The Year That Labor Hung On By Its Fingertips

A lot of things happened for working people this year, and most of them were bad. But even in a year as deranged as 2020, the broader themes that afflict and energize the labor movement have carried on. If you are reading this, congratulations: There is still time for you to do something about all of these things. Here is a brief look at the Year in Labor, and may we never have to live through something like it again.

The pandemic

Broadly speaking, there have been two very large labor stories this year. The first is, ​“I have been forced into unemployment due to the pandemic, and I am scared.” And the second is, ​“I have been forced to continue working during the pandemic, and I am scared.” America’s labor reporters spent most of our year writing variations of these stories, in each company and in each industry and in each city. Those stories continue to this day. 

The federal government left working people utterly forsaken. They did not create a national wage replacement system to pay people to stay home, as many European nations did. OSHA was asleep on the job, uninterested in workplace safety related to coronavirus. Republicans in Congress were more intent on getting liability protections for employers than on doing anything, anything at all, that might help desperate regular people. And, of course, Trump and his allies unnecessarily politicized public health, leading directly to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths and the economic destruction that goes with that. It was a bad year. The larger political institutions created to protect workers did not do their jobs. The labor movement was left very much on its own. And its own track record was mixed. 

Front-line workers

The year of the hero! We love our heroes! Our front-line workers, our delivery people and sanitation workers and bus drivers, our paramedics and nurses, our cooks and cleaners and grocery workers: We love you all! Sure, we will bang pots and pans to celebrate regular workers who had to push through during the pandemic, and we will write you nice notes and have school children draw signs celebrating you. But will you get paid for this?

How well have unions representing these front line workers done this year? In many cases, not well. I think first of the grocery workers, represented by UFCW, who were generally awarded with temporary ​“hazard pay” bonuses rather than actual raises. Or of the UFCW’s meatpacking workers, whose plants were encouraged to stay open by an executive order, and who suffered terribly from the coronavirus and from management’s utter disdain for their welfare. These are workers who, particularly during the early phase of the pandemic, had a ton of leverage. Had they struck, or walked out, asking for basic safety and fair pay for risking their lives, the public would have neared panic, and their demands probably would have been met. Their employers would have had no choice. Instead, there was a great deal of outcry from their unions, but no real labor actions at scale. Thus, the meatpacking workers continued to suffer, and the grocery workers saw their ​“hazard pay” bonuses disappear, and here we are. 

The point of this is not to be harsh. Faced with an unexpected disaster, most unions have spent this year scrambling desperately to keep themselves and their workers afloat, and have been flooded with the task of dealing with the catastrophe that has cost millions their jobs. But when this is all over, there should be a serious postmortem about what could and should have been done better. And that will include, right up top, the failure of front line workers to turn their newfound hero status — and the temporary, absolute necessity that they continue working through life-threatening conditions — into any lasting gains. It is easy to surrender to the feeling of just being thankful to be employed while others sink into poverty. But we need to be ready with a better plan for next time. Billions of dollars and a good deal of potential power that working people could have had has evaporated because unions were not prepared to act to take it. 

Public workers

Teachers unions conclusively demonstrated their value this year. In general, in cities with strong teachers unions, public schools did not reopen unless the teachers were satisfied that adequate workplace safety procedures were in place. (In practice this meant that many school districts simply kept instruction online.) While this earned the ire of some parents, they should think it through: Workplace safety in America only existed where unions were strong enough to see to it that it happened. Schools were the most prominent example of that. 

Elsewhere, the news for federal government employees was gloomy. The Trump administration waged a years-long war against the labor rights of federal workers, and it is fair to say that the unions lost that war. Federal employee unions in particular, and state employee unions in Republican states, have become pathetically weak. Much of their bargaining power has been outlawed by Republican politicians. The unions have been reduced to writing politely angry letters as their workers are abused while waiting for a new Democratic administration that they can beg to restore their rights. It is not a workable model for a union. These unions must decide at some point that they are willing to break the law in order to assert the fundamental rights of their members, or they will grow increasingly less able to demonstrate to members why they have any value. 

That may not be fair, but it’s the truth. 

Organizing

The biggest issue for unions in America — bigger than any pandemic or presidential election cycle — is that there are simply not enough union members. Only one in 10 workers is a union member. In the private sector, that figure is just over 6%. The decades-long decline of union density is the underlying thing robbing the once-mighty labor movement (and by extension, the working class itself) of power. If unions in America are not growing every year, they are dying. 

Disastrous years like 2020 tend to put structural issues on the back burner, but they can also serve as inspirations for people to join unions to protect them. The annual figures for the year are not out yet, but anecdotally, union leaders and organizers are optimistic that the pandemic’s havoc will serve as fuel for future organizing. Most unions managed to at least continue major organizing efforts that were already underway this year, like SEIU’s successful conclusion of a 17-year battle to unionize 45,000 child care providers in California. Industries that were already hotbeds of organizing tended to remain so. The safety net of a union contract clearly demonstrated its value far and wide this year, at least in the ability of union members to negotiate terms for furloughs and severance and recall rights and all the other things that matter during disasters, as non-union workers were simply cast out on their own. 

Still, it is up to unions themselves to have a concerted plan to take advantage of the widespread national suffering and channel it into new organizing. Since unions have spent the year transfixed by the election and by trying to respond to the economic collapse, it is safe to say that such a concerted plan does not really exist yet. That needs to be done, soon, or this moment will have been wasted.