A Distinctive Look at Unionism and Strike Action - Essay Example

Blue Collar: A Distinctive Look at Unionism and Strike Action Introduction Merely an ideological, steadfast labour movement can lead to important reforms to the legal system that hampers the rights of workers. Inopportunely, there are a number of signs that the labour movement is building up a class ethos. The risky condition of organised labour must push the idealist to reassess the situation (Holley et al. 2008). Jeremy Brecher (1997) claims that despite of the changes that render people-driven employment and unions more complicated it is not the type of industrial unions that has weakened the capability of present-day unions. Nevertheless, as further argued by Jeremy Brecher (1997), labour movement, such as mass strike, situate workers as historical actors and change their roles and relationships with one another and with their employer/s. This essay illustrates the above argument by analysing the effects of the strike action on employment relations in the 1978 film Blue Collar. Strike Action and Employee Relations: An Overview ‘Strike’, according to the The British Industrial Relations Act (1971) is (Pattnaik 1993, 2): A concerted stoppage of work by a group of workers in contemplation or furtherance of an industrial dispute, whether they are parties to the dispute or not, whether in the case of all or any of these workers, the stoppage is not in breach of the terms and conditions of their employment and whether it is carried out during or on the termination of their employment. Experiences across the globe prove that strikes are unavoidable in an industrial social order. Strikes are widely exercised to place economic demands, and are planned to disrupt business operations, or to change relationships in order to discontinue, or at least hinder, usual roles (Pattnaik 1993). The strike, according to Gennard and Judge (2005), is considered as a lawful and potent tool in the disposal of workers in contending with an employer or management who declines to grant their requests. Nevertheless, strikes are naturally economically unwise and bring about problems. Strike is essentially a tool of self-protection against the capricious and unfair actions of the management. Hence, strike is a social need for supporting or securing a fair economic standing of the workers (Gennard & Judge 2005). As argued by G.D.H. Cole, the working class is obliged to turn to strike because fundamentally there is an obvious inequality between the workers and their employers. Under the law, workers and employers are equal (Pattnaik 1993). According to Cole (as cited in Pattnaik 1993), the contractual worker is mandated to give his/her labour to his/her employer; the employer is mandated to dictate the employment relations: this setup is largely unequal. The arguments of various scholars, like Jeremy Brecher, point to one fact: strike is vital to the continued existence of the union. The working class should have the liberty to decline to trade or to pull out their labour. In an egalitarian social order, if the citizens are granted the freedom of assembly, it is foreseeable that the workers must mobilise for the alleviation of their complaints and betterment of their conditions; and the mobilisation could occasionally result in strikes (Blanpain 2010). The strike is viewed as a fundamental human right. However, according to Brecher (1997), it is tough to propose whether employees should be granted absolute right to strike or several limitations should be enforced by principle or lawmaking or through contracts democratically agreed between employers and workers. Employees cannot be given absolute liberty to discontinue any form of job at any time they want. Several forms of occupation have to be performed continuously if the social order is not to be destabilised and dislocated. Yet, society cannot be permitted to function efficiently to the detriment of the workers’ welfare involved in such functions (Brecher 1997). In order to avoid social disorder, according to Holley and colleagues (2008), employees should be fairly and reasonably paid and their welfare should be appropriately secured. The role of unions in times of difficult problems is examined in detail by Jeremy Brecher. He systematically explains about how heads of unions would either seize power over strikes, or would completely denounce the right of the subordinates to mobilise radically and freely. In almost all instances where the subordinates breached an agreement or contract or disobeyed the orders of the union heads, the union leaders methodically organise against their subordinates (Brecher 1997). There are hardly any exceptions, and majority of these unusual exceptions where efforts by the union heads to take power over the strike groups, so as to weaken mutiny, hamper opposition, and keep revolutionary leaders under surveillance. Usually, subordinate employees would condemn union leaders and use the union for their own purposes. There are also instances where subordinate members of the union would annul their union membership, and/or form or enter another union, such as trade unions, that proclaim to be at the level of the strategies the subordinate would want to use (Brecher 1997). These are the dynamics of employment relations at times of difficult struggles, or mass strike. Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar Paul Schrader’s film Blue Collar is a narrative about three automotive employee in Detroit. Disheartened by their financial hardship, Jerry Bartowski, Smokey James, and Zeke Brown eventually plan to steal from the headquarters of their local union. In the course of the criminal act, the three colleagues found a ledger cataloguing a chain of illicit credits to Las Vegas and New York. Uncertain about how to take in hand their finding, Jerry and Zeke are swayed by Smokey to exploit the list as a tool to threaten the union (Greene 2010). Instead of giving in to their threats, the union bribes Zeke of a position as shop supervisor. Immediately after such negotiation, Smokey is murdered in an intriguing accident at the workplace. Jerry, frightened that he might be killed too, gives his consent to be a witness against the union. The film concludes with Jerry and Zeke violently fighting. It is a hostility that is not the end, but the means to an end. Kotto afterwards says, “Everything they do, the way they pit the lifers against the new boys, the old against the young, the black against the whites, is meant to keep us in our place” (Biskind 2005, 76). But these usual roles, not just of the workers but of the management as well, are radically changed by the strike action. Zeke, Jerry, and Smokey are all burdened by financial woes, and all are disappointed by the failure of their union management to represent them effectively. Their criminal act is successful but they are only able to rob a few money. But the criminal act itself does not change their roles but the list they find and use to blackmail the union management. The union immediately finds out their identities, fatally jeopardising them all. Zeke’s role changed from an ordinary automotive worker to a shop supervisor at their factory; he accepted the position for his own security and because of an idea that he can actually make a difference (Biskind 2005). Jerry, on the other hand, chooses to consult an FBI agent, John Burrows, who is looking into possible corruption and fraud in the union. The change in the roles of Zeke and Jerry due to the strike action leads to a violent struggle, each laying blame on the other. A commentary afterwards reminds the audience of the previous statement of Smokey that the powers will exert its best to cultivate opposition among the workers (Biskind 2010). Yet, regardless how powerful the possible insinuations of this concluding remark about the significance of class consciousness, the film fails sufficiently to examine the subject matters towards which it draws. As stated by Smokey, the control is not in getting hold of the list itself. The control is the ‘cash’ it can potentially produce in order for them to escape from their phase of continuous labour and increasing debt that ‘maintains’ the ‘prevailing order’ in the workplace. The depressing paradox of the film is that Smokey is the only character who is killed. Furthermore, the roles of Jerry and Zeke are overturned by the film’s finale—opposed to what they originally planned (Greene 2010). According to Greene (2010), the flawed inconsistency created by the film about strike action is that to ‘better’ yourself you should certainly act at the expense of others, and both Jerry and Zeke ‘betrayed’ their colleagues. Besides the negative consequences of the strike action for the three main characters, the film also shows how strike action encourages an already corrupt union management to further engage in dishonest acts. The film’s undesirable portrayal of the union management is suggestive of the film’s apathy against praising any feature of industrial capitalism. Contrary to the real United Auto Workers, the union in the film is fictionally named the American Auto Workers (Greene 2010). This alteration, according to Greene (2010), does more than simply fabricate the union; it paradoxically represents American automotive labourers whose struggle for financial convenience, innately creates everything but ‘unified, integrated automotive labourers’. Moreover, the film does not present an especially compassionate depiction of the working class. Nevertheless, the film does not relegate the working class to conformist images. The film is a ‘neutral’ portrayal of industrial capitalism, which depicts quite loathsome and unlikeable characters implicated in the mechanism of assembly line labour, a corrupt union, and the government mostly hooked on taking the union to pieces instead of helping the workers (Biskind 2005). It is quite crude to create a twofold wherein Jerry becomes the film’s unwilling protagonist by helping the FBI bring down the union whilst Zeke turns out to be the antagonist by being a ‘pet’ to the dishonest union. The role of the government and the union as the guardian of the labourer