A month ago I was lucky enough to attend the Delaware Valley Grant Makers Conference. I met a lot of great people and was inspired to here funders talk about taking risks and putting resources into innovative projects.
One area I am sure of that lacks funding opportunities but that is critical importance right now is the organizing of alternative worker organizations. I wrote the following essay for the DVG Breakthrough Blog
The Great Recession has accelerated the growing gap between the wealthiest and the poorest in our country. This trend can cause some serious problems for our nation in the future. In order to confront this challenge, philanthropists should fund projects in the neglected area of worker collectivity.
We are not yet sure what the long run implications of the growing inequality will mean for us in the long run, but a recent book Bruce Judson, Senior Faculty Fellow of the Yale School of Management, “It Could Happen Here: America On The Brink,” puts inequality in a historical perspective.
In “It Could Happen Here” Judson gives the reader many case examples of how societies facing deep disparity are ripe for political upheaval, collapse and even revolution. This point is made even more alarming when he shows us how our current level of inequality is reaching level not witnessed in the nation since before the Great Depression. He points out that the Soviet Union, then the world’s only other super-power, collapsed under the weight of similar, though more extreme, disparity.
Judson cautions that we cannot necessarily predict the future by looking at the past. However, he also maps how other revolutions from the Russian Revolution, the French Revolution and the Chinese Communist Revolution also had clear underpinnings of inequality.
Judson’s book came out in January 2010. Things haven’t gotten any better. In fact, many studies show that the problem has been accelerated. The Congressional Budget Office report in August of 2010 shows that since the Bush Tax cuts took effect, there has been a massive upward distribution of wealth, the bulk of the benefits of that policy have been concentrated among the top 1% of our nations wage earners. President Obama and Congress recently extended that policy for another two years.
Of course, as many of the people who attended the Delaware Valley Grantmakers Fall Conference know well the ills that stem from poverty. These are the folks that are out there everyday fighting for better nutrition, schools, environment and against incarceration.
We need them more now than ever. Though mitigating the worst side effects of poverty is essential, I think that the philanthropy world is going to have to consider putting resources into a historically neglected sector, worker collectivity, if they are serious about fighting poverty and its side effects.
Labor unions have traditionally been the force that has led the charge for economic change for low-waged workers. Over the last 40 years, however, the labor unions have lost ground year after year shrinking from representing 32% of the workforce to barely 7% of the private sector today.
This loss of membership and clout stems from a number of factors from a lack of vision among labor leaders to “pro-business” environment among federal regulators. In a last ditch effort to turn the tide for organized workers, labor unions played an unprecedented role in the election of President Barack Obama by mobilizing tens of thousands of their members in phone banking and door-to-door efforts and contributed $400 million to the effort. The labor unions made it clear that they had one main agenda item, the passage of the Employee Choice Act, a law that would have made it easier to recruit new members.
The Employee Free Choice Act was officially declared dead in October. Many experts predict that labor law reform will not return for another decade. The recent election of a wave of anti-union politicians seems to support their dreary outlook.
Given that the labor unions, the largest and most powerful voice for the American worker, does not appear to be ready a come back any time soon, workers will have to find a way to secure a family sustaining income in this hard reality. What can be done?
There has been plenty of blame to spread around about the decline of organized labor. However, one theory that has had little exploration is that work places have changed in a way that is incompatible with the structure of most labor unions.
Our work places are far less centralized than in the union hey day. Fewer and fewer American workers show up to a large factory or even punch a clock. More of us are sub-contracted, independent contractors, temps and have more than one part-time job. The move toward a service economy, an economy dominated by low-waged jobs, has accelerated during the Great Recession. Furthermore, the ability to organize workers is made more difficult by growth of private sector, small-business and low-waged employment.
All of these structures make organizing workers in the new economy cost prohibitive or structurally impossible for traditional labor unions.
The good news is that there are some options for workers these days. Non-traditional labor organizations are popping up all around the country to try to wrestle with the issues of the new economy and to aid vast majority of the workers left in the wake of “big labor.”
Worker Centers, non-majority and independent labor unions are showing us the way to a new middle class.
Worker Centers like the Workers United (day laborers), the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (farm workers), Domestic Workers United (housekeepers and caregivers) and the Restaurant Opportunity Centers (restaurant workers) are finding ways to win wage, benefit and working condition improvements for workers across multiple employers.
Likewise, the Taxi Workers Alliance, a worker organization of taxi drivers, which are classified as independent contractors who are not eligible for union representation under the National Labor Relations Act, is winning major improvements in Philadelphia and in other cities in the country.
The independent Philadelphia Security Officers Union, which I founded in 2009 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, began as what scholars refer to as a “non-majority union.” A non-majority union is a organization of worker activists who enact workplace progress through self-organization without the recognition of federal or state labor regulators.
While we are negotiating our first union contract with three sub-contracted employers right now, we were able to win more than $2.5 million in new wages, benefits and work place improvements at the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Drexel and at the Museum before we were ever recognized be the National Labor Relations Board.
We were also able to recover $140,000 in stolen wages from an employer at the Park View Towers.
Service jobs will be the jobs that are available for a generation. These do not have to be poverty level occupations, though. In fact, worker organizations that are operating “around” our broken labor laws are succeeding where traditional labor union won’t or can’t.
Now we are talking “labor unions” a controversial topic among philanthropists, many of which gained their wealth by running successful business, and may have had less than amicable fights with organized labor. There is also the perception that labor unions have enough money to fund their own efforts at social change.
These alternative worker organizations don’t differ from their larger counterparts in their agitation tactics. When all reasonable avenues have been exhausted, grassroots organizations of all types, whether womens associations, civil rights institutions or worker groups may have to resort to agitation. However, how these incipient worker projects differ from even these other formations is that they fall into a funding desert.
Organized labor will not fund these groups because if these workers do not become dues paying members of existing unions, there is no interest in supporting them financially. On the other hand, since they are “organized labor” (though not legally defined as labor organizations under the current definition of the NLRB) they are not supported by mainstream philanthropic funding streams.
These experiments in rebuilding the middle-class in the new economy should be supported. Decent wages and benefits generally do mitigate some of the worst side effects of poverty such as hunger, housing instability, lack of access to health care and decent education and incarceration. More importantly, though, good jobs can help our broader society by increasing social stability, preventing the worst case scenario painted by Mr. Judson in his book, “I Could Happen Here,” revolution or national collapse.
The funding of alternative worker organizations would be a break through and could pave the way to new prosperity for thousands in the Delaware Valley.
Fabricio Rodriguez is a writer, organizer and consultant who focuses on worker and immigrant rights issues. Fabricio arrives in the non-profit world after a 6 year career as a sub-surface miner. Fabricio is the founder of the independent Philadelphia Security Officers Union and is on the Community Grant Making Committee of the Bread and Roses Fund
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