Is this labor’s comeback moment? 

IN A HISTORIC breakthrough, workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee voted decisively on April 19 to be represented by the United Auto Workers. Following two previous failed efforts, the newly reinvigorated UAW leadership had committed $40 million to build off their successful 2023 strike by challenging labor’s long and durable inability to organize workers in the South. 

The vote at the VW plant represents the first successful union drive at a foreign automaker plant in the US South. Next up: workers at a Mercedes plant in Alabama, who will be taking a union vote in May.

The Tennessee workers overcame yet another round of virulent opposition from political leaders. Before the vote, six Southern governors issued a letter warning that union success would halt economic growth “in its tracks.” The governors claimed they had “worked tirelessly” to attract companies to relocate to the low-waged, union-free South. 

Has the UAW’s victory sent the region’s anti-union walls tumbling down? Is this extraordinary development a one-off anomaly, or the latest indication of a resurgence in labor’s ranks? 

There are signs in recent years suggesting a renewed labor movement may be taking root. 

Six years ago, the “Red for Ed” teachers’ strikes in Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, and other states with a minimal union presence initiated a heightened level of union activism. A little over two years ago, a Starbucks store in Buffalo voted in a union, and since then Starbucks Workers United has won elections at nearly 400 locations. In April 2022, workers voted to unionize at the 8,000-worker Amazon facility in Staten Island, New York. 

These events shocked both employer and labor observers. Neither Starbucks baristas nor Amazon warehouse workers with their high rates of turnover fit the image of standard union members, and both companies had made clear their implacable hostility to unionization. During that year, the largest number of workers on strike were in the education field, including graduate students at universities – another group that did not correspond to the stereotypical unionist.

In 2023, a series of campaigns involving the automotive and entertainment industries, health care, hotels and casinos, UPS drivers, and airlines further captured the nation’s attention. The UAW’s clever, strategic “stand-up” strikes kept the Big Three auto companies off balance, unaware of where shutdowns would occur, and harkened back to the great auto worker sit-down strikes of the 1930s.

Leaders of the Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) and the Writers Guild argued for the need to protect their members from the imposition of AI and other new technologies, and celebrity actors consistently advocated for their less well compensated brothers and sisters. There were remarkably few defections among a community more famous, or infamous, for its individualistic accomplishments.

These organizing drives and strikes were generally greeted with a high degree of public support. The teachers’ strikes sought better pay, but many also insisted on reducing class size and called for additional public funding to improve the quality of educational services. Parents and students rallied to their cause. 

Nurses’ campaigns have often adopted a similar approach, sometimes labeled bargaining for the common good, by incorporating demands for decreased patient care load in order to provide better treatment in the highly stressed health care sector. And the UAW’s president, Shawn Fain, repeatedly referred to the sacrifices workers had made in the wake of the 2008-2009 recession and COVID, linking the auto workers’ fight to the society-wide struggle against corporate greed.

A TALE OF TWO NUMBERS 

For decades, Gallup has annually polled Americans on their view of unions. In 2023, 67 percent of the American public had a favorable view of unions, consistent with the 71 percent favorable view seen in 2022, levels not seen since the mid-1960s. 

A recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report announced that there was an increase of 191,000 union members last year. In February of this year, Michigan became the first state to repeal a right to work law. All these developments occurred in the context of an administration led by the self-described most pro-union president in history.

And yet. Despite last year’s uptick in union membership, there was actually a slight decline in the percentage of workers represented by unions due to overall job growth in a strong economy. Organized labor today represents only 10 percent of the total US workforce and just 6 percent of the private sector workforce. 

The striking contrast between the strong level of public support for unions today and the small share of US workers they represent frames the enormous opportunity – and challenge – facing the American labor movement. 

For all the encouraging news, the reality is that the fundamentally low rate of unionization can only be understood by a 50-year story of the transformation of US labor relations.

During the period between World War II and the early 1970s, corporate America reluctantly accepted unionism and exchanged collective bargaining agreements for labor peace. Union density peaked at around 35 percent. It was the era when, as the bumper sticker says, unions built the middle class. 

