While most of us of us have come to associate Labor Day with mattress sales, car deals and/or backyard barbecues on a three-day weekend, very few people make the leap to a celebration of workers, unionism or the American labor movement in any way. Nonetheless, today, more than at any time in recent history, according to a recent Gallup poll, most Americans unions and would be eager to one if their employer did not subvert efforts to organize, which is all too common in the corporate world.
The labor movement has waxed and waned throughout U.S. history, hitting a high-water mark in the 1930s with the Wagner Act and 35-40 percent union density. Since then, unionization has declined in the face of repeated assaults on workers’ efforts to organize along with other internal and external barriers to union efforts. And not surprisingly, as union hip has decreased, so has the middle class, and economic inequality has climbed.
So the struggle continues to this day with the battle against unprecedented economic inequality and the continued bait and switch strategy of the American right, as too often a kind of backlash populism emphasis on culture wars rather than an emphasis on economic issues as they impact working people, and the vast majority of Americans have been put on the back burner for far too long.
In “The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor,” longtime labor journalist Hamilton Nolan observes that unions are the best way for American workers to reverse our poisonous level of economic inequality. His sense is that unions are not just a vehicle for leveling the playing field economically, but the foundation upon which any thoroughgoing democracy should be based.
As he puts it: “When does the typical American ever experience democracy? As a child, they are told what to do. At school, they are told what to do. When they grow up, they get a job, and are told what to do. If they go to church, they are told what to do. And everyone with any common sense can see that voting, the one activity explicitly branding and participating in democracy, seems to change nothing, as power is concentrated, and decisions are made by unknown people in places remote from the everyday experience of a normal person. From this base of nothing, we expect Americans to treasure democracy as their greatest value. That is a hard ask, when it is something they have never seen in the wild … Unless — unless — they happen to be in a union. In a decent union, their opinion will matter. They can directly participate in discussions that lead to a set of demands. They can decide, collectively, to take direct action to win their demands. … It is not democracy as a slogan, but democracy as lived experience.”
Unions are, for Nolan, the only tool the American worker has to make the “sham version of the American dream” real. In San Diego, many in the labor movement value the continuing power of unions and their ability to help improve the lives of workers.
Larissa Dorman, currently a lead organizer for my union, the American Federation of Teachers, Local 1931, observes, “Being a unionist means combating the systems that oppress all people, standing in solidarity with the most precarious in our society and acting as an accomplice in the struggle towards liberation. The union movement has the capacity to be at the forefront of this work, however, it requires us to see our role of community building and coalition building in a different light. It’s possible for our unions to act as communities of care for our hip and our community.”
Brigette Browning, the secretary-treasurer of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, makes the case that, “Being a trade unionist means that I always put workers first. I ed the labor movement because I wanted to make the American Dream become a reality for thousands of workers who have been exploited by our capitalist society. I think the labor movement is the only real check on corporations and it is my life mission to know when I retire, workers are in a better place than when I started. They only way we can rebuild the middle class is through unions – not legislation.”
So let’s celebrate American unions as both the key to rebuilding the middle class and reinventing community in the United States.
Miller is a local author, professor at San Diego City College and vice president for the American Federation of Teachers, Local 1931. He lives in Golden Hill.
