Less than a month after a decertification effort failed spectacularly, the nurses’ union at Maine Medical Center signed its first contract – a historic achievement, possibly a milestone in reviving the union movement.
As just about everyone knows, unions, until the pandemic, had been declining for decades, with their private sector membership a third of its 1960s peak.
There were many reasons; most historians cite Ronald Reagan’s 1981 firing of striking air traffic controllers, shortly after becoming president. But there were others, starting long before Reagan.
The 19th Century produced large industrial unions as the nation’s economy reached a size and prosperity never seen before. Strikes were broken up by police and the military, most memorably during the 1894 Pullman strike that idled the nation’s railroads.
It wasn’t until 1935, amid widespread deprivation and unemployment, that the Wagner Act legitimized unions, requiring corporation owners to negotiate in good faith.
The next three decades saw two developments we might look back on fondly: resumed and unprecedented economic growth, and remarkable shared prosperity. Workers’ wages rose in tandem with bosses’ salaries; a hugely enlarged middle class resulted.
Then it began to fade. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, passed over President Truman’s veto, made it far more difficult to form unions, and allowed management to employ anti-union tactics against organizing campaigns.
There were, again, reasons why Congress turned against unions. Crippling strikes after World War II soured the public mood.
Some unions became corrupt – most notoriously, the Teamsters – and aging, inflexible leadership, plus a sharp decline in factory jobs, created a downward spiral.
But just as we didn’t try to eliminate banks after they crashed the economy in 1990, and again in 2008, there was no justification for the widespread corporate hostility to unions after 1970.
Newspapers once had labor reporters, and though never as numerous as business reporters, there was some balance. Now, almost every labor-management story mimics the business perspective, as witness the current “worker shortage” which, for working people, could be the opportunity of a lifetime.
The coronavirus changed many things, showing how much we depend on front-line workers. The spectacle of “essential,” but low-paid workers forced to labor without protection, while managers worked at home, was too great to be ignored.
“Labor consciousness,” an awareness unions are, in large companies, the only way to level the playing field, has dawned anew.
The nurses’ union at Maine Med is one example, joining their counterparts in Bangor, who organized decades ago. The Portland effort followed two unsuccessful campaigns, in 1976 and 2000, with stunning levels of management intimidation by what, under Maine law, is a charitable, tax-exempt, organization.
The success of the 2021 vote, and larger margin for recertification in August, is testimony to the determination of Maine nurses, and their affiliation with National Nurses United, which brought a new degree of sophistication to organizing.
It follows rising activism among national brands such as Amazon, Starbucks and Chipotle – but with one big difference. These campaigns are locally organized, meaning vulnerable to company pushbacks.
It’s one thing to vote to form a union, quite another to win a contract addressing workers’ concerns. The deck has been stacked against new organizing for years.
One almost unnoticed development, except in the business press, was the National Labor Relations Board’s Sept. 6 vote to bring back an Obama-era rule redefining the legal responsibilities of national franchise owners.
Briefly put, current law allows giant national hotel, restaurant, and fast-food chains to operate as if they were a collection of small, locally owned businesses. That’s why it’s so hard to organize a Starbucks union, despite a hundred favorable local votes.
The NLRB’s renewed rules would allow unfair labor practice complaints against the national company – a powerful tactic that could, finally, allow wide entry of service workers into unions.
Naturally, we’ll hear this will bankrupt companies and send prices soaring – marking the end of the “free enterprise” system as we know it.
It won’t. It might lead to rebalancing the wage economy, where nearly all gains flow to the top, with workers struggling to support themselves, let alone raise a family.
For the first time since the New Deal, labor unions have a friend in the White House. Joe Biden’s leadership made a big difference in the recent threatened but averted national rail strike.
Workers are finally able to resist scheduling requirements made to create “efficiency” that leave them with no weekends off, no hope of spending consistent time with family.
It’s too soon to predict a major shift in what we once called “labor relations.” But it’s possible, and if it happens, the union revival will lead the way.
Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, commentator and reporter since 1984, is the author of three books, and is now researching the life and career of a U.S. Chief Justice. He welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net
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