Why Unions Still Matter

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Unions still matter

New evidence suggests that unions may be more important than Democrats in reducing inequality

April 15, 2015 2:00AM ET

 

by Sean McElwee @SeanMcElwee

 

This year the Republican war on unions has returned with a vengeance. In former labor stronghold Illinois, GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner is pursuing right-to-work legislation — which allows workers to gain the benefits of union representation without paying dues — and looks likely to succeed. Wisconsin became a right-to-work state last month, and its Republican Gov. Scott Walker looks set to ground a presidential bid in union busting, recently saying his political fight with unions prepared him to take on the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The Supreme Court appears ready to overrule its Abood v. Detroit Board of Education decision, which allows unions to collect dues from nonmember public sector workers who nonetheless benefit from collective bargaining.

With the enemies at the gate, the liberal elite seems to have finally learned to love unions. Nicholas Kristof writes that, contrary to his earlier opinion, “we should strengthen unions, not try to eviscerate them.” Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, a key architect of Bill Clinton’s finance-friendly economic policy, recently argued, “Measures that facilitate collective bargaining can result in a broader participation in the benefits of productivity and growth.” And in “The Report of the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity,” which is likely to become the centerpiece of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the commission, co-chaired by Ed Balls and Lawrence Summers, concludes that “we need to support the growth of unions.”

But it may be too little, too late. Democrats did little to defend unions when it counted. Under President Jimmy Carter, Alfred Kahn began deregulating the airlines. Carter then signed into law legislation deregulating railroads and trucking (both hobbling powerful unions). President Bill Clinton pushed for the North American Free Trade Agreement against union opposition and deregulated finance, greatly empowering capital. To be fair, some of these pressures came from global trends, but public policy played a key role in tilting the field against labor. Now Republicans are fighting to drive a final spike in the heart of the most effective anti-inequality movement in history. If liberals do nothing to shore up unions, their decline will only continue. That will have important implications for inequality.

What unions do

Unions not only give their members a voice at work but also can have much broader political effects. By mobilizing voters and contributing to campaigns, organized labor is in effect the only lobbying group operating in the interest of ordinary Americans.

In a 1998 study, political scientists Benjamin Radcliff and Martin Saiz found that “the relative strength of the labor movement across the American states is one of the principal determinants of policy liberalism.” They found that the rate of unionization has a dramatic effects on spending for Aid to Families With Dependent Children and education as well as on tax progressivity and that these effects are stronger than Democratic governors and Democratic legislatures. As Radcliff told me, “strong labor unions are able to influence public policy, so as to create programs … that benefit everyone in society, not merely organized workers.”

Unions are the most important institution in the fight against inequality.

One way unions reduced inequality was by boosting voter turnout, which gave them political leverage. It’s rarely noted, but the campaign for Seattle’s $15 minimum hourly wage could not have succeeded without a massive, union-led voter registration drive. Many studies have confirmed that unions boost voter turnout and that their Election Day mobilizations push candidates and parties to the left.

Percent reported voting, union and non-union households

Source: ANES, 1948-2008.

In a country where few politicians come from a blue collar background, unions have often been a conduit for workers to enter politics. Political scientist Nicholas Carnes found that “a 10-point increase in the percentage of the state that belonged to labor unions was associated with a 1-point increase in the percentage of state lawmakers from the working class.” Given that politicians’ occupational background and wealth influences their voting behavior, this is another important way unions can promote policies beneficial to the working and middle classes.

The right-to-work revolution

But unions have always faced deep opposition, especially in the South, where many of the first right-to-work laws were passed. Historian Elizabeth Shermer writes, “The central message in the Southern right-to-work campaigns was preserving the Old South’s racial order.” Southern elites feared that an organized working class would be a threat to the racist social and economic practices that had long defined the region. They successfully kept collective bargaining at bay with laws that forbade unions from requiring beneficiaries of its negotiations to become members and pay dues. These right-to-work laws appealed to non-elites by channeling widely held anti-government individualism. But labor law expert Raymond Hogler notes that the question has often been posed in deceptive terms:

Many polls show a strong majority of Americans are against making workers pay union dues to keep a job. That’s the wrong question. When workers in a union are asked whether anybody benefitting from a collective bargaining agreement should pay dues to support the agreement, they say yes.

