Celebrate Labor

 Celebrate Labor

Collective Action Brings Change

 

Another Labor Day weekend is here to celebrate all the accomplishments brought to us all by the American labor movement. Most will enjoy the extra day off from working for someone else by spending time enjoying family, friends, and the fruits of our labor. We should take some of that time to recognize what collective action has accomplished.

 

The American labor movement grew out of the excesses of the robber barons in the coal, steel, garment, auto and transportation industries around the turn of the last century. Workers came to realize that if they banded together and came up with a list of demands, their employers would rather negotiate and meet those demands than suffer the consequences of a strike when those that produced their products withheld their labor. No labor, no product, so sales, no profits. 

 

Over time labor unions brought us all safer working conditions, living wages, 40-hour work weeks, overtime pay, fringe benefits like employer paid health insurance, paid vacations, sick leave, family leave, workplace safety regulation and enforcement, the weekend, paid holidays and many others. Unions, collective action, helped level the playing field between workers and employers and helped build a strong middle class. 

 

I worked my way through college and law school with a good paying union job. I was a proud member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 251 in Madison, Wisconsin in the 1970s. I put in long hours, often well into the morning, helping to put on shows at the Dane County Coliseum for traveling companies of rock and roll performers, folk singers, Ice Shows, Auto Shows, political events, and others. My union brothers taught me what I needed to know and how to do it safely. If issues arose with the roadies, our business agent was on hand to iron them out. I took UW college classes in technical theatre and got to help put on the Bernstein Mass in New York City with our lighting instructor under the watchful eyes of the brothers and sisters of IATSE Local 1. 

 

Before I finished college, I joined VISTA and trained as a community organizer. I was posted to Houston, Texas where our team helped organize poor people of color to make the Houston Public Schools more responsive to their needs. We put together alliances with other community groups, and organized voter registration drives. I came to understand that individuals are essentially powerless, but groups of like-minded folks are not. Organized groups have the power to put pressure on decision makers and public officials to bring about change. 

 

After law school, I came to realize that community organizers owe a large debt to labor unions and their organizing strategies. We both utilize the same techniques to achieve mutually desired goals. We both recognize the power of collective action. 

 

Organized labor has long had a home in the Democratic party. Other organized groups have found friends and alliances in Democratic party efforts as their platforms are often aligned. Groups advocating for civil rights, opposing unjust wars, promoting reproductive freedom, same sex marriage, and universal suffrage have all found success working together with Democrats to achieve their goals. We have learned that we get more done if we work together. 

 

This explains why big business and their political allies work so hard to destroy the power of collective action. Wisconsin’s Act 10 is a perfect example. Teachers were organized and their statewide union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), had become a powerful ally of the Democratic party working to get more resources into local public schools and paying teachers well. They helped advance other Democratic party objectives. WEAC opposed a darling of the right, school choice and the now failed voucher system which stole funds from public schools and paid them to unaccountable charter and religious schools. When Scott Walker and the Tea Party took over state government, they dropped the Act 10 bomb which stripped organized teachers of much of their power. Unfortunately, we have now seen the result in underfunded public schools, demonized teachers bolting from their careers, local school boards strapped for resources and parents wondering how their children will continue to learn. 

 

So called “Right to Work” laws have further diminished worker power and made it harder to organize workplace unions. 

 

In today’s labor market, workers are once again feeling some sense of their collective power. Whole new sectors of our economy are seeing union growth. Witness the 200 Starbucks coffee shops that are now staffed by union members. Recent polling shows the approval rating for unions and union activity continuing to rise, surpassing post-World War II levels. Workers are demanding higher wages, living wages, and withholding their labor until their demands are met. There is not a shortage of people willing to work. There is a shortage of employers willing to pay workers what they are worth and recognize that labor produces the product, not the employer. 

 

Celebrate Labor Day and join a union. If your workplace does not have one, start one. There is power in collective action.