Most of us know about President Reagan crushing the air traffic controllers’ (the PATCO union) strike in 1981, and how most labor unions failed to respond. Next we suffered through the accelerated destruction of unions, and reactionary Republicanism's ascent that plagues us to this day.
Yet history's tides didn't drove 1981's events; it could have gone the other way.
Here is my “What if” rewriting of history during the 1981 PATCO strike and a different possible aftermath.
“On Strike! On Strike!” the air traffic controllers chanted as they picketed at the airport entrances around the country. Their spirited voices belied the despair in their hearts as they watched all other airport workers, and thousands of travelers, who streamed past their picket lines on August 4, 1981. But what really struck fear in the controllers’ hearts was President Reagan’s threat to fire all 13,500 of them if they didn’t abandon their strike in 24 hours.
The air traffic controllers directed all commercial air traffic in the US. They ordered planes when to take off, when to land, and how and where to fly. The controllers felt their job was too stressful for their pay. Their contract demands included increased wages, and they also insisted on new operating rules that would increase air traffic safety. But they were federal employees, and after they struck, Reagan insisted they either return to work or get fired.
On August 5, 1981 President Reagan fired the 12,345 controllers who were still striking. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) began hiring strikebreakers and utilizing military air traffic controllers in a shaky effort that barely kept 50% of commercial air traffic operating.
The evening after the firing of the PATCO workers, the top officers of the national unions gathered in a tense meeting. PATCO was not popular among the other unions; PATCO had endorsed Reagan for President, and many felt the controllers projected a “more professional than thou” attitude that alienated the truck drivers, nurses, and laborers who constituted the membership of these other unions. The unions, paralyzed by indecision, could not decide on an action at the national level.
Later than evening, several avowed socialist leaders of the national unions met in their own unpublicized council, including William (Wimpy) Winpisinger of the Machinist Union, Tony Mazzocchi of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, Dolores Huerta from the Farmworkers, Jerry Wurf from the Government Workers, Doug Fraser from the autoworkers, Teamster Harold Gibbons and several others.
Farmworker Dolores Huerta was the first to speak,”Fellow socialists, should we sit and watch another union get crushed by this reactionary President?"
She glanced around the quiet room. The unionists shifted in their seats, uncomfortably staring at the floor.
"If you do not act now, we will be lucky to represent 10% of the workers, 30 years from now. The bosses will break every strike with strikebreakers. We will lose 500,000 union jobs in trucking and 100,000 airport jobs to deregulation. Our steel mill and auto jobs will get shipped to Asia. We will lose the union shop laws in places like Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. Mark my words!"
Huerta stood up,”I say Huelga (strike)!” She shouted. The others looked up, startled. ”Huelga!” Dolores cried. She glanced around the room at her silent compatriots. Her face twisted in anger. "Pedejos!" She sneered, and stalked from the room.
Meanwhile, rank and file union members in several leftist-led local unions in urban areas like Detroit and San Francisco, began picketing airports. They discovered that only a few dozen cars, "stalled" in the airport approach roads, would swiftly generate a 5-mile long snarl of traffic. No one would be able to get to the airports through those tie-ups.
The planes may be ready to fly but they would leave almost empty. Most the passengers weren't going to get to the airports on time, if at all.
President Reagan met with his advisors.
'These airport pickets are communists," Reagan pontificated,"My assistant Ed Meese remembers some of them from the UC Berkeley campus riots years ago. If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with. Let's assign this to that energetic Marine officer, Oliver North. He's been in central America and knows how to deal with communists."
Late that evening, Colonel Oliver North schemed how to terrify the union pickets, between snorts of the cocaine his contra allies were smuggling into the US. Then it came to him. "The calvary! The calvary!" North raved, to the barren walls of his motel room.
And the next afternoon, dozens of mounted police swept through the pickets at the Oakland airport approaches, swinging clubs like baseball bats. North himself clouted Dolores Huerta at full gallop, practically lifting her off her feet.
Fortunately, an ambulance rushed Dolores to the hospital, where they treated her for a fractured skull and internal injuries. But TV footage of the attack on Dolores outraged many.
Barbara Walters interviewed Dolores in the hospital, for the TV program 20/20. Walters posed a few vague questions. The network had coached Walters to bait Dolores into strident remarks, so Walters then asked Dolores,"What do you have to say to the police who beat you?"
Dolores struggled to her feet, stared into the camera, and began to sing an union song from the 1800s, Step by Step.
"Step by step, the longest march can be won, can be won ..." Her voice quavered. The strain of singing strained Dolores' stitched wounds, and blood began to seep through her bandages.
