Abstract

Class Warfare

The author reports on efforts by corporate lobbyists and some conservative politicians to cut off public funding for labor studies programs at universities across the U.S. In Sacramento cloakrooms, where lobbyists normally whisper blandishments into legislators' ears, the University of California's labor studies program is now being discussed in language once reserved for reds, and worse. The current set of charges are the latest in a long effort to eliminate the Institute for Labor and Employment once and for all. Behind them is a political alliance between the state's Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC, the powerful lobby for nonunion construction companies) and the Pete Wilson wing of the state's Republican Party, which has retaken the governor's mansion. Conservative foundations have been orchestrating a national attack on labor studies. If the opponents of the ILE prevail, activist-oriented programs in Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri and other states will be next on the fight-wing hit list. The controversy raises a fundamental question about labor rights--should joining a union be protected and encouraged by law and public policy, or are unions just a narrow private interest? When a labor program assumes that workers should strive to raise wages and improve conditions, it's considered selfish--against the public interest. For more than two decades the country's largest corporations have busted unions as a normal part of business activity, and have lost whatever interest they had in labor-management cooperation. It should be no surprise, then, that the end of union acceptance in the workplace should bring with it an end to the prestige of labor-management cooperation in academia.