Unions help to instill a moral capitalism in the workplace.

Byline: Bob Bussel For The Register-Guard

During my 34 years of association with the union movement, I have participated in many high-profile and even historic events - boycotts, strikes, legislative initiatives - that have helped to improve working people's lives.

However, the achievement I recall most proudly and which for me epitomizes the deeper meaning of the union movement involved something far more prosaic: helping a group of workers get new chairs.

Two decades ago, when I was a union representative in upstate New York, I entered a factory where our members produced athletic sportswear. Since they were on piecework, the mostly female work force toiled feverishly to increase their pay by boosting their output.

The workers were seated on stools, and many had stacked telephone books beneath them to elevate their bodies. They explained that they were searching for a more comfortable position that would place less strain on their arms and wrists.

Several of the women had scars on their wrists from surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome, a painful ailment often caused by repetitive motion. The surgery sometimes was successful but still did not address the fundamental problem of performing repetitive work on poorly designed seats.

We began holding meetings to discuss the problem. The workers brought in the union's occupational safety and health department to study the situation and requested that the employer purchase ergonomically designed chairs to replace the stools

The arguments were both pragmatic (the new chairs would lead to fewer workers' compensation claims and save the employer money) and moral (as a matter of simple justice, workers should not be injured in the course of performing their duties).

Eventually, the employer agreed to replace the phone books and stools with ergonomically designed chairs, and morale in the factory improved dramatically.

For me, those chairs remain a vivid illustration of how unions and collective bargaining can effect small but significant changes that make a profound difference in the quality of workers' lives.

Consider some additional examples of benefits obtained through collective bargaining: extra pay to buy braces for a child's teeth, time to take an extended vacation with one's family; and, as a home health care worker recently told me, the ability to make an overbearing boss "behave and do what's right."

Because these benefits involve fundamental matters of dignity, fairness and respect, they have personal and social implications that transcend the immediate issue at hand.

The chairs campaign also embodied another important and overlooked contribution that the union movement makes to both our social discourse and economic decision-making: its advocacy of "moral capitalism."

This useful term was articulated by historian Lizabeth Cohen in her prizewinning book, "Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939," on the role that workers played in shaping politics and society during the 1930s.

Cohen wrote that while workers were angered profoundly by the business greed and corruption that helped create enormous hardship during the Depression, they did not seek a social revolution. Instead, they embraced the notion of "moral capitalism," an unspoken but abiding belief that basic principles of fairness and justice should govern political and economic affairs, and the power of corporations should be offset by the "equalizing" power of a vigilant government and strong unions.

In return for their hard work and loyalty, workers would receive some measure of protection and security against the inevitable fluctuations contained in a market-driven economy rather than being left simply to fend for themselves.

At their best, unions have advanced a set of values that seek to make economic relations more fair and democracy more participatory.

To be sure, workers and unions recognize that individual initiative, entrepreneurship and competition have been essential features in creating American prosperity, but they also believe that union values of solidarity, cooperation, security, protection and the dignity of labor have been equally important in ensuring that the promise of American life is available to all.

These values were present in our effort to get new chairs and can be seen in many of the small and large struggles that unions wage everyday in both workplace and community settings.

As more Americans are buffeted by the global economy and struggle to maintain their standard of living, they feel increasingly insecure in the face of forces over which they seem to have little control. In this context, there is an urgent need to develop a new social contract in which the principles and values of moral capitalism will play a prominent role.

In Oregon and across the country, we are seeing fresh examples of how the union movement is pressing the case for moral capitalism and a renegotiated social contract.

There has been a quiet revolution among home health care and child care workers who care for the very young and the very old, two of our most vulnerable populations. Until they became union members, they were paid meagerly and granted minimal social respect.

Through unionization and collective bargaining, these workers are now leading much more dignified lives, posing basic questions about our social priorities, and are becoming models for engaged citizenship.

A sophisticated, union-led campaign has prompted more and more Americans to ask if Wal-Mart's employment and social practices reflect American values and represent the kind of corporate behavior that serves the public good.

Following Oregon's lead, union-backed measures to raise the minimum wage triumphed in six states in 2006, underscoring public support for a moral capitalism that would provide workers with a minimum standard of sustenance and security.

And the growing attention being paid to developing programs and policies that strengthen families by granting workers more paid leave represents an emerging issue that has wide social appeal and that the union movement is uniquely qualified to lead.

Although language and values are critical, strength and power also are necessary if the union movement is to spearhead an effective drive for moral capitalism. As public intellectual Walter Lippmann once observed: "The Golden Rule works best among equals."

Ongoing efforts to reform the nation's labor laws (Oregon recently enacted such reform for public sector employees) and ensure that workers can freely exercise their right to join a union deserve broad support.

Unions also will have to do a better job of explaining their values, rallying "coalitions of conscience" to press for high-quality jobs, affordable health care and family friendly workplaces, and showing how collective bargaining benefits not only union members but also the community at large.

It is the images from that factory in upstate New York, however - telephone books, stools, scars - that most powerfully shape my thoughts about the values of the union movement and its advocacy of moral capitalism. When those chairs replaced the stools and phone books, I knew that group of workers had found their way to a more dignified life.

It is the ability of the union movement to help workers gain this kind of dignity that sustains my faith in its possibilities on this Labor Day weekend two decades later.