Which Side Are You On?

My congregation is about to embark on a major capital campaign to revitalize our crumbling physical plant. Our rabbi recently raised the question on his blog of whether we should have a strict policy of only using unionized vendors to do the construction work. I posted the following response:

A mishnah we studied in Pirke Avot class tonight says the following: “… love work, hate acting the superior, and do not bring thyself to the knowledge of the ruling authority.” As the texts so often do, this one seems to side with the weak, the oppressed and the exploitable. The bias here in favor of the low person on the totem pole is categorical. It bespeaks an institutional priority in favor of the powerless. This principle bears directly on the issue of whether we should have a policy of Union Only! at CBE.

Several prior entries in this string have suggested that some non-union firms treat their workers better than unionized shops in the same industry. Fair enough. In my life, I’ve worked in two union shops, one an awful hell-hole of a factory in Long Island City, where I lasted two weeks before fleeing to the Catskills and then fifteen years at Legal Aid, where I was a proud member District 65/UAW until I became part of management. The Teamsters, who owned the union franchise at the factory, seemed to have little interest in the membership. There is much positive, and some decidedly negative, I could say about the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, but there is no question that without the union, we would have been paid a lot less, staff and supervisory attorneys alike. Plus, the union was the most important vehicle for keeping the issue of quality representation on the table, even if it was often honored in breach.

For me, the issue isn’t whether there are good or bad unions or better or worse non-union companies. The issue is unionism, not the merits of this union shop or that one. The quoted mishnah instructs us to be suspicious of power, to ask ourselves “which side we are on?” A logical corollary is that we should be suspicious of social and institutional arrangements that promote or maintain unequal power relationships. Unions promote fairer, more balanced institutional relationships, both in the workplace and in society generally.

With these observations in mind, there are several things that we, as a congregation, should look for in the vendors with which we contract, none mutually exclusive of the others. Obviously, a reputation for doing a good job is essential. Second, to support the institution of unionism, a union shop should generally be a requirement. Third, we should be sure that any union company we deal with treats its workers properly. This trilogy of considerations reminds me of still another mishnah we studied this evening: “If I am not for myself, who is for me, but if I am for my own self only, what am I, and if not now, when?

[Full disclosure: for the last eleven years I have been an attorney in a not-for-profit law office, essentially functioning as an appellate public defender. For most of that time, I’ve been a supervisor. So far as I know, the staff has never considered forming a union. If the issue ever comes up, I will support it, but I think it’s the staff’s responsibility, not management’s, to organize itself. As I think Hillel would agree, some things you have to do for yourself].

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