Some Thoughts on Union Organizing and its Implications for Democratic and democratic Politics
May 10, 2024
Last month in Tennessee, the United Auto Workers won one of the most important union elections in recent memory. For decades, auto makers have shifted production to the South to take advantage of the anti-labor laws and environment in places like Tennessee. Organizing is hard in right to work states where there are no political consequences and no serious legal sanctions for firing people for exercising their federally-guaranteed right to organize. For a long time, union leaders avoided even attempting to organize southern auto plants. But for at least the past decade, the UAW has invested in growing union density in the South.
The Chattanooga Volkswagen facility that was the site of the UAW’s victory last month has been a target for labor organizers since Obama was president. In 2014 and 2019, union elections were held there which resulted in very close losses. This time, with the UAW committed to new tactics and to investing heavily in organizing non-union plants, the union won in a landslide.
Volkswagen was a good target. It was committed to staying somewhat neutral in union elections – even though the UAW has filed some unfair labor practices against the company – perhaps owing to its German ethos, where unions are more likely to be considered partners than enemies by capital. As Politico pointed out, Volkswagen’s refusal to go to war with the UAW as other automakers, such as Tesla, have done was a problem for Tennessee’s right-wing politicians. Republican politicians essentially led the anti-union effort against the UAW. While previously arguing that the union was an outsider just wanting to make money off of the workers, their tune changed to associating the UAW with President Biden. Assuming workers would hate this association proved to the be yet another example of the classic political mistake of believing your own BS. The landslide victory has been applauded by Biden, who has a chance here to make allies of some of the very people Republicans have been counting on as part of their base.
I’ve noted before how short-sighted it has been for Democrats to not make voting rights its number one priority but there is a related issue that they should be focusing on: supporting the right of workers to unionize and otherwise act collectively in the workplace. Many, including me, were encouraging by Obama’s victory in 2008 and the Democratic legislative majority. We thought could finally pass the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would allow for unions to be recognized once a majority of workers joined rather than have a divisive and unfair election (although elections would still be permitted). EFCA would have also provided meaningful penalties for violations of workers’ right to organize.
But once in office, Democrats never made it a priority even though it was as important for their political organizing as it was for worker organizing. We know from history that where workers can and do organize on the job, they also become more engaged in community organizing and politics that support equitable economic policy and related progressive goals. At the time, polls showed that EFCA had support from a majority of Americans, yet once in office Democrats wouldn’t make it a priority and it did not pass.
A similar thing happened in 2020, when Biden was elected. The PRO Act contains many of the labor law reforms necessary to reverse the right-wing legislative obstacles that have upended the promises of the Wagner Act. The Act passed the House when the Democrats had a majority, but passage in the Senate has been impossible – and not just because of the filibuster, but because some Democrats would not vote for it.
The three most important laws Democrats should have passed as soon taking office in January 2021 were the PRO Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the Freedom to Vote Act. While plenty of other legislation was important, resolving these essential right to organize and right to vote matters remains essential to safeguarding our democracy. All other policy rests on whether we have a fair and functioning democracy.
There are many reasons the industrial working class became the “white working class,” and Democratic abandonment - real and perceived - of workers has been an important factor. Republicans grasped what fascists did in the 1920s and 1930s: you can gain the political support of workers by focusing on the failures of their supposed political allies and point the blame at them at the Other. The Other is important because fascists need workers to blame the powerless and despised, not the bosses and the wealthy. To this end, Republicans combined racial resentment with liberal embrace of Republican economic policy to build the white working class that forms a big part of their electoral base today.
The Clinton wing of the Democratic Party certainly deserves its share of the blame, as they happily moved the political center of the country to the right in exchange for just one of their own winning the presidency. Clintonism - at least in terms of economic policy - has turned out to be an abject failure. But it was still so influential on party politics that even as late as 2008 in the wake of a near-depression caused by neoliberal economics championed by Republicans and Clintonistas, Obama appointed nearly Clinton’s entire economic team as his own. The progressives were relegated to the vice-president’s office. That vice-president? Biden. And some of those folks are now advising him as president. Which is one reason why we see a pro-labor administration stronger than any since, well, Roosevelt. But even still, the PRO Act was never elevated as it should have been, like voting rights: a Democratic Party priority.
While it may be hard to understand for many people why many workers have turned to Republicans in the past decade or more, the answer is not that complicated when you understand that desperation breeds resentment. People who are supposed to do the right thing will always be criticized harder for failing to do so than people who you can never count on. And Democrats were supposed to be the party that protected working people, not Wall Street investors and bosses.
Staughton Lynd chronicled the beginnings of this resentment when supposed political allies in the 1970s would not support seizing plants by eminent domain and have the workers run them - something that foreshadowed the Clinton wing’s support for NAFTA. Instead of saving these steel plants, Rust Belt communities were decimated by massive job loss. It happened again in the 1990s as neoliberalism took hold. It was easy for Republicans to combine this worker resentment with the racial resentment they had been stoking since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Desperation breeds resentment.
The Clinton wing’s idea of embracing Republican economic ideas, but perhaps layering in some safety net protections, was always a terrible idea. It demonstrated an abandonment of workers and communities while focusing on programs that were not just easily labeled as welfare (in the derogatory sense of the term), but that were typically not universal and thus subjected to intense political attacks as favoring the Other at the expense of “hard-working Americans.” The very small constituencies that might benefit from many of these programs simply lacked the political power to get most Democratic politicians to go to the mat for them. In fact, Clinton made a big deal out of “ending welfare as we know it” in a cynical attempt to outflank the Republicans on the right (which, in turn, just made them turn further to the right).
Supporting the right to organize is not just a labor or worker issue, it’s a democratic issue - and it is a Democratic issue. Labor organizing empowers workers, who are also members of their communities. Their unions are run by members elected and accountable to them. They “tax” themselves to have the capacity to advocate for themselves on the job, in the community, and at the ballot box. They create meaningful vehicles for civic participation.
When workers see the benefits of a collectively bargained contract, they see how they can change their communities as well as their work-life. There is an increased sense of solidarity, and that is especially important in diverse workplaces. It builds bridges and undermines the appeals of the right to resentment. At the height of union density in this country, unions supported much of the social life of their communities. This should benefit the Democratic Party, but only if workers see the party has supporting their union rights. For this reason, EFCA and the PRO Act are a pro-democracy bills every bit as much as the voting rights bills.
This is the first of an occasional series on labor organizing and politics and its implications on Democratic and electoral politics.