As right-to-work laws spread from the South to the rest of the country, the results have been devastating. A paper by Holger, Steven Schulman and Stephan Weiler shows that right-to-work states have seen an 8.8 percent decrease in union density and that these laws account for slightly more than three-quarters of the difference in union density across states.

Another study found that from 1989 to 2002, whether a state had a right-to-work law was more important than partisan control of the state government in determining the progressiveness or regressiveness of the state’s taxes. This conclusion holds up at the global level, according to a recent International Monetary Fund study showing that lower unionization rates were associated with an increase in the share of income going to the top 10 percent of the population.

Political actors

The importance of these studies is clear: Unions are the most important institution in the fight against inequality. But for too long, many liberals seemed happy to watch unions disappear. Part of the problem is that they misunderstood unions as primarily economic institutions, interested in parochially negotiating wages and benefits for their members. In reality, unions are far more important as political actors promoting policies that benefit the working class and middle class as a whole. As legendary United Auto Workers leader Walter Reuther put it in 1970:

"There’s a direct relationship between the ballot box and the breadbox, and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls."

It’s nice that the Kristofs and Summerses of the world have finally caught up with Reuther. We can only hope it is not too late.

Union membership and share of income going to the top 10%

Source: Economic Policy Institute, 2015.

Sean McElwee is a research associate at Demos.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.

The meaning of social justice unionism

The meaning of social justice unionism

What labor activists today call social justice unionism is a renewal of a long tradition of solidarity in the U.S. labor movement, writes New York City educator Megan Behrent.

May 18, 2015

 

 

Chicago teachers march with supporters during their strike to defend quality public schools

 
UNIONS TODAY are in an existential struggle for survival, from the draconian anti-labor policies of Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin and the spread of right-to-work laws to half of all U.S. states, to the raiding of pension funds and the imposition of concessionary contracts in the era of austerity.

These are not just assaults on organized labor, but part of a broader attack on working class living standards. While some sectors of the economy have recovered the crisis hit its low point in 2008-09, much of that recovery has been on the backs of working people. Unemployment remains high--specifically in Black and Brown communities--while wages have remained low, unlike heath care payments, tuition rates, and local rents.

Meanwhile, unions are weaker than ever. Their strategies of backroom deals and political negotiations--the failed model of "business unionism," which still dominates the labor movement today--have left rank-and-file members demobilized and union leaders without much leverage.

Faced with this dire situation, many labor activists argue that unions need to adopt a new strategy of "social justice unionism"--an approach that begins with the premise that an attack on organizations of the working class requires a wider working class response.

From this standpoint, building a strong union movement requires broadening the fight beyond the specific demands of one union to class-wide or "social justice" demands-- which include traditional "bread and butter" issues, but are not limited to them.

"Given the horrific attacks on unions and teachers, business unionism is suicidal," argues education and labor theorist Lois Weiner in The Future of Our Schools. "Fighting for the social good," she goes on to write, "which is what a social movement union does, is actually the more practical option."

This tradition of unionism based on struggle, class solidarity and movements for social justice has a long and successful history in this country--from the IWW to the sit-down strikes of the 1930s.

In its latest incarnation, social justice unionism has attracted a generation of radicals from the global justice protests and Occupy Wall Street--as well as movements for environmental, educational and racial justice--who became political through different social movements and turned to unionism in search of a force with the power to win.

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PUBLIC-SECTOR workers--particularly unionized public school teachers--are central to these struggles, both because they represent one of the last bastions of unionized workers and because their struggles for fair wages and working conditions are intimately bound up to the fight to defend public services and the living conditions of the working class as a whole. As a result, while this article will argue for the importance of social justice unionism generally, it will focus primarily on how it has emerged within teacher unions.

Social justice unionism is a necessity because the only way that teachers unions can survive and make real gains for teachers and students is by allying with the communities they serve.