in a liberal democratic society is very much distinct in the film. The connection of Zeke to the government is hostile from the beginning and mostly marked by his difficult plights with the I.R.S. (Greene 2010) When Jerry proposes they consult the authorities, Zeke tries to make an excuse, or defend, why he has returned the list for the position as shop supervisor, even after Smokey’s suspicious death (Greene 2010, 135): I got one chance, and I’m gonna take it. I’m black... The police ain’t gonna protect me. Six months after this fucking thing is over, I’ll end right back were I started from, living in some ghetto, up to my black ass in bills... If I gotta kiss ass, I’m gonna pick the ass I want to kiss, and it ain’t gonna be the motherfucking police, because all their gonna do is shit in my face. Jerry, on the other hand, is only persuaded to turn State’s evidence when the union threatened him. Hence, according to Greene (2010), the affiliation of Jerry to the falsehoods of the State and the Democratic Party as the defender of organised labour and workers are relegated to a tasteless reminder of ideological commitment. So are there any social institutions changed by the strike action in the film? The answer is, yes there are. The filmmaker obviously disfavours the unions, but one way or another, the film has escaped the filmmaker’s personal political inadequacies. Zeke, Jerry, and Smokey are collaterals of the system, which flourishes through class differentiation. The conflicting components (Smokey) are wiped out, whilst the ‘practical’ components (Zeke) are bribed and the weaklings (Jerry) are dangerously implicated (Biskind 2005). No one prevails triumphant in the film; it is a doubtful, but not an unenthusiastic film, for it shows the possibility of transcending racial divisions and work together as one, and, ultimately, form a solid class consciousness. The filmmakers may have believed his characters were idiots, yet they become the contrary. Zeke, Jerry, and Smokey are quite excellent, the depictions of racial realities quite overwhelming, that the audience cannot help but think that comradeship among these three major characters encloses inside it the germs of strike action. Nevertheless, the type of collective action justified by the Marxist philosophy rises above union efforts. According to the Marxist principle, unions may function to restrict the abuse and oppression of workers, but they in due course stay within the system of capitalism, and can themselves be spoiled or damaged by it (Greene 2010). This reality surfaces in Blue Collar, which shows a crooked auto worker union in Detroit whose connivance in sustaining the ‘prevailing order’ or status quo is eventually exposed. What is unique in this film in terms of labour movement is that it is not the company that creates racial conflicts among the workers, but the union itself that should protect the rights of these workers. A number of critics have labelled the film as ‘anti-union, but as the filmmaker argues, the film ends with a quite precise Marxist finale about the weaknesses of unionism (Biskind 2005). As stated by Blanpain (2010), according to the Marxist principle, it is integral to rise above unionism, to wield political pressure and in time to take part in revolutionary movement. Conclusions Even though not specifically radical in its political representations, Blue Collar is extraordinary in the American film tradition in the sense that it puts emphasis on the experiences of the workers, particularly in the real place of work. Moreover, it shows that workers are usually oppressed and abused by powerful elements in a social order that does not value their inputs to it. Inopportunely, Blue Collar maintains what was in the past deep-rooted American film tradition by portraying the labour union that stands for the workers as the key of the elements that oppress them. It hence transmits the dangerous distortion that workers would be much at an advantage, more contented, or happier without becoming a union member at all. Furthermore, by highlighting automotive labourers, the movie obviously places its condemnation of unions to the American Auto Workers. The film hence marks one of the most flourishing American labour unions as incompetent and crooked. References Biskind, P. (2005) Gods and Monsters. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Blanpain, R. (2010) Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations in Industrialised Market Economies. The Netherlands: Kluwer Law International. Brecher, J. (1997) Strike. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Gennard, J. & Judge, G. (2005) Employee Relations. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Greene, D. (2010) The American Worker on Film: A Critical History, 1909-1999. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. Holley, W., Jennings, K., & Wolters, R. (2008) The Labor Relations Process. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning. Pattnaik, S. (1993) Strike, A Study of Conflict. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House. Read More