Racial and gender discrimination were undoubtedly essential elements of economic life. Black and white industrial workers may have both been members of the newly organized unions, but after work each group went home to segregated neighborhoods where racism defined much of our nation’s social life. And the Rosie the Riveters who kept industrial America humming during World War II ended up being replaced by returning male veterans and relegated to domestic work as homemakers. Still, economists have rightfully called this period “the great compression,” as it was the only extended time in modern American history when income inequality was actually reduced or “compressed.” 

From 1948 to 1973, the income of the lower fifth of households increased by 42 percent while the upper fifth only increased by 8 percent. But the notion of shared prosperity disappeared from the corporate handbook to be replaced by an obsession with maximizing profits and shareholder value. Free market ideologies reigned in the boardrooms. A shift to open and constant hostility to unionism accompanied globalization, with outsourcing and the structural transformation of our economy all contributing to the decline of union density and the return of income inequality.

THE CHALLENGE AHEAD

The prospects for union growth are limited by this backdrop. In the face of organizing campaigns, most US employers can be counted on to resist and twist the laws to their advantage. 

The National Labor Relations Act, the 1935 law that established the playing field for labor relations, sought to create an environment in which workers were enabled, and even encouraged, to organize a union free of employer intimidation and interference. But over time, the National Labor Relations Board has lost its bite, ranging from an openly anti-union to, at best, a toothless agency, depending on which federal administration is in power.

Employer threats to close businesses, cut wages, and fire union supporters commonly occur without reprisals. A study from last year found that employers successfully stonewalled over 40 percent of all the cases where workers fought through employer tactics and actually won an election. When companies can “just say no” and ignore their employees’ wishes without sanctions, it puts a serious damper on worker activism. What is the point of risking our jobs, say workers, when the deck is stacked in the employer’s favor?

Amazon recently spent $4.3 million to defeat the fledgling under-resourced organizing group at its Staten Island facility, and routinely mobilizes “employee resource teams” at the first sign of worker discontent to undermine collective activity at any of their facilities. The company’s refusal to bargain has not only blocked a first contract, it has had precisely the intended effect of demoralizing union supporters. 

The Amazon Workers Union has been roiled by dissension as the new union members have turned on each other. Similarly, there had been a large number of firings and resignations among Starbucks workers until a recent reversal of corporate policy. It takes courage and tenacity to create a new union out of whole cloth. Inevitably, some workers have questioned whether the financial, psychological, and emotional risks were worth it in the absence of a tangible result for their clear and overwhelming support for unionization.

Efforts to promote labor law reform and restore legal balance have consistently failed. The “Protecting the Right to Organize Act” (known as the PRO Act) has been introduced in Congress over the past few years and would, among other important improvements, provide an arbitration process for a first contract similar to the laws in many Canadian provinces. 

Clearly, the legal system that governs our labor relations needs to be overhauled to give organizing a chance. Winning a first contract would lay the foundation for organizing successes. But in the real world of Washington politics, the likelihood of enacting the PRO Act or any other meaningful reform is a pipe dream as long as Congress is ruled by its current state of dysfunction.

Jennifer Abruzzo, appointed by President Biden as the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, has moved to reinvigorate the board’s original mission. And yet, once again, Amazon, SpaceX, and Trader Joe’s are currently in the courts arguing that the NLRB is, in and of itself, unconstitutional at a time when it finally has become relevant.

Ultimately, a commitment to organizing depends on the labor movement. The AFL-CIO is a decentralized umbrella operation without the authority to lead long-term national campaigns.

The power and the resources lie with the individual internationals. Unlike labor, the anti-union forces in our society have demonstrated time and time again that they have the financial wherewithal, coordination, strategic vision, singular focus, and the long term commitment to develop and lobby for anti-worker legislation at the state and federal levels. They are also prepared to challenge collective bargaining rights in the courts, and promote political programs committed to undermining union power.

The absence of a national labor strategy is not for lack of resources. A recent study suggests that America’s unions hold over $13 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Fortunately, a number of internationals, like the UAW, have demonstrated a commitment to organizing, while others continue to reserve their assets for servicing functions focused on their current members. 

