unions Archives - Organizing to Win

A still from the movie "Stir of Echoes." A man is digging in his basement. There is a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. One visible wall is stonework, another is brick. There is a ladder against the brick wall, a hot water heater, several planks of wood and the corner of a fireplace.

A while back, I was the organizing director for an organizing campaign with state employees in Colorado. It was a huge campaign, with about 30 organizers and 40,000 workers.

Part of leading the campaign was going with organizers during their house visits – knocking on doors of workers and asking to come in and talk about their work for a while. It’s the best way to have one-on-one conversations away from the prying ears and eyes of bosses.

House Visits

One day, I went with an organizer to the home of a maintenance crew chief in the Department of Corrections.

He came to the door in clothes covered with dirt, dirt on his face, wiping his hands on a rag. He explained that he and his wife were in the middle of digging up their basement to do their own repairs on the sewage or plumbing system.

The organizer starts the conversation by asking about the crew chief’s job. He talks about the crew he coordinates, emphasizing that as a manager, he’s paid a little more. He understood that the members of his team might be struggling more than he was. A union might be good for them.

The two continue to talk about the work, the institutions, his co-workers and more. The organizer did a great job of getting to know this man and his work. The organizer also described the organizing that other state employees were doing to come together to form a union.

Asking the Question

At the right moment, the organizer asks “will you sign a union authorization card and join your co-workers in forming a union?”

“Oh, no. I think the rest of the guys on my team probably need that more than I do,” he said.

The organizer points out that he seems to care a lot about the rest of the team. “What other solutions have you tried to support them?” Of course, nothing.

This conversation continues for a while. They talk about values, teamwork, having the right tools to do the job. Then the organizer asks again about signing a card to form a union.

“Oh no. I’m not that kind of person. I’ll just let the others do it,” he says.

Agitation

At that point, I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Really??? You don’t seem like the kind of person who lets others do the work for you. You’re digging up your own basement!!!” I said.

He looked at me for a few seconds, then said “You’re right. Give me the card.”

Sometimes it takes a little agitation for someone to take action.

image in the style of a Tarot card. Grey top hat with a dollar sign and red band. Roman number III and a lightning bolt at the top with grey clouds framing the corners. Raindrops fall around the hat. Stacks of golden coins and the words The Capitalism along the bottom. — Image credit: @teenvogue

Trigger warning: there is some graphic language about the violence of slavery and the treatment of Indigenous people.

The bedrock of the American economy is the belief that everyone can be rich if we just work hard enough. For example, if you’re poor, you must be doing something wrong. Are you too lazy to get a better job? (See also: health care.)

Why? Because. . . slavery.

Not Just the South

As Matthew Desmond writes in the 1619 Project, American capitalism is based on the plantation economy. His essay is titled “In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.” In it, he details the unholy alliance between enslavers, creditors, northern textile factories and the US government. This alliance developed the US cotton market, on the backs of indigenous people whose land and culture were stolen and enslaved Black people who were brutalized, all in the name of profit.

How did these people live with themselves? How did they sleep at night, knowing that they’d exploited millions of people for their own gain? Where was their conscience?

That’s where American capitalism collides head-on with humanity. If we can deny the humanity of people, then we can do whatever we want to them. Kidnap them, ship them across oceans in horrid conditions, sell them like livestock, torture, rape and kill them. We can spread disease and violence across thousands of miles, uproot people from their ancestral homes and rip children from their families.

Aren’t We Done With Slavery Though?

This capitalist denial of humanity is the root of oppression in the United States. It continues today in the form of police murder of people of color, denial of health care, the school-to-prison pipeline, the emotional labor we expect from people of color, dangerous border camps and so much more.

To believe in brutal American capitalism is to deny the humanity of people. For example, if we truly respected the humanity of immigrants, we could never force them into dangerous limbo in tent camps in Mexico. If we truly respected the humanity of Black people, the police wouldn’t shoot first and ask questions later (if they ask questions at all). If we respected the humanity of Indigenous people, thousands of Indigenous women wouldn’t go missing every year. (Talking about women, if we respected the humanity of women, there would be no rape.) Here’s one I bet you didn’t expect: If we believed in the humanity of rural, conservative people, we wouldn’t categorically dismiss them as ignorant and write them off.

Capitalism with Guardrails

Our capitalism needs guardrails precisely because we don’t respect fundamental humanity.

As Representative Katie Porter says, “Capitalism needs guardrails to work.”

(Hint: a federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour and laws that permit employers to fire workers for organizing a union are not guardrails.)

I suspect that if you read this far, you were hoping for some neat resolution. For a happy ending where there’s an intersection between American capitalism and humanity.

But there isn’t. The two are incompatible.

If we believe in the humanity of all people, we couldn’t possibly exploit them enough to maintain our capitalism without guardrails. Guardrails can look like unions, restrictions on the greed of giant corporations, a living wage, universal health care, student loan forgiveness, an end to subsidies for planet-killing industries and more.

I prefer to deny American capitalism (which is a difficult position for a small business owner). I don’t really know what the alternative is, but I know that when workers and working families have power, things get better.

So let’s get busy building guardrails and building power.

Tag: unions

Agitation in Action