Chaumtoli Huq
Jonathan Harris is a Brooklyn based labor lawyer and former organizer
“Most holidays we celebrate ain’t nothing but scams and lies and tricks and all the real meaning be lost/For me it’s time-and-a-half or just another day off ” from “Holiday Pay” by rapper Tahir, 2001 (Raptivism)
Many workers today think that unions are not for them. They may tell you that an older relative was in a union at one time, but they really don’t know what the union was or did. It’s simply assumed that a worker must negotiate one-on-one with her boss, or more likely, that she must accept whatever the boss offers her and she should feel lucky to even have a job in this economy.
It wasn’t always like this.
Not that long ago, huge segments of the U.S. workforce had a say in their terms and conditions of employment—it was normal. The fight for collective workplace rights through the creation of unions was no doubt difficult, took decades, and often left people of color and women out. Imperfect as they were, however, the unions of past decades won us the standard 40-hour workweek and other workplace protections. Now, the concept of workers organizing together to raise the floor for all, as opposed to individual workers asking one-by-one for better treatment, is practically incomprehensible.
At the same time, courts are paralyzing—and members of Congress are attempting to abolish—the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the body formed to protect collective rights. For example, in August, a federal trial court ruled that the appointment of NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Soloman was unlawful. Since so much of the NLRB’s work flows through the General Counsel’s office, the ruling could seriously disrupt the operations of the NLRB. Moreover, government-mandated individual workplace protections have been unable to fill the void left by the decrease in union membership and the corresponding loss of a popular recognition of collective rights. Other collective rights outside of the labor context are also being eroded, as witnessed in the recent Supreme Court dismantling of the Voting Rights Act.
Many recent immigrants, on the other hand, come from countries with thriving current union movements. This, I believe, helps explain the proliferation of workers’ centers and unions’ focus on organizing immigrant workers. These developments are already rekindling a national consciousness of collective workplace rights. In my experience organizing workers in Florida, North Carolina, and New York, for example, recent immigrants from Cuba, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Haiti were some of the most active leaders of union and workers’ center organizing campaigns in hospitals, restaurants, construction sites, and other workplaces. Many told me they drew on their experience with active labor movements in their countries of origin, even if they weren’t leaders in those unions. Workers’ centers aren’t only for immigrants; Black workers’ centers are also thriving.
Workers’ centers and their allies have also led the way in using creative legal tactics to support organizing. One relatively successful tactic has been coordinating group or class lawsuits against employers for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, Title VII, and other employment laws. While, at first glance, those laws tend to address individual—not collective—workplace rights, legal advocates have utilized them to put additional pressure on employers to agree to company-wide changes and limited but significant power-sharing arrangements. There are varying models for using such litigation, and unscrupulous employers have sometimes responded with SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) claims of their own in retaliation (unions are likewise not immune from such retaliatory tactics: just this week a federal appeals court ruled that a union’s strategic lawsuit challenging shopping centers’ leasing of space to nonunion supermarkets could be considered an unlawful “secondary boycott” that is not protected by the First Amendment). Nevertheless, these lawsuits have helped in building both the power and the membership rolls of workers’ centers, and have assisted in forcing wage thieves to pay workers their hard-earned cash.
So there are some things to celebrate this Labor Day. For me, I plan to celebrate by supporting the campaign to raise the minimum wage because raising the floor for some of the lowest-paid workers—via a union or a workers’ center—will help to reignite our nation’s not-too-distant tradition of recognizing workers’ collective right to negotiate for better conditions.