Boosting union organizing is more complicated than just turning on a spigot. After all, trade unions were built to advocate for members with the collective bargaining function at the core. Many members feel that their dues should be used to advance their own conditions rather than assist workers outside the union fold. But in order to move beyond 6 percent representation in the US workforce, unions cannot limit themselves to a service-only posture, which will simply perpetuate the status quo. 

The 2023 SAG-AFTRA, UAW, and Teamster UPS campaigns relied on strong internal education to mobilize members, which can be models for a similar type of external messaging that has to consistently declare that the House of Labor welcomes, will support, and is prepared to represent all workers, not just those who already pay dues.

The underlying dynamics of our economy and the changing nature of work figure into the equation. While the extent of the gig economy is often overstated, the concept of workers as solitary individuals making their way through the world of work is increasingly celebrated. 

Independent contractors still only make up 7 percent of the workforce, and gig, or platform, workers are a subset of that number. But it is part of a trend of treating workers as “YOYOs” – you’re on your own. While there are people who are legitimate independent contractors, the problem of misclassification – an employer strategy for saving money and shedding responsibility for employees by wrongly treating them as contractors – affects the very concept of organizing.

Gig employers spin the status of independent contractor as one that offers independence, freedom, entrepreneurship, and the chance to be your own boss. Uber and Lyft have repeatedly beat the drum that flexibility – the characteristic that attracts most rideshare drivers – is dependent on being an independent contractor. Yet there is nothing in federal or state employment laws that prevents employees from having flexible schedules. 

Federal law only allows employees, not independent contractors, to form unions. And all the benefits provided by legislation dating back to the New Deal – overtime, unemployment, workers compensation, as well as the right to form a union – are only available to employees. 

The issue of employee status for rideshare drivers is being litigated around the country, including in a lawsuit filed by the Massachusetts attorney general and potential state ballot initiatives here in November. In the meantime, these drivers and other gig workers are in limbo, forced to try to improve their conditions by a variety of convoluted tactics, none of which yet include straightforward union organizing.

In a promising development, Starbucks’ new CEO has abandoned founder Howard Schultz’s relentless opposition to unions and has promised to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement. A first contract at Starbucks and UAW victories at the VW plant in Chattanooga and Mercedes in Alabama would be landmark developments. 

Two of the major demographic groups that have long been outside the union fold are young retail and service sector workers, such as Starbucks baristas, and industrial workers in the South, such as the auto workers. These victories could spark a new surge of unionism that has not been seen in many decades.

With 67 percent public support for unions, it ought to be possible to grow union membership from its current level of 6 percent of the private-sector workforce. But even taking advantage of that support to double the union share would require the kind of upsurge that hasn’t been seen since the 1930s. 

Five million workers joined unions from 1933 to 1937. It is hard to imagine a resurgence on that scale without overcoming some of the legal and political hurdles facing labor. It is even harder to imagine a revival without a deep and fundamental resource commitment by all of organized labor to fulfilling the aspirations of the 67 percent, tapping, in particular, the apparent openness to unionism among younger workers.

The past history of labor-management conflict in the US may be the most violent of any major industrialized nation. In the modern age, companies hire lawyers, lobbyists, and union avoidance consultants instead of thugs and goons. Unfortunately, there is continuity in some of the underlying attitudes. As Henry Ford said over 100 years ago, “Why is it that I always get the whole person when all I want is a pair of hands.” 

To those who say unions may at one time have been necessary but are obsolete now, Ford’s dehumanizing comments are consistent with a more subtle but just as degrading contemporary corporate outlook. We cannot afford to be YOYOs. We can’t afford to be on our own. Unions may be more crucial than ever if we are to move toward a more just society. The recent victory in Tennessee could be a major step in revitalizing labor’s role and restoring a path towards greater economic equality.

Mark Erlich is a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Center for Labor and a Just Economy, the retired head of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, and a member of the board of  MassINC, the publisher of CommonWealth Beacon.