It was a hot summer, record setting, so the slightest breeze that hints of fall seem welcome. Politics around the world was also record setting. In the UK, Conservatives took a historic drubbing by Labour. In France, the right was turned away, but government was stalemated in order to meet a left surge. In the United States, a last-minute flip at the top of the ticket, as a sitting president took a walk, turned the whole campaign topsy-turvy, as the nation holds its breath until the November election. Here at Social Policy, we tried to stay the course.
Leading this issue is a piece by frequent contributor, labor and political activist and organizer, Steve Early, which ostensibly presents itself as a pean to twenty years of work by a local community and political organization, the Richmond Progressive Alliance, across the bay from San Franciso in the shadow of the giant Chevron refinery. I say ostensibly, because this is an essay that speaks deeply to the experience gained in the tug of war of local politics and issues that distils lessons that every political and community organizer needs to study and learn. I won’t be surprised when we’re asked for reprints of this one!
We also take a deep dive looking through the prism of another very local experience, this time in Little Rock, Arkansas, with the challenges that confront the reentry of formerly incarcerated individuals into society by two people at the front lines, Nuno de Almeida and Avionta Ellis. Bruce Boccardy, another regular contributor returns with his analysis of the numbers game that gaslights unemployment figures, and why people feel differently about the economy at the bottom, than the economists and politicians would hope they feel.
The nearest some of Gen Z might get to imagining a telephone operator or customer service person would probably be a Lily Tomlin sketch on YouTube, but Debbie Goldman had a front row seat at the changing technology and the pains of automation as research director for the Communications Workers of America, as the except from her new book, Disconnected, describes. George Goehl, formerly director of the national community organizing coalition, Peoples’ Action, and now organizing in rural communities in Wisconsin, Illinois, and elsewhere, shared a pamphlet with me, and I imposed on him to allow us to share some insights he offered on organizing fundamentals. Joshua Douglas, Professor at the University of Kentucky Law School pulls no punches in detailing the way the US Supreme Court has assaulted the rights of voters in the excerpt from his new book. Kyle Crawford makes a different case. He sees ambiguity as a core principle and weapon in one area after another, and we offer a taste of his argument as he looks at “form.”
Phil Mattera isn’t buying the attack on Kamala Harris when she poked the corporate bear on the issues of prices, and in his column argues that price and wage manipulation is simply and sadly standard operation procedure for corporations. If Boccardy talked about “crass” struggle, Drummond Pike is clear about class, especially as manifested in some of the excesses of the superrich, recently tragically revealed in the yacht sinking and deaths off the coast of Sicily. John Anderson gets a little nostalgic as he looks back over 20 years as an ACORN organizer to his experiences as a neophyte being trained in New Mexico and California and, fast forward, looking to the next international organizers meeting in the Netherlands. Professor Squires underlines the shift and horror of the recasting of citizens as grist for the mill consumers and cogs in the vast commercial market. In Backstory, I can’t help myself from returning to the promises underlying the organizing of informal workers in light of the continuing failure of unions to break the chains of rules and regulations for formal workers.
This issue of Social Policy may not have something for everybody, but it’s jampacked with tips, tools, and analyses that everybody needs. Enjoy, then take it from here to there.
Throughout Joe Biden’s time in office, critics have complained he has not done enough to address high grocery prices. Now that his replacement as the Democratic presidential nominee has come forth with a plan to deal with the problem, many of those same critics are accusing Kamala Harris of going too far.
