Abstract

Will Labor Come Back?

This commentary explores labor in the United States and in the political campaigns of the presidential candidates. Labor Day has never been a very inspiring holiday, established as it was by late-nineteenth-century union bosses as a homegrown alternative to May Day, which was viewed as having uncomfortably leftist, European associations. American workers today, of course, would love to have the healthcare, organizing rights and vacations enjoyed by their counterparts in most of Europe. Celebrating the holiday early, in August the Bush White House and its rich friends no doubt toasted new regulations that will deprive up to 6 million additional American workers of overtime. Even more disturbing, in June the Administration's National Labor Relations Board quietly moved to "review" the legitimacy of the card-check procedure, by which an employer recognizes a union when presented with cards signed by more than half of the shop's employees. Presidential hopeful John Kerry, meanwhile, has firmly opposed the Bush Administration on overtime as well as card check, even co-sponsoring the Employee Free Choice Act, which would require an employer to recognize a union when 50 percent of its workers sign cards. These issues alone -- and of course there are many more -- are reason enough to applaud unions' vigorous contribution to the defeat of George W. Bush, which has unified and energized the rank and file more effectively than anything in years. Any successful revamping of labor strategy should also take heed of the vibrant small-scale and local organizing going on outside traditional unions: Immigrant workers nationwide, and black workers in the South -- long hampered from organizing by "right to work" laws and by racism in traditional unions--have been organizing through worker centers, building power in their communities as well as on the shop floor.