When conservative Ohio Governor and former Lehman Brothers executive
John Kasich feels compelled to remind his fellow conservatives that upon
entering Heaven, “Saint Peter is probably not going to ask you much
about what you did about keeping government small. But he is going to
ask you what you did for the poor,” you know poverty has reached center
stage.
From the homilies of Pope Francis, to New York City Mayor Bill de
Blasio's (pictured) inauguration speech, poverty and its close cousin
inequality are playing starring roles in the current political
discourse. The President’s 2015 budget proposal, released earlier this
month, calls for a significant increase in federal spending on
anti-poverty programs, and while these proposals are likely DOA in the
Republican-controlled House, Democrats across the land have promised to
campaign on the issue leading up to the 2014 midterm races. This year,
then, appears little different from much of 2013: the spotlight on
poverty shows no sign of dimming.
Amid all the discussions are familiar calls to raise the minimum
wage, buttress the food stamp program, and expand health insurance to
the nation's needy. Yet absent from the conversation is a proven and
powerful way to reduce poverty: strengthening the labor movement.
Historically, unions have played a vital role in supporting the most
vulnerable, despite the fact that very few union members were then, or
are now, themselves poor. Cross-nationally, countries with powerful
labor movements have lower poverty rates. And, in the U.S., recent
research by the sociologists David Brady, Regina Baker, and Ryan
Finnigan finds that states with strong unions tend to do a better job
reducing the number of Americans living “on the outskirts of hope,” as
President Johnson memorably characterized the issue.
How
have unions reduced poverty? Both directly and indirectly. Directly,
by helping to double the wage levels in industries as varied as textiles
in New England, California canneries, and department stores in the
nation’s largest cities, as the historian Nelson Lichtenstein has found.
Prior to their organization, wages for bottom-rung occupations in these
industries were extremely low. Likewise, maritime work was once brutal,
disorganized, and temporary – until unions successfully signed up
thousands of port employees along much of America’s coastline.
But unions are not simply economic organizations. They are political
ones too, and through their political efforts unions have consistently
championed poverty-fighting policies, indirectly helping low-wage
Americans. Take food stamps, a program whose funding was recently cut
by Congress. Current controversies surrounding food stamps are nothing
new. During the course of its existence, many lawmakers have lambasted
the program as overly generous and in need of reform. Key segments of
the labor movement have intervened against these efforts, repeatedly,
during decades of attacks from budget-cutting politicians. During the
mid-1970s, for example, organized labor took to the courts to fight for
the program’s solvency: Over 50 labor unions joined various other
organizations and sued the federal government over proposed cuts to food
stamps. Half a decade later, unions would threaten court action again.
READ: MSBNC's Ned Resnikoff responds with "For Labor To Succeed, It Has To Be Disruptive"
Or take the minimum wage. As I explore in my book, unions have been
pressuring elected officials for over half a century first to establish
and then to raise the minimum wage, although not all their battles
proved successful. Legendary labor leader George Meany once castigated
President Jimmy Carter for failing to accede to union demands to
increase the minimum wage to $3.00/hour. Meany claimed to the New York
Times in 1977 that Carter’s intransigence was “a bitter disappointment
to everyone who looked to this Administration for economic justice for
the poor.” More recently, the campaigns to increase wage floors in
states and localities across the country have been heavily underwritten
by labor unions.
Finally take New York City's new mayor, Bill de Blasio, who in his
inaugural address promised to “take dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities,”
by combating inequality and lifting up those at the bottom of society.
If not for the Working Families Party (WFP), a party funded and
co-founded by some of New York’s still-powerful unions, de Blasio’s
political ambition may have been stillborn. His 2009 campaign for public
advocate was managed by the WFP, and the party considers him a
longstanding ally. As documented by Harold Meyerson in the American
Prospect, whatever successes the mayor may have in narrowing the yawning
income and wealth gaps in the city will also be due to the WFP: The
new mayor has the party to thank for the 20 allies that comprise the
“Progressive Caucus” on the city council.
While organized labor remains strong in New York, it has been
devastated elsewhere. Nationally, private sector organization rates
have plummeted from approximately 35 percent to 5 percent. Public
sector unions are fighting rearguard battles even in such traditional
labor strongholds as Wisconsin and Illinois.
We recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty.
One clear lesson of the last half century is that if you take away
unions you lose the financial and organizational resources behind
various efforts to support the poor. Quite possibly, you lose New
York’s new mayor. Over the next 50 years, winning the new War on
Poverty will require a mix of creative policy initiatives, many of them
now being touted by politicians across the ideological spectrum. But it
will also require something almost nobody is discussing: a revitalized
labor movement.
Adapted from What Unions No Longer Do
by Jake Rosenfeld. Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of
Harvard College. Reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press.
All Rights Reserved.
Jake Rosenfeld is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington, co-director of the Scholars Strategy Network Northwest
(SSN-NW), and a faculty affiliate of the Center for Studies in
Demography and Ecology (CSDE), the West Coast Poverty Center (WCPC) and
the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies. He received his PhD in
Sociology from Princeton University in 2007. For more information,
please see www.jakerosenfeld.net.
