Unionism

Unionism

I recently watched a short video by Chris Hedges, whom I greatly admire, about Democrats who align themselves with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and capitulate to the neoliberal, or New Democrat, agenda. That agenda involves kowtowing to the corporate elite, militarism, and the destruction of the environment, with perhaps some halfhearted tinkering at the edges of the environmental disaster all around us.

Chris Hedges rightly names unions and organizing as the two tools to push back against the darkness that has taken hold of this nation and government. Here are the numbers of union workers in the US: In the public sector, 32.9% of workers belong to a union, or about 7.3 million people. The private sector has about 5.9% of workers in unions, or 7.4 million members. That’s a total of about 10% of all workers in the US. Compare those numbers with 1954 figures when 35% of US workers were in a union and the 1979 total when 21 million workers were unionized. It’s no accident that 1979 marked the growth of the global economy, which hollowed out both unions and industrial centers in the US.

I belonged to three unions during my working years, with the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers being the unions I belonged to the longest. The university/college union I belonged to was not much of a union for adjunct faculty like myself. The one time I needed the latter’s help, they were useless.

Both the NEA and AFT were fairly dependable unions, although I pushed back against the AFT because of their support for war in the 1980s. The reaction of the union president in that case was vicious. When the government of Rhode Island, including all three branches of the state government, successfully supported the elimination of union members’ cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs), unions bent to the will of the government, and many union members gave away, or supported, the state government in taking away retirees legally guaranteed COLAs. Hundreds of public service workers like myself fought against the state’s draconian action in taking away the COLAs that allowed members to live with a measure of dignity.

Unionism in the US was met with state violence during the late 19th and 20th centuries. While some unions were forward-thinking, others became staunch supporters of McCarthy-era anti-communism. The government entered the fray once again just after World War II with the Taft-Hartley Act (1947) that banned many strikes. Right-to-work laws would soon follow. I searched for one of the effects of the Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME (2018) on union dues for public sector workers and found that over 30,000 members of one major teachers’ union refused to pay the fees generally associated with collective bargaining. In other words, a union member could benefit from the negotiations of his/her union for better working conditions and pay but did not have to pay full dues for that representation. The resulting power of unions to influence elections was lessened.

A few days after the Kent State Massacre of anti-war protesters in Ohio in May 1970, rampaging trade union workers rioted in the Wall Street area of Manhattan and went on a bloody attack against protesting students. During Donald Trump’s successful run for the presidency in 2024, he had the support of the majority of rank-and-file workers represented by the Teamsters Union.