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Why Surging Support for Unions in the US Could Reduce Racial Divisions
The ongoing UAW strike has given us a glimpse of another future. Rarely in contemporary America do we see multiracial crowds gathered for a common purpose.
Oct 07, 2023
No one has been caught using a racial slur. There’s no video footage of an encounter between a White police officer and a Black motorist that ends in tragedy. It’s not an event with the familiar hallmarks of a racial story.
But make no mistake: The United Auto Workers strike against Detroit’s Big Three automakers is not just a story about workers versus corporate power. It’s also about race.
If the UAW is successful, they could also impact one of the significant political trends in America: the exodus of White working-class voters, fueled in part by racial resentment, from the Democratic Party.
The labor dimension to the strike is well-known. The UAW launched its strike Sept.15 and is seeking increased wages, benefits and job protections for its members.
Unions shrink the physical and psychological differences between White and non-White Americans. They have a history of fostering racial solidarity between White, Black and brown workers.
Last week, President Biden became the first sitting president to join workers on a picket line when he stood with UAW workers.
The strike came as major automakers had reported record or near-record profits, with their CEOs earning an estimated 300 times more than their workers.
The UAW strike is part of larger pattern. Unions are experiencing a resurgence amid a perception that workers aren’t sharing fairly in corporate profits. Public approval of unions last year reached its highest level since 1965 and has only fallen slightly this year, according to Gallup pollsters.
But the surging popularity of unions could reduce some of the racial divisions in our country.
Our parties, like much of the country, are divided mostly along racial lines. The Republican Party has benefitted from a steady exodus of White working-class voters since the mid-1960s, when Lyndon Johnson, a Democratic president, threw his party’s support behind major civil rights legislation.
No Democratic president has won a majority of the White vote since. More than 80% of Republican voters are White.
Several historians say the contemporary decline of unions paved the way for the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Working-class Whites who once found a political home in the union hall now “found solidarity in a new populist movement.”
But this strike has given us a glimpse of another future. Rarely in contemporary America do we see multiracial crowds gathered for a common purpose. The UAW strike, however, has furnished plenty of images of White and non-White workers walking the picket lines together.
These images represent unions’ peculiar power. Unions shrink the physical and psychological differences between White and non-White Americans. They have a history of fostering racial solidarity between White, Black and brown workers.
Their message to those workers: The enemy is not a person of another skin color but something else: corporate greed.
That message has racial implications. Several studies have found union membership not only reduces racial resentment but also leads to White unionized workers becoming more likely to support economic policies that help the Black community.
“Unions provide opportunities for people of different racial backgrounds and identities to not merely work side by side — which may itself relax prejudice through sheer exposure — but to work toward a common goal together, promoting cooperation, and enhancing respect and mutuality across racial lines,” wrote Meagan Day, co-author of Bigger than Bernie: How We Go from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism, in an essay in Jacobin magazine.
Unions provided crucial support to the civil rights movement. It’s often been noted that Shawn Fain, the current UAW president, quotes Malcolm X. But Walter Reuther, his legendary predecessor in the 1950s and 1960s, was a “stalwart” ally of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Reuther gave critical support to the 1963 March on Washington and sat on the advisory board of the NAACP. He also joined King for the historic Selma to Montgomery march, which helped spark the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
King was also a strong supporter of unions. He had gone to Memphis, where he was assassinated in 1968, to support striking sanitation workers.
In fairness, unions don’t always practice the racial solidarity they preach. They, too, have a history of racism and corruption. Not long ago, the Justice Department unearthed a massive corruption scandal at the UAW.
But the UAW strike could have an impact not just in the immediate future, but long-term. The current labor resurgence could help Democrats make inroads among White, working-class voters.
The current headlines may not say this: But the UAW strike and others like it are about something more than labor rights.
They’re also about race.
And in America, the two have always been intertwined.
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The Willow Project Was a Key Climate Test. And Joe Biden Failed It.
The rubber-stamping of such a project sends a message not just to our generation but humanity as a whole: The future of our planet and the present well-being of frontline communities are being sacrificed for short-term economic gain and political expediency.
Apr 07, 2023
President Joe Biden’s recent approval of the Willow Project in Alaska has alarmed many young people and once again made us question his seriousness about addressing the climate crisis before it is too late.