Many contractual issues are, in fact, social justice issues because the conditions of teachers' workplaces impact the learning environment of students. At the same time, if teachers want parents and communities to fight for the contract that teachers deserve, they must broaden the scope of traditional trade unionism and be ready to stand with them on issues that most impact parents' and students' communities.

Bob Peterson was elected president of the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association following the 2011 Wisconsin labor uprising that battled heroically--but unsuccessfully--against the imposition of the draconian anti-public sector Act 10, which significantly eroded collective bargaining rights and requires annual recertification of unions by 51 percent of all eligible employees.
In a recent article in Rethinking Schools, Peterson argues that we need a revitalized movement based on social justice unionism--one that:

builds on the strengths of traditional "bread and butter" unionism. But it recognizes that our future depends on redefining unionism from a narrow trade union model, focused almost exclusively on protecting union members, to a broader vision that sees the future of unionized workers tied directly to the interests of the entire working class and the communities, particularly communities of color, in which we live and work.
This is a sea change for teacher unions (and other unions, too). But it's not an easy one to make. It requires confronting racist attitudes and past practices that have marginalized people of color both inside and outside unions. It also means overcoming old habits and stagnant organizational structures that weigh down efforts to expand internal democracy and member engagement.

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WHILE PETERSON'S vision of social justice unionism might indeed be a sea change from the business unionism that has dominated for the past few decades, it has a long tradition in the U.S.--particularly in the history of teachers unions.
The early teachers union movement had strong links to the women's suffrage movement, simply because with a female-dominated workforce, there was no way to talk about teacher rights without talking about women's rights.

Tenure, for example, was understood by early teacher unionists to be a women's rights issue. Without tenure and unions, women were routinely fired for being married or becoming pregnant. Lest the unmarried and childless women think they might be spared, one could also get fired for wearing pants or being out too late in the evening.

(This was not just a 19th century occurrence. My grandmother, a home economics teacher in Texas, lost her job when she got married. This was not extraordinary, but routine.)

Furthermore, as early unionists argued, the pay inequity between men and women was immense. "In 1850, four-fifths of New York's 11,000 teachers were women," historian Dana Goldstein notes, "yet two-thirds of the state's $800,000 in teacher salaries was paid to men."

This discrepancy was the subject of one of Susan B. Anthony's first speeches--made at the 1853 annual meeting of the New York State Teachers' Association--after which she became a full-time activist for women's rights.
Likewise, Margaret Haley, an early teacher unionist in Chicago known as the "lady labor slugger," saw the fight for suffrage as crucial to the ability of female teachers to fight for their rights. Haley also provided one of the earliest and clearest articulations of social justice unionism, arguing for the importance of contractual provisions to protect both teachers and students rights.

In her book Blackboard Unions, Marjorie Murphy quotes Haley's argument that the freeing of the child or the student:

can only be secured by the freeing of the teacher...to the teacher it means freedom from care and worry for the material needs of the present and the future--in other words, adequate salary and old-age pensions, freedom to teach the child as an individual and not to deal with children en masse. In other words, fewer children for each teacher. Last but not least, the teacher must have recognition in the educational system as an educator. The tendency is to relegate her to the position of a factory hand, or a taker of orders from above.

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HALEY'S WORDS continue to resonate today for a new generation of radical unionists--particularly in schools, hospitals and other public-sector workplaces where neoliberal restructuring has increasingly made it clear that attacks on working condition are attacks on the living conditions of the working class as whole.

This ultimately is the central argument of social justice unionism: To be successful, union struggles must move beyond the narrow constraints of individual workplaces to make links with social movements and fight for our interests as a class.

Social movement unionism," argues Weiner, "requires stretching the union's definition of 'what counts' for members...We shouldn't counterpose union work to other political activity. Instead, we need to find ways for members to bring their activism into the union, encouraging them to use the union as a vehicle for social justice work."

Weiner's point here is important in light of frequent debates about the relationship between school-based or workplace issues and "social justice" issues. In fact, the two are inextricably intertwined: to win changes at the school or shop level in the era of neoliberal austerity requires alliances and solidarity that extend beyond the individual school or workplace.

