Is A Great Labor Offensive Underway?
April 10th, 2024
Earlier this year, UAW president Shawn Fain gave Joe Biden the union’s endorsement after a substantial delay, sending a clear message to the campaign that labor was not to be taken for granted. “This choice is clear: Joe Biden bet on the American worker while Donald Trump blamed the American worker,” Fain said at the Biden endorsement rally.
Organized labor plays an outsized role in elections, but its power in the workplace has been shrinking for decades. At the end of 2022, union membership fell to 10.1% of the workforce, about half of what it was in 1980. Researchers are trying to figure out the “union paradox” of high popularity but low participation. Speaking to friends who have organized workplaces in the past, I think the researchers underestimate the pressure Management exerts on workers.
CIO campaign posters promoting FDR
Despite the low participation rate, there are some rays of hope suggesting that organized labor is getting its claws back. Over 200,000 new workers joined a union for the first time in 2022 and there was a 50% increase of representation petitions compared to 2021. Workers won over 70% of those elections. At the end of 2023, unionized workers made up 11.2% of the workforce, a point higher than the year prior.
Less than a month into 2024, over 10,000 workers signed union cards for the UAW at more than a dozen non-union automaking companies, intending to exercise their right to form a union. The UAW has two union elections in the hopper, one in West Virginia and the other in Alabama.
National Nurses United has similarly won some major victories of late. In November 2023, NNU notched its fourth victory over Ascension in thirteen months. More importantly, this was the first time registered nurses (RNs) have successfully organized a hospital in the city of Baltimore proper. This came shortly after a big win in Davis, CA, over a Sutter hospital. The union kicked off this year by winning a secret ballot election in Austin, TX, with 96% of workers supporting unionization.
National Nurses United logo. Credit: NNU
This has made some compare labor’s current efforts to Operation Dixie, the Congress of Industrial Organizations’ (CIO) effort to unionize the South after World War II. While it failed in its goal to organize on a grand scale, it remains an aspiration to work toward for labor organizers and their allies. It certainly wasn’t for lack of effort: CIO organizers went toe-to-toe against Taft-Hartley, racism, the Red Scare, and corrupt politicians of all stripes.
There is hope, I think, for the South to be a different battleground today than years prior. Outside of the two Alabama drives, the maintenance workers at Duke Raleigh Hospital are joining the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 465. This came on the heels of Duke’s doctoral students unionizing with the Southern Region Workers United in August 2023. Wells Fargo Bank suffered a setback in Florida, with its second unionized branch joining the Wells Fargo Workers United, which is associated with Communications Workers of America.
Despite the regional history, Southern workers are showing corporate bosses and their politicians that the South is no longer safe. They are taking their destiny into their own hands and democratizing the workplace.
United Autoworkers logo. Credit: UAW
While we should be excited about these wins and ongoing efforts in museums, Starbucks negotiations, college athletics, and booksellers, Management is not going down without a fight.
Amazon, in particular, stands accused of many labor law violations, dirty tricks, and captive audience propaganda hearings. These allegations will be heard later this year. But that’s not enough for them. Amazon is teaming up with SpaceX, Trader Joe’s, and Starbucks in an effort to get the Supreme Court to declare the NLRB unconstitutional. I’m sure this is completely unrelated to these companies racking up hundreds upon hundreds of labor law violations.
The NLRB is underfunded, outgunned, and in the fight for not just its life, but the fight for all workers, union or not. The National Labor Relations Board is the watchdog that does the best it can to protect workers from Management’s exploitation. The NLRB General Counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, was defiant in a recent webinar, declaring “There is no way, despite our very limited resources and board agents being overwhelmed with quite a number of cases … that we’re going to succumb to the pressures imposed in addressing these challenges and in defending the constitutionality of our agency structure.”
Jennifer Abruzzo. Photo credit: Washington Post
For decades, the unholy alliance of Management, conservatives, and corporate liberals have done their best to suppress the power and influence of organized labor. They’ve largely been successful. Freedom doesn’t simply mean freedom from oppression, being unjustly jailed, or the like-it means the right to a fair wage, economic security, and a just workplace.
Solidarity to all and with all union workers everywhere.
UAW President Shawn Fain on the picket line with UAW members. Photo credit: WSJ