Modern Labor Activism

Much has been written about the decline of the labor movement in the United States.  The notion of a “labor movement” is usually associated with the existence of labor unions.  The number of union workers operating in the public domain is still significant, but union representation in the private sector has been falling for decades and is increasingly rare.  The public/private diversion is partly due to the hostility towards unions by private corporations, and partly to changes in employment conditions as the economy has evolved.  Most pundits would predict that this decline will continue into the indefinite future.

Unions once had the power to create work standards that would become national in scope.  The fact that they could negotiate higher wages, better working conditions, and job security forced nonunion companies to elevate their compensation for employees when unions were common.  Now, the fact that the few workers covered by unions enjoy better employment conditions is a cause for dismay by others who view them as coddled workers who earn more without having to work very hard.  Does this mean that unions are a dying concept and that labor activism is dying also?  Janet Paskin provided an article for Bloomberg Businessweek, The Resurrection of American Labor in the online version, that suggests that there might still be some life left in the domain of worker activism.

She points out that the number of strikes by workers in 2017 was a mere eight.  Against all odds, that number increased to 20 in 2018.  Unhappy employees had found new ways to apply leverage to their employers and get what they wanted.

“Aggrieved workers, however, took matters into their own hands, using social media and other tech tools to enhance their campaigns. From industry walkouts to wildcat teachers’ strikes, they made very public demands of their employers. The official number of major work stoppages recorded by the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] in 2018 nearly tripled, to 20. Off the picket line, workers also won a wide range of concessions. Facing employee pressure, Google and McKinsey &Co. dropped contracts for government work employees found objectionable; thousands of dismissed Toys “R” Us workers got a severance fund; and Starbucks Corp.  expanded parental and sick leave policies.”

Traditional forms of worker empowerment may be fading away, but unhappy employees will be with us forever.

“’Workers aren’t waiting for the traditional forms of organizing, as provided under labor law,’ says Tom Kochan, co-director of the MIT Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research. ‘They’re looking for new options, whether that’s Google employees on a one-day walkout or workers filing online petitions with their management about everything from scheduling to fringe benefits’.”

Kochan has been studying workers and their feelings about their terms of employment since the 1970s.

“At the beginning of his career, about one-quarter of workers were represented by a union and another third, according to a national Quality of Employment Survey, said they’d join one if they had an opportunity. The next time the question was fielded, in the mid-’90s, workers’ interest in joining a union had barely budged.”

“Kochan and his colleagues put the question to almost 4,000 workers in 2017. The results: Almost 2 out of 3 said they had less of a voice than they felt they deserved, and nearly half said they’d like the opportunity to join a union. ‘That doesn’t mean they want an actual union in the traditional sense,’ Kochan says. ‘It’s more of an expression that they’re looking for some form of voice, a desire for real influence’.”

Employees have discovered that social media tools can be very efficient at gathering supporters for initiatives and for propagating concerns and demands.

“Historically, only unions could provide the cohesiveness and leverage workers needed to speak as a group. Now workers have Facebook and Twitter, both to talk among themselves and to make their case to their employers in a potentially embarrassing way. Technology has given rise to a new set of tools—targeted ads to reach disillusioned workers, text blasts to engage them, online petitions to make demands clear.”

Specialized tools have also been developed to assist workers who feel they need to organize in order to correct some wrong.

“Around the same time, a pair of tech-savvy activists with labor roots, Michelle Miller and Jess Kutch, launched Coworker.org, which creates networks of employees and provides them with tools so they can push for pretty much anything they feel would improve their working lives.”

“Some 230 new worker groups have sprung up in the past decade, forming the backbone of what’s come to be called alt.labor. Among them, Organization United for Respect, known as OUR, has become expert at uniting workers through technology. Spun out of a movement by Walmart workers to petition the country’s biggest employer for change after several traditional union drives failed, the group has broadened its mandate to include all low-wage workers, particularly in retail.”

Paskin provides several examples where this kind of specific issue campaigning has paid off.  Consider former employees of Toys “R” Us and their accomplishment.

“When Toys “R” Us, preparing for liquidation, said it wouldn’t pay severance to more than 30,000 employees, OUR organizers stepped in. They ran online ads to reach workers, connecting them first with a peer-to-peer texting tool, then one-on-one phone calls, then committee calls. The workers gathered in Facebook groups to commiserate, share strategies, and organize demonstrations online and in real life. Eventually, KKR and Bain Capital, the company’s private equity owners, agreed to put up $20 million for ex-employees—short of the $75 million workers say they’re owed but a concession the firms weren’t legally obliged to make. OUR is now putting Sears Holdings Corp. employees in touch with Toys “R” Us workers who can preach the power of collective action.”

Paskin suggests that events of recent years have generated a surge in activism related to political and social issues that will encourage a continued focus on work issues as well.

“Beyond the growing number of union alternatives, demonstrations by employees are part of a rise in political activity overall. The years since the 2016 election have witnessed the largest protests in U.S. history, inspiring a lot of people—particularly college-educated twentysomethings—to demonstrate for the first time. And while a Black Lives Matter protest or a Women’s March on Washington may seem unrelated to work, they can inspire people to speak out for other causes.”

Unions are encouraging these new forms of worker activism as a means of achieving their traditional goals and as a way of demonstrating the effectiveness of collective action.

“Unions continue to make the case for their relevance—and have been reinvigorated by all the nontraditional labor activism. At least 18 states raised the minimum wage, a victory for the union-backed ‘Fight for $15.’ Similarly, after popular upswells, at least three more states and three more cities added paid sick time laws—reforms usually advocated by unions.”

Developing a notion that collective action can be an effective means of righting a wrong, especially if the younger people become activated, has to be a good thing for our society.  Stagnation and political standoff seem to be the order of the day.  We need activism to generate progress in dealing with the problems we face.  The young should be the ones to provide the numbers and the energy to generate motion because they will be the ones who will suffer the most from the lack of progress.