At the same time, we need to recognize the fact that, ultimately, the greatest power we have to win social justice is through our collective power as workers--in short, our ability to withhold our labor and shut down the system.
That is why Weiner also argues that "a social movement union not only endorses social justice outside of the school, it also exists as a social movement itself."
Weiner prefers the term "social movement unionism" because it emphasizes the fact that this type of unionism is not limited to social justice demands, but instead understands that internal union democracy--the organization of the union as a social movement--is likewise crucial.

Unions that advocate for social justice positions in the abstract while, in practice, suppressing dissent and adopting the organizing model of top-down service unionism are not the solution. Democracy is essential--not only because it is a principle to be defended, but also because without it, genuine rank-and-file movements are impossible.

A union that fails to foster genuine rank-and-file leadership on the shop floor will inevitably fail to mobilize the kind of rank-and-file militancy and organization that is crucial to winning demands and fighting for social justice.

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SOCIALISTS WHO see the self-organized struggle of the working class as the only means by which genuine liberation and democracy can be achieved have often used the term "class struggle unionism" to highlight the means by which demands for social justice can be achieved. From this standpoint, no amount of lobbying, advertising or moralizing will ever achieve social justice--it is only through rank-and-file-led class struggle that such goals can be achieved.

Activists around the country have looked to the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) for inspiration as the union that has come closest to this model of social justice unionism in recent history--despite many ongoing debates in the CTU.

At the time of the 2012 strike, there was a clear sense that the union was fighting for more than just legally negotiable contractual provisions, but instead, for the "schools Chicago's children deserve." At the height of the strike, when people had the greatest sense of their own power, they insisted on the need to fight not only for raises, but also for air conditioners and against what CTU President Karen Lewis called a system of "education apartheid."

The CTU leadership came from the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE), which from its inception built alliances with parents and community leaders in the fight to stop school closings. Karen Lewis summarized the success of CORE in a Jacobin article:

Only one [caucus] talked about the need to include our natural allies in the struggle against educational apartheid and the takeover of Chicago's public schools by the city's ruling class; only one had been organizing alongside those allies for years; and only one had begun laying the groundwork for the strike that would come in September 2012.
That caucus was CORE.

This practice of social justice unionism was the reason why the 2012 CTU strike received such immense support among parents and other members of the community--particularly among African-Americans and Latinos.

The flip side of this lesson is the devastating impact of a failure to understand the necessity of taking up social justice issues and the struggle against racism, sexism and oppression.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the 1968 teachers strike in New York City, which saw the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) pitted against advocates of community control in the African American community of Ocean Hill-Brownsville, a debacle that led to a decades-long term rift between the UFT and the communities in which its members worked.

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THE U.S. labor movement must take up the question of racism. It is no coincidence that the South, the region with the greatest legacy of our country's racist history, also has the lowest unionization rates.

This has been all the more important since the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the resistance in Ferguson--and, more recently, Baltimore, which has posed new questions in the labor movement about the relationship between social justice issues and unionism.

Demanding justice for Mike Brown, for example, is also a class issue and a union issue. Mike Brown was a public high school graduate--from a school so underfunded that the entire graduating class had to share two graduation robes. His mother Lesley McSpadden is a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

The fight against racism is not external to the trade union movement, but is very much at its center. When tragedy strikes one of us, it is felt by all of us," declared UFCW President Joe Hansen. "We stand in solidarity with our sister Lesley McSpadden and join her calls for a fair investigation and justice under the law." A revitalized labor movement should echo Hansen's words and push for them to be translated into action.

The same principles hold true in New York City: In the most segregated school system in the country, racism is a school-based issue. This was made all the more apparent when a small group of teachers wore NYPD T-shirts to show their solidarity with the police, rather than Eric Garner, after his murder at the hands of the NYPD.

While some teacher union members used the argument of "due process" for the police officer who killed Garner to justify their pro-NYPD stance, it's important to be clear that the only people who were denied due process were Eric Garner, a public school parent and an unarmed man, and his wife and children, all of them former and current public school students.

