Chris Bohner is a union researcher and activist.
Donald Trump will do his best to undermine unions. But the labor movement still has momentum on its side and numerous opportunities to seize. Trump’s presidency has to be a time for labor action, not despair.
What explains Kamala Harris’s poor numbers with voters who belong to unions? The decline in real wages for union members under Biden may have something to do with it.
The Right has given us plenty of indications of the dangers a second Trump term could pose to labor. To see how bad things might get, we can look to another example of a brutally anti-labor presidency: Ronald Reagan’s.
With union popularity at historic highs and organized labor’s war chests overflowing, now is the time to spend big on strikes and new organizing. So far, unions mostly aren’t doing that.
Even as union density has declined, unions have spent little on organizing while amassing vast war chests. But the UAW and Workers United are showing that spending big on strikes and organizing pays off.
Union democracy shouldn’t be seen as an abstract good separate from more important strategic considerations about rebuilding labor. Without democratizing labor, we can’t rebuild labor.
From the UAW to the Writers Guild, this year’s biggest contract victories have been won by unions in which members directly elect their leaders. That’s a right denied to most US union members — but it may be the key to unleashing broader labor militancy.
The United Food and Commercial Workers, one of the US’s largest unions, has shed members despite seeing its bank account expand over the last decade. A rank-and-file reform movement wants to democratize UFCW and push the union to spend its resources on organizing.
American unions’ members are down, but their finances are through the roof. The labor movement can’t rebuild its dismally low membership unless unions start spending their resources on aggressive new organizing campaigns.
Despite years of employer attacks, unions still have vast resources at their disposal. This moment of worker upsurge is the time to use those assets to fund aggressive organizing.