Jake May/MLive.com/The Flint Journal via AP
United Auto Workers members strike against General Motors last September in Flint, Michigan. Polling reveals that 64 percent of Americans approve of unions, but only 6.2 percent of private-sector workers are enrolled in one.
If you’re a corporate titan or Wall Street giant, the U.S. economy is doing very well; the stock market is at record highs and is showing outsized growth already this year. At the same time, though, the gap between the rich and the poor is wider than ever, and working people continue to struggle to find ways to claim their own share of all this prosperity.
To be sure, overall economic growth is positive, unemployment is stable, and some sectors have begun to add jobs again. But the persistent inequality between the top earners and the rest of us afflicts workers and their families with instability, anxiety, and despair, and exacerbates societal frustration, anger, and unrest. The traditional American modes of upward mobility—education, home-buying, and community development—have either stalled out or no longer deliver like they used to.
Labor unions have long served as a check on this imbalance. From the job actions that helped shape Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to the latest wave of labor walkouts across the automotive, hotel, food service, health care, and education sectors, unions have served as America’s leading mechanism to mitigate inequality by offering working people a pathway to a better life through a voice at work and a voice in our democracy. More than any other institution, labor has also been the countervailing force to corporate power.
Most Americans understand and appreciate the role that labor unions play; in fact, we’re more popular today than we’ve been in nearly 50 years. But union membership has been decimated over the last few decades, destroyed by laws designed to make it harder for workers to organize and negotiate contracts, and stifled by corporate-backed interests at the National Labor Relations Board and the Supreme Court. The most recent annual Gallup poll shows unions’ approval rating at 64 percent, while last month’s government tally of union membership shows the share of private-sector workers enrolled in unions to be a meager 6.2 percent—less than 10 percent of the share of Americans who approve of unions. That’s why now, more than ever, we need a new set of labor laws to help change the balance of the economy in this country so it’s fairer for the people who do its work.
Good labor laws set a standard for how working people should be treated in an economy where there are countless laws already on the books to protect the rich and powerful.
Good labor laws do more than just right the wrongs waged against unions and their members. Good labor laws help ensure people are safe at work and have a shot at decent wages, health care, and a secure retirement. Good labor laws lift up every working person, even those not in a union, because when workers in unionized companies win better wages and working conditions than their peers in non-union companies, those peers may seek to unionize, too—and pressure employers to better their lot. Good labor laws set a standard for how working people should be treated in an economy where there are countless laws already on the books to protect the rich and powerful.
The educator walkouts of the last two years—from West Virginia, where teachers had no actual right to strike, to Los Angeles and Chicago—show just how critical labor law is in protecting the ability of teachers, classroom assistants, school counselors, and other staff to come together to fight not just for themselves but for what their students and communities need. They won improvements for public schools that went well beyond what their state or city governments had passed (or failed to pass) in budgets or through legislation—things they needed a contract to enforce, like full-time nurses in every school and class size limits at certain grade levels.
During last year’s government shutdown, thousands of flight attendants threatened to walk off the job over concerns about the nation’s aviation security. This activism helped create the pressure that ended the 35-day shutdown. We know that such activism helps change the narrative, and with it, the public’s hearts and minds, and through that, public policy, and through new policy, people’s lives. One strike alone may not transform the American workforce, but protecting the ability of workers to use their voice and hold their employers accountable is a critical check and balance in our economy.
That’s why the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, introduced by Representative Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), and being considered on the House floor this week, is so important. It will remove barriers for workers, enabling them to organize, form unions, negotiate fair contracts, hold employers accountable for violating workers’ rights, and stand in solidarity with one another through strikes and boycotts when necessary.
Notably, the PRO Act would not directly help many of the members we represent. Public-sector workers, most educators, and many health care professionals, as well as transportation workers, are covered by different laws and require different solutions.
But solidarity means fighting for everyone—not just our own members. With real solidarity, we’ll keep working people engaged in the fight to lift everyone up, and restore some balance to an economy and a nation whose workers need a much fairer deal.