It is worth noting that of 179 fatalities involving the NYPD in 15 years, there have been only three indictments. To invoke due process or union solidarity with the police in this context is to leave the police to remain above the law--while inevitably alienating the Black and Brown communities our schools serve. It is to oppose the movement's slogan that "Black lives matter."

It's also worth noting that "union solidarity" rarely goes both ways when it comes to the NYPD. Indeed, in the event of a teachers' strike, it is the police who will be called in as strikebreakers to enforce the anti-labor Taylor laws that make it illegal for public-sector unions to strike in New York.

No matter what the individual political opinions of officers or their connections to members of other unions, as a force, the police serve the 1 Percent to maintain a system that is racist to the core and inherently at odds with the interest of the working class.

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REAL LABOR solidarity means standing with working people--union and nonunion--who are fighting for social justice. Such solidarity is not simply a question of political calculation, but a recognition of our shared interest in opposing exploitation and oppression.

In this regard, International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 in Oakland led the way on May Day by shutting down the Port of Oakland in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

As educators in North Carolina's Organize 2020 explained in a statement endorsing #BlackLivesMatter:

We believe deeply that the lives of all people matter. As teachers, our lives are constructed around this fact. Shouting loudly that Black Lives Matter does not negate our commitment to ALL of our students. In fact, we believe that challenging all of our students and colleagues to recognize the innate value of Black lives will help them grow, and that the quality of life for all who live in our communities will improve when we value the lives of everyone. Since so many of our Black students struggle to trust that our society values them, we must go out of our way to affirm that their lives, specifically, matter...
Historically, when Black people have fought for a more democratic society, the lives of all people have improved. Each time a barrier to Black people's potential has been erected, our whole society has suffered. Organize 2020 stands with those who proclaim that Black Lives Matter, and we commit our work in the classroom and the community to making this slogan a reality.

Putting the fight for racial justice at the center of the fight for educational equity is particularly important when those who seek to destroy public education drape their attacks in the mantle of civil rights. To expose their hypocrisy, it is essential to take up issues of racial justice.

As Weiner writes:

[The] failure [of teachers unions] to see beyond "bread and butter"--in particular, their unwillingness to put race and racism on the table as legitimate concerns of parents and students--has made them vulnerable to neoliberalism's audacious and effective usurpation of the rhetoric of equal educational opportunity historically associated with progressive movements.

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FOR ANYONE committed to the fight for public education or to reforming our unions so that they can be genuine defenders of workers' rights, the fight against racism and all forms of oppression is central. This is an essential principle of social-justice, social-movement and class-struggle unionism. It is at the heart of the old labor slogan that "An injury to one is an injury to all."

When the labor movement has been at its strongest, it has learned these lessons, showing in practice what genuine solidarity looks like: from the IWW textile workers strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, that involved workers from 25 different nationalities, speaking 45 different languages, to the massive strikes of the 1930s that were able to organize so-called unskilled factory workers and win the support of the unemployed.

Most recently, it was evidenced in the CTU strike of 2012, which has led to a growing network of teacher unionists committed to social justice unionism as a means of reforming their own unions and fighting for educational equity.
If the labor movement hopes to emerge from its current death spiral, it must build on this history, learn its lessons and rebuild the kind of solidarity and alliances that are essential to its survival. Anything else is suicidal.

To achieve this aim, unions need to be rebuilt from the bottom up--or built anew--in every workplace, in every school, on every shop floor. But they must also reach beyond the confines of individual workplaces to unite with social movements in the fight for social justice for all working people. This struggle has never been more urgent.

One by One, States Are Pushing Bans on Sick Leave Legislation

Economic Policy Institute

Economic snapshot | Unions and Labor Standards

One by One, States Are Pushing Bans on Sick Leave Legislation

By Gordon Lafer | November 6, 2013

Nearly 40 million Americans—almost 40 percent of the private-sector workforce—lack the right to even a single day of paid sick leave. These employees commonly go to work sick, or leave sick children home alone, out of fear of dismissal. Even when they are not terminated, the loss of pay takes a dramatic toll—particularly since jobs without sick pay are concentrated among low-wage workers. A typical family of four with two working parents who has no paid sick leave will have wiped out its entire health care budget for the year after just three days of missed work.

