A history lesson on saving labor: Look to how unions rebounded in the 1920s for insight on how they can make progress today
Many obituaries have been written for labor. The anti-union Janus vs. AFSCME Supreme Court decision is already being followed by a dark money campaign to convince workers to quit their unions. In the private sector, employers evade the reach of workplace-based union contracts by off-shoring, sub-contracting and freelancing jobs. Despite occasional bright spots like Missouri voters’ rejection of right-to-work, this is labor’s lowest point in a century. The parallels between today and the 1920s are striking. Like then, unions faced existential threats and structural challenges with no obvious solutions. Yet that nadir was quickly followed by the wave of sit-down strikes, the passage of laws protecting workers’ rights to organize and an unprecedented half-century of shared prosperity. This begs the question: what were union activists and allies doing in the 1920’s that set them up for such a dramatic reversal of fortune? And is there similar under-the-radar work we should […]