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worker rights
We Need a Vibrant Labor Day in This Country to Lift Up Working People Far and Wide
Time is of the essence, but there is still time to make this Labor Day—and everyone going forward—a lasting Workers Action Event.
Jul 29, 2024
Labor Day in Reality for September 2, 2024 is a huge, ignored asset, except by the commercial interests offering “sales.” A neglected Labor Day symbolizes the decline of labor unions and the absence of vigorous leadership generating higher levels of energy for Labor supremacy over Capital. Up to now, many labor leaders have had little focused interest in making Labor Day a grand national media day, from appearances on the Sunday news talk shows to producing thousands of events around the country that nourish labor solidarity, regardless of political labels.
Corporatist predations and exploitations make all workers, regardless of their political leanings, bleed the same color. Vibrant Labor Day events would be grounded not in nostalgia or self-anthems, but in the vital need to overcome worsening structural injustices at all levels of the workplace.
Overdue worker necessities include a living wage, affordable universal health care, child tax credits, the Western European safety nets of paid childcare, paid family leave and maternal care. Crackdowns on corporate crimes, fraud and abuse, and ending autocratic workplaces under fine print concessionary contracts which turn workers into modern-day serfs are also needed.
The Trumpsters want to TAKE AWAY many existing worker rights and limit the ability of unions to gain power. The AFL-CIO has highlighted several anti-worker policies of the Project 2025 Agenda developed by the Trumpsters. It includes:
- Banning unions for public service workers;
- Firing civil service workers and replacing them with Trump anti-union loyalists;
- Letting bosses eliminate unions mid-contract;
- Letting companies stop paying overtime and allowing states to opt out of federal overtime and minimum wage laws; and
- Eliminating child labor protections.
Communities can organize events on reversing corporate-managed trade agreements. Depending on the location, special events can be tailored, especially in swing states, to give workers a platform to talk about the outsourcing of jobs to low-wage repressive countries and other attacks on labor. Assemblies, rallies, voter registration drives, marches, demonstrations and even agenda-driven parades – a lost tradition in most regions – could build support for a pro-worker agenda. Organizing these events could either induce or demand commitments by invited candidates for office in November. No diverting candidate handshakes, fake smiles and sweet talk on this no-nonsense day.
Firm commitments, wrapped in a “WORKER COMPACT” for America, in the weeks after Labor Day, can be tied to enabling legislation, copies of which can be distributed at the events. Challenging anti-labor laws like Taft-Hartley and weaknesses in NLRB procedures, weak corporate sanctions, coming out for card checks, etc., should be a part of the “WORKER COMPACT.” In truth, Labor Day could also be an occasion for formally summoning Senators and Representatives and state lawmakers to worker-organized and conducted Town Meetings. (See: Sending Citizens Summons to Members of Congress at nader.org or my book “Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think” for boilerplate formal summons language.)
The publicized focus on concrete improvements in livelihoods and shifts of power advancing the lives of workers where they work and raise their families will excite voters and motivate them to raise their own sense of significance and encourage them to participate in Labor Day actions with fellow workers. The momentum can be carried forward to election day showing the stark contrasts between the pro-worker and anti-worker candidates and political parties.
Labor Day is the opening bell for the final stretch drive before election day. (See my August 17, 2022 column: To Democrats: Make Labor Day A Workers’ Action Day).
In a winner-take-all Electoral College system, a 10% turnout from eligible non-voters and turning out more occasional voters will answer, with jackhammer determination, the age-old voter question of “Which Side Are You On?” Politicians and political party officials who don’t show up due to their indentured corporatism will be exposed in the raw by name. The Labor movement arouses and achieves dominance as stronger and more resolute, sweeping aside the “divide and conquer” manipulations that dominate reporting in the rancid social and mainstream media.
Purposeful Labor Day events will also bring forth support and participation by civic organizations. Nationwide, they have millions of members.
There are six weeks or so to Labor Day. Too much of the AFL-CIO sat out the last election (2022) leaving it up to “the more credible locals” according to Damon Silver. An aroused AFL-CIO can provide the galvanizing strategy and resources to use Labor Day as it should be used, and then some, to build a decisive momentum for November and beyond. Used to defeatism, accustomed to tying themselves unconditionally to the corporate Democratic Party – itself suffering from this trait – this reversal would shock the media and the young generation into attentiveness.
There are many Labor Leaders who would spearhead a massive Labor Day event including Sara Nelson of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, Mark Dimondstein of the American Postal Workers Union, and other long-time labor union leaders and activists such as Baldemar Velasquez (Farm Labor Organizing Committee), John Samuelsen (Transport Workers Union), Carl Rosen (UE General President), Gene Bruskin (National Labor Network for a Ceasefire) and RoseAnn DeMoro (retired executive director of National Nurses United), Larry Cohen (CWA former president) and many others. And the pulsating Culinary Union in Nevada and the UAW have shown some of labor’s true potential to galvanize support for a “WORKERS COMPACT.”
Some elected candidates can bear down publicizing this venture, as well as some suggested sparkplugs such as the great author/speaker Jim Hightower. What is needed, for starters, is a major national call for action and then moving into person-to-person outreach. Adequate funding is essential and grassroots outreach will be much more effective than millions of dollars spent on corporate conflicted media consultants craving their 15% commissions from forgettable Democratic Party TV ads.