His decision to greenlight ConocoPhillips’ massive oil project isn’t just a betrayal of his promises on the campaign trail when he vowed to halt drilling on federal lands and to help the United States make the transition toward clean energy. It’s a betrayal of our generation’s future and of the millions of people suffering the impact of the climate crisis.
As if that were not enough, the Biden administration is auctioning off more than 73 million acres of waters in the Gulf of Mexico to offshore oil and gas drilling — double the size of the Willow Project if it goes ahead as planned. The president faced one of the greatest tests of his commitment to addressing climate change, and he failed. His administration must step up and commit to do better.
As young people who will inherit a burning planet, we are gravely concerned about the long-term impact of the Willow Project and the precedent it sets for future decisions on climate and energy policy.
By the administration’s own estimates, the Willow Project on Alaska’s North Slope is projected to add 9.2 million metric tons of carbon pollution to the atmosphere per year. That’s the equivalent of adding 2 million gas-powered cars to the road every year — potentially for 30 years. Despite the large amounts of emissions that await, the administration — which faces pressure from unions, Alaskan lawmakers and some Native Alaskans who support the project — argues that refusing a permit for the Willow Project would trigger legal issues due to previously issued leases.
However, this decision not only contradicts Biden’s promises but also undermines the steps set forth by last month’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change synthesis report. The IPCC, a panel of experts brought together by the United Nations, made it clear that the world already has too many fossil fuels in production to limit global warming to the relatively safe level of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) unless swift action is taken.
Young people and members of marginalized communities are the ones who will bear the brunt of the consequences of the escalating climate emergency. The rubber-stamping of such a project sends a message not just to our generation but humanity as a whole: The future of our planet and the present well-being of frontline communities are being sacrificed for short-term economic gain and political expediency.
Millions of young people made their concerns about Willow known. Youth-led climate organizations, such as the Sunrise Movement, have been vocal about the potential repercussions of approving Willow, warning that it could turn young voters away from the administration. Young people organized online, pushing the massive oil project to trending status on TikTok the week before Willow’s approval, part of an effort that garnered around 5.6 million messages calling on Biden to reject the plan. But the voices of millions who spurred into action were left gutted on March 13 when Willow was approved.
Greenlighting the project also highlights the glaring disconnect between the administration’s climate rhetoric and actions. While the US has made some landmark investments in clean energy under Biden through the Inflation Reduction Act, the project will undermine these efforts and threaten the fragile Arctic ecosystems, wildlife and Indigenous communities, conservation groups say. What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.
Scientists warn us that crossing the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius could trigger multiple climate tipping points, leading to irreversible and dangerous impacts with serious implications for humanity. The Willow Project, set to produce 600 million barrels of oil and generate roughly 278 million tons of carbon emissions, goes directly against the word of climate scientists.
By supporting the Willow Project, the administration is exacerbating the climate crisis and further jeopardizing the well-being of vulnerable populations.
The impact of climate change is already disproportionately affecting communities in the global South — a crisis they have done little, if anything, to create. Africa, for example, is responsible for about 4% of global emissions. It faces devastating floods, droughts, food scarcity and displacement due to rising sea levels — and the number of people suffering will surge as fossil fuel production continues to expand. By supporting the Willow Project, the administration is exacerbating the climate crisis and further jeopardizing the well-being of vulnerable populations.
As young people who will inherit a burning planet, we are gravely concerned about the long-term impact of the Willow Project and the precedent it sets for future decisions on climate and energy policy. We have said it before and we say it again: We need system change, not climate change. We need people in power who show real climate leadership, who will work with young people and stand by their promises. Considering that the USA is the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gasses, stopping developments like the Willow Project is the bare minimum of what it needs to do.
The US reduction targets are already insufficient for keeping global warming below 1.5°C and we need to see ramped up ambition and accelerated implementation from Biden. He must prioritize the future of our generation, frontline communities and the planet. We urge the president to stick to his word and not commit to funding any new fossil fuel development.
