Abstract
Recent attempts to curtail collective bargaining rights of public-sector unions in states such as Ohio and Wisconsin have brought labor issues back to the front page. In truth, as Chris Rhomberg argues in The Broken Table, the breakdown of hard-fought labor rights has been unfolding for decades, as a result of both the erosion of the New Deal-era labor accord and rising corporate antiunionism. While on the surface a gripping story of a late 1990s strike at two Detroit-area newspapers, The Broken Table tells a much larger story about the rise, fall, and future prospects for the U.S. labor movement that will appeal to scholars, activists, and all those interested in the future of workplace governance.
The book begins by presenting a framework for understanding why and how labor disputes have unfolded throughout U.S. history. Beginning with reforms passed during the New Deal, labor disputes were generally internal affairs. Since the National Labor Relations Act explicitly protected workers’ right to strike, employers had an incentive to engage in collective bargaining and negotiate any employee grievances quickly and quietly. Over time, however, courts have chipped away at the potential costliness of strikes by granting employers the right to hire replacements during strikes as well as by narrowing the range of issues over which employees can strike without fear of those replacements becoming permanent. Employers no longer have as much incentive to “come to the table.”
Rhomberg argues that this erosion of New Deal labor reforms, coupled with increasing corporate savvy in exploiting loopholes in remaining laws, has moved labor disputes out of the workplace and into the streets. To make strikes more costly for employers, labor unions must now rally the community, applying both moral and economic pressure through social movement tactics and boycotts. The very meaning of strikes has also changed, from disputes over economic grievances to the basic right to negotiate over grievances.
Rhomberg unfolds and illustrates these arguments in four sections. In Part 1, Rhomberg places his case in historical context, discussing the growing economic struggles of the newspaper industry that have moved employers to restructure their workplaces in chapter 1; the historical strength of labor unions in Detroit, which have made any such restructuring a challenge for employers in that city, in chapter 2; and the changes that have taken place in the newsroom as a result of news technology, which have eroded the historical strength of newspaper unions, in chapter 3.
In Part 2, Rhomberg goes into more depth about the institutional mechanisms that have historically guided labor disputes. Chapter 4 in particular is essential reading for labor scholars and could be read on its own, outlining the features of the original New Deal system (including limits that have been present from the beginning in terms of “who gains access,” “what gets negotiated,” and “how disputes are settled”) before discussing how this New Deal system has eroded. Chapters 5 through 7 then discuss the buildup to the strike at the Detroit newspapers, from the origins of the dispute, to the extensive preparations taken by the newspapers for a strike, and finally to the ultimate breakdown in negotiations.
In Part 3, Rhomberg provides the details of the Detroit newspaper strike. These chapters especially will appeal to mass audiences, including labor activists hoping to learn from the successes and failures of the Detroit strike. Chapter 8 discusses the promising beginnings of the strike but also the quick move by the newspapers to hire replacements. Chapter 9 discusses the descent of the strike into violence, both by private security firms hired by the newspapers and a local police force that was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the newspaper companies. Chapter 10 considers how unions rallied the community through consumer and advertising boycotts and protests outside distribution centers but also how the newspaper companies fought back through their own editorial pages and in courts. Chapter 11 examines the mostly disappointing court rulings that resulted as well as the return of some of the workers to their jobs. Finally, in the conclusion in Part 4, Rhomberg connects the events of the strike to recent attempts to roll back collective bargaining rights in state legislatures and offers thoughts on policies that would fill gaps in current United States labor law.
Overall, The Broken Table rises above the details of a quite fascinating moment in recent United States labor history to offer a compelling framework for understanding why the labor movement has arrived at its current juncture. Given the high stakes of current struggles over collective bargaining, the book’s arrival couldn’t be timelier.