Episode 55 - May Day Special

 Problems

Stagnant Wages, Declining Union Coverage

  • Between 1973 and 2016 productivity grew six times faster than compensation in the U.S.

  • Between 1954 and 2018, the proportion of union members in the labor force dropped from 35% to 10.5% in the U.S.

  • Private sector union membership is at its lowest point since the 1920s, at just 7.9%

  • In the U.S. a 2009 survey found that union supporters were illegally fired at 34% of companies where the management opposed a union 

  • Employers are charged with violating US federal law in 41.5% of all union election campaigns, and workers were illegally fired for union activity in 30% of all union elections

Rise of the Precariat and Declining Work Conditions

  • Independent contractors

  • Division between unionized workers and un-unionized precariat

“At Amazon, a handheld scanner tells Guendelsberger what to do at every moment and tracks her even into the rest room. A training video warns of the work’s physical demands—“This is going to hurt”—and she’s disconcerted that painkillers are dispensed for free. But soon, she writes, “I pop Advil like candy all day.” Her shifts last eleven and a half hours, and she gets home too drained to even think of writing or reading. One day, slumped in front of “The Muppet Christmas Carol,” she finds herself “laughing almost involuntarily” at the realization that “Scrooge literally has a better time-off policy than Amazon.”” (New Yorker article, talking about the memoir On the Clock by Emily Guendelsberger)

Union Avoidance Industry

  • Rise of the union avoidance industry since the 1970s

  • In the U.S., employers spend roughly $340 million annually on “union avoidance” consultants

  • Union avoidance tactics have made it more difficult to organize unions

  • Union avoidance tactics include: mandatory anti-union meetings on work time, posting anti-union posters, instructing managers to tell workers they will lose their jobs if they vote to unionize, and other strategies to disincentivize unionizing

  • For a good example of union avoidance at work, see the documentary ‘American Factory’, which offers an inside look at a unionization drive at the Fuyao Glass America factory in Dayton, Ohio

  • A number of Canadian companies have hired the union avoidance firm Positive Management Leadership

Success Stories (and Promising Starts)

Dynamo

  • Dynamo is a community platform designed to facilitate collective action for Mechanical Turk workers.

The Fight for $15 

  • Began in 2012 with fast-food workers in New York City.

  • Started as a fast-food worker walkout, but has since become an international movement. 

  • Median fast-food pay is $8.69 per hour nationwide in the U.S..[1] 

  • 52% of fast-food workers and their families received some form of public assistance, compared with 25% of the overall workforce.[2] Public assistance includes things like Medicaid, food stamps, earned income tax credits etc.

  • The fight for $15 was successful in raising the minimum wage in several states, including New York and California. While some states have committed to gradually raising the minimum wage to $15/hour, no state minimum wage is yet that high. But several cities, including Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., have raised their minimum wage to $15 per hour through local ordinances.  

Fast Food Justice

  • Fast Food Justice was created through the Fight for $15 movement. It is a workers’ rights organization that is funded through voluntary contributions from workers. It’s an example of a new model of labour organization.

  • Fast Food Justice was made possible by a law in New York City that allows fast food employees to deduct money from their paycheck and have it sent to a nonprofit, non-union workers group.

15 and Fairness

  • Canada has its own movement called 15 and Fairness

  • Their demands:

    • A $15 minimum wage and an end to sub-minimum wage rates and exemptions to the minimum wage

    • Equal pay for equal work

    • Decent hours

    • Paid leave

    • Protections for migrant workers

    • Rules that protect everyone

    • Job security and respect at work

    • Right to organize and unionize

  • Alberta is the only Canadian province with a $15 minimum wage, along with Nunavut Territory. But British Columbia and the Northwest Territories are scheduled to increase their minimum wage to $15 per hour this year.

Florida Tomato Workers and The Fair Food Program

  • Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) – a worker-based human rights organization built by tomato farmworker community organizing beginning in 1993.

  • CIW initially sought to change worker practices by targeting tomato growers, but in 2001 they shifted tactics to target the retail food industry that buys tomatoes.

  • Their first target was Yum! Brands’ Taco Bell.

  • The Campaign for Fair Food had three demands of food retailers: (1) to support a wage increase by paying an additional penny per pound of tomatoes, (2) requiring a human rights code of conduct on tomato growers, and (3) that workers play an integral role in monitoring and enforcing these agreements.

  • After a four-year national boycott of Taco Bello, including the “Boot the Bell” campaign on university campuses, Taco Bell agreed to the CIW’s demands in 2005.

  • CIW secured agreements with McDonald’s in 2007 and Burger King in 2008.

  • The Fair Food Program was established in 2011 to institutionalize these agreements, and it has expanded since.

COVID-19 and Paid Sick Leave

  • Paid sick leave seems to be having a moment in Canada

Future

Reasons for optimism

  • Workers increasingly want to unionize, and the public is increasingly supportive of social democracy

How workers can regain their power

Suggestions from Beaten Down, Worked Up:

  • Campaign finance limits

  • Create a new national workers’ group

  • More reporting on labour issues

  • Harsher penalties and better enforcement

  • Introduce laws to reinstate collective bargaining rights and to make it easier to unionize (e.g. banning ‘captive audience meetings’)

  • Introduce laws that make workers’ rights like civil rights (e.g., replace America’s at-will employment system with just cause rules)

  • Worker inclusive capitalism (e.g., union-run training programs, union membership on corporate Boards)

Connection between laws and union bargaining

  • Union membership increased voter turnout by an estimated 5 percentage points, while right-to-work laws reduce turnout in Presidential elections by two percentage points.

How you can help

  1. Get involved with your union, or with workers’ rights groups in your community (E.g., coworker.org, Justice for Workers).

  2. Vote for and donate to progressive, pro-labour political parties.

  3. Sign petitions for workers’ rights initiatives, such as raising the minimum wage; introducing mandatory, permanent, employer-paid sick leave; and laws strengthening the right to collectively bargain.

  4. Show up to protests opposing union-busting laws.

  5. Learn about strikes and other labour actions in your area and don’t cross picket lines.

  6. Boycott union-busting companies like Walmart and Amazon. 

  7. Support labour journalists and news organizations, especially in your community (E.g.: Propublica).

  8. Support tax justice initiatives so that governments can pay public sector workers what they are worth.

Kyla’s Notes

Want to learn more about Universal Basic Income? Check here and here and here and here!

Want to learn more about bias in algorithms? Check here and here and here and here!


Endnotes

[1] Greenhouse, Steven. (2019). Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor. NY: Random House.

[2] Greenhouse, Beaten Down.