For her, a family child care provider in Brooklyn, having a union meant finally having a voice and the power to speak out for what she and other family providers needed to help the children they care for learn and grow. It meant respect and dignity for her work.
That’s what the union movement has always been—a bedrock of our democracy, ensuring working people have a voice and a path to the American dream. Having a union empowers teachers to stand up for their students and their communities, to fight for community schools with services housed on site, art and music, and school nurses and guidance counselors; for increased parent engagement, professional development, project-based learning and teacher-driven innovation. They can stand for less testing and test prep, like educators did in recently concluded contract negotiations in St. Paul, Minn., and New York City.
Having a union empowers nurses to fight for safe staffing ratios so they can better care for their patients and save lives. Having a union allows firefighters and EMTs to negotiate for the lifesaving equipment and staffing levels they need to respond effectively to emergencies.
Having a union offers significant opportunities for a better life for workers, who, historically, have been disenfranchised. Unionization raises wages 12 percent, on average, for African-American workers and more than 11 percent for women. African-American workers in unions are 16 percent more likely to have employer-provided health care and 19 percent more likely to have a pension than their nonunion peers. For women in unions, they are 19 percent more likely to have employer-provided health care and nearly 25 percent more likely to have a pension than nonunion female workers.
Unions still remain a key driver of voice and fairness, equity and opportunity. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called the labor movement the “principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.” That is truer today than ever.
Our economy is out of whack. Working people who have aspired to the middle class and tried to make a better life for their families have taken it on the chin for years. Stagnating wages, loss of pensions and lack of upward mobility have defined the economic distress they’ve experienced.
Meanwhile, those lining up to make it harder for workers to have a voice and a shot at the American dream are more coordinated and more emboldened than ever before. We face repeated efforts by corporate and monied interests to not only dismantle unions, but also strip the rungs from the ladder of opportunity for all working people.
Last year, the Supreme Court rolled back critical pieces of the Voting Rights Act that have ensured traditionally disenfranchised voters access to the ballot box. This week, that court once again sided with corporate interests over working people. The court’s decision in Harris v. Quinn will make it harder for home health care workers—some of the lowest-wage workers in our country, who care for our parents and grandparents—to join together in a union and fight for a better life for their families and better care for their clients.
These workers—the majority of whom are women and people of color—had no power on their own but joined together for a piece of the American dream. Because these workers joined a union, they were able to win wage increases that took them from less than $6 an hour to more than $13 an hour. They also won health care benefits for the first time. Now, anti-union forces want to crash and burn their union, and the court has made that even easier.
But they won’t stop there. Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, made it obvious that his real target was diminishing a union’s ability to collectively negotiate for fair wages and benefits on behalf of those we represent, and to fight for safe communities and high quality public services for those we serve.
Just look at Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker secured legislation under the guise of a budget shortfall that didn’t simply find savings but eliminated workers’ rights. A teacher told me that, as a result, she and her co-workers could no longer collectively bargain over anything but wages, and everything they had fought for was gone. From their health care to their paid sick days to the improvements they won for kids in the classroom over 20 years, everything had been gutted.
These attacks make clear what’s at stake, and they highlight the importance of empowering and elevating our members and collaborating like never before with our broader community. America’s workers have gone through the crucible of tough times and adversity—that’s why America’s labor movement was formed. Workers did not start off with their rights being protected by government. Throughout history we’ve had to organize ourselves, our families and our communities to win those rights—and we must do so again.
Unions were started by men and women who came together to create a better life for their families, and that’s the work we need to continue doing. We need to connect the dots and educate our communities. The corporate forces driving down wages and slashing benefits are the same ones using their oversized power to limit the voice of working people at the voting booth as well as the work site in state legislatures and through the courts. They are influencing politicians to do their bidding, and they have a Supreme Court that shares their ideology and wants to strip workers of every right to have a shot at opportunity and a voice in our democracy.
In cities and towns across America, we need to unite with one voice to ask politicians which side they’re on—CEOs and corporate interests or American families? We need to engage our co-workers, families and neighbors in the fight for a better America, where we enshrine the right of all working people to come together and form strong unions, and where we secure good jobs, great public schools, prosperous communities and opportunity for all, not just the wealthy few.