As shown in the figure, ten states have adopted laws that ban any city or county within the state from establishing a right to sick leave. In Wisconsin, legislators repealed the city of Milwaukee’s mandatory paid sick leave law, which had been established by a referendum supported by 69 percent of voters in 2008. In each of the ten states, the bills’ sponsors included members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). And in each case, the bills were adopted following vigorous advocacy by corporate lobbies such as the Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Independent Business, and Restaurant Association.

These bans fly in the face of public opinion. 75 percent of Americans—including 59 percent of Republicans—think there should be a law guaranteeing all workers a minimum number of paid sick days. Yet, the nation’s most powerful corporate lobbies remain adamantly opposed, and have been pushing bans on paid sick leave legislation in one state after another. Read EPI’s new report The Legislative Attack on American Wages and Labor Standards, 2011–2012 to learn more about the unprecedented series of corporate-backed legislative initiatives aimed at lowering labor standards, weakening unions, and eroding workplace protections.

— With research assistance from Alyssa Davis 

See more work by Gordon Lafer

 

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For Labor To Succeed, It Has To Be Disruptive

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TPM Cafe: Opinion

For Labor To Succeed, It Has To Be Disruptive

 

AP Photo / Kris Tripplaar 

 

 

Ned Resnikoff – March 19, 2014, 6:01 AM EDT3415

 

 

This is part of TPM Cafe Book Club for Jake Rosenfeld's What Unions No Longer Do. Rosenfeld's latest contribution to this here book club is especially timely. For the past few weeks, the liberal commentariat has been having one of its perennial debates over whether the labor movement is dying and, if so, whether we should mourn its passing. This particular iteration of the old back-and-forth was kicked off by Bloomberg View columnist Evan Soltas, who argued that American unions are as good as dead and that's pretty much okay.

According to Soltas, the primary function of unions is to promote the narrow interests of their dues-paying members and "provide a voice for workers that management can hear." As a side benefit, unions also sometimes improve workplace productivity and reduce turnover, so everybody wins. It would be a shame if workers lost their voice and productivity took a hit, says Soltas, but there are technocratic fixes to those problems (such as better monetary policy) which can achieve a positive result for all without recourse to fundamentally selfish labor cartels.

Needless to say -- because so many others have already said it in the intervening weeks -- this line of thinking relies on a historically suspect understanding of how unions operate. The movement is not a monolith, and some unions will always pursue their own self-interest at the expense of all else, but even a cursory glimpse at American history should belies the idea that myopic acquisitiveness is somehow an intrinsic feature of organized labor. In fact, as Rosenfeld notes, so-called "cartels" of self-interested workers have always played an irreplaceable role in the struggle to lift standards for the entire working class.

That's why there's no top-down, technocratic fix to the hegemony of the boss: The technocratic class is unlikely to do anything of note for the working poor's living standards unless they're forced to. The power of organized labor rests not just in its ability to bargain with individual managers, but in its capacity for disruption on a massive scale. This country's economy has become more egalitarian and more progressive when the working class has used that power to extract concessions from the elite.

A classic example of massive disruption put to good use would be the General Motors Sit-Down Strike of the mid-to-late 1930s. By attacking the most powerful car manufacturer in the United States, the United Automobile Workers (UAW) sought to transform the whole industry. Their victory was a pivotal moment in the fight to better living standards throughout American manufacturing, and therefore the working class as a whole, but it didn't come easy: In order to get there, strikers had to occupy a GM plant and hold it against violent attacks from the local police department. When GM finally agreed to bargain with UAW, it was a victory for raw labor power first and foremost.

Not all confrontations between the rich and poor need be that dramatic, but the fact remains that power respects only power. The only way to improve the fortunes of the working class is to demonstrate that it has sufficient capacity to undermine any economic status quo in which it doesn't get a fair share.
Note that this doesn't mean organized labor exists to provide a "countervailing force" to capital, which is how Mother Jones' Kevin Drum characterized its mission in his response to Evan Soltas. There can be no enduring balance or harmony between workers and the boss; history never makes accommodations for that sort of lasting stability, and the only reason we pine for it now is because the post-World War II status quo briefly made the dream of a balance between class interests seem at least semi-plausible. We don't have the luxury of such illusions now. So long as there is class, there will be class struggle.

