Challenges Ahead
We have a great opportunity today as polls show that about
fifty percent of workers would choose to have a union if they didn’t face employer opposition. That’s at least
40 million who don’t have one now.
But taking advantage of this opportunity to strengthen all working people requires overcoming some stark realities:- The organizing process established by the National Labor Relations Act can no longer be counted on to protect workers’ freedom to form a union. In most cases, it takes too long, leaves too much room for employer interference and intimidation, and imposes little or no penalty for violations of the law.
- The only way to persuade most employers to respect workers’ rights is to conduct a corporate responsibility campaign that holds the employer accountable for the full range of ways that its policies and practices affect the larger community. That takes money, political strength, and the ability to campaign effectively throughout the nation or even around the globe.
- Our industries and employers increasingly operate on a regional, national, or global basis. They can move capital from one place to another. They plan how to drive down pay and benefit standards in one place as a step toward driving them down everywhere. Their increased size allows them to bring to bear far more political pressure than a purely local employer can.
- Capital is now blurring the lines across industries and between the public and private sectors. Already, more than four million people work for companies controlled by corporate buyout firms that have no industry focus but only an interest in moving and manipulating money to maximize profits for a limited group of executives. One of these buyout companies now controls HCA, the largest profit-making hospital chain in America. Another controls Manor Care, the largest nursing home chain. A third controls one of the three largest multi-service contractors.
Their latest target: public infrastructure (roads, bridges, and lotteries) that have been performed by public employees but could be outsourced to companies the buyout firms control.
- The percentage of unionization in the private sector has dropped below eight percent, and two-thirds of public employees have no union either. In the health care and property services industries, ninety percent of workers have no union.
- Virtually all population growth in the U.S. in the next 20 years will be in southern and western states where unionization is lowest. Those states increasingly will have an economic impact on pay and benefit standards for the nation, so if we don’t help workers there unite to win improvements, pressure will be greater to reduce standards in the rest of the country.
- Industries that are growing fastest generally are those with the least unionization.