The Assault on Labor: The 1986 TWA Strike and the Decline of Workers’ Rights in America by Sandra L. Albrecht

Recent decisions from the US Supreme Court are a stark reminder of the hostile climate that American unions face in the twenty- first century. In May 2018 the court ruled that employers could force workers to sign “class action waivers” that would prevent them from using collective lawsuits to address employment issues. The following month in the infamous Janus decision the court overturned an earlier ruling that required nonmembers of public sector unions to pay “fair share” fees to cover things like grievances and health and safety. Labor advocates rightly point out that such decisions pose a serious threat to workers and unions in America, hindering employees’ efforts to obtain justice and undermining unions’ ability to function (Ariane de Vogue and Clare Foran, “Supreme Court Deals Major Blow to Public Sector Unions,” CNNPolitics, www.cnn.com/2018/06/27/politics/supreme-court-union-fees-decision/index.html [accessed September 8, 2018]).The Supreme Court’s attacks on working people and their organizations are part of the long history of class conflict in the United States and the latest development in an intensified assault on labor that began in the late 1970s when employers and the state stepped up their efforts to roll back the rights and victories won by the labor movement over the course of the twentieth century. In The Assault on Labor: The 1986 TWA Strike and the Decline of Workers’ Rights in America, sociologist Sandra L. Albrecht provides a detailed study of this assault through an analysis of a key labor battle that occurred during this period: the 1986 strike by sixty- five hundred unionized flight attendants employed by Trans World Airlines (TWA). The ten- week strike began on March 7 and ended on May 17 when the union representing the flight attendants — the Independent Federation of Flight Attendants (IFFA) — made an unconditional offer to return to work. Though the strikers displayed incredible solidarity and pursued a number of creative tactics to pressure the airline to negotiate a fair contract and rehire the thousands of flight attendants who had been permanently replaced during the strike, the strain of a long and tense strike, the hiring of replacement workers, and several unfavorable rulings from the courts ultimately shaped the outcome in favor of the employer. Albrecht’s in- depth analysis of this significant strike waged by a female- dominated union in an industry undergoing rapid transformation is a fascinating study that highlights the limitations of the labor relations system and the importance of worker militancy and solidarity.The Assault on Labor examines the TWA strike as an example of how major shifts in US labor relations during the 1970s and 1980s shaped the outcome of labor disputes and made it increasingly difficult for workers and unions to secure improvements in wages and working conditions through collective bargaining and strikes. Albrecht’s central argument is that the TWA strike was “one of the most dramatic cases of the heightened labor conflict of the 1970s,” in which management increasingly used permanent replacements to break strikes and scare workers and unions into accepting major concessions (2). At the same time, such tactics also spurred labor into action. During this period, she contends, workers engaged in “a solidarity that went beyond the strike and reenergized rank and file unionism” (9). In the case of the TWA flight attendants, “they remained in solidarity with one another, maintained their focus on their goal of returning everyone to the line, and developed strategies of survival that gained them the reputation of the ‘pit bulls’ of the labor movement” (2).Albrecht’s study consists of eight chapters plus an introduction and conclusion. In the introduction, she provides an overview of the book, the history of flight attendant unionization at TWA, and the shifts that occurred in labor relations and the airline industry in the 1970s and 1980s. In the years leading up to the strike, IFFA members fought long and hard for a fair contract and dignity and respect in the workplace, a struggle that ultimately led TWA flight attendants to leave the male- dominated Transport Workers Union and form their own independent union in 1977. The new union faced the difficult task of negotiating with an employer set on drastically reducing labor costs to make up for profit losses experienced in the years after the federal government’s deregulation of the airline industry in 1978. At the same time, in the wake of President Ronald Reagan’s firing of eleven thousand air traffic controllers in 1981, American employers increased their attacks on unions, in particular their use of permanent replacements.In the core chapters, Albrecht shows how IFFA members’ militancy, airline deregulation, and increasingly hostile relations between labor, capital, and the state shaped the TWA strike. Chapters 1 to 5 focus on the period leading up to the strike, including preliminary contract negotiations, changes in the ownership of TWA, the deals that the other male- dominated unions struck with the airline’s new owner — “well- known corporate raider and greenmailer” Carl Icahn — and the company’s hostile and sexist attitude toward IFFA and its members (53). As Albrecht explains, IFFA members viewed TWA’s demands for concessions as “so extreme that they meant giving up much of what they had worked for in the last decades” (84). Chapters 6 to 8 examine the strike and its aftermath, including the solidarity and resourcefulness IFFA members demonstrated during the strike, their long struggle to ensure that all of their members who had been permanently replaced were rehired, and their frustrating experiences with the courts. Albrecht pays particular attention to the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of TWA’s decision to treat “crossovers” — flight attendants who did not join the strike or returned to work before the strike was over — as permanent replacements, meaning the company did not have to discharge them after the strike. She argues that this ruling struck a huge blow to the labor movement, strengthening employers’ rights and further dividing workers. In the concluding chapter, Albrecht traces IFFA members’ story through the 1990s and up to the present, recounting their struggle for fairness and equality following TWA’s merger with American Airlines in 2001 and American’s subsequent merger with US Airways in 2013.The Assault on Labor provides a detailed analysis of an important labor conflict that occurred at a pivotal moment in the American airline industry and US labor history. Using a range of sources, including newspapers, magazines, and the archival collections of TWA and the unions representing the company’s pilots and flight attendants, as well as the literature on flight attendants, labor law, unions and labor relations in America, and the political economy of the airline industry, Albrecht provides a rich account of the TWA strike. Indeed, in many places Albrecht includes lengthy quotes from some of these sources. Though quotes can be used to great effect, at times the inclusion of extensive quoted material distracted from the book’s analysis and made it difficult to follow the development of Albrecht’s argument. Still, by providing a close examination of the TWA strike, Albrecht reminds us that the current attacks on labor are not new and that workers cannot rely solely on collective bargaining and the courts to defend their rights. Workers and unions must remain militant, organizing new groups of workers and standing together in solidarity when capital and the state attempt to pit working people against one another.

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.