"Many stones can form an arch, singly none, singly none.." she continued.
The TV camera focused tightly on the blood seeping from Dolores' wound, and Walters began to sob. So did millions of TV viewers.
"And in union what we will, can be accomplished still. Drops of water turn a mill, singly none, singly none." Dolores collapsed back onto the bed.
By the next morning, trucks began pulling off the road, coast to coast. Deliveries to airports were the first to cease. But most teamsters were so angry that they refused to make deliveries to almost any destination except hospitals. They parked their trucks, closed the warehouses, and streamed to their union halls to determine the next step.
As the news spread, the coal miners, still bitter over a recent 110 day strike and poor contract, began to drift off their jobs, too. Pickets with hand lettered signs appeared. Mines began shutting down.
The Longshore workers left the Ports.
In the union halls, a consensus developed. Many of the workers were also painfully aware that Reagan's ongoing de-regulation of the airline and freight industry would destroy working conditions in those industries.
An Oakland teamster's outburst summed it up, after the union leader warned against an illegal sympathy strike.
"We stay out one day for Dolores, and another day against the damned de-regulation!"
Millions of workers had also lost their jobs during the Reagan Recession, as unemployment rates raced to almost 11%. Upon the urgings of local Democratic clubs, leftist groups and unions, many of the unemployed took to the streets also, demanding jobs and economic reforms. Their battle cry was "Stay out day three for a full employment jobs bill!"
Leftists from every city and town began their own demonstrations and work stoppages, with the slogan," Stay out Day Four, for no Latin american War!"
Then ten thousand Bank of America data entry workers, mostly women, seized control of their work place, the Bank's main processing center in San Francisco. Their counterparts at many banks followed suit. They sent out word:
"Stay out another day, for equal pay!"
By the end of the week, the nation’s economy sputtered. In the larger northern cities, the local labor councils, in concert with leftists and liberal Democratic politicians, organized emergency services. Hospitals remained open. Some food sales were allowed to continue. The restaurant and farm workers unions set up public kitchens, so no one would go hungry. And not a single commercial flight crossed the skies.
At the White House staff meetings, the discussions spun in circles.
“Let’s use the military to deliver fuel.”
“But we’re running short of fuel, the refineries are closed.”
“Can we arrest the union leaders?”
“We don’t even know where to find them.”
"What shall we do, Mr. President?”
President Reagan stared blankly at the questioner. His jaw hung open, his eyes vacant.
The staffers glanced at each other, startled. Finally Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush spoke.
“By golly, we are going to settle that darned strike,” he spat out, “And make sure no one sees him like this,” he concluded, nodding towards the poleaxed President Reagan.
After negotiations with the government, the unions called an end to the General Strike. In a compromise, the FAA rehired the PATCO members, and punted their contract demands to an arbitration panel, who later granted PATCO most of their issues.
The revitalized labor movement gained steam, decisively won the next wave of big strikes at Phelps-Dodge, Pittston Coal, Hormel, Continental Airlines, and Greyhound, and elected ever-increasing Congressional majorities in the 1982 and 1984 elections, as well as electing President Mondale.
Labor law reform and universal health care topped the legislative agenda, and both passed smoothly. Mondale appointed ex-President Carter as ambassador-at-large, and he negotiated an end to the violence in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ireland, and the Middle East. In 1992, Mondale’s vice-president Geraldine Ferraro, because the first woman president of the United States.
LOOKING BACK
In 1981, several labor leaders were democratic socialists, unions represented about three times as many workers percentage-wise, as they do currently, and there were several energetic, if tiny leftist organizations. All those advantages have eroded considerably since then.
The breaking of the PATCO union was an important loss, because then they came for the rest of us.
While saving PATCO was not the best rallying cry, history taught us that waiting for the perfect moment can lead to immediate defeat. Labor may never be stronger in my lifetime than it was then, even in its weakened 1981 state, and I ponder daily how it might have turned out differently. Perhaps Labor’s own institutional structure makes it impossible for us to defend ourselves vigorously. Yet I remember how rank and filers like me were chafing to rattle the foundations during the 1980s.
A political strike like I described would be brazenly illegal. Nixon called out the army against a wildcat postal workers strike. Judges have levied fines totaled many millions of dollars against unions waging illegal strikes. But would the labor movement possibly have ended up even weaker than it is now? For more discussion on illegal strikes, please see my earlier diary:http://www.dailykos.com/...
I will do my best to respond to comments tomorrow, but I am preparing for our own strike against the Koch Brothers' companies. Wish us luck, and please watch for an "All out against the Kochs!" diary, coming very soon.