Long before the current spike in inflation backed millions of workers into a financial corner, American workers have been getting a raw deal. In real dollars, the buying power of the Federal minimum wage peaked in 1968!
But it wasn’t always this way. There was once a brief window in which American workers enjoyed the unfettered right to organize nationwide.
In the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt and New Deal Democrats ended a brutal war that business – backed by police and military – had been waging against labor unions for more than 50 years. But while passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 gave workers the right to bargain collectively, but unemployment levels of nearly 25% rendered the legislation largely symbolic.
World War II brought the return of jobs, along with price and wage controls. And once American workers had won the war and prosperity returned, the first Republican Congress in 30 years promptly passed so-called ‘right to work’ laws that effectively neutered labor unions. After that, it was straight downhill for organized labor.
That is, until 2022… when union election wins jumped 80% over the previous year. The 2022 wins also represented more than twice as many workers as those in 2021.
Retail, service, health care, and transportation industries all saw growth in union formations in 2022, most notably at Starbucks, Amazon, and Apple.
Bloomberg reports that unions have won nearly 77% of this year’s elections, the highest rate since it began recording data. Members overwhelmingly support their unions, and half of non-union workers surveyed say that they would join a union if they could.
But the embrace of unionism is occurring not just among workers, but among the American public, among whom 56% say that the decline in union representation has been bad for the country as a whole.
Among workers aged 18-29 who are leading the new push for unionization, support surges to 69%.
There was a time when unions were bashed as Big Labor over-reach, but in this era of multi-national companies presided over by American oligarchs, the pendulum is finally swinging back.
Yet is seems shameful that these ‘essential workers’ who kept the nation running through COVID have been made to wait so long for an expression of the nation’s gratitude where it counts most.
Leave a Reply