Labor on the Move
After years on the defensive on all counts — bargaining, politics, organizing — labor is on the move on a variety of fronts. Perhaps more important than any particular issue is that labor’s enthusiasm has returned.
That’s the clear sense I get, as a result of having the opportunity recently to speak to a number of unions about the status of the labor movement and what lies ahead.
Whether it’s the Teachers, Laborers or Bricklayers, the San Diego Labor Council, Pennsylvania COPE or DC Metro Labor Council, or some of America’s key labor leaders like Rich Trumka, Gerald McEntee or Rich Trumka, there’s an optimism and drive that can’t be missed.
It’s not just the election, which they anticipate will lead to political and legislative changes that might give workers some help and labor a fairer shake, but also the sense that members are engaged and that the public at large feels the pendulum has swung too far in one direction and so policies and practices need to be redirected to establish a more-level playing field.
As someone who’s written a book on labor (State of the Unions: How Labor can Strengthen the Middle Class, Improve our Economy, and Regain Political Influence) it even seems that the media is increasingly interested in discussuing these topics. Whether it’s the approaching election or Labor Day or something else, the result is the same — attention to issues that for too long have gone unreported and unexamined. Several recent developments have served to galvanize regional and national attention around matters of American jobs and control, notably the tanker refueling contract and the planned sale of Anheuser-Busch.
That said, if labor is to fully capitalize on the current political developments, socio-economic trends and public sentiments, unions and their leaders need to sharpen their efforts on two fronts: communications and values.
Harnessing the momentum will require getting out the message of why labor is as relevant as ever; of drawing the links for people between the economic anxiety affecting workers/middle class and the weakening over decades of the labor movement; of why a more-balanced industrial relations system is not just in unions’ or workers’ interest but in the national interest. This is not a difficult case to make, but it needs to be made sharply and crisply because people are busy and have a lot on their minds and these are not things they necessarily think much about.
Taking advantage of the confluence of events will also require that labor recast its diverse issues as fundamental American values, so it can compete on the all-important values terrain. Labor needs, during elections and every other time, to emphasize values of fair play, of economic justice, of people sticking together and standing up for one another, of the fate of small towns and mom-and-pop businesses and family farms being determined on the local level and not by distant corporations, of job security and hard-working people being able to support their families. Doing so will not only make labor’s hoped-for election results occur, it will also give them more meaning by providing labor with a mandate from those results.
Labor’s decline was never inevitable or pre-ordained, and the union movement has a chance now to begin to turn things around. But it must act imaginatively and robustly now if the potential improvements are to actually materialize.