S T C E P S PRO
Thinking Sectorally
Our current model of collective bargaining leaves millions of workers out in the cold. Sectoral bargaining could change all that—and, just maybe, rebuild our shrunken middle class. By Isabelle Gius The outlook for the labor movement in America is at once bleak and hopeful. On one hand, the number of workers belonging to or represented by unions continues to decline. In 2021, a meager 6.1 percent of private-sector workers belonged to a union, and union coverage overall stood at 11.6 percent. Income inequality is the highest it has ever been, and the power differential between labor and management, coupled with the weaknesses of U.S. labor law, enables employers to engage in rampant union-busting and retaliation with minimal penalties. Just when they are needed most, unions seem nearly at risk of extinction. On the other hand, a wave of grassroots labor organizing has gained traction across the country at Starbucks, Amazon, REI, Trader Joe’s, and beyond. Sixty-eight percent of Americans support unions, the highest level since 1965, and the number is even higher among young people. Almost half of non-unionized workers say they would join a union if they had the chance. “I believe we may be on the verge of an era of mass organizing like we have not seen since the 1930s,” Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI) said in a statement to the Prospect. Hoping to build upon this promising momentum, union organizers and labor experts are thinking big. Facing a legal and political environment rife with fragmentation, exclusion, and sluggishness, major structural change to the relationship between workers and companies may be the only way to tip the scales in workers’ favor. That’s where sectoral bargaining comes in. Sectoral bargaining is a form of collective bargaining where workers bargain with multiple employers in order to set standards across an entire industry or sector. Negotiated benefits and wages apply to all workers across the sector, regardless of whether or not they are unionized. 22 PROSPECT.ORG AUGUST 2022
As it stands, labor law in the United States emphasizes bargaining at the enterprise level—or more accurately, bargaining at individual workplaces or even subsets of workplaces. At the same time, the holes that have been punched in the law over the past half-century make it extremely difficult for workers to build power at the workplace level and allow for intense employer opposition—though President Biden’s appointees to the National Labor Relations Board are trying to fill some of those holes. A sectoral system would address the limits of
enterprise-level bargaining, change what it means to organize, and lead to significant improvements in workers’ conditions. Sectoral bargaining’s critical promise is to deliver the benefits of unionization to all workers, whether union members or not. Even at the height of their postwar power, when they represented roughly a third of the workforce, American unions were never able to set standards for the majority of American workers. The National Labor Relations Act doesn’t extend collective-bargaining rights to domestic workers, agricultural workers,
