In the December 2011 issue of Chaparral, my article on the role of unions in the class war was published. Here is the link to the article: https://campusguides.glendale.edu/c.php?g=514558&p=3516875
I would like to take this opportunity to begin where I left off. I wrote the following in the last paragraph of my essay published in 2011:
If the systemic flaws within capitalism are not properly addressed, we will continue to see more economic crises in the future, and each time unions and others will be fighting tooth and nail to protect less and less. This situation is unacceptable for our future and those workers who will come after us. This is why we need our unions to transcend beyond protecting specific interests such as wages, benefits, and working conditions in a particular sector, and become truly active rank-and-file member-driven organizations. They must advocate and take action to achieve more substantive social changes. To be effective, it is imperative that unions from all the sectors unite with other organizations around common interests to bring about a social transformation benefitting the majority of people, as opposed to the current situation that benefits only a small percentage of the population.
Since then, we have continued to see more economic, political, and social crises. The distribution of wealth in the United States today has become ever more distorted. A study from the Institute for Policy Studies titled “Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us” found that the three richest Americans hold more wealth than the entire bottom half of the U.S. population. This situation, of course, translates to greater inequality within our political system. Princeton University Professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Professor Benjamin I. Page (2014) published their research titled “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens” in the journal Perspectives on Politics, where they showed that the United States is now an oligarchy where the economic elites have a significant amount of influence over government policies, while folks like us and mass-based interest groups have very little to no influence. Socially, our society is suffering from incredibly high rates of social ills, such as suicide, deaths from drug overdose, mass shootings, and hate crimes, to name a few.
Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed, in a dramatic fashion, the realities of social class inequalities and how they impact our lives. Along with the pandemic, the working class were disproportionately affected by the ensuing economic crisis and the incredibly high rate of inflation that we experienced over the last few years.
If there is a silver lining to these tragic outcomes, it is the fact that we are now seeing what appears to be a resurgence of interest in unions and the labor movement, which is manifested in greater labor activism. We all witnessed workers from graduate students to Amazon warehouse workers to even Uber and Lyft drivers vote to unionize. We also have seen the activism of unions such as the UAW, the Writers Guild of America, and SEIU lead to huge wins.
All of this provides some hope. At the same time, we know that the anti-union forces are well-organized and resourceful. They have been quite effective in undermining unions and the rights of workers for the past forty-plus years. As I reflect on the history of organized labor, it becomes clear that in addition to the unique circumstances of the past, organized labor, despite some of its limitations, was effective because it was a workers’ movement. It is imperative that we bring back the spirit and reality of a true workers’ movement. It is now time for us workers to organize around a workers’ movement that seeks to truly protect the interests of all workers and people, especially those who are most vulnerable and marginalized. This is the only way that we can come out of the difficult challenges that we currently face and the ever-growing challenges of the future.
Richard T. Kamei
November 12, 2023
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