Os sindicatos nos EUA

Daquilo que vou vendo, uma das coisas que mais me impressionou (de modo negativo) foram as notícias sobre a situação que vive o movimento sindical norte-americano, nos dias que correm. Aquilo que lá se passa, neste domínio, não tem qualquer comparação com a situação homóloga em qualquer país europeu. É um dos sintomas mais evidentes da deriva direitista dos EUA (a nível político, a nível ideológico, a nível de hegemonia cultural - ver notas sobre isso: etiquetas - eua, política). O que se passa pode ser ilustrado por três tipos de informação.

Uma - tomemos-la como exemplo - ilustra a situação a nível de uma empresa - e não de uma empresa qualquer. Brad DeLong relata o modo como o jornal Washington Post trata os seus funcionários: "A message from the Communications Workers of America, about the Washington Post: Background: The 400 production workers at the Washington Post have not seen a wage increase in five years. Five years. For much of that time, since May 2003, the workers have been fighting for a fair labor contract. But the Post has been holding things up. And now the Post is after the workers’ employee-funded pension plan....". Têm de ler tudo para ficarem com a verdadeira dimensão da actuação do jornal.

A outra dá o grande quadro. Gregor Gall (Guardian - Comment is free) apresenta os factos que caracterizam a situação do movimento sindical nos EUA:

1. ...In 2005, over 31,000 workers were disciplined or fired for union activity - that's one every 17 minutes of the year. And the number of workers being disciplined or fired is increasing - between 1993 and 2003, the average was 22,633.
2. ... In the late 1970s, unions organised around 7,500 recognition elections per year via the NLRB, with a 37% success rate. By 2006, they organised just 1,600 (albeit with a higher success rate of 57%).
3. ...These bald figures hide a lot more. Research has found that 49% of employers threaten to close their operations when faced with unionisation attempts and 91% of employees are forced to have one-to-one meetings with supervisors to dissuade them from joining when attempts are made to unionise workplaces.
4. ...Even when workers successfully unionise and gain union recognition, only a third of these agreements ever lead to collective bargaining. So two-thirds of employers that concede union recognition say to themselves "we've lost the battle but not the war" and they get another opportunity to stymie union recognition by simply refusing to bargain.
5. ...In this environment, you can then understand why more than half (58%) of the US workforce - some 60 million workers - say they would join a union if they could. But they do not, because employers impose costs on workers for joining a union. They make it a risk-laden activity.This explains, in the main, why in 2006 overall union density in the US was just 12%, comprising 35% density in the public sector and 7% density in the private sector. These figures are just a third of what they were in 1955, the highpoint of organised labour in the post-war period.
6. For many years, the union movement in America has been trying to get the law changed and government to be more sympathetic. Attempts under Carter in the 1970s and Clinton in the 1990s failed to get past the initial stages.
   Ironically, the best opportunity is probably now taking place under Bush's watch. In 2007, the employee free choice bill was presented to Congress and passed through the House of Representatives. It is meeting resistance in the Senate and will then need presidential sanction to become law.
   With the presidential election looming, it will be interesting to see not only whether the Democrats win through but also which Democrat will be selected as candidate. Relatively speaking, John Edwards and Hilary Clinton are more pro-union than Barack Obama. But, of course, that still does not say that much. More will depend upon what the composition of the Congress is - whether it is more or less Democratic - and what pressure unions can put on the Congress members to continue to support the bill and get presidential authorisation. If the bill can become an act, it will be one small step towards levelling out a very, very unlevel playing field between workers and employers. But even if gets passed, the "American dream" will still remain elusive for most of America's workers.

Finalmente, a última retrata a situação dos apanhadores (imigrantes) de tomate na Florida. O artigo é da The Nation (o New York Times também focou esta história) e intitula-se Slavery in the Union, o que não é nenhum exagero de descrição face aos factos relatados. Só um excerto: "These farmworkers pick the tomatoes many Americans eat at McDonald's, Taco Bell, Burger King and other fast food chains. They are paid 45 cents for a 32-pound bucket of tomatoes. It's grueling work, as Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser noted recently in a New York Times op-ed : "During a typical day each migrant picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes." For that two tons the worker can expect about $50, and annual wages of $10,000-$14,000. Wages have been stagnant for more than two decades. Two weeks ago, six people were indicted on slavery charges for beating workers, chaining and locking them inside U-haul trucks, and threatening physical harm if the workers left their jobs. This is far from a rare occurrence, as the Miami Herald wrote, "… farm crew slavery stories and the brutal exploitation of undocumented workers have long since lost their shock value in Florida."

Robert Reich, no seu livro Supercapitalism (já fizera uma referência a esse livro), descreve bem (mas não tão bem as causas) o contexto mais lato enquadrador das relações de trabalho na economia americana (leitura do Nouvel Observateur do livro): "Les faits : l'âge d'or du capitalisme, avec sa concurrence organisée, ses syndicats puissants, ses patrons soucieux du bien public, son emploi à vie, est mort. Et l'avenir est sombre car «les outils traditionnellement utilisés pour tempérer l'exubérance irrationnelle de la société américaine» - redistribution par l'impôt, éducation publique, syndicats - agonisent. Mais cet état des lieux que Reich, démocrate engagé, «déplore», est aussi incontournable que la mondialisation qui l'a engendré. Autant prendre conscience de cette réalité si nous voulons la changer car en économie la nostalgie n'est pas une catégorie recevable.
Délits d'initié, scandale Enron, «bonus» colossaux, stock-options gargantuesques et maintenant «subprimes» : nous savions vaguement que la globalisation de l'économie, sa financiarisation portée aux nues par la doxa libérale faisait des ravages. Théoricien de l'économie mondialisée, aujourd'hui professeur de politique publique à Berkeley, Bob Reich met les points sur les «i». Dans les années 1980, le PDG d'une grande entreprise américaine touchait quarante fois le salaire moyen versé par son entreprise. C'était 400 fois en 2001 . En 1976, les plus riches (1% du pays) possédaient 20% de l'Amérique. En 1998, ils accumulaient le tiers de la richesse de la nation. En revanche, le salaire moyen n'a pas progressé au cours des trois dernières décennies. Et «pendant les neuf premiers mois de 2006 - cinquième année de la reprise économique -4,5 millions d'Américains en moyenne ont quitté leur emploi ou ont été licenciés chaque mois».

A tese de Reich é a de que é a globalização, a responsável por este estado de facto. A globalização é portadora, de modo inegável, de forças que contribuem para fragilizar a capacidade negocial dos sindicatos, mas imputar-lhe a totalidade da explicação, é ir longe de mais. Um sindicalismo forte nos EUA, seria factor corrector dessa evolução e, a sua inexistência - podendo ser explicada em parte por factores objectivos - funda-se, no entanto, e de modo mais significativo, na história sócio-política norte-americana mais recente, na deriva que se falou acima. As consequências da globalização são susceptíveis de serem lidadas sem rotura da solidariedade social e dos níveis de vida adquiridos - na Europa, alguns países, pelo menos, estão a demonstrá-lo.