[Larry Cohen argues that the labor movement should seek power not
solely in individual workplaces but in entire industries, while Eric
Blanc writes that the priority should be unionizing workplaces.]
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SHOULD THE LABOR MOVEMENT PRIORITIZE THE PUSH FOR SECTORAL
BARGAINING?  
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Larry Cohen, Eric Blanc
March 3, 2023
The Nation
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_ Larry Cohen argues that the labor movement should seek power not
solely in individual workplaces but in entire industries, while Eric
Blanc writes that the priority should be unionizing workplaces. _

Chris Smalls, a leader of the Amazon Labor Union, leads a march of
Starbucks and Amazon workers and their allies to the homes of their
CEOs to protest union busting on Labor Day, September 5, 2022, in New
York City., Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis via Getty

 

Yes!

Sectoral bargaining means looking for labor power not solely in
individual workplaces but in entire industries. Compared with workers
in other wealthy countries, few American workers are in unions, and
they have lower standards of living, less employment security, and
fewer organizing rights. Elsewhere in the world, sectoral bargaining
has allowed labor movements to help more workers, more quickly, than
by relying on the shop-by-shop organizing strategy common in the US.
The labor movement here should look for inspiration to the African
National Congress in South Africa, which legislated sectoral
bargaining after smashing apartheid; the striking Amazon workers in
Italy
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years ago; the 2018 mass strikes against fascism in Argentina
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and even its own history.

From 1935 to 1955, the CIO rooted its work in sectoral organizing—in
contrast to the AFL’s craft unionism, which excluded most low-wage
workers. The more radical CIO organized industries, which meant that
each union could win higher wages for hundreds of thousands of auto,
steel, and telecom workers in one go. Nearly 80 years ago, after a
decade of fierce organizing, the United Auto Workers bargained on
behalf of all auto workers. Typically, the union targeted one of
the big three automakers
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General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. A labor win at one employer would
almost immediately improve conditions across the industry, as the same
contract was extended to the other firms’ workers. In the coal and
steel industries, sectoral bargaining was more formal, with multiple
employers bargaining at the same time. These efforts expanded the
share of unionized workers in the private sector from about 13 percent
in 1930 to more than 35 percent by 1955. But after that, industry-wide
bargaining in the US declined, partly because of anti-union trade
policies. Congress never codified sectoral bargaining, nor did it
extend it to new enterprises, as happened in most other democracies.
The result: Only 6 percent
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private sector are in unions today.

In our current political context, sectoral approaches can seem
bureaucratic. The California law AB 527,
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instance, is set to establish a fast-food worker council, which will
cover more than 500,000 workers
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mostly women of color. The council will have worker representatives as
well as employer and government members and will have the power to set
wage floors and rules about scheduling and other issues. This approach
makes sense, because our legal structure fails to effectively support
organizing and bargaining. Such councils are not substitutes for
unions, but they cut against the bifurcated workplaces with
contractors, franchises, and part-time workers. If the council system
is implemented—and companies are spending millions on a ballot
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to prevent its adoption—it could encourage a mass movement of
fast-food workers that would further reinvigorate labor.

Similarly, last year, more than 5,500 minor league baseball
players—most receiving starvation wages, and many of whom are
Spanish speakers from the Caribbean and Central and South
America—won recognition for a union
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more than 120 teams. They are bargaining now, and the outcome will
almost certainly be better than it would have been if they had
organized one team at a time.

In 2022, heroic workers—from video game designers
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warehouse employees
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through the gauntlet of US organizing and won recognition. But in each
case, negotiating a strong contract has been incredibly difficult.
Even last year, when the labor movement gained such momentum, the
percentage of workers in a union declined
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global union work, not once did I hear workers in a nation with
sectoral bargaining say they’d swap it for the atomized framework of
the US.

Finally, workers don’t have to make a single choice. We should
organize at every level: workplace, employer, and sector. Autoworkers
in Germany, trash pickers and recyclers in Argentina, telecom workers
in Norway, and metalworkers in South Africa know that their nation’s
version of sectoral bargaining starts with workplace solidarity, but
the sectoral frame gives them a floor on which to build that
solidarity. It’s much easier to start there than at the beginning of
the long, difficult road to a union contract in the US.

Workplace organizing alone will not be sufficient to initiate or
sustain sectoral bargaining in the US. The pro-union messaging from
Biden is nice, but we need economic policies that encourage bargaining
and organizing rights. Both the electric-vehicle and chip sectors, for
instance, receive billions
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federal funds. Imagine if the White House required employer neutrality
and sectoral bargaining to occur in order to receive any government
money. Reforms to our labor system are not enough. We can’t just
support workers at a particular worksite or employer. We must build
solidarity across millions of workers in an industry or sector, and we
should demand, at a minimum, the same kind of foundation for unions
that workers have won in most other democracies.

