Abstract
Strategic behind-the-scenes organizing, plus the economic havoc wreaked by the Covid-19 pandemic, has effectively broadened the gamut of policy considerations among Democratic legislators. The U.S. Congressional Progressive Caucus, now ninety-four members, up from six at its founding in 1991, has become increasingly savvy about rallying support for progressive policies. Its first chairperson, Senator Bernie Sanders, is still there, but, today, the Caucus is led by Representative Pramila Jayapal, the first Indian-American woman to serve in the House of Representatives. The Caucus stands behind a broad vision of social democracy and economic justice, outlined in its “The People’s Agenda: A Progressive Roadmap for Congress in 2021.” This document has the ring of a manifesto, but it also serves as a very specific practical guide to progressive law-making on everything from job creation and labor law to health care and renewable energy. Underlying the whole is an unwavering commitment to a fair economy and to dismantling racism and preserving democratic rights.
Despite the challenges to progressive governance posed by a very determined right-wing bloc, the Caucus has grown not only in numbers but also in influence on mainstream Democratic politics and institutions, perhaps especially on the presidency itself. Joe Biden-the-moderate has emerged as a New Deal-style Democrat. While he remains to the right of the Progressive Caucus, he has moved distinctly leftward, particularly regarding large-scale economic relief, job creation, labor protections, and racial equity.
This issue of New Labor Forum examines policy and organizing opportunities in an environment where progressives hold increasing sway among Democrats, yet the determination of right-wing and corporate actors remains unabated. In our lead article, Deepak Bhargava, Professor of Urban Studies at the CUNY School for Labor and Urban Studies, tackles the necessity of immigration reform, arguing that Democrats have long been hobbled by their own ambivalence and lack of vision. Predicting that advancing climate change will cause an exponential increase in migration from the Global South, he makes the case for a humane immigration policy that could “make the U.S. the most welcoming country on earth for immigrants and refugees.” Unless and until that happens, he says, the right wing will be able to exploit xenophobic impulses to upend key progressive priorities.
The proposed PRO Act (Protecting the Right to Organize Act) would present the most significant chance in over half a century to enhance the power of workers. However, short of filibuster reform, passage of the Act looks unlikely, making the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) the main arbiter of U.S. labor law and policy. With a new Democratic majority on the Board, labor attorney Ellen Dichner sees opportunities to reverse anti-worker rulings, particularly extensive in the Trump years. Going forward, she says, the Board should restore protections for workers and broaden organizing rights by expanding the categories of workers covered under existing labor law.
While the nearly six thousand Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama are covered by the National Labor Relations Act, their unionization campaign was impeded by the weak protections of that law. Interviewing Amazon workers; leaders of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union; and labor scholars, Sarah Jaffe draws out the lessons of the campaign, the most widely covered unionization drive of the past several decades. She concludes that, despite a bruising defeat for the union, the high-stakes campaign to unionize the behemoth is far from over. And indeed, as we go to press, the hearing officer from the National Labor Relations Board has recommended a new election due to the company’s actions during the campaign. In a further article on the Bessemer campaign, labor relations expert John Logan shows precisely how our current labor law allowed Amazon to exercise undue influence over the union election and how inconsequential the penalties typically are for violating the law.
On the policy front, we examine two other critical issues: affordable housing and crippling student debt. Sociologist Miriam Greenberg analyzes why and how progressive coalitions—united on general matters of social justice—splinter on the issue of housing and land use. Using the 1980s Progressive Alliance of Santa Cruz as a case study, she argues that a large segment of the middle class—potential allies in such coalitions—have come to rely on rising asset values due to property tax breaks, deregulated rental markets, and a real estate regime that privileges homeowners over renters. She suggests ways new coalitions might address this dilemma through engagement with the Biden administration and the Progressive Caucus.
