Unions making a return in US

CAMPBELL RICHARDSON Staff Writer

In April of last year, the Amazon JFK8 warehouse, following a five-day vote, became the first Amazon warehouse in the United States to unionize. This marked a major victory for the Amazon Labor Union and a huge steppingstone in revitalizing America’s declining labor movement.

Worker organization has long been an aspect of labor in America since the beginnings of industrialization. Previous modes of production were replaced with the efficient assembly line, and the maintenance of machinery became increasingly dangerous for employees. A new class of tycoon industrialists took advantage of the government’s lack of regulation to keep wages and working conditions poor. At times the government even collaborated with business interests to suppress worker collaboration. For example, because of poor treatment of coal miners, skirmishes broke out between the workers and mine operators, ending in the first ever deployment of a bomb on US soil against striking workers at Blair Mountain.

However, by the turn of the 20th century, a more political labor movement took shape in the form of the Progressives. Later, the desperation brought about by the Great Depression led many workers to turn to unions after the passing of various legislation, giving greater freedom to unions. In 1933, FDR signed the National Industrial Recovery Act, allowing employees to organize and bargain freely. By 1960, nationwide union membership had peaked at around 30%.

A variety of factors would contribute to unions’ declines in the following decades. Unlike in much of Europe where entire industries were unionized together, each factory had to be voted on separately. A growing undercutting of American production by competition from other countries led to the collapse of many once heavily unionized industries particularly in Rust Belt cities like Detroit. Work stoppages via strikes fell 97% between 1970 to 2010. America had never truly developed an explicit labor party like in European states, and over time both parties lost interest as the free market was encouraged.

The effect of this decline is clear. A comparison of union membership and earnings inequality shows a strong connection between the two, with the fall in membership correlating to a steady rise in inequality. While the minimum wage has technically increased since its introduction, with inflation and increases in productivity considered, it has actually stagnated for the past decades. The once strong labor movement that brought many rights now taken for granted, such as a mandatory two-day weekend, is relatively unimportant in today’s modern economy.

This weaking has been taken advantage of by large companies. Amazon has been under scrutiny for quite a while now for its poor working conditions. In late 2021, there were two cases of employees not being allowed to leave their workplace despite tornado warnings, leading to the collective deaths of twelve in Kentucky and Illinois. Amazon was working hard to suppress pro-union sentiment, such as the mandatory distribution of explicitly antiunion employee training videos.

Recent years have shown the first union growth in decades. In 2022 alone, union petitions increased by 58%. Between 2018 and 2019, almost half a million people took part in strikes. Still, there is a long way to go in the process of achieving worker solidarity in negotiations, but with a new attitude toward organized labor and greater accessibility to organization through social media, the future of the American labor movement seems promising.