize to get decent working conditions. The leadership must recognize that without that, the labor movement is cutting its own throat. It's not a question of abstract protectionism-it's a question of protecting both the foreign worker and the American worker. Even the United Auto Workers (UAW) has recognized there has to be a global approach to the problems of the automobile industry, that it can't be solved country by country. Workers have to be organized because the corporate interests are already organized-multinationals are far more class-conscious than the workers have been. Monitor: Do you think the IJ.S. labor movement should push for international labor rights standards in trade agreements? Healey: That's a starting point. If workers in Korea, Taiwan, and Mexico have a guaranteed right of unions, of honest independent unions, workers would be better able to monitor what the multinationals are doing. If that kind of campaign was started in the labor movement there might be a revival of the old labor solidarity in this country. Monitor: Why is the labor movement on the defensive today? Healey: Part of the reason is that the labor movement is paying the price of the anti-communist hysteria of the Cold War. Eleven unions were expelled from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) during the 1950s. There was a witch hunt within every union. A tremendously indispensable part of the labor movement was lost-an organized, conscious left. The movement now consists of only a center and a right. It lacks the capacity to mobilize on a rank and file basis. It is always on the defensive, always fighting to retain what little it has instead of advancing to a new plateau. Monitor: Why do you think there is such a reluctance on the part of the labor leadership to put women in positions of leadership? Healey: I saw a Detroit study, and one of the things that fascinated me was that of one hundred auto workers, 50 of whom were trade unionists and 50 of whom were not, the one common bond they had was their racism. They were all working class men, but on the question of women, they weren't quite so sexist, for one very simple reason, they had to have their wives work if there was to be an income in the family that would allow them to do anything. And so the historic questions of sexism were replaced by the needs of the family for survival. That wasn't as true as far as the blacks were concerned. Although sexism is not quite as rampant as racism, when you look at how many women are in the top leadership of unions, or on the AFL-CIO executive board, you see that it still operates, it is still there. The policies unions have followed have shown this sexism. How much interest does the labor movement have in comparable worth? I doubt there is any great crusade for it. There are other things that are important to working women that are also being ignored. Daytime meetings and the demand for child care facilities would open enormous doors for women. Again, we have to judge how many unions are really on the cutting edge of such issues-not how much lip service they can give-but how many issues they really make into significant contractual questions in collective bargaining. Monitor: Are women harder to organize because of their double responsibility as working wives and mothers? Healey: I don't think women are harder to organize, even as far as labor unions are concerned. I don't think it was true in the 1930s, I don't think it's true in the 1980s. That is, it is not more difficult to organize women than it is to organize men. It is just more difficult to organize in the 1980s. And of course, a lot of that is the surrounding culture, the surrounding political pressure of the whole Reagan agenda-but I don't think it has more of an effect on working women than it has had on working men. It certainly was not true in the 1930s although our consciousness was far different then. I don't think there was any greater response on the part of the leadership to the status of women than there is today. What is so long overdue is this pressure to put women in official positions, particularly in unions such as the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. Monitor: Are there issues women could focus on which would unify the women's movement? Healey: There are inherent contradictions, not only in the ranks of the working people, but contradictions in the status of women, as well. The job of the organizer is to be aware of those contradictions. You can't push them aside, you can't dismiss them, you can't say "all women are sisters�-it's not true. Therefore you have to look at the differences that exist among women and figure out how to organize to diminish the differences, to transcend the differences, to have policies that overcome them. That's very difficult, it means constant thinking, and studied awareness of what the realities are. It's not a short-term struggle, it's not meant for people who are going to fight today and run away and do something else tomorrow. It's a long-term struggle that requires tenacity and courage. It is harder in this kind of period. It was much simpler in the 1930s when there was enormous organization, when there were huge strikes and greater support for unions. Monitor: Aren't such upsurges in enthusiasm cyclical? Healey: I see another upsurge, not necessarily because I think it is cyclical-although it might be-but mainly because I have an incurable belief in the potential of working class people. I believe that ultimately, the need to organize, the need to strike, it may get detoured, it may be a very long detour but ultimately it gets back on the road again. Monitor: Do you think privately-owned corporations can be held accountable? Healey: Not as long as there is no public organization with matching strength capable of intervening politically for the individuals and communities affected by the corporation. Corporations couldn't care less about welfare-community welfare, the nation's welfare. In the absence of any countervailing pressure, I don't see any way they can be held accountable. The public must be educated to understand that the most fateful decisions in their lives are being made not by politicians sitting in Congress whom they can watch and see, but by corporate executives who make the major decisions affecting their lives-whether they will have jobs, whether their children will have jobs, where they are going to live, whether they are going to live in a healthy atmosphere. Until people in great numbers start to understand the significance of the corporate decisions made privately, I don't see much likelihood of any important regulation of them. Monitor: In many countries with nationalized industries, the workers are treated worse than in privatelyowned industries. Are state-owned industries a real alternative to multinational corporations? Healey: To call for nationalizing industry is to not look very carefully at the experience of workers in England and elsewhere. Bv itself it is not a fundamental solution. The mining industry [in England] was and is state owned -they haven't been privatized yet. But what they did to the miners was as ruthless, cruel and outrageous as what the coal barons did to workers in this country in the 1900s. Again I don't think there is a single thing that is a solution. You've got to accompany any demand for privatization with worker and community control. It shouldn't only be the worker, it should be the worker and the community participating together. To simply call for state-ownership doesn't mean anything. Secondly, when push comes to shove I still believe that until there is no longer the private control of the commanding heights of the economy, you can't fundamentally solve anything. Public or social ownership is needed-and that is a lot different than state ownership.