Organized Labor in America: A Year In Review

It’s not often that struggles of organized labor are featured in a major motion picture, so it was notable when “Sorry to Bother You” hit the silver screen in 2018. Although the film was marketed as a comedy about a newly hired black telemarketer, Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield), putting on a “white voice” to improve his sales, it quickly becomes clear that class struggle and a union uprising are central to the film’s plot.

One of the first characters Cassius meets is Squeeze (Steven Yeun), who reveals to Cassius that along with some of their coworkers, he is organizing a union to negotiate for better wages and working conditions.

“This is all of us, ride or die,” Squeeze says to a gathering of Regal View workers as they prepare to go into work. “Today is the warning shot, telling them that we stand united.”

The “warning shot” Squeeze refers to is the first of many union actions featured throughout the film - a 20-minute work stoppage during the busiest part of the workday. After Squeeze finishes delivering his heartening speech, the Regal View workers quietly file into work and begin what becomes a drawn-out labor struggle that lasts for the duration of the film.

“Sorry to Bother You” regularly evokes a sense of cynicism and hopelessness surrounding the nascent union push. The workers of Regal View are exploited, their employers use tactics of intimidation and manipulation to turn the workers against each other, and a dispassionate public turns a blind eye to gross violations of human rights. Looking outward to the reality American workers inhabit today, it’s hard not to see why the film's outlook is so bleak.

In 2018, union membership in the U.S. reached an all-time low of 10.5%, which is roughly half the rate it was in the 1980s. Indeed, union membership has been on a downward trend for decades.

On the other hand, unions also saw a number of major victories just in the last year.

Teachers’ unions across the country have seen somewhat of a renaissance in the last year with massive teachers’ strikes in West-Virginia, Kentucky, Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, and most recently, Los Angeles to name a few. In fact, the teacher’s strikes of 2018 made last year the biggest for labor strikes since 1986. To compare, fewer than 50,000 U.S. workers participated in a strike in 2017. In 2018, nearly 500,000 workers went on strike, largely thanks to the success of the teacher’s strikes in 2018.

At a time when teachers are being paid nearly 20% less compared to the average comparable worker, the string of teacher’s strikes and subsequent victories offered some much-needed relief to struggling teachers, especially those in states where years of austerity have strained public school budgets.

In Anaheim, Disney workers campaigned for higher wages for months. Disney eventually reached an agreement with workers to raise hourly wages to $13.50 in July and then $15.00 at the start of 2019.

That was only the beginning, however, as workers throughout the community campaigned for a local ballot initiative that would enact an hourly wage increase to $18.00 by 2022 for all hospitality businesses that get a city tax subsidy. The ballot initiative won with 54.25% of the vote on November 6, 2018.

As 2019 begins and labor organizers in Anaheim come off major victories in 2018, the focus of Anaheim's labor movement has shifted to Hilton and Sheraton resort workers as they struggle for better wages and fairer scheduling practices; all of which comes after a series of other hotel strikes around the country, including in Los Angeles and Chicago.

Even Amazon, owned by the wealthiest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, has faced public pressure to allow workers to organize a union. Last year, Amazon agreed to raise starting wages to $15.00 an hour. In December, Amazon warehouse workers began a push to unionize that has picked up traction in recent months, though Amazon has remained steadfast in its resistance to unionization, and even pulled out of a deal for a new headquarters in New York after refusing to remain neutral towards a union drive at its Staten Island warehouse.

Just this January, the U.S. Government partially shut down for 35 days, the longest shutdown in U.S. history; and while many were quick to give Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi the credit for ending the shutdown, the actions of thousands of federal government workers were also greatly instrumental in bringing the standoff between congressional Democrats and Republicans to an end. Workers of TSA, the IRS, air traffic controllers and flight attendants refused to work after 35 days of no pay, crippling crucial government services, forcing President Trump’s hand and ending the seemingly unbreakable impasse.

“It’s meaningful and rewarding work to really affect the conditions of worker’s lives through a common humanity and solidarity,” said Christian Mach, a former union organizer for the Service Employee’s International Union 1199.

While Mach sees the value and importance of labor unions, he said not all unions are the same and that some have been corrupted. Mach described two distinct structural models traditionally followed by unions. The first, characterized by a decentralized and democratized structure is what Mach calls the “organizing model.” Unions that follow the organizing model tend to be more militant with a focus on building membership and heightened class consciousness.

“The organizing model puts an emphasis on internal democracy, membership taking an active role and participating,” Mach said. “The idea being ‘The union is us.’ It’s bottom- up as opposed to top-down.”

The other model Mach discussed is the “service model,” which adheres to a more bureaucratic and professional management style. Mach described the service model as “appeasement of management” and “co-opted by capitalists.”

“Under the service model, unions become this professional bureaucracy with a self-serving purpose that has more in common with management than workers,” Mach said. “Stronger unions are the ones that are more democratic and member driven, like the Industrial Workers of the World and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. A union is more corrupted as it gets further from that mission.”

Mach also described his experience with the union-busting tactics used by employers.

“Employers would hire professional union busters to break up organizing efforts,” Mach said. “Threatening and firing pro-union workers and making other workers feel intimidated.”

Mach said employers often punish workers for organizing by cutting their hours while sweetening the deal for others who are willing to play ball with management. Employers like Wal-Mart, for example, may even make anti-union propaganda a part of their training process for new hires. The ultimate goal of these tactics being to “split workers up and turn them against each other.”

“Employers might tell their workers that they don’t need a union because their workplace is a family environment,” Mach said. “But real power is through collective action. Together, workers have a lot more power than individually. Unions are a counter to the imbalance of power between workers and management.”

In 2019, with union membership at an all-time low yet a heightened atmosphere of grassroots activism, it appears organized labor is at a fork in the road. Is it true that, as critics of unions say, organized labor has become obsolete? Will the labor movement simply fade out of existence or is it possible that a resurgence of militant union organizing is upon us?