Labor Aristocracy - Criticism of Unions of Elite Workers

Criticism of Unions of Elite Workers

The term was originally coined by Mikhail Bakunin in 1872 as a criticism of the notion that organized workers are the most radical. Bakunin wrote: "To me the flower of the proletariat is not, as it is to the Marxists, the upper layer, the aristocracy of labor, those who are the most cultured, who earn more and live more comfortably than all the other workers."

In the U.S. and Britain, the term "aristocracy of labor" is used as an implicit criticism of labor unions that have organized high-salary workers and have no interest in unionizing middle-income and lower-income employees—even in cases where organizing the unorganized would strengthen the unions involved. These unions, it is argued, are content to remain a "labor aristocracy." Examples might include the unions of professional athletes, which have raised the wages of a certain class of already highly paid workers—professional athletes—but refuse to organize other workers, including other employees of the teams they work for. It commonly charged that the Air Line Pilots Association, the Screen Actors Guild, and a handful of other AFL-CIO unions conform to the labor aristocracy model of trade unionism. In defense of these unions, the AFL-CIO's jurisdictional rules may forbid such unions from organizing workers in certain occupational classes.