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MAY 16, 2023

Meyerson on TAP

A Great Week for American Labor

Doctors in Philly and auto (well, actually, bus) workers in rural
Georgia both go union big-time.

Two signal union victories last week suggest that, against all odds, the
American labor movement may have a future. The first confirmed a new
trend in worker organizing; the second could mean that the government
has finally found a way to help workers to join a union.

Residents and fellows at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Med
hospital voted 892 to 110 to join SEIU's Committee of Interns and
Residents. The election was further validation that workers who can't
easily be replaced (in this case, doctors) are flocking to unions these
days. Just on the U of P campus, museum workers unionized recently, and
TAs and RAs are expected to during the spring term.

Ever since employers realized in the 1970s and '80s that they could
fire replaceable (chiefly, nonprofessional) workers who sought to go
union, successful organizing campaigns, even in a relatively pro-union
city like Philly, have ground to a halt. But independent professionals
like physicians are responding to the corporatization of medicine by
acting like the proletarians of yore (i.e., going union). The victory
for 1,400 residents and interns was the largest unionization of any kind
that had taken place in Philadelphia in the past 53 years.

The second of last week's union victories is even more astonishing.
Last Friday, largely African American workers at a rural school bus
factory in Southwest Georgia joined the United Steelworkers by the
decisive margin of 697 to 435. As a New York Times report
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noted, the landmark legislation and agency rulings of the Biden
presidency have tilted the playing field just a bit in the workers'
favor.

Alex Perkins, who'd worked at a unionized Georgia paper mill, was such
a fervent union champion that the Steelworkers had put him on staff
several years ago. (The paper workers' union had affiliated with the
Steelworkers in 2005.) In 2019, Perkins helped organize 300 workers at a
tire factory in Macon. Even while that campaign was still ongoing, he
was approached by workers at Blue Bird, and began regularly meeting with
them.

"When we started, we'd meet in the local library," Perkins says. "Then
the meetings got too big for the library." The pandemic curtailed much
of the organizing, but it started up again in 2021, and grew to the
point that the union sent in more organizers to join Perkins. "By 2022,"
he says, "we had an organizing committee in every department."

As Perkins recounts, Blue Bird did hold "captive audience" meetings that
it compelled its employees to attend, in which plant officials delivered
the customary anti-union diatribes. "I don't know if they hired
[anti-union] consultants," he says, "but their managers used the same
scripts the managers at the tire factory had used."

It's important to realize that most of this activity took place

**before** the Biden administration passed its agenda. But Blue Bird
received a $40 million grant from the Environmental Protection
Agency's Clean School Bus Program, funded through the infrastructure
bill. That bill stipulates that contractors can't use federal funds to
thwart union elections; the EPA specifically says that recipients must
"remain neutral in any organizing campaign and/or to voluntarily
recognize a union based on a show of majority support."

When the company issued the standard complaints about not being able to
afford unionized workers (starting pay for the current workforce starts
at about $16 an hour), however, the union pointed out to members that it
was getting millions from the government for building electric
buses-so much so that its stock had recently risen by 37 percent-and
that it had a $120 million backlog in deals with municipalities seeking
to buy an electric bus fleet.

This green spending, then, made it all but impossible for Blue Bird to
argue it couldn't afford a unionized workforce. And the
Steelworkers' unfair labor practice claims against Blue Bird cited how
receiving government funds committed the company to neutrality. This
helped to diminish the anti-union campaign and helped lead the
Steelworkers to victory. Such pro-union leverage may loom large as the
projects authorized by the Biden bills roll out.

Whether the victory at Blue Bird portends union successes in the
historically anti-union South remains to be seen. While the pro-labor
policies of the administration will not in themselves suffice to rebuild
unions among blue-collar workers, these governmental laws and policies
can contribute to labor success.

All in all, it was a great and potentially important week for American
workers.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

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The Budget Farce: A Travesty in Two Acts
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On today's X-Date: Watch out for Act II, the annual budget process for
the new fiscal year that begins October 1, when Democrats will be
playing a weaker hand. BY ROBERT KUTTNER

Economists Hate Rent Control. Here's Why They're Wrong.
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Half of Americans, namely homeowners, already have rent control. It's
time to expand it to everyone. BY MARK PAUL

The Fake 'Left-Wing Attack on Science'
<[link removed]>
The supposed mistreatment of an article that criticized leftist assaults
on scientific objectivity was itself a fake. Why did the editors of The
New York Times take this fraud seriously? BY PETER DREIER

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