The question, then, is what shape that struggle will assume in the future. Soltas and Drum may very well be right in at least one regard: The modern American union is a historically idiosyncratic phenomenon, shaped by legal institutions which emerged only in the mid-20th century. That form of organized labor was never going to last forever, but that doesn't mean labor will stop organizing once it's gone. Unions were around long before the passage of the National Labor Relations Act, and they'll be around long after the post-NLRA labor system has crumbled. What they'll look like then is anyone's guess.

Ned Resnikoff is a reporter at msnbc.com, covering issues of class, labor, inequality and climate change.

Want To Win The War On Poverty? Rebuild The Labor Movement

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TPM Cafe: Opinion

Want To Win The War On Poverty? Rebuild The Labor Movement

 

AP Photo / Frank Franklin II 

 

 

Jake Rosenfeld – March 19, 2014, 6:00 AM EDT3115

 

 

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.

Advocates for Workers Raise the Ire of Business

Business Day

Advocates for Workers Raise the Ire of Business

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE 

JAN. 16, 2014

As America’s labor unions have lost members and clout, new types of worker advocacy groups have sprouted nationwide, and they have started to get on businesses’ nerves — protesting low wages at Capital Grille restaurants, for instance, and demonstrating outside Austin City Hall in Texas against giving Apple tax breaks.

After ignoring these groups for years, business groups and powerful lobbyists, heavily backed by the restaurant industry, are mounting an aggressive campaign against them, maintaining that they are fronts for organized labor.

Business officials say these groups often demonize companies unfairly and inaccurately, while the groups question why corporations have attacked such fledgling organizations.

The United States Chamber of Commerce issued a detailed report in November criticizing what it calls “progressive activist foundations” that donate millions of dollars to these groups, which are often called worker centers. The business-backed Worker Center Watch has asked Florida’s attorney general to investigate the finances of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. That group sponsored a protest last March in which more than 100 workers marched 200 miles to the headquarters of Publix supermarkets to urge it to pay more for tomatoes so farmworkers could be paid more.

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Richard Berman has run ads attacking the Restaurant Opportunities Center, one of the nation’s largest worker centers. Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times

A prominent Washington lobbyist, Richard Berman, has run full-page ads attacking the Restaurant Opportunities Center, accusing it of intimidating opponents. He has even set up a separate website, ROCexposed.com, to attack the group.

The Restaurant Opportunities Center is one of the nation’s largest worker centers, sponsoring repeated protests inside Capital Grille restaurants and winning sizable settlements from famous chefs. The group even infiltrated the National Restaurant Association’s lobbying day on Capitol Hill, learning about the association’s goals and strategies.

Business groups argue that worker centers should face the same strictures as labor unions under federal law, including detailed financial disclosure, regular election of leaders and bans on certain types of picketing. Business groups say worker centers act like unions by targeting specific employers and pushing them to improve wages.

Regarding the Restaurant Opportunities Center, Scott DeFife, an executive vice president at the National Restaurant Association, said: “They’re trying to have it both ways. They’re a union and not a union. They’re organizing workers but not organizing workers. They have a history of tactics unions couldn’t get away with.”

Business groups say they have grown far more concerned about these new organizations since Richard L. Trumka, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s president, announced last March that organized labor would work closely with these groups, many of which were formed to help immigrant workers whom unions had long overlooked. “For the employer community, it’s a question of what does this grow into,” said Glenn Spencer, executive director of the Chamber’s Workforce Freedom Initiative, which commissioned the study on foundation funding. “Judging from Trumka’s remarks, organized labor sees a lot of potential in this model.”

According to that study, millions of dollars have flowed to worker centers from 21 foundations. From 2009 to 2012, it found, the Marguerite Casey Foundation gave $300,000 to the Southwest Workers Union and $300,000 to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The Ford Foundation gave $717,000 to the National Domestic Workers Alliance, $1.15 million to the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice and $2.4 million to the Restaurant Opportunities Center.

