Year: 2017

A Better Way to Protect Workers

[This op-ed was co-authored with Moshe Z. Marvit.] Maybe we should thank Joe Ricketts for closing his Gothamist and DNAinfo websites in petty retaliation for the writers’ vote for a union. Or maybe the NBC News executives who turned a blind eye to Matt Lauer’s harassment of female colleagues until the #MeToo movement empowered enough of them to make their complaints too official to ignore. Or the federal contractor that fired a bicycle-riding employee who flipped off the president’s motorcade, a gesture captured in a photo that went viral. These bosses revealed that a workers’ rights system that is applied unequally to only some workplaces and only some employees is no way to ensure that everyone’s rights are respected. Workers may have the right to do their jobs free from sexual harassment and assault, but it has become increasingly clear that employers violate those rights by exploiting the power disparity […]

The Biggest Labor Stories of 2017: A Look Back in Horror and Hope

The first year of any Republican presidential administration is sure to bring new attacks on unions and their allies. This year has seen plenty of anti-labor offensives, as well as inspiring fights and encouraging signs for the future. Let’s start with the most over-blown “fake news” labor story of 2017: the asinine notion that Donald Trump has a cunning plan to cleave white working-class voters away from the Democratic party by protecting American jobs and giving unions a fair shake. From the coalmines of West Virginia to the Carrier plant of Indiana, Trump’s claims of saving jobs have been spectacles of hucksterism that resulted in fewer good jobs. His invitation of building-trades leaders to the White House in his first week on the job—once seen as a canny exploitation of union leaders’ simmering resentment towards Democratic party indifference—is now understood as the gesture of a clueless buffoon struggling vainly to […]

How Bosses Use “Open Shop” Campaigns to Crush Unions

U.S. employers have never been particularly accepting of unions. Yes, there were a few decades after World War II when most employers engaged in a largely stable pattern of collective bargaining that recognized unions as junior partners in industry. Wage increases kept pace with gains in productivity, and union endorsements were courted by both parties. But, as heavily as that postwar labor relations compact features in the rosy rhetoric of union boosters who decry global capitalism and the modern GOP, the truth is that corporations have been periodically going to war against their workers far more often they’ve occasionally conceded their basic humanity. Two new books shed light on the sustained union-busting campaigns that bookended that all-too brief period of labor-management détente. One focuses on the innocuously named “open shop” drive, which was a vicious nationwide union-busting campaign that began at the dawn of the 20th century and lasted well […]

The Untold Story of How Immigrants Turned the Wobblies into a Global Force

Declaring, “an injury to one is an injury to all,” the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) upended and forever changed the labor movement a little over a century ago. The Wobblies’ commitment to organizing workers on an industry-wide basis, their cynicism about legislative action and electoral politics, their aversion to signed contracts and their preference for sudden strikes remain fascinating subjects for labor studies. Their multiculturalism, anti-racism and pioneering bohemian approach to God, country and sex remain a rich vein to be mined for cultural studies. Although there is no shortage of books about the history of the IWW, they mostly tell the story of a North American union and revolutionary movement. But naming themselves the Industrial Workers of the World was no mere rhetorical flourish. The globalism implied in their name is fleshed out in a new book, Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW, […]

Fletcher & Richman Discuss What the Revival of Socialism in America Means for the Labor Movement

Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Shaun Richman are contributing writers to In These Times, as well as veterans of the labor and socialist movements. Both have worked for several labor unions, with Fletcher having served as a senior staffer in the national AFL-CIO and Richman as a former organizing director for the American Federation of Teachers. Both came of age during different eras of left politics. In this conversation, the two writers and organizers examine what a revived socialist movement could mean for unions—and the broader push for workers’ rights and dignity. Shaun Richman: We’re in a political moment when tens of thousands of Americans are declaring themselves to be socialists and joining and paying dues to socialist organizations. It’s not just Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), although DSA is growing the largest and the fastest. The entire alphabet soup of the Left, basically any socialist group that isn’t a weirdo […]

SCOTUS Is on the Verge of Decimating Public-Sector Unions—But Workers Can Still Fight Back

On Thursday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Janus vs. AFSCME, the case that will likely turn the entire public sector labor movement into a “right-to-work” zone. Like a lazy Hollywood remake, the case has all the big money behind it that last year’s Friedrichs v. CTA did, with none of the creativity. In Friedrichs, the plaintiffs argued that interactions between public sector unions and government employers are inherently political. Therefore, the argument went, mandatory agency fees to reimburse the union for the expenses of representation and bargaining were forced political speech, violating employees’ purported First Amendment right to not pay dues. The case ended in a 4-4 deadlock in March 2016, following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, who had appeared poised to vote against the unions’ interests. Much like Friedrichs, the Janus case has rocketed through the federal courts. The National Right to Work Foundation, which represents the […]

The Right Wing Has a Vast, Secret Plot to Destroy Unions for Good. Here’s How to Fight Back.

The vast right-wing network of Koch brother-funded “think tanks” is now plotting to finish off the public sector labor movement once and for all. In a series of fundraising documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy of Madison, Wis., and published in the Guardian, the CEO of a cartel of 66 well-funded arch-conservative state capitol lobbying outfits promises funders a “once-in-a-lifetime chance to reverse the failed policies of the American left.” Tracie Sharp, the leader of the States Policy Network (SPN), goes on to explain that the pathway to permanent right-wing victory is to “defund and defang” unions that rely on the legal protections of state labor law. Though less well-known, the SPN is something of a sister organization to the American Legislative and Exchange Council (ALEC), which writes cookie cutter “model legislation” for right-wing state legislators. SPN affiliates, like Michigan’s Mackinac Center and Ohio’s Buckeye Institute, promote […]

A New Bill of Rights for Workers: 10 Demands the Labor Movement Can Fight for and Win

ON A CLOUDY AFTERNOON IN APRIL 2006, ROGER TOUSSAINT LED A PROCESSION OF UNION WORKERS ACROSS THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. Toussaint, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100 and an immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago, was on his way to surrender himself to the authorities to serve a 10-day jail sentence. His crime? He led the largely Black and Latino union membership in a 60-hour strike the previous winter, shutting down the city’s subway and bus system in violation of a judge’s injunction and New York’s 1967 Taylor Law, which bans public-sector strikes. The court also slapped the union with a $2.5 million fine and suspended its ability to collect dues for a year. Individual strikers were fined two days’ pay for each day on strike. Punishments this draconian are rare outside the world of labor law. Toussaint saw more jail time than any of the top bank executives responsible for […]

The Right to Organize at Work Deserves Constitutional Protection

On Labor Day, alongside stories about parades and final trips to the beach, we can expect to read the usual depressing statistics about the decline of labor unions in the United States. The problem with this coverage isn’t the facts, which are undeniable — it’s the tone of inevitability. Today, less than 11 percent of workers, including just 7 percent in the private sector, are members of a union — a dramatic drop from the 1950s, when more than one-third of the workforce was unionized. The recent loss by the United Auto Workers at a Mississippi Nissan factory, where workers voted by a three-to-one ratio against union representation, is just the latest in a long string of defeats for the labor movement. And this decline has a real effect on families’ financial security: Researchers have shown that nearly half of the decline in middle-class incomes is due to the shrinking […]

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