Welcome to America's Newest Labor Movement

First published by Workforce Monitor at https://wfmonitor.com/2022/09/21/labormovement/

Today’s labor movement has qualities that harken back to the 1940s and 1980s. It’s experiencing a solidarity surge that can alter the life trajectories of millions of workers, including non-degreed, low-income, disadvantaged individuals. This article addresses some of its history and current state of affairs, and there are a few spots where?I insert my own opinion.

Introduction

The mainstream media typically portrays former President Ronald Reagan as a heroic figure we have never seen the likes of since his two terms in the White House, from 1981 to 1989. But, if you take under consideration what Reagan did to the American labor movement, his heroism, in my opinion, is ill conceived and dwindles dramatically.

At the same time, I don’t want to sound overly political. I do believe there are good actors and actions on both sides of the isle. Reagan’s historic relationship with the late Mikhail Gorbachev, for instance, and his “tear down this wall” messaging, were certainly good for humanity.?

However, we seem to have forgotten that in 1981 the Reagan administration destroyed the working lives of about 12,000 striking air-traffic controllers by swiftly firing them. Many of these workers were bright Vietnam veterans who had picked up air-traffic-control skills during the war. This turn of affairs initiated a period of time that undermined the power of workers and labor movements that is still being felt today.

Back then, I recall what the Reagan administration’s firing did to a personal friend with a young family who happened to be one of those striking Air Force Vietnam veteran air-traffic controllers. He was sadly forced to transition from a decent-paying, family-sustaining job to a low-paying, local-delivery truck-driving job that ultimately changed his entire life.

Unfortunately, the horrendous Reaganesque act that became a death knell of an American labor movement that once brought great prosperity to our country immediately following World War II has never recovered. However, there’s some hope, and it’s coming from an increasingly wider variety of workers across the country who are fed up with being mistreated by an overly wealthy, self-indulgent business class of employers. And yes, the 21st?century labor movement has a long ways to go, and it’s still being bullied by the likes of billionaires such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Starbuck’s Howard Schultz, along with, IMO, a formidable anti-union corporate- and political-based disinformation campaign.

A New Spirit Arising

Recent headlines show a resurgent labor market movement, with workers organizing in growing numbers.?A recent?Gallup poll ?confirmed that 71% of Americans approve of unions.?According to Gallup Senior Research Consultant?Megan Brenan ?in a September 2021?article ?headlined?Approval of Labor Unions at Highest Point Since 1965,?90 percent of Democrats approve of unions compared to 47 percent of Republicans and 66% of independents.?Additionally, “approval is relatively high among young adults aged 18-34 (77%) and those with annual household incomes under $40,000 (72%).”?

In an April 28, 2022?New York Times?piece ?headlined?The Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class, reporter?Noam Scheiber ?noted that as more college-educated get hired in frontline jobs they become instrumental union organizers.?“Over the past decade and a half, many young, college-educated workers have faced a disturbing reality: that it was harder for them to reach the middle class than for previous generations,”?Scheiber wrote. “The change has had profound effects — driving shifts in the country’s politics and mobilizing employees to demand fairer treatment at work. It may also be giving the labor movement its biggest lift in decades.”

“One of the factors in companies like Amazon and Starbucks is that you have many young people working for them, and many are college graduates,” said?Dan Marschall , research professor at George Washington University and former executive director of the AFL-CIO Working for America?Institute . “They have student-loan debt. They are not currently working in careers they imagined. They want a greater say in working conditions, and they are trying to convince their employers to provide greater protection for their health and safety.”

In a May 10, 2022?Vox?article ?headlined?Why unions are growing and shrinking at the same time,?Rani Molla ?reported that?“people are successfully unionizing across the economy, from?retail ?to?tech , and their wins are leading to even more union interest. Petitions for union representation in the first half of 2022 are?up nearly 60 percent? from last year.”

Historic Measures Show Disturbing Numbers

Despite all the favorable propensities for union organizing, “by one measure, unionization is less common now than at nearly any point in over 100 years,” wrote WorkRise Research Assistant?Andrew Boardman .??WorkRise ?is an Urban Institute-hosted national platform that identifies, tests, and shares “bold ideas for transforming the labor market.”

Boardman also noted that “from 2020 to 2021, the unionized workforce shrank by 241,000 – even as the?economy-wide employment level ?grew more than 6 million, according to?data released in January ?by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.” As the number of unionized workers reached more than 14 million, “close to a historic low.?Not?since 1950 ?(PDF) have there been fewer union members in the U.S. workforce.”