Read more: EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS - Attacking Price and Wage Manipulation
The Shift from Market Participants to Citizens
I would like to pledge to you my faith and cooperation to make this a better country…for all of us to live in and to make you pledge in return, that as we move forward, we may feel that our country is safer because it is a better country to live in for everyone. - Eleanor Roosevelt speech to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters’ convention, 1940
Everyone does better when everyone does better - Jim Hightower, The Austin Chronicle 2015
…everyone does better when all of us do better - Reverend William J. Barber II White Poverty 2024
When everyone gets a fair shot, we’re all better off - Barack Obama Democratic National Convention August 20, 2024
Read more: COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORNER - We All Do Better When we All Do Better
Recently, there was a “best of times, worst of times” op-ed in the New York Times by labor lawyer Matt Bruenig of the NLRB Edge newsletter on the successful NLRB-based organizing campaign by Workers United/SEIU of more than 400 Starbucks US coffeeshops covering 11,000 workers. Over the last three years baristas and their union have been wildly successful at winning NLRB elections, but Starbucks has been equally persistent in denying any of these units a firs contract, though the parties are finally at the bargaining table.
No small amount of credit also goes to the National Labor Relations Board. As Bruenig points out,
With an overall budget of $299 million and a staff of around 1,200, the N.L.R.B. has conducted over 550 union elections, processed more than 1,000 unfair labor practice charges and issued roughly 300 decisions in cases involving the company. N.L.R.B. lawyers have also filed for 12 preliminary injunctions against Starbucks, the company accounting for more than 40 percent of all the injunctions the agency sought last year. The agency’s legal documents in Starbucks cases comprised at least 2.7 million words … not counting hearing transcripts, complaints, motions and briefs that … would at least double that figure.
That’s good work from the NLRB. The bad news is that countering the $36 billion dollar company has meant a 50% delay for other workers and unions in the NLRB processing and concluding their charges and cases. Our own local union has had an open-and-shut successorship case with a healthcare company hanging for two years now. Starbucks’ tactics have effectively gummed up the entire system, but breaking the NLRB won’t result in labor law reform or more resources to support workers organizing unions. Instead, they have served as a model for other anti-union companies like Amazon and Tesla to go that route and ante up even higher by challenging the very existence of the NLRB in court.
It’s impossible not to conclude that the system is broken and, given the state of our national politics, regardless of Biden/Harris advocacy, it’s clear no one is coming to fix it. If that’s the case, what hope is there for the kind of mass organizing that workers need and that unions have thus far failed to deliver? The default answer for decades now has been for organizers to avoid the NLRB and our weak labor law protections and win with worker heat coupled to significant political leverage and what remains of solidarity from existing pockets of labor power. That strategy has brought some victories, especially among home healthcare workers and childcare workers. It has not brought us success at Walmart, McDonalds, and other mass employers.
I’ve made the case for majority-based worker organizing outside of the law or employer recognition, but it’s been a call largely unanswered since our effort with Walmart workers decades ago, especially by what remains of institutional labor in the United States. Elsewhere we’ve had more luck. With support from the British Columbia General Employees Union (BCGEU), the United Steelworkers Union of Canada’s Humanity Fund, and some private donors, we have seen some progress in India especially among informal workers. The ACORN affiliated Joint Hawkers’ Action Committee has now brought street sellers into one mass organization in over 20 cities now representing 350,000 members with our sights on many more. Earlier we had won a livelihood act that allows street selling and creates town committees where our members are able to be represented in something approximating a public-private partnership with our union, as well as a form of social security.
Would this strategy work with large corporations with tens of thousands of workers? Maybe, yes, maybe, no? The results in the Walmart campaign were encouraging, but weren’t exploited or expanded, so don’t provide a definitive answer. Many unions are trying different organizing tactics and strategy, but no one is lining up outside this door. At least, not yet.
Ironically, the one-off victory at Amazon and the hundreds of Starbucks wins seemed to have hardened many unions’ commitment to the NLRB, despite its weaknesses. The fact that the NLRB has been better under Biden administration than any other board in the last more than forty years was encouraging, but, as Bruenig argues, isn’t really sustainable.
Workers are supporting unions in record numbers and from diverse constituencies. They need a mass movement, and there are signs that they want such a movement. NLRB elections will never make that happen. Whether a majority-union strategy or some other, when will unions finally come together and respond? Unions are facing an existential crisis. Wouldn’t it be better to die trying, than continue to weakened?