In 1915, labor organizer and songwriter Joe Hill was executed in Utah after being convicted of murder in a highly disputed trial. According to legend, Hill’s last words were, “Don’t Mourn, Organize!” As public employee union members await the rightwing dominated Supreme Court ruling in the Janus case, which they expect to lose, Joe Hill’s words are worth remembering. “Don’t Mourn, Organize!” If the Court rules as expected, it will overturn the right of unions and states to negotiate “agency shop” status granting unions the right to collect fees from employees who opt not pay union dues because the unions provide them with important services.
In 1933 United Mine Workers of America union president John L. Lewis launched a mass organizing drive in the coalfields that eventually produced the AFL-CIO by telling miners, “The President Wants You to Join a Union.” It was never clear whether the president who wanted miners to join a union was Franklin Roosevelt, or Lewis himself. Either way, Lewis’strategy worked. In 1933 there were 2.3 union members in the United States, approximately 11% of the employed workforce. By 1941 the number of union members had grown to 10.4 million and included 28% of American workers.
Today, no one believes that Donald Trump wants workers to join labor unions. But the problems confronting organized workers are not just Trump, Republicans, and business leaders. They include the failure of their own leaders to inspire union membership. In the 1940s, after World War II, labor union leaders accepted that workers and their organizations would be junior partners with corporate capitalism, even when business allies in government were attacking the right to organize with the passage of anti-union “Right to Work” laws. The “deal” made some sense until the 1960s, when, with the start of globalization, blue-collar union jobs started to leave the country. Today, one-third of public employees are union members, compared to only 7% of workers in the private sector. The overall union membership rate has declined from 20% of workers in 1983 to 11% in 2015. In states like North and South Carolina, Mississippi, and Utah labor unions are almost non-existent. Corresponding to the decline in union membership, the real wages of American workers, adjusted for inflation, have barely risen in 45 years.
The recent upsurge in teacher activism, with walkouts and strikes in West Virginia, Kentucky, Arizona, Colorado, and Oklahoma, some of the most anti-union low wage states, suggests hope for the future of the labor movement. Unfortunately, anti-union forces are at work at the same time. The same states where teachers are fighting back against low wages and the inadequate funding of public schools are also amongst the states promoting the expansion of non-union charter schools and private school vouchers.
The best response to Janus is to fight back. And for teacher unions, the best way to fight back is to organize teachers working in charter schools and private schools to join unions and demand equal pay and benefits and improved working conditions. Of the approximately 7,000 charter schools in the United States, teachers in only about 1 in 10 are currently union members. At many charters and private schools teachers are forced to work extra hours for no additional pay, sharply lowering their hourly wage. For example, at the non-union private school chain known as Fusion Academy, where student tuition ranges from $41,000 to $62,740 a year, teachers are paid only for the hours they actually teach, which means researching and planning lessons, grading assignments, and contact with parents is unpaid labor.
The charter school industry is worried. Romy Drucker, co-founder and CEO of the pro-charter website The 74, accused the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), one of the more militant chapters of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), of trying to coopt charter school teachers after failing to kill the charter school movement. Last year a hundred employees of Noble Street College Prep charter school in Chicago, in conjunction with the CTU, are trying to unionize all 800 of Noble’s educators. Drucker warns the charter movement that they cannot afford to ignore efforts to organize their teachers. In California, United Teachers Los Angeles is conducting a similar campaign to organize Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, Los Angles’ largest charter school network.
In New York City, where the United Federation of Teachers is the AFT’s largest chapter, and where the politically power Success Academy Charter School Network is entrenched, the union has been lobbying the Governor for favors and trying to hold onto its members by offering a members-only discount app. So far there has not been much of a push to organize charter school and private school teachers. That has to be the next organizing battleground. Union members must insist that if the current leadership, including President Michael Mulgrew, wants to remain in office, they begin a campaign to organize the unorganized. Why not resurrect the slogan “The President Wants You to Join a Union”?
Writing in In These Times, Shaun Richman, a former organizing director for the AFT, sees the possibility of a labor upsurge if the Supreme Court rules against agency shops. In exchange for agency fees, public employee unions are often contractually required to sign away the right to strike. Break the contract and remove agency shop and you unleash the right to protest and to suspend work. Agreements between states and unions also granted specific unions the exclusive right to represent employees. Suspend the agreement and you open space for a wave of much more militant unions to recruit members. Mainstream unions will have to work hard to convince workers to sign up with them, so they will become more militant as well.
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