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**APRIL 13, 2021**

Meyerson on TAP

The Shifting Class Composition of Unions

Yesterday, in the course of my postmortem on the rather resounding
defeat of the campaign to unionize the workers at Amazon's warehouse
in Bessemer, Alabama, I noted that the change in the class composition
of America's unionized workforce was accelerating. More than ever,
perhaps, the dividing line between workers who can win a union and
workers who can't depends on their replaceability, clunky though that
word may sound.

In my article
yesterday, I pointed out that blue-collar and low-paid service sector
workers fear being discharged, harassed, or downgraded by management, or
even having their workplace closed, for supporting unionization, even
though many such management threats violate federal labor law. (The
penalties for such violations, however, are altogether negligible.)
Professionals, by contrast, usually know that management would have
trouble finding and training their replacements, and that they have a
decent chance of finding comparable employment even if they're let go.
(That's why unions of professional athletes wield such clout.)

It's not surprising, then, that professionals have continued to
unionize during the past few years, in media outlets, at nonprofits, in
school districts and universities, and in hospitals. Nor is it
surprising that successful unionization campaigns among blue-collar
workers have been few and far between.

I'm returning to this topic today because of two press releases that
popped up this morning in my in-box. One was from the NewsGuild of New
York (an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America), announcing

that a majority of the 650 tech workers at

**The New York Times**had formed a union and were seeking voluntary
recognition from management. (The 1,300

**Times**reporters, editors, photographers, and such are already
unionized.) The tech workers who've decided to go union include
engineers, product managers, project managers, designers, quality
assurance staffers, and data scientists and analysts.

Also in my in-box was an announcement

from the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union, a relatively new
organization that has racked up a string of organizing victories. It
informed me that employees at the Brookings Institution and the Urban
Institute-two anchors of the think-tank world-had each formed a
staff union and, like their fellow workers at the

**Times**, were calling on management to voluntarily recognize them. In
a wonderful display of entirely justifiable chutzpah, they cited their
respective institutions' many studies attesting to the value of unions
as one reason for their decision to unionize.

Our organizations have produced independent research that shows the
value of unions in reducing racial and gendered wage disparities,
increasing economic mobility, and strengthening workers' voices. It is
our belief in this research-and our commitment to each other-that
inspired us to form our respective unions.

Being a professional is not the sole determinant of workers' ability
to win a unionized workplace. The nature of one's employer is the
other crucial factor. The engineers and mathematicians at Amazon and
Microsoft have no unions because the pay is good and management won't
stand for it-though if 80 percent of those workers truly wanted a
union, management would certainly have to rethink.

But for working-class employees of for-profit businesses-that is, for
the very workers who most need the raises and benefits that unionized
status confers-unionization remains out of reach, and will stay that
way unless Congress rewrites labor law to keep management from
intimidating workers who'd like to join a union-as the PRO Act,
currently pending in the Senate, would begin to do.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

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