Unions reinvented
Our world is undergoing the most profound economic transformation in history. Corporations are changing, technology is changing, the political climate is changing, and as a result, workers’ lives are also changing. To fulfill their mission for working people in the 21st century, unions must change as well.
Fifty years ago, when the AFL-CIO was founded, one in three workers had a union, and unions were an essential vehicle for achieving the American dream. A union job was a ticket to the middle class, and union wages and benefits helped raise every American worker’s standard of living. But today, with only one in 12 private-sector workers in a union, the labor movement is not strong enough to ensure that work is rewarded throughout the economy.
Polls show that at least 50% of working people in the U.S. today want a union where they work. But U.S. labor laws, written for the industrial economy, are outdated, and employers use their excessive power to stand in the way.
And, to tell the truth, it’s not just employers who are to blame. Unions share responsibility by failing to have the focus, strategy and resources to unite more workers in each industry.
Helping more working people form unions can be done. Our union, the Service Employees International Union, decided nine years ago to transform itself to help working people organize unions in whole industries, markets or states. Our members voted to make difficult changes in priorities, including spending 50% of our national resources to help more workers organize and build unions. That meant reallocating money from traditional union services that were useful in the short run but did not contribute to workers’ strength in the long term.
The result is that more than 900,000 new workers -- homecare workers, janitors, child-care workers and security officers -- have joined the SEIU and gained paychecks that can support a family, affordable healthcare and a retirement with dignity.
But unions, overall, continue to decline. And the AFL-CIO -- the national labor federation for the last half-century -- has failed to make the hard decisions and take the necessary steps to make the union movement grow again. For months, a group of major unions has been talking to the AFL-CIO leadership on how to reorder priorities and modernize the federation’s strategy and structure. But to no avail.
That’s why we at the SEIU and three other major unions declared over the weekend that we would not participate in the AFL-CIO national convention in Chicago this week. And on Monday our union -- with 1.8 million members -- along with the 1.4-million-member Teamsters announced we would withdraw from the federation, effective immediately.
The Teamsters and the SEIU have joined with five other unions -- Unite Here, the Food and Commercial Workers, the laborers, the carpenters and the farm workers -- to form the Change To Win Coalition, representing nearly 6 million workers. This is a dramatic step that we hope will open up opportunities similar to the surge in worker unity and organization when the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was created in the 1930s because the American Federation of Labor (AFL) failed to adapt to the changing economy of that era.
Union members can be effective partners with employers if they start from a position of strength and equality. In California, for instance, United Healthcare Workers West has united more than 140,000 healthcare employees to negotiate innovative agreements with hospital chains such as Kaiser Permanente, Catholic Healthcare West and Tenet on issues, such as safe staffing levels, that affect the quality of care.
We also are committed to acting independently from any political party -- Democrats or Republicans -- and being an aggressive watchdog for the public interest. In Los Angeles, for instance, at a time when the city has bold new leadership, unions must be a reliable voice for policies on issues, such as education and healthcare, that benefit everyone.
We live in a world in which companies, not countries, are making the global economic rules. No one is going to reverse globalization. But a global economy needs policies that benefit working people, not just giant corporations. Workers in global companies need global unions to negotiate agreements across borders that help raise living standards for workers, instead of continuing the race to the bottom.
These principles for change were at the heart of our unsuccessful talks with the AFL-CIO. The Change To Win unions intend to move forward to pursue new strategies at the national level, while continuing to work at the local level with effective labor councils such as the L.A. County Federation of Labor.
The next decade can be a time of innovation and energy that will bring to life a new American dream. But to ensure that work in today’s economy is valued and rewarded, unions must have the vision and the courage to change.
