Book review - The Red Bull shot labor needs
70 percent of Americans approve of labor unions – compared to 48 percent in 2009. As corporate profits rise and billionaires take space excursions, average people struggle balancing groceries, childcare, rent and a diminishing paycheck.
This pro-union approval rating reflects people’s economic needs, so why aren’t union ranks swelling? Today unions only represent ten percent of the workforce, only six percent in the private sector – factories, construction, retail – 32.5 percent in government jobs.
That’s the question Hamilton Nolan asks in The Hammer, particularly relevant after a hard-fought election campaign that saw many working people falling for the contradictory blandishments of an egotistical, orange-haired con man. “How can the labor movement, after dwindling for decades, turn itself into a force strong enough to bend politics in its own direction, rather than being bent?” he asks.
Every union talks organizing and some unions do well in their individual sector, but where is the concerted union drive that engages whole communities and industries?
120 years ago, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) membership grew dramatically as workers organized community-wide local unions. These efforts increased the labor movement but failed to capture heavy industry. The Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) 1930s drives organized industrial workers, an effort that the AFL soon equaled. These movements depended on a working-class consciousness that uplifted all workers. The 1940s – 1960s saw the working class becoming the middle class, thanks to a solid union foundation.
Reaganomics, deindustrialization, blatant union-busting and hostile politicians launched that downward spiral. Even the supposedly labor-friendly Democratic Party unleashed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and deregulation. Unions pour millions into supposedly labor-friendly candidates, yet that effort is usually defensive, rather than building a movement.
Nolan challenges his readers to put the move back into the labor movement, calling for aggressive organizing, inter-union solidarity and an open door to all workers.
His heroine is Association of Flight Attendants International President Sara Nelson. Although a small union, Nelson is always available to any media opportunity, picket line or union struggle. In 2022 there were rumors that Nelson would run for AFL-CIO President, challenging another woman, today’s AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. Health issues precluded Nelson’s run, yet it has not stopped her willingness to support any effort.
The Hammer analyzes campaigns that build worker power. The Las Vegas Culinary Union has dramatically changed workers’ lives in that city and political power followed. UNITE-HERE is trying to replicate that model in airports, hotels, and resort rich cities. Nolan cites workers like fast food workers in Elkview, West Virginia, who wanted a union and organized themselves, though with little support and resources to sustain their effort.
Nolan’s prescription is a labor movement that worries less about each union’s particular jurisdiction and instead throws its doors open to workers. A systematic, resource rich pool of organizers, labor lawyers and media savvy staff could guide workers in the tough struggle to organize. Currently, too many workers do not even know what a union is, let alone how to access one.
Finally, if democracy survives, people need lessons in democracy. More than voting every other year, it is at a union meeting where everyone has a voice, every opinion is heard, and people are treated as equals. That union meeting and its grass-roots democracy empowers people power, which leads to electoral, political power.
The movement needs to move, organize and build power. The politicians will follow – rather than the politician seeing labor as just another special interest, waiting with a check.
The Hammer is a powerful cry for labor revitalization and reinvention as a powerful, effective mass movement that can mobilize the nation and ensure economic stability for workers. The book is well written, accessible and the real life working people's stories draw the reader in.
- Mike Matejka