Abstract
So dire are the threats to our frail safety net posed by the Trump regime and the far-right-controlled Congress that their legislative ineptitude has become a rare, if unreliable, source of good news. Those seeking sturdier sources of protection might look to organized labor, despite its decades-long decline. The news on that front, however, has gone from bad to worse. The thin legal apparatus upon which unions have depended since the 1935 passage of the Wagner Act has been steadily torn away and currently risks near total rupture.
In this, our twentieth anniversary issue, we examine the impending peril of and long-term possibilities for resuscitating the labor movement. Right-to-work legislation, made possible by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, has increasingly provided a legal fulcrum for the right wing to eviscerate labor. Right-to-work legislation, now law in twenty-eight states, enacts an erosion of rights by incentivizing workers to choose to work without a union by enabling them to refuse to pay dues, even as unions in their workplaces are obliged to bargain on their behalf. And right-to-work is poised to become the law of the land with the Janus v. AFSCME case now slated for a hearing before the Supreme Court. Unions in many states have experimented with ways to increase the power of workers and their unions in right-to-work environments. Here, Chris Brooks takes a close look at the grim track record of members-only unionism—advocated by some on the left—in Kentucky and warns against the inter-union competition that it inevitably unleashes. Beyond the Supreme Court’s likely ruling against labor in the Janus case, Trump’s appointment of Neil Gorsuch is likely to undermine worker interests and bolster those of employers in a host of other ways enumerated by Sochie Nnaemeka. Shaun Richman argues that the labor movement should take the ambitious step of seeking a firmer legal footing than its basis in the Commerce Clause, namely, by locating worker rights within the First, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendments—on freedom of speech and of assembly, freedom from involuntary servitude, and equal protection.
Labor will require more than surer legal ground to stop its dissolution. The relationship between organized labor and civil rights organizations has a largely troubled, but occasionally productive, past. Refreshing that alliance in the years ahead could prove critical. Brandon Terry and Jason Lee examine the historical obstacles to such alliances, and suggest new grounds on which to reinvigorate those efforts under current circumstances.
Campaign pronouncements and promises on trade and infrastructure were critical elements in Trump’s victory. But so far, he’s delivered very little.
John Miller details why we should be especially pleased that Trump’s infrastructure plan remains derailed, given its penchant for privatization and tax incentives that will line the pockets of rich investors. Max Fraser in his “Organized Money” column reveals the conflicts of interests among the cast of characters that are pushing the private–public partnership boondoggles that are the cornerstone of the Trump plan. Adam Weissman’s examination of the administration’s haphazard approach to international trade from renegotiating NAFTA to taking on China indicates close consultation with corporate leaders, with unions largely left out in the cold. Weissman also argues that Trump’s trade policy, to the extent there is one, may well broaden divisions between labor and environmental and immigrant rights activists.
The effects of deindustrialization that became central talking points in the Trump campaign have run their course throughout the global north. We offer an examination of the toll of neoliberal deindustrialization in Italy, former bastion of industrial production and union power that made those jobs decent. Ugo Marani’s article (translated by Frederika Randall) describes the privatization and dismantling of the country’s industrial base and the rising numbers of detached youth who have left school and cannot find jobs. He suggests these problems are exacerbated by Italy’s deep north–south inequities, and a union movement that, despite its size, has grown less militant and failed to respond adequately to these crises.
Some contemporary observers argue that remedies for the devastating consequences of neoliberalism lie embedded in the economic and social arrangements associated with information technology. They detect there the makings of a post-capitalist future. Howard Brick, in “On the Contrary,” takes issue with the info-tech disciples who see a post-capitalist world order in what they postulate will be increasing demand for social provision and greater equality. Brick finds in their arguments antecedents going at least as far back in the United States as Walter Lipmann in the early twentieth century, and also finds naive what he views as their over reliance on spontaneous collective action, and disregard for the work of building solidarity and systematic organizing so essential to socialist and labor movements.
Whether or not a post-capitalist future lies on the horizon, the gig economy is now shaping the conditions and imaginings of millions of workers. In this installment of “Working-Class Voices,” Clynton Lowry, a young art handler who crates, transports, and assembles artwork, paints a compelling picture of the simultaneous attraction and exploitation of this sort of gig work, as well as the inherent obstacles it poses to worker solidarity. In “Under the Radar,” Sarah Jaffe looks at a vastly different type of gig work as she reports on a successful $1.25 million class action settlement won by the Oakland Raiders cheerleaders in restitution for their subminimum wages. Jaffe also highlights the courageous battle Newark public school students are waging against the expansion of charter schools. Mariya Strauss’ “Roots of Rebellion” in this issue tracks the well-organized resistance to the privatization of public lands among Oregon’s ranchers, hunters and anglers, native tribes, sporting companies, and outdoor enthusiasts. And in his column on labor and climate change, Sean Sweeney defends a move by a number of South African unions to halt the closure of coal mines in favor of a more thoroughgoing transformation of energy production in that country toward renewables and a just transition for workers.
Our book reviews in this issue include an examination by Ahmed White of Elizabeth Anderson’s Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It), a discussion of the transformation of the free market from a tool for upending entrenched hierarchies beginning with the Leveller movement in mid-1600s England to its changed role since the dawn of industrialization as a means of validating the prerogatives of the capitalists. Megan Tobias Neely assesses Capital without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent by Brooke Harrington, a book about the ways in which the global “one percent” hides their money in offshore shell corporations and the deleterious effect this has on social equality and political democracy. And Nausheen Quayyum reviews two books trained on the expanding global working class and the prospects for strengthening international workers movements: Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class by Immanuel Ness and Building Global Labor Solidarity in a Time of Accelerating Globalization edited by Kim Scipes. And we end with the poetry of Solmaz Sharif, a young U.S.-based poet born in Istanbul to Iranian parents. Her work offers an arresting and intimate depiction of the dread brought about by our wars on terror that show no sign of abating.