Imagine a huge rally next to the New York Stock Exchange to demand a stock, bond, derivatives tiny progressive sales tax that can raise over $300 to $500 billion a year. New York State has collected and rebated this tax since 1981 — about $40 million a day to the brokers. Hundreds of billions of foregone dollars could have been devoted to specific necessities of New Yorkers. See the ongoing corporate campaign website: greedvsneed.org
Time is of the essence, but there is still time to make Labor Day a lasting Workers Action Event. A new tradition, if you will.
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Guitar Center Workers Rock the Shop Floor
Oct 26, 2013
If your 9-to-5 job revolves around your life's passion, the satisfaction of being surrounded by what you love can offset the daily grind. But such passion is often in short supply in retail work, which is generally defined by the quintessential boring sales job. At Guitar Center, however, one of the country's largest instrument chains, workers' love for music, combined with their disdain for The Man, is driving a valiant campaign for a union.
In several cities, Guitar Center employees have been organizing since late 2012 with the support of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). In May, they scored their first victory at the flagship store in the West Village, with 57 employees voting to unionize. Then another Guitar Center, in Chicago, unionized in August. As labor organizers reach out to other cities, though, the management, controlled by private equity giant Bain Capital, is reportedly hoping to undercut the union before it recruits more workers at the other more than 200 stores nationwide.
Since Bain took over in 2007, workers say, labor conditions on the sales floor have eroded under a pay structure based on commissions. According to employees, because base pay has started as low as $7.25 an hour, often without paid vacation or sick days, these commissions constitute a major portion of workers' income. But this commission on sales kicks in only after reaching a certain minimum threshold--a system known as "fading." Another major frustration for workers has been a lack of autonomy; they say non-sales duties that the Bain management has heaped on them detract from cultivating sales clients. Moreover, a relatively flat wage structure means workers who work their way up the management chain do not receive comparable pay increases.
The workplace atmosphere has allegedly grown more tense since workers started organizing. In May, Manhattan Guitar Center employee Anim Arnold told Labor Press that management was targeting individual workers as they were gearing up for the groundbreaking union vote.
"They've definitely pulled people aside and said they don't think unions are a good idea," he said. "They say, 'Oh, unions don't have anything to offer. It's not the 1920s. We're not children in coal mines. We're fine.'"
Sure, Guitar Center workers know they're not Dickensian factory children, but they do feel entitled to more dignity at work, not least because they genuinely value their jobs. One employee's testimony, broadcast by Rock4Rights, the Chicago Guitar Center workers' public media campaign, reflects the employees' modest demand: "I love my job, and as of now I can't afford to work here."
The staff's subculture makes them unique among service workers. organizer Phillip Andrews, who's working with the Guitar Center campaign says that a perennial challenge in this largely non-union sector is that "conditions in retail are so bad that nobody really cares about the job that they do have, and even if they did, they have very little expectation that it's going to get any better."
By contrast, while Guitar Center workers may be frustrated with their boss, Andrews adds, they "have an affinity with each other that is unlike the affinity that let's say, Wal-Mart workers might have ... People work at Guitar Center because they love music, and the Guitar Center allows them to have a job that helps pay the bills while allowing them to be around other people who love music, both their co-workers and their customers, and be around musical instruments."
Noting that workers are friends, bandmates, and supporters of each others' music outside of the workplace, he adds, "you get a crowd that is naturally going to stick together... and fight to make this job better, because many Guitar Center workers have said to me, 'This really could be the perfect job if we were just able to fix A, B and C. ... If I could just make ends meet and play my music, I could imagine being here forever."
Another advantage Guitar Center workers have is a cadre of music lovers at their back--which happens to include fans and musicians who have long bristled at corporate commercialism invading the music scene. In addition to their store-by-store organizing, the RWDSU has gathered thousands of supporters through an online petition campaign and won celebrity endorsements from radical rockers like Tom Morello, Billy Bragg and Steve Earle, with a slick YouTube video soundtrack courtesy of Anti-Flag.
As campaign publicity has ramped up, however, the management has reportedly put their own paternalistic spin on the company's culture of camaraderie to deter worker activism. In response to the New York store unionization, Dennis Haffeman, executive vice president of human resources told Rolling Stone that the company strives for "a working environment that our folks love." Referring to the organizing effort, he said, "It's unfortunate that we now have a third party involved.
But organizers remain optimistic. In New York and Chicago, where employees are now actively engaging in talks to establish a fair contract for workers, Andrews says that managers are starting to negotiate with workers in good faith. He's hopeful that despite the company's reported anti-union stance in the past months, this positive attitude will remain consistent at other stores.
Meanwhile, the workers continue their online campaign to gain public support. Because the bureaucratic union-election process generally affords the employer a long timetable for strategically wearing down workers with union-busting campaigns, organizers say that generating strong public pressure on the company--such as the kind of populist energy sparked by parallel grassroots campaigns at fast food chains and in other low-wage, non-unionized sectors--could give workers much-needed leverage against a goliath like Bain. Though Guitar Center stores nationwide may not be unionized for some time, organizers hope that its workers are conducting the prelude to a new wave in retail organizing.
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