The student debt crisis that is leading so many college graduates into poverty will not be solved by half-measures, contends historian Elizabeth Shermer. It will be fully addressed only by federal intervention on a scale imagined by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in their 2020 campaign proposals for tuition-free education. In reaching this conclusion, Shermer traces the history of rising student debt, documents its disparate impact on people of color—especially women—and exposes the shortcomings of state, local, and private-sector remedies, including those offered by elite colleges and universities.
J. Phillip Thompson, Deputy Mayor of New York City and Christine Curella, Senior Policy Advisor, note the evolving knowledge economy’s influence over nearly every aspect of human life. What remains up for grabs, they argue, is the extent to which organized labor and social justice allies will take up the challenge of forcing Big Tech to answer to human, rather than corporate, interests. To illustrate what that might mean, they describe a number of nascent efforts to bring economic democracy to cyberspace.
The potential for progressive social change must be measured against the strength of right-wing extremism. Sociologist Matthew Hughey traces the rise of QAnon from its unremarkable beginnings in the United States to a far-flung organization with groups in Europe, Asia, and Australia. In this country, he shows, assumptions about a working-class QAnon majority are wrong. While the average QAnon adherent is white, Republican, and male, college graduates slightly outnumber those without college degrees. And given the fact that 17 percent of U.S. adults affirm the foundational myths of QAnon, Hughey suggests that if we dismiss or disrespect them, we do so at our collective peril.
On an inspiring note, in November 2020, propelled by the pro-agribusiness legislation that threatens the very existence of small farming, a cavalcade of striking farmers from Northern India marched toward Delhi. Stopped by police from entering the city, they camped at its borders in what has become the longest farmers’ protest in Indian history. Reporting from Delhi, political scientist Navsharan Singh tracks this growing movement, led by farmers and their unions across the country and sustained by the personal and cultural work of women farmers and farmworkers.
In her “Working-Class Voices” column, Kressent Pottenger features Norma Leiva, a warehouse manager at Food 4 Less in Panorama City, Los Angeles. A thirty-three-year active member of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Leiva details the struggles she and her coworkers faced during the pandemic as they fought for protective equipment, safe work environments, and full disclosure from top management about workforce infections.
In his column “Earth to Labor: Dispatches from the Climate Battleground,” Sean Sweeney challenges the idea, popular among environmental groups, that renewable energy companies are the heroes that will tip the scales away from fossil fuels. Reminding us that they are not charities, he details the ways in which large wind and solar interests depend on public money while advancing polices that protect private profit over collaborative measures urgently required to meet global climate targets.
Our Books and the Arts section looks at some of the other challenges facing progressives today. In Worked Over: How Round-the-Clock Work Is Killing the American Dream, reviewed by Laura Adler, Jamie K. McCallum details how capitalist ideology has normalized overwork and worker surveillance at both ends of the labor market, from white-collar professional workers to workers in the gig economy doing multiple jobs just to survive. In Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism, reviewed by Whitney Strub, Heather Berg argues that the “complicated class politics of the porn industry” can illuminate much about work in the twenty-first century provided we listen to those who work in the industry, not just those who study it. She makes clear that porn work, like all work within capitalism, is exploitative. She conveys the complex motivations that draw sex workers to the porn industry and shows how sex workers exercise agency—with or without the support of the labor movement. In Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace, reviewed by Andrew Elrod, Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis look at the ways in which resurgent nationalism in different parts of the world has both challenged the inevitability of globalization—with its attendant growth in inequality—and provoked a rethinking of the need for low wages and consumer austerity to periodically restore trade and investment balances. Further, Matt Witt’s “Out of the Mainstream” column—as always—offers a reliable guide to books and films that deserve more attention than they have gotten in the mainstream press.
And extending this issue’s discussion of Amazon worker organizing, we offer “Lost in Space,” a tongue-in-cheek poem by Leah Mueller, dedicated to Jeff Bezos and his soaring arrogance.
Finally, New Labor Forum notes with sadness the passing on August 5 of Richard Trumka, who had served as AFL-CIO president since 2009, but whose devotion to the labor movement began over a half-century ago as a Pennsylvania coal miner and later on, president of the United Mineworkers of America.