On Union Actions Speak Louder than Political Words

4-5-2024

On Union Actions Speak Louder than Political Words: Pollsters report we are a nation filled with anxious, angry, dissatisfied and fearful people.  People willing to grab on to anyone that promises to take us from where we are, to a better place.  A number of us are ready to swap our very freedoms for the promise of a fix to our displeasures.  While the pollsters are probing the American psyche, something else is happening that may well prove more useful than political theater or governmental actions.  Union’s are actually attacking the root causes of our malaise, with an increasing degree of success.

These seemingly unconnected union actions are starting to look like a burgeoning trend.  They portend an alternate path to the kind of nation that provides opportunity, equity and broad prosperity.  A generally shared goal of most Americans.

My Union, the United Steelworkers, is in a battle with the massive arrogance of the US Steel/Nippon Steel global corporate combination.  The USW is demanding financial guarantees for our members and the communities they work in.  The Autoworkers, having taken the Big 3 to the mat, have declared war on automakers who have been exploiting southern workers.  The smiling and allegedly subservient barista’s at Starbucks are in the process of humbling the billionaires of coffee.  Boeing Aircraft is facing its first strike in 16 years, as its workers refuse to be blackmailed anymore with threats of runaway work.  A newly born union at Amazon, is taking on the richest man in the world.  Across the country unionists are insisting that any taxpayer money that goes out from the various infrastructure and industrial/manufacturing capacity legislation is awarded to companies that commit to fair and well-paid workforces.  Working people, no longer waiting for political solutions, are using their unions to change the deal for us all.

It is noteworthy that these fights are not the traditional narrow ones over economics.  While lifting pay is certainly a major goal, the demands workers are pursuing include quality of work life issues, workplace standards and a voice in decision-making.  They openly are contesting long-held company strategies on foreign investment and the “Southern Strategy” that has been the modern equivalent to the plantation.  In a very real way, the union movement is gathering itself to challenge the corporate design of globalization.  It is this wealth-driven throat-hold on the nation that underlies our decline and divisiveness.  While the political world makes promises, these efforts have already lifted working families and are building a force that can effectively change a lot that ails us.

The approach of union leaders is changing as well.  Labor no longer talks in terms of economic improvements alone.  They are appealing for solidarity based on a broad agenda that will put a leash on money and rebalance the power that working people need to assure we share in the bounty of this nation.  They are calling out politicians who are fronts for unbridled greed.  It’s bold, audacious and long overdue.  And workers are responding.

The newly invigorated union movement hasn’t been lost on the public.  Support for union actions has dramatically increased as have the number of Americans interested in being union.  When we look closely at what is happening, we see common interests rising above individualism and negativity.  Enthusiasm is high where labor is rising.  Young people are sensing it’s a place for them to make their mark.  While still constrained by organizing resources and anti-union pressures, workers continue to build and expand. 

This is about exposing we have been fed a deception that is the reverse of how workers made gains in the past.  An accurate reading of America’s history, shows that workers built collective power strong enough to force the political system to respond with legislation and respect.  The New Deal, with its labor rights and protections, wasn’t bestowed on us by Franklin Roosevelt.  Roosevelt was responding to a movement that required him to give it legitimacy, or face a massive social breakdown.  Workers building power and demanding a change in the rules of the game, is the way progress has been made in this nation.  It is also the way working people have led the nation to a fairer and more equitable place.  This is a critical lesson for America to re-learn.  What it means is that we will have limited success in getting our political system to improve things unless we build the pressure and demands for it to do so.

To repeat what I said at the start, these are pieces of efforts that have yet to gel into a wholly-formed, organized economic and political alternative agenda.  This movement is up against powerful and well-funded adversaries.  To succeed it needs time to grow and convince us that our current environment is not one we have to wallow in.  Yet, remarkably, with both success and setbacks, it is rising.

If we recognize that we’re not bound by the political world.  That we can change the options being offered to us.  That the principles of the labor movement are the basis for fixing what we need fixed.  That we’ve had enough of the leadership of greed, and are open to leadership from those who actually do the work.  That we forge alliances with allies and find ways to collaborate.  Then we just might punch a hole in the pathetic “search for a savior” box we’ve been corralled into.  And we might find a way to move forward using the positive energy that lurks within us all.

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