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An ad attacking the Restaurant Opportunities Center accused it of intimidating opponents.

Mr. Berman, who receives millions of dollars from business to fight unions and oppose a higher minimum wage, acknowledges that he is using a hammer to prevent these groups from growing far more powerful and troublesome.

“There’s quite a range of activity among worker centers,” said Mr. Berman, whose lobbying firm has spawned numerous spinoff nonprofits, including the Center for Union Facts. “They have yet to reach the point of being a long-term problem. We’re trying to stay ahead of the curve.”

Saru Jayaraman, a co-founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Center, has repeatedly strategized to get under the industry’s skin. Her group does an annual dining guide, giving a thumbs down to restaurants it says treats employees poorly by, for instance, avoiding paid sick days.

The group enraged one of New York’s top chefs, Daniel Boulud, by demonstrating outside his Daniel restaurant with a 12-foot-tall inflatable cockroach, asserting that the restaurant’s Hispanic and Bangladeshi employees faced discrimination when they applied to become waiters. Her group reached a confidential settlement with Mr. Boulud. After a similar protest against Mario Batali’s Del Posto restaurant in Manhattan, he reached a settlement that called for paying $1.15 million over misappropriated tips and unpaid overtime and included new policies on promotions and paid sick days.

Because of its in-your-face tactics and numerous successes, the restaurant group has faced many attacks from business.

“It’s flattering,” Ms. Jayaraman said. “The fact that they’re attacking us is a sign that they feel threatened. That’s what happens when you challenge the industry to do the right thing.”

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Saru Jayaraman, a co-founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Center, has repeatedly strategized to get under the industry’s skin. Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Greg Asbed, co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, noted that numerous companies had signed onto his group’s far-reaching “Fair Food Program” to improve pay and working conditions. The group announced on Thursday that Walmart had joined the program, which calls for paying a penny more per pound for Florida tomatoes. But Mr. Asbed criticized some attacks leveled by business as “McCarthy-era tactics.” “Attacking workers who are fighting poverty wages, sexual harassment and other problems in the food industry is doing a disservice to those companies that are working to prepare the industry for the challenges of the 21st century,” he said.

The chamber questions not just the millions that foundations are giving worker centers but also the image that they run on a shoestring budget.

But worker center leaders say they need foundation funding to get off the ground and keep operating. Some foundations viewed the chamber’s report as a brushback pitch intended to discourage them from giving.

In a statement, the Ford Foundation said: “Growing numbers of workers are finding themselves in low-wage jobs with limited resources to support a family and move up the economic ladder. The foundation’s support for worker centers is one part of our effort to help more hard-working people climb out of poverty and achieve economic security.”

Industry officials say that when the Restaurant Opportunities Center negotiated with Mr. Batali about promotions and other policies after suing him, those negotiations resembled collective bargaining. But in 2006, the general counsel’s office of the National Labor Relations Board concluded that ROC was not a labor organization under federal law, finding that it was not engaged in a pattern of dealing with specific employers.

Ms. Jayaraman said her group was not bargaining, but instead seeking injunctive relief to settle a lawsuit. Mr. Berman, the lobbyist whom the CBS program “60 Minutes” once called “Dr. Evil,” has mounted a multipronged offensive against worker centers. He is hitting not just ROC and the Immokalee coalition, but also the recent fast-food strikes and Black Friday protests at Walmart, which have strong union backing. “They put on a costume and call themselves something other than a union,” Mr. Berman said. “They’re doing Potemkin-village unionization.” He declined to disclose his sources of funding.

Janice R. Fine, a labor relations professor at Rutgers, said one should distinguish between efforts like the Walmart protests, which were largely organized by a labor union, and worker centers, which are generally independent of unions.

“Business groups have this notion that unions have created worker centers as front groups, that they are creatures of these big institutions,” Professor Fine said. “The idea that they are sort of offspring of organized labor is just wrong. They were often set up because of a vacuum left by the labor movement. There was often downright hostility between them.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 17, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Advocates for Workers Raise the Ire of Business. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe