The Meaning of the Verdict + How Can Unions Grow?
Immigration Matters book launch + Viral Video about Class Struggle + Ai Weiwei’s beloved cats
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Like much of the rest of the country, we were transfixed by the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. While the verdict represents a partial measure of accountability for the Floyd family, it’s a telling indictment of our broken and racist justice and policing systems that we all held our breath about the jury’s decision in a case where the murder was videotaped, took place in front of many live witnesses, and inspired millions of people to take to the streets. We agree with Megan Ming Francis, who tweeted
this verdict means that it took the largest racial justice protests in history to shift public opinion & push the system to make an exception. . . . We are conditioned to believe the options on the table are the only options available for justice. But generations of freedom fighters have taught us that is not true. If we want to stop hanging our hopes for justice on a flawed racist system we need to collectively imagine & build a new world. The last few weeks of stomach churning have underscored this urgency.
We’ll return to this topic in a subsequent issue of The Platypus, but in the meantime, a few of the other short commentaries that resonated include ones by Phil Atiba Goff, Alan Jenkins, and Elie Mystal. We also want to lift a couple of must-read, shorter books that examine the outer and inner dimensions of the unfolding racial justice reckoning, including Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s brilliant From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation and Resma Menakem’s mesmerizing My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Path to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. And Amy Lerman and Vesla Weaver’s classic Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control demonstrates just how our pervasive carceral state has far-reaching consequences for the relationship of people to the state — and undermines democracy itself. (There’s also this excellent short article by Vesla Weaver and Gwen Prouse in The Washington Post based on interviews with 1500 people living in overly policed communities).
This week’s issue continues on the theme of plutocracy and its discontents and examines the future of the labor movement. Like many of you, we avidly followed the courageous efforts of Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, to form a union. Despite the fact that two-thirds of Americans support unions, less than 11% belong to a union (even less in the private sector). This gap is due in large part to a rigged set of rules and relentless, brutal, and often illegal campaigns by employers to block union drives (all of this played out in the Bessemer case). There is no path to redress massive economic inequality in the country without more worker power. The famous Economic Policy Institute chart below tells the story.
One of the most hotly debated questions of our time is: What is the path to revitalizing the labor movement? Community, labor, and social movement organizers are close siblings — we argue occasionally, but we’re family and, at least at our best, we understand our interdependence and linked fate. So those of us who are not union organizers also have a stake in rebuilding the labor movement, and we have a responsibility to follow and contribute to the strategic dialogue. The unfolding debate about the Amazon workers’ loss seems to The Platypus to illustrate many of the main theories of the case, including views that
Federal labor law reform, including measures like the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, is necessary to unlock union growth because the current system is so rigged in favor of bosses. The PRO Act is sponsored by 47 Democratic Senators, the three exceptions being Sen. Mark Warner (VA) and the two Democratic Senators from Arizona, Mark Kelly, and Krysten Sinema. (The Platypus’s venomous hind spike is twitching.) The legislation would eliminate states’ ability to impose “right to work for less” laws, address misclassification of workers as independent contractors or supervisors, limit employer intimidation of workers through “captive audience meetings” and more. The labor law reform strategy ties the future of workers to political and legislative engagement. The tactical questions about the path in the short term are whether it’s possible to get all Democratic Senators to not only support the bill but also to end the filibuster to enable it to overcome united Republican opposition in the Senate. Previous efforts to enact labor law reform foundered when Democrats had unified control of the federal government, under both Carter and Obama, in part because of Democratic opposition and a failure by both presidents to prioritize it. Reform of the country’s labor laws is desperately needed — the question is whether such legislative changes will be a catalyst or consequence of worker mobilizations — or both.
Sectoral bargaining, on the European model, is a promising path because workers bargain with employers across a whole industry rather than negotiating separately with each employer. (In a piece from last spring in Dissent, Kate Andrias made the case for sectoral bargaining and told the fascinating history of how it was enabled and pursued for a time under the Fair Labor Standards Act.) New York and California still can use wage boards to increase wages, and that was the mechanism for fast-food workers in New York State to win a $15 minimum wage. New, pathbreaking California legislation would, if enacted, create a Fast Food Sector Council that would establish a process for workers to negotiate wages and working conditions with employers for the industry. David Madland’s Center for American Progress report on the California strategy is useful. There are differences of opinion within the labor movement about the merits of sectoral bargaining, and it’s therefore unlikely that national reforms will take place in the short term, but models showing results in blue states could give the approach momentum nationally.
Deep organizing campaigns that depend on real worker leadership and build deep ties in communities can amass enough power to win recognition and contracts despite overwhelming employer opposition. To the extent that workers do win campaigns in hotels, universities, hospitals, and elsewhere, this is usually the path that leads to success. In this view, old-fashioned organizing, rather than slick campaigns or one-time mobilizations, is a tried and true path to power. The organizing path depends on identifying real worker leadership, intense and ongoing face-to-face conversations by workers, and tapping into the social and community networks of worker leaders to provide a broad base of community support. The question about this approach is whether it can scale given 1) the time and resources that deep worker organizing campaigns take, 2) the atrophy of the traditions and culture of organizing in some parts of the labor movement, and 3) the barriers to success in high-turnover industries. There’s no question that a return to the fundamentals of organizing is essential to winning more.
So-called “alt-labor” approaches seek to build power for workers outside the structure established by federal labor law and have achieved impressive gains. Worker centers in specific industries like domestic work or day labor, for example, may confront individual employers about abuses such as wage theft, and they have also been adept at winning policy changes that benefit workers. The power of this approach can be seen in community groups with a broad social base among working-class people like Make the Road NY, which was one of the key groups pushing for the landmark Essential Workers Fund that provides $2.1 billion in cash support to undocumented workers. The American Prospect published an excellent set of articles appreciating the strengths and accomplishments of worker centers, including their variable relationships to unions and the distinctive paths that Black and immigrant worker centers have taken. Questions about alt-labor include 1) how to “self-finance” worker power — since many worker centers rely mainly on support from donors, foundations, and sympathetic local and state governments rather than dues from worker members — and 2) how to scale this approach in hostile political terrain.
Disruptive worker movements will lead to permanent worker organizations. There’s an intriguing argument that the mass movement of workers is what has historically driven big bursts of unionization and labor law reform. So worker organizing before the National Labor Relations Act created the conditions for the legislation, which in turn created conditions for permanent organizations. The “Fight for 15” is a contemporary example of a broad-based movement that aims to foster a widespread sense of injustice and thereby lay the predicate for permanent organizations. Organizations, in this theory, can have a role in fanning the flames of movements — though they cannot create them or control them. The synergy between movement and organization seems like a particularly important concept in a time of ascendant social movements. (Janice Fine wrote a very excellent book on this topic: Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream).
Use the power of massive, federal public investments in growing industries to shape labor standards and encourage unionization. One of the best things about Biden’s American Jobs Act is that it proposes huge investments in green infrastructure and care infrastructure and includes provisions that would facilitate higher wages and unionization of workers in those industries. Given that most union members work in the public sector or publicly financed industries, it’s exciting to think about tying rules about worker voice and labor standards to these investments as a strategy to fuel worker power. (The Platypus tips its bill to the amazing architects of these imaginative and bold strategies to remake the economy and build worker power. While far from enactment, these transformational ideas are on the table only because of years of organizing and ideas work).
There are many more theories of the case, including “rank and file unionism,” corporate campaigns to leverage brand and shareholder power, use of public systems like Unemployment Insurance and mechanisms like benefit navigators to connect workers to unions, and Bargaining for the Common Good (featured in an earlier issue). The Platypus doesn’t claim to know the right path forward, and we doubt there’s a silver bullet. It may ultimately be a remix of multiple strategies over time —disruptive movement, deep old-school organizing, and massive public investment at the front end, for example, opening up new terrain for more deep organizing, sectoral bargaining, and labor law reform — that produces the breakthrough over a period of years. We are encouraged that so many avenues and ideas for revitalizing the labor movement are being pursued.
Reading Recommendations
On the campaign to unionize Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse, the most important thing we read was this informative interview by Luis Feliz Leon with the lead organizer for the RWDSU, Joshua Brewer. In a democracy, politicians don’t get to pick their voters, do they? That would be so outrageous! (The Platypus checks its notes and realizes. . . . “Oh wait, this is exactly what is happening with gerrymandering and voting rights violations!”) In any case, Amazon pulled a similar stunt by changing the bargaining unit for the election, increasing the number of votes needed to win. Brewer in the interview responds to tough critiques of how the campaign was run from Jane MacAlevey andMike Gecan in The Nation.
Deepak’s class watched excerpts from the moving documentary Rising from the Rails, about the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
The Pullman porters played an important but unsung role in the history of this country. In 1925, they formed the first black labor union, under the stewardship of A. Philip Randolph, called the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. They helped pave the way for the civil rights movement and are also credited with building the black middle class in this country.
If plutocracy is the problem, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry lays out a path forward in her incredible 2019 speech “Unions for All.” It’s worth watching now because it articulates a cogent theory of the case for how to build worker power.
Ruth Milkman just released a great report: “New York’s Retail Grocery Industry: Economic Restructuring and Its Impact on Organized Labor.”
U.S. supermarket chains launched aggressive growth and acquisition strategies in the 1990s, resulting in a wave of corporate consolidation. That, in turn, destabilized the collective bargaining system that had prevailed in prior decades, and radically shifted the balance of power between management and labor in favor of the former. Whereas in the post-World War II era labor relations in the grocery industry had been geographically decentralized, with the restructuring that took place in the 1990s, “each local market area has come to count for a smaller part of the companies’ revenues and profits,” as Richard W. Hurd explained in a trenchant analysis. Employers thus became less and less financially vulnerable to strikes and other types of pressure from unions, yet for their part the unions remained locally (or in some cases regionally) oriented.2 This reduction in leverage of the nation’s retail grocery unions was part and parcel of the broader neoliberal transformation driving the relentless decline of the U.S. labor movement as a whole that took off starting in the late 1970s. . . .
Ultimately, the most important driver of change in the industry was financialization and the corporate concentration that accompanied it, and more recently, the impact of private equity.
We highly recommend the podcast Black Work Talk with longtime organizer Steven Pitts. This episode with Bill Lucy, a leader in AFSCME who played a key role in the famous Memphis sanitation workers strike, is really moving and inspiring.
We loved this piece in The Forge by Keith Kelleher about the deep history of the Fight for 15, which begins:
On February 22, 1980, workers at the Greyhound Burger King in downtown Detroit won the first union election at a fast food restaurant in the United States by a vote of 25-23.
Lena Halmon, a cashier and leader in the drive, told the Detroit Free Press that the workers “had been ready for something like this…[and] were upset because so many of them are treated with disrespect. We’re not children anymore. The managers should treat us like the young adults we are, instead of screaming and hollering.” A co-worker, Beverly Passmore, added, “The reason I want the union is not only to better things for the employees there now, but also to better it for the people yet to come. Hey, I got little brothers and little sisters. They will come here and get pushed around, treated like dogs. I want them to RESPECT us. Let them treat us like people, not animals!”
This very valuable article, grounded in the German experience, defines two sources of power for workers, structural and associational power. Stefan Schmalz and Klaus Dörre, 2018. “The Power Resources Approach,”
A consensus has emerged in international trade union research that trade unions are not solely at the mercy of major societal trends like globalisation or rise of the service economy, but rather they have the option of making strategic choices. A new branch of research has since established itself under the label Labour Revitalisation Studies (LRS) emphasising the ability of trade unions to act strategically (for instance Voss/Sherman 2000; Frege/Kelly 2004; Turner 2006; Brinkmann et al. 2008; Schmalz/Dörre 2013; Lévesque/Murray 2013; Fairbrother 2015; Murray 2017). At the heart of this line of research is the question, what power resources are available for trade unions in a wide range of contexts while repositioning themselves as organisations. This debate has significantly shaped the way international scientists and scholars are dealing with the issue of trade union renewal. In this discussion, the power resources approach has emerged as a research heuristic.
Savvy Corner
This is the week that the book Immigration Matters: Movements, Visions, and Strategies goes on sale! Have you bought a copy? Signed up for one of the events below?
On April 27th, the Carnegie Corporation of NY, JPB Foundation, and Open Society Foundations will host a book launch featuring Amaha Kassa, Cecilia Muñoz, Mae Ngai, Ruth Milkman, and Deepak. Register here. Registration is free.
On April 28th, Georgetown University’s Kalmanowitz Institute will host a book launch featuring Ruth Milkman, Saket Soni, Marielena Hincapie, and Amaha Kassa. Register here. Registration is free.
Also, there’s another event with overlapping content, “Immigration, Race and Public Policy: Assessing Biden’s First 100 Days,” with Cecilia Munoz, Niambi Carter and Deepak sponsored by the Price Institute at Cornell on Tuesday, May 4 from 7-8:30. You can register for free here.
You can find out more about the book and watch some short trailers from various authors here. And here’s the main trailer for the book, which we welcome you to share on social media.
Delights and Provocations
On the theme of work, comedian Scott Seiss’s viral rant is a window into the experience of Ikea workers. Genius. Also, this conversation between Anand Giridharadas and Seiss is worthwhile!
ANAND: Sometimes a viral video is more than that — it speaks to something so widely felt in a moment. And I think yours about working at Ikea landed at this moment of a real crisis of people's feelings and relationships to work. As a professional observer of the culture, why do you think the Ikea series caught the way it did?
SCOTT: I just think that people are sick and tired of being treated like shit at work. I mean, people are underpaid, they're overworked, and especially within the pandemic, they're realizing that they're being asked too much of by their jobs. And the video is depicting a minimum-wage worker at the breaking point, making the switch, turning on the customer, turning on the job, and I never expected it to take off the way that it did.
I never in a million years thought it would get to this level. It's absolutely blowing my mind. I'm just so, so grateful for all of that. And the fact that people that work absolutely thankless, thankless jobs are enjoying them or getting some sort of catharsis from them means the world to me.
CUNY’s School of Labor and Urban Studies put on an amazing conference this week, “Working Class New York Revisited,” which charted terrain from the nature of progressive urbanism to the future of social democracy to the intersection of racial justice and worker movements, historically and today. The conference was a tribute to the brilliant historian Joshua Freeman, who also offers immense wisdom at the end.
The best dramatist of class conflict today may be the brilliant Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, whose film Parasite won five 2020 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. We recently watched and loved his previous film Okja, a hilarious, thrilling, and utterly original anti-corporate satire about a girl and her genetically modified “super pig.” We know it sounds weird. But it’s great.
And, unrelated to the class struggle, here’s a delightful interview with Chinese artist Ai Weiwei about his very understandable love of cats.
We leave you with this reminder of how plutocrats are different than you and me. (Tip of the bill to the union movement for giving us the weekend.)