Amid National Turmoil and Tumult, a Union Renaissance May Be Afoot
Recent historic unionization victories suggest the 40-year neo-liberal experiment started during the 1980s is beginning to falter.
In January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported union membership in the United States in 2021 to be at 10.3 percent while the number of unionized workers continued its decline to 14 million.
To put that into perspective, in 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the unionization rate was 20.1 percent with 17.7 million union workers.
One of the intentional casualties of 40 years of neo-liberal Reaganomics is the precipitous drop in public-sector unions.
But we might finally be entering a unionization renaissance.
As The Guardian reported in March:
"The recent, much-publicized wave of union victories in the US at companies as varied as the giant coffee chain Starbucks, trendy outdoor outfitters REI and media group the New York Times is spurring hopes that this will somehow turn into a much larger unionization wave that lifts millions of Americans.
"This is an unusually promising moment for unions, labor strategists say, as they strain to figure out how best to build a larger wave, although they acknowledge it won’t be easy because US corporations fight so fiercely against unionization."
As of last month, 306 Starbucks stores in 35 states have filed to unionize.
Despite assiduous anti-union intimidation, dozens of union elections are scheduled.
But it isn’t just Starbucks basking in victories.
Amazon made history in April when Staten Island, NY Amazon employees voted to create the first unionized warehouse.
Microsoft entered into a neutrality agreement with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), stating if it purchases Activision, it will not interfere with Activision Blizzard workers’ union rights.
Graduate student employees at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) voted to unionize.
Ditto workers at Medieval Times in Lyndhurst, NJ.
After striking following an imposed 30% fee, internet retail marketplace Etsy is considering forming a union as well.
Trader Joe’s workers are as well.
On the campaign trail, Joe Biden promised to raise taxes on Americans making more than $400,000 a year.
Earlier this year, President Joe Biden introduced the "Billionaire Minimum Income Tax," a new plan to raise a trillion dollars by requiring a minimum 20% income tax on individuals' assets worth more than $100 million.
Quoting a White House fact sheet,"Under current law, when an American worker earns a dollar of wages, that dollar is taxed as they earn it. But when a billionaire earns income because their investments increase in value, that gain is too often never taxed at all."
One crucial piece of federal legislation, the "Protecting the Right to Organize" (PRO) Act, seeks to grow and strengthen union membership by:
"Introducing meaningful, enforceable penalties for companies and executives that violate workers’ rights;
"Expanding workers’ collective bargaining rights and closing loopholes that corporations use to exploit workers;
"Strengthening workers’ access to fair union elections and requiring corporations to respect the results."
America has arrived at a crossroads, and the direction we take could plunge us deeper into neo-liberalism’s feudal tax cuts for the economic royalists, or again into an age where the wealthy pay their share of taxes and average workers producing the largess off which the wealthy profit will benefit from higher wages, better living standards, and democratic workplaces.
As progressive radio talk show host on Sirius XM and author Thom Hartmann warned recently:
"If the neoliberals win and Biden and the Democrats back down, it’s unlikely America will simply slide back into a 'friendly neoliberalism' like we had before the Trump presidency.
"Instead, we will almost certainly follow the path that Russia and Hungary have trod, embracing Friedman’s economic policies and the authoritarian strongman politics of oligarchy necessary to enforce them. It will be the end of the largest and most noble parts of the American Experiment."