A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement (A Century Foundation
Contents:
Dick is not pro-union. Dick has said if a union came to organize a business he was associated with, he would oppose unionization. And I remember you, Richard Bensinger, early on talking about: Why was the shelf life so short on that in the labor movement? But I was going to say, one thing about these principles is the UAW did adopt these versions of these principles. And so he has really challenged the companies to do nothing more than have an election like we have in the rest of society. The issue was local. It was public sector workers and government workers where AFSCME was doing really smart organizing in towns like Wellston and Enid, and in little conservative towns all over Oklahoma, and they were heavily Republican.
I might not vote for one, but they should certainly have the right to vote for one, free of any interference from us and any threats or fears, or retaliation or anything. I think the American people—and these are good people like anybody else. And I think if we frame the issue right, then I think we win overwhelmingly on that. I want to go back to the civil rights question. Why not argue for freedom of association as opposed to labor and civil rights?
I mean freedom of association is a basic premise in the Constitution. Why not make that the case as opposed to labor and civil rights? I think the two are closely related. In the case of the Fourteenth Amendment, it prohibits discrimination based on race. That applies to state governments and under the Civil Rights Act, the Fourteenth Amendment was essentially applied to the private sector. So the notion here is to kind of marry civil rights and civil liberties.
The reason we use the words civil right is that people understand that. But in this country, that is not what appeals to people.
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Does making the civil rights demand help us politically, in terms of organizing, and if it does, how? As someone who was fired for organizing, I got almost no back pay. I got a couple of thousand dollars after almost six years, because this was saying that, you know, they deduct from your back pay what I earned in the interim.
However, Amy, I agree with you that this is fundamentally a question of the fundamental right of freedom of speech and freedom of association. But why not just fight for stronger penalties to the NLRA? Well, I would say two things. It is directly connected to freedom of speech.
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It was about free choice. It seems to me that part of the reason is that it was able to be described as a fight between two special interests. The civil rights movement is really the iconic movement in this country. I agree this is also a human right, but from my understanding, the pulling on that suggests that people think of human rights as something that need to be protected abroad.
I want to wrap up with two final questions. So, the first question is, would EFCA have done anything to expand the reach to cover workers whose employment issues just did not exist at the time of the NLRA? Would EFCA address any of that? You mean like temporary workers, or agency workers, or part time or contract workers? But I think the labor movement can. And this is why, even with EFCA, even with the great law or whatever we get, employers will always figure out how to adjust to whatever law there is.
Rebuilding the Labor Movement
There certainly is this social media and new media, and union campaigns, I think, are beginning to consider using them. And I think that this is a changed world.
A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement (A Century Foundation Book) [Amy B. Dean, David B. Reynolds, Harold. A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement (Century Foundation Books (Cornell Paperback)) By David B. Reynolds.
People care about what they do during work. We just have to be responsive as a labor movement and commit our time and energy, and focus and resources to thinking of new ways of organizing, and learn from other movements, like the Occupy movement, or look back into the civil Rights movement, or look at other movements globally, or think of something new that no one thought of before. What we see is so interesting with new media, new ways of talking to people.
There never will be a substitute for old-fashioned relational politics, one on one. But I do think there are all new ways to people relating on that. I think social media is a really good equalizer for unions, because it gives us access to literally tens of millions, or hundreds of millions of people.
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That sort of levels the playing field for workers, even in small enterprises. And, my second question, for Richard Kahlenberg, how does making labor rights into civil rights address this sticky problem of who is the employer of record? It seems to me that one of the brilliant moves that industry made over the last ten or twelve years—maybe even longer, maybe twenty years—is just really to convolute who is the employer.
I think the big picture here is that the National Labor Relations Act passed in So you saw the exclusion of agriculture rural workers, of supervisors, of public employees. And the Civil Rights Act, which was passed in , is a step forward, right? So it includes agricultural laborers, and public employees, and supervisors. This Civil Right Act addresses many of the problems of the National Labor Relations Act in terms of how work has changed by including these categories that I mentioned—agricultural, and supervisors, and public employees.
Your point is a correct one—that any amendments would need to incorporate additional ways in which work has changed and be updated. Just one thing on that. NLRB has almost no relevance to a worker that wants to organize. Sometimes we just get confused, I think, and we forget to adjust for a non-union worker, we have an obligation to give them a fair choice. This law is irrelevant. Even we in the labor movement tend to forget that there are really two sides of the NLRB.
One side, for workers that have existing unions—that side does pretty good. I mean, if employers fail to bargain, they can charge the company with the failure to bargain.
The Three Legs of Regional Power Building
But that speaks to protecting the rights of already organized members, and the NLRB does do a good job on that. And NLRA really speaks fairly well for those people, if not perfectly. It is a law that is sympathetic—because it changed so much over the last seventy-five years. When it comes to non-union workers, it actually helps the business community. We should keep it. I want to ask one last question. I find that fascinating. There has also been an enormous amount of collaboration among groups that have been doing anti-foreclosure work for so many decades and now, somehow, informally, people are networking into sort of a national collection of organizations called Occupy Our Homes, shining the national limelight on local fights.
And I find it to be some of the more exciting stuff going on right now in the country. I would say a lot. Tell the story for what it is. Just get the workers themselves—as unions have done for the ages—and talk about what the fight is about. I think that we win on that overwhelmingly, if the issue is framed for exactly as it is.
And so, Occupy rolls up, and it creates this outburst against inequality—global inequality, and inequality in this country. And labor unions speak as much as any institutions to the issue of the global economy. I agree completely with what Richard has just said, that the paradox here is that Occupy, Wall Street, and the labor movement are collective efforts.
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And yet, what drives people is those individual stories: A New New Deal explores successful coalitions forged in Los Angeles, Boston, Denver, San Jose, New Haven, and Atlanta toward goals such as universal health insurance for children and sensible redevelopment efforts that benefit workers as well as businesses. The authors view partnerships between labor and grassroots organizations as a mutually beneficial strategy based on shared goals, resulting in a broadened membership base and increased organizational capacity.
They make the innovative argument that the labor movement can steward both industry and community and make manifest the ways in which workplace battles are not the parochial concerns of isolated workers, but a fundamental struggle for America's future. Drawing on historical parallels, the authors illustrate how long-term collaborations between labor and community organizations are sowing the seeds of a new New Deal. The Birth of Regional Power Building 1. Developing a Regional Policy Agenda 4. From Access to Governance: Building Aggressive Political Action.
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The Spread of Regional Power Building 6. Dean , David B. Foreword by Harold Meyerson. A New New Deal. Reynolds offer a compelling vision of a new kind of labor movement. At a time when America desperately needs stronger unions, A New New Deal sends a clear message that nostalgia for organized labor's past is no strategy for our future. Reynolds paint a compelling picture of regional movements for a just and sustainable society.
A New New Deal reinspires social activism and offers a modern road map to the labor movement.
Labor movement insiders Amy B. Dean and David Reynolds understand the importance of the economic empowerment of women and people of color. The authors draw on their real-world experience as activists in this contemporary look at grassroots organizing. Reynolds understand that union workers don't check their other identities at the shop floor door; they are people of color, women, immigrants.
A New New Deal helps union organizers make the most of the multiple identities of workers in the fight against the overlapping injustices they face.