Nonetheless, as noted previously, support for labor unions is on the rise. Boardman added that Pew Research data shows?“Americans increasingly say the decline in union membership is?bad for?both workers and the country.”? ??Additionally, “the appeal of collective organizing is also growing among workers themselves.?Nearly half of nonunionized workers would vote to join a union if given the opportunity to do so,?according to the findings of a?nationally representative 2017 survey? by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”?

Additional Characterizations of the Resurgence

According to DOL Office of Labor-Management Standards Director?Jeffrey Freund , calling the current labor movement a?resurgence “can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people, but there is clearly a significant interest.” Whether that ultimately translates into favorable votes to organize unions “remains to be seen. But I don’t think anybody can realistically say there has?not?been a resurgence in interest.”

“When people say unions are in decline, they are basically repeating a narrative that has been developed by corporations in order to serve their own interests,” Marschall added.?“Unions are more influential than people ordinarily acknowledge, and you can tell that they are more influential because of the way employers still oppose them in extreme and?radical ways .”?

And then, of course, there’s the American low-wage worker’s historically great friend?Robert Reich ?who recently tweeted that?“Amazon, Starbucks, and other corporations wouldn’t be deploying massive union-busting campaigns if they weren’t terrified of union power.”?The Rhodes Scholar and former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor’s twitter feed is loaded with many similar sentiments, including: “So wait, Howard Schultz is worth $4 billion and can afford a $145 million, 254-foot super yacht with a helicopter pad, but Starbucks can’t afford to give workers a living wage and good benefits?” Or, “When I graduated college in 1968, the typical corporate CEO got 21 times the pay of the average worker. When I became labor secretary in 1993, the ratio was 61-to-1. Today, the ratio is 351-to-1. No wonder workers across America are fed up and unionizing.”

Solidification Efforts

In short, the growth of pro-union activities is a wide spread, burgeoning movement not only solidifying workers at Starbucks and Amazon locations, but also by employees at the Democratic Congressional Campaign?Committee ,?cannabis workers ,?Chipolte ,?Apple ?retail employees, and?minor league baseball ?– the list keeps growing within pockets of numerous additional industries.

At the center of this 21st?century labor movement “are widespread labor shortages that have caused deteriorating working conditions,”?wrote ?Washington Post Economist Correspondent?Abha Bhattarai .??“Staffing shortfalls in key industries, such as health care, hospitality and education, have put unprecedented pressure on millions of workers,?igniting a wave of labor disputes as well as new efforts to organize nationwide.”

The recently averted railway strike is another case in point, and indeed one that can have an enormous economic impact on an already struggling economy.

On September 17, 2022, Washington Post Labor Reporter?Lauren Kaori Gurley ?explained ?that “railroad attendance policies were at the heart of the dramatic showdown.” In the article’s opening paragraphs, she provided a heartbreaking story as an example of the implications of attendance polices on railway employees. When Aaron Hiles, a locomotive engineer, told his wife he wasn’t feeling quite right and accordingly made a doctor’s appointment, his employer BNSF still called him into work, resulting in a scheduling conflict. Hiles knew not showing up would invite a penalty, so he delayed his doctor’s appointment and went into work. The consequences of that delay turned up when he “suffered a heart attack and died in an engine room on a BNSF freight train somewhere between Kansas City, Mo., and Fort Madison, Iowa — a tragedy that helped fuel a labor standoff last week that nearly shut down the U.S. economy.”

The Biden administration has temporarily averted a full-blown railway strike, and fortunately IMO, did not even consider following the aforenoted Reaganesque playbook, although Senate Republicans were positioning to force an agreement that ultimately would not address the key issue of attendance policies, according to?Politico ?and?Insider .?

It also needs to be mentioned that Biden did not take a path similar to his Democratic presidential predecessors. Essentially, both Obama and Clinton were known to have only given lip service to union organizers during their terms. As noted in a February 2021 Axios?article ?by Johnathan Swan,?in which he interviewed the late AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka, “former Presidents Clinton and Obama didn’t understand unions’ importance — and were disappointments to organized labor because of it.”

Biden, currently and long recognized as a strong union supporter, took a very solid pro-worker approach, but the final outcome of the railway negotiations is very much up in the air. The September 17 Post article indicated that railway workers are still feeling restless and discontented, as “few details have been made available about the agreement, which leaves the points-based attendance policy in place for other types of emergencies. And some say they doubt the deal will address their fundamental concerns about quality of life amid painful labor shortages and the continued spread of covid-19.”

The early rise of a 21st?century labor movement, and seemingly everything else that is going on in politics, the economy, and the upcoming mid-term elections, shows we are living in a wait-and-see moment in time that certainly has enormous implications for our future.

Related Articles:

U.S. Workers’?Organizing Efforts ?and Collective Actions: A Review of the Current Landscape

As Apprenticeships Take Off,?Unions ?are in the Driver’s Seat?