LARRY COHEN

No!

Sectoral bargaining is a desirable goal, but prioritizing this fight
puts the cart before the horse. The labor movement currently faces a
far more urgent task: organizing unorganized workers into unions.

Increasing employees’ collective power on the ground is the most
realistic path to bringing bosses from across an industry to the
bargaining table. US labor leaders too often treat sectoral bargaining
as a strategic alternative to the daunting work of organizing workers
shop by shop. But hoping for a quick policy fix overlooks the fact
that centralized negotiations in Europe largely arose as a response
from employers hoping to tame powerful local unions and strike
militancy. And once European labor movements found themselves on the
retreat in the 1990s, centralized bargaining was often either scrapped
or came to serve as a mechanism to impose austerity and deregulation.

Without a bedrock of worker associational power, sectoral bargaining
is unlikely to get widely implemented—at least not in a manner
favorable to working people.

Fortunately, we’re living in one of the ripest moments for workplace
organizing in decades. Young, radicalized workers are overwhelmingly
pro-union and eager to take on the billionaire class. Their ability to
do so has been boosted by a tight labor market
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the spread of digital technologies, and a new Biden-appointed National
Labor Relations Board that is aiding unionization for the first time
in decades.
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Unfortunately, even last year’s string of high-profile unionization
victories
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Starbucks to Amazon to media outlets to retail stores and beyond—has
not yet proved sufficient to snap the leaders of most national unions
out of their defensive posture. Instead, the AFL-CIO’s June 2022
convention set a far-from-ambitious goal: 1 million new members
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the next 10 years. Achieving no more than this would result in a drop
in union density, since the total workforce is set to grow at a faster
pace than the AFL-CIO’s organizing goal.

The stumbling block is not a lack of resources. The US labor
movement’s assets total $35.8 billion
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a third of which is “highly liquid,” according to recent research
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These funds nearly doubled from 2010 to 2020, a period when the number
of union staffers dropped by 19 percent.

It is true that investing in new organizing is risky and expensive,
which is why unions have tended to focus on legislative fixes. Workers
face a broken labor law system, merciless opposition from employers,
and a ruthless “union avoidance” industry. And as advocates of
sectoral bargaining correctly point out, the fissured nature of many
businesses today has further undermined the effectiveness of
shop-by-shop organizing, since employees in many industries now
nominally work for themselves or for subcontractors.

These are formidable obstacles. Willpower and good organizing methods
alone will not be sufficient to win a union for every worker who
deserves one. But it would be a tragedy to let the current opening
slip away.

Worker-led unionization efforts with few resources have racked up some
impressive victories over the past year, but imagine how far things
might be able to go if the campaigns at Amazon, Trader Joe’s,
Starbucks, Apple, and elsewhere were backed by the full firepower of
organized labor.

Advocates of sectoral bargaining are correct that workers will likely
need an assist from lawmakers. But labor’s big breakthrough in the
1930s demonstrates that the best way to pressure politicians to
pass—and employers to accept—comprehensive labor reforms is by
creating crises for ruling elites and keeping inspirational workplace
organizing in the headlines.

Doing so, however, will require that unions stop deferring to
Democratic leaders. Though President Biden has taken some pro-union
steps
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he has so far refused to use his bully pulpit or his power to withhold
federal contracts against the union-busting wave sweeping the country.
Lots of this employer intimidation is legal. But some of it is
blatantly against the law, including the firing of worker organizers
by Starbucks and its decision to withhold benefits from unionized
stores, which has had a chilling effect on momentum at Starbucks and
beyond.

Unions should not expect Democratic politicians to seriously defend
workers’ right to organize, let alone pass major labor law reform,
unless the labor movement initiates an escalating campaign of protest
and disruption to pressure the federal government to start treating
the systematic suppression of employees’ voices at work as an
intolerable national scandal. A useful start for such a campaign would
be an all-hands-on-deck blitz supporting the heroic efforts of
Starbucks baristas to overcome Howard Schultz’s illegal “scorched
earth
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campaign against their right to organize.

Only by unionizing new workplaces, together with a campaign in defense
of workers’ right to organize, can labor start building the power
necessary to eventually win transformational legal reforms—including
sectoral bargaining.

ERIC BLANC

_Larry Cohen is the board chair of Our Revolution and was the
president of the Communications Workers of America from 2005 to 2015._

_Eric Blanc is the author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike
Wave and Working-Class Politics (Verso Books, 2019)._

_THE NATION [[link removed]] Founded by abolitionists in
1865, The Nation has chronicled the breadth and depth of political
and cultural life, from the debut of the telegraph to the rise of
Twitter, serving as a critical, independent, and progressive voice in
American journalism._

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