That means stopping the Willow project and ensuring there can be no more of its kind. It is the only way to secure a livable planet for all. It is also a chance to listen to our generation and take the first important steps away from a broken political system where leaders care more about short-term political gain than our collective futureKeep ReadingShow Less
Why We Should Be Very Skeptical of the Billionaires Who Vow to 'Give It All Away'
In the end, voluntary philanthropy will never be an adequate substitute for an effective tax system that forces the fabulously rich to pay their fair share.
Nov 29, 2022
In the United States, we are now treated to regular announcements about benevolent billionaires pledging to share their wealth. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, for instance, recently told CNN that he would be giving away the majority of his $124 billion fortune in his lifetime. Further back in 2015, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced he would give away what he makes from 99% of his Facebook shares.
At this point, we should assume a skeptical posture. The truth is, pledges like these may take years, decades or even generations to reach their nonprofit destinations--if ever. That's why we need more public scrutiny of billionaire philanthropy--and much clearer rules to make sure donations actually support real, working charities.
Consider the Giving Pledge, an initiative founded by Warren Buffett, Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates to increase charitable giving by the extremely wealthy. As of today, more than 230 billionaires from 28 countries have taken the pledge to give away the majority of their wealth.
Presumably, this means we would see declining billionaire fortunes. But on the 10th anniversary of the pledge in 2020, my colleagues at the Institute for Policy Studies and I found that the total net worth of the 62 living initial pledgers hadn't diminished at all. In fact, it had nearly doubled, when adjusted for inflation.
Part of the challenge is that billionaire wealth is simply rising so fast--US billionaires have seen their total wealth increase by $1.5 trillion since the beginning of the pandemic, according to an IPS analysis based on Forbes' billionaire database. As our economy becomes ever more tilted toward the rich, even committed philanthropists are making money faster than they can give it away.
The increasingly top-heavy nature of today's giving landscape--and the growing dominance of lightly regulated funds often controlled by donors themselves--is an even bigger problem.
While billionaires do of course still donate to charities, grand philanthropic pledges are often fulfilled by dumping funds into family foundations or donor-advised funds (DAFs) that could exist in perpetuity. Some 30% of charitable donations now flow through intermediaries like these, outpacing direct donations to many traditional charities.
Billionaires may claim enormous tax deductions--not to mention starry-eyed headlines--for parking funds in these intermediaries. But there's little to no guarantee that money will ever make it to working charities. Foundations are only required to pay out 5% of their assets each year, and most dole out just slightly more than this minimum. DAFs face no annual payout requirement at all. Lax reporting requirements make it difficult to assess their activity, but recent reports suggest that median DAF payouts are shockingly low.
What's more, billionaire charity is our tax dollars at work. For every dollar a billionaire gives to charity, we the taxpayers chip in up to 74 cents of that dollar in lost federal tax revenue as donors claim deductions in their income, estate and capital gains taxes, among others. That makes it even more outrageous that much of this money may never reach a real, on-the-ground charity.
Because our tax dollars subsidize this system, charity needs to be more transparent, with clear disclosures of when donations reach their recipients. Payout requirements should be increased, with more oversight to ensure that philanthropic money reaches real working charities. Components of these reforms are included in the Accelerate Charitable Effectiveness (ACE) Act, which has bipartisan backing in the Senate, although a vote has yet to be been called since it was introduced in 2021.
There are refreshing exceptions to the troubling trend of billionaires warehousing charitable contributions in private foundations and DAFs. For example, MacKenzie Scott recently announced almost $2 billion in direct gifts to recipient charities, increasing her direct giving to more than $14 billion since 2019. That is news.
In the end, philanthropy will never be an adequate substitute for an effective tax system where billionaires pay their fair share and democratically elected governments make decisions about investment priorities, not billionaires.
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Four Reasons Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act Doesn't Live Up to the Hype
Yes, the legislation marks a small step forward. It is better than not having it. But Biden certainly shouldn't have handed his signing pen to Sen. Manchin as a mark of honor.
Aug 20, 2022
The Democrats are celebrating the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act over unified Republican opposition, claiming that the legislation is a historic breakthrough. Sadly, it's not.
Though the new legislation takes some steps in the right direction on climate and drug prices, it falls far short of what is needed. The Democrats, with control over the White House and both houses of Congress, squandered the historic opportunity for a progressive breakthrough.
There are four big reasons to be skeptical of the Democratic Party's self-congratulation.
