Enjoying your vacation? Thank a labor union.

They're the reason we're no working 60+ hour, 7-day weeks

Right to Work provides no “rights” and no “work.”….it’s purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining.

• Martin Luther King, Jr.

About 10-12 years ago, I worked at a Target store in east Portland over the Christmas holiday to make some extra money. The store paid whatever was minimum wage here in Oregon at the time- just over $8 an hour- and store management acted as if we should be damned glad to get that.

During orientation, the 12-15 of us going through it together were required to watch an anti-union video whose basic message was “Target good. Union bad.” The through-line of the video was that the company likes to think of Target employees as one big family, and what do families do? They solve problems within the family.

I don’t know if anyone knew my family, but no one talked back to my father, so no problem was ever really solved. That was essentially the environment Target had created and wished to maintain, one where the workers had no power or influence, and the company could do what it wanted.

Seldom have I ever felt my intelligence so insulted as I did during the 15 minutes the video ran. It was pure anti-union propaganda, making unions sound like something straight from the bowels of the worst sort of Soviet socialist hell.

Unions were Of. The. Devil.

Communication between workers and the company would be banned. Workers would no longer have any voice in what happens in their workplace. Everything would have to go through their union. In short, workers wouldn’t be able to defecate without their union’s involvement. The whole thing was pretty juvenile and the worst sort of cheap propaganda, but it had its intended purpose. Most of my fellow employees swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

As the Christmas season progressed, my fellow Target drones and I worked our tails off. We were hustling, on our feet for eight-hour shifts at odd hours, working for minimum wage. I’d come home exhausted, knowing I’d busted my hump but had little to show for it.

Meanwhile, the CEO at company headquarters in Minneapolis, who’d maybe had a “rough” day (the espresso machine didn’t work) behind his solid mahogany desk in his climate-controlled office, made $24 million that year. It was hard for any front-line employees in my store to give much of anything resembling a fuck when Casper Q. Milquetoast made $24 million in a year when he probably had to make a few tough decisions but rarely broke anything resembling a sweat.

When people begin running down unions, I trot out this story and tell them how Target refused to schedule people who’d worked there for years enough hours to qualify for benefits. I told them about my store refusing to schedule anyone for more than 29.5 hours, so technically, everyone was part-time and thus ineligible for benefits. Yeah, but we were all one big family….

So, in this summer/autumn of labor’s discontent, it seems a good time to review why labor unions can be a good thing…besides the obvious safety in numbers argument.

Among the things that labor unions have secured for American workers over the years include

• Higher wages

• Employer-based health insurance

• Vacation days

• Paid sick leave

• Retirement benefits

• Flexible scheduling

• Protections against harassment

• Safer working conditions

• The weekend

• End of child labor

• Unemployment benefits

• Worker compensation laws

• 40-hour work week

In 1870, the average workweek for most Americans was 61 hours. In the late 19th and early 20th, labor unions engaged in massive strikes demanding shorter work weeks so workers could enjoy more time with their families. Before that, employers neither acknowledged nor cared about a worker’s family. They were units of production and of value only so long as they continued to have utility. If injured or their production dropped, they’d often be fired and replaced without recourse or compensation.

By 1937, labor unions had created enough political momentum to force Congress to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). FLSA created a federal framework that instituted a shorter work week, allowing workers to enjoy leisure time. Workers began to be able to “work to live” instead of “living to work.”

Unions, chief among them the AFL-CIO, fought hard for additional worker rights and worked with Congress to pass the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in 1993. FMLA

requires state agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave annually for workers to care for a newborn, newly adopted child, seriously ill family member or for the worker’s own illness

This year, it finally seems like unions writ large are coming back from the efforts of Republicans since the reign of Ronald Reagan to neuter labor unions. When Reagan fired the air traffic controllers in 1981, it seemed the labor movement’s reach had exceeded its grasp. Afterward, labor was severely weakened and ineffective for years.

Now, with perhaps the most pro-union President in history in the White House, the labor movement seems to be experiencing a new renaissance. UPS drivers won a significant victory in the form of a new contract earlier this summer, and now autoworkers have finally settled their strike against the Big Three automakers.

Teachers here in Portland are on strike for smaller class sizes and more planning time, and Starbucks workers are striking for better scheduling considerations. With the lowest unemployment rate in half a century, workers are exercising the leverage they have to secure better treatment, working conditions, and compensation.

Americans may have forgotten that in 2008, the American auto industry was on the verge of going under entirely. The industry may have failed without significant labor concessions and a government bailout. Fortunately for America, it didn’t- but American auto workers still haven’t gotten back what they gave up 15 years ago, even with the industry now making record profits.

Oh, and the Big Three CEOs now make over $20 million annually. Workers believe it’s time they were given back what they gave up…even as management says, “Hold on just a minute, now. Not so fast.”

So, while it’s easy to condemn workers for asking for a 46% pay raise and a 32-hour work week while they’re paid for 40 hours, let’s remember what they gave up 15 years ago to save the American economy. AND for which they’re STILL waiting to be repaid.

Labor contract negotiations are messy, especially when much of that negotiation is conducted in the media. Before we react to what we hear from the GOP News Network, we should consider where we’d be without labor unions.

We have more to be grateful for than we probably realize.

(All of my posts are now public. Any reader financial support will be considered pledges- support that’s greatly appreciated but not required to get to all of my work. I’ll leave it to my readers to determine if my work is worthy of their monetary support and at what level. To those who do offer their support, thank you. It means more than you know.)

How about a big North Stars & Cowboy Bars “Thank you!!” to our sponsor: