Many people just want to get through 2020, but labor organizer Jane McAlevey believes we can set our sights higher than simply surviving. A senior policy fellow at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, McAlevey kicked off the year making a strong case for Americans to build and flex their collective muscle through workplace organizing. Her third book, “A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy,” shows the gains that are possible through well-run campaigns and how the union model can strengthen the nation’s frayed social contract. The book was released on Jan. 7 and, by the end of the month, the United States had entered a global health crisis.
Several months into the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the problems McAlevey covered to illustrate the country’s inequality of wealth, resources and power have been exacerbated. Take income inequality. According to the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, the state gap between poor and rich has widened since 1980, with Black and Latino workers hit especially hard. From 2006 to 2018, the top 5% of earners enjoyed an income growth of 18.6%, while the incomes of the bottom 20% saw a 5.3% drop when adjusted for inflation. And between 2016 and 2018, roughly 1 in 6 California residents could not support their families based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which factors in housing affordability.
With widespread pandemic-related workplace shutdowns this spring, well over 1.6 million jobs were lost in California — the highest decline in the country. Meanwhile, California billionaires got richer, and Amazon founder recently Jeff Bezos became the first person to have a net worth of more than $200 billion.
Before a pandemic was on Americans’ minds, collective labor actions were already on the rise. In 2018, 485,000 workers participated in a major work strike that lasted at least one shift — the most since 1986. Last year, there were 25 major work stoppages, higher than the annual average over the last decade. Amazon worker actions have helped spotlight the burgeoning labor movement, from last year’s Prime Day walkout to the protesters with a guillotine outside Bezos’ Washington, D.C., mansion in August.
In “A Collective Bargain,” McAlevey provides a road map to a methodological approach to the work of labor organizing — that is, building a 90% to 95% supermajority to agree on a plan of action. She shares the successes of Philadelphia nurses who have faced the fierce opposition of professional union-busters and Los Angeles teachers who won significant concessions in 2019 with community and parent support. Through these stories, she illustrates the wins that are possible under a well-run democratic campaign. With an urgent call to action, McAlevey uses unions as a metaphor that goes beyond the workplace, showing how it’s possible for citizens to reclaim political power from what she calls the “third-party billionaire class.”
The Chronicle spoke with McAlevey in August about her book, cutting through political divisions and how COVID-19 is changing some of the tools of labor organizing, but not the principles.
Q: What has it been like to release a book about collective action at this particular time? Do you think there’s a hunger for the solutions that your book covers?
A: You can see it in a lot of the actions that have been taking place. I think whether it’s in response to George Floyd’s murder, whether it’s in response to the looming eviction crisis that we are about to face, whether it was in response to the treatment of workers during the pandemic, as it became increasingly clear who actually is an essential worker versus who isn’t. I think that the outrage is really palpable in this country, and it’s really growing, as it should be. …
I know it from being in conversation with people across the country as we’re all trying to figure out: What’s our part? What are we doing? Frankly, are we waking up and doing enough each day to meet the moment? I think the answer to that is no.
Q: Are there any other particular issues that you think the pandemic and shutdown have revealed to Americans?
A: I think that people are beginning to understand that 40, 45 years of systematic disinvestment in the concept of the public good, meaning society, is really failing us right now. So, not having personal protective equipment stockpiled, K-through-12 schools trying to figure out how they can open safely, (with) the central questions being, do they even have air conditioning or heater or ventilation systems that work? If not, do the windows open in the classroom? If not, is there water running in public schools in big cities so that kids can wash their hands if they go back to school? …
(They’re beginning to see) the grotesque inequality that comes from this root problem that we’ve really screwed with the tax system. And again, I’m not saying that there’s a broad understanding of that. But I am seeing people coming to that conclusion in everyday conversations.
Q: Organizing, as you explain, is that work of building a broad base, a supermajority of active participants. Public opinion seems especially polarized right now, whether looking at the issue of wearing a protective mask in public or the Black Lives Matter movement. What advice do you have for people wanting to have those hard conversations, rather than disengage with those they disagree with?
A: Yeah, my first recommendation is get off social media. … It’s really important if you want to win campaigns, if you want to challenge inequality, to use the tools when they’re useful for you and not have them be tools that are distracting. … You’re either on social media arguing with someone whose mind you’ll never change, or you’re engaging with a bunch of people you already agree with. Neither of those is constructive and useful. …
What makes unions so unique is that it’s just a healthy cross-section of the country, wherever you are. So you’re battling with people who have never voted, who might vote Republican, who might vote Democrat, who might vote whatever. You’re constantly forced to engage with the cross-section of the country. … It’s how we have to punch through polarization in the United States right now. It’s not shying away from the conversations, it’s engaging with them.
Q: Can you talk about how you’ve adapted your work to the fact that we can’t meet face to face right now?
A: One of the very first things that I did was immediately agree to teach an international course on organizing under COVID. I began to engage with a team of trade union organizers from other parts of the world in how we could immediately help people understand that the methods and disciplines that we use hold through COVID, but the tools and mechanisms change. And we’ve been refining it ever since. So, I’m on my fourth course this summer and about to launch a fifth one this fall. …
We know we can’t rest on our laurels and wait for the pandemic to end. We’re still having the hard conversations. We’re still tracking participation by small work area (a hospital wing, for example) to be sure that there’s 100% of people being engaged. …
I look forward to getting out of the pandemic and returning to face-to-face work, honestly. But the one thing that we were committed to and exploring back in March (was): Could we actually translate our tool of mass training of ordinary workers into an online context? And I think the answer is yes, it’s harder. And yes, it’s doable. And yes, we must.