1. Despite its title, the new legislation will have essentially no effect on reducing inflation during the next few years.
Today's inflation, running at 8.5% year-over-year in July, results from economy-wide imbalances of supply and demand. Even the small steps on drug pricing in the new law--allowing Medicare to negotiate the prices of some drugs as of 2026--will have no effect on current inflation, and only tiny effects later. One study at Penn Wharton, for example, expressed "a low level of confidence that the legislation would have any measurable impact on inflation."
Calling the legislation the "Inflation Reduction Act" was a marketing ploy, not reality.
2. Most of President Joe Biden's original social agenda was left out of the legislation.
Unlike the first draft of the legislation (under the original banner of "Build Back Better"), the new law stripped out most of the social programs in Biden's original program, essentially because conservative Democrats blocked all of the proposed tax hikes on the rich that would have paid for such programs. The Dems abandoned earlier proposals for universal pre-kindergarten and subsidized child care, paid family and medical leave, free community college and expanded child tax credits, among other initiatives.
3. Democrats once again sided with campaign donors and lobbyists over everyday voters.
Biden's initial plan called for at least partly reversing the unjustified giveaway to the rich in former President Donald Trump's 2017 corporate tax cut. It also called for raising personal income taxes on the richest Americans and on ending some egregious tax loopholes. These tax objectives were abandoned when conservative Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona protected the rich rather than their own constituents. They went with the campaign contributions, not the voters.
With no meaningful tax increases on the rich, the federal government will continue to run chronic and rising budget deficits as a share of GDP, even with the legislation stripped of important social initiatives. Federal outlays as a share of GDP are rising over time as the US population ages, health care costs rise and as money continues to be squandered on record military budgets and overseas wars. Direct outlays on wars since 9/11, including the current war in Ukraine, have cost $2.3 trillion and many trillions more in other costs, such as veterans' care.
The long upward march of the debt-to-GDP ratio will therefore continue. When former President Ronald Reagan assumed office in 1981, the federal debt was 24.6% of GDP. He sold the American people on the idea that they could have their social programs and tax cuts at the same time. Yet the real result has been a 40-year build-up of public debt. In 2021, the debt was 96.9% of GDP. According to the most recent projection of the Congressional Budget Office, the debt will grow to a staggering 185% of GDP in thirty years on the current tax and spending plans.
4. The much-touted climate actions will deliver modest results despite the headline promises and bravado.
Here's a hint why: Sen. Manchin, owner of two coal companies and darling of the oil lobby, let the bill pass. He knows the truth that the Democrats won't admit. This bill will not come close to putting the US or the world on the path to energy decarbonization.
According to much-touted claims, the new law will direct nearly $370 billion to clean energy and will reduce US greenhouse gas emissions as of 2030 by around 40% below the 2005 level. Yet this claim is easily misunderstood. The Princeton study used to support it actually asserts that the legislation will reduce emissions by around 15% of 2005 emissions, with the remaining 27% reduction as of 2030 predicted to occur based on pre-existing trends, even without the new legislation.
Yet there is more worrying news. The Princeton study also comes with the following small print: "Several constraints that are difficult to model may limit these growth rates in practice, including the ability to site and permit projects at requisite pace and scale, expand electricity transmission and CO2 transport and storage to accommodate new generating capacity, and hire and train the expanded energy workforce to build these projects."
Put more simply, the actual reduction of emissions under the new law is likely to fall short of the widely advertised 40% relative to 2005.
What the US truly needs is a decarbonization plan involving public land use, the national transmission grid, limits on new deployments of fossil-fuel infrastructure and more--not simply a set of tax incentives, as provided in the new law. The new legislation includes no energy plan, and the Supreme Court recently struck down the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to put forward any such plan.
In short, despite some steps for a safer climate--almost all revolving around tax credits for clean energy--we are almost surely stuck with an inadequate pace of decarbonizing the energy system. Global warming is likely to hit very dangerous levels, and US efforts to cajole other countries to decarbonize faster will be stymied by insufficient action at home.
Yes, the legislation marks a small step forward. It is better than not having it. But Biden certainly shouldn't have handed his signing pen to Sen. Manchin as a mark of honor.
It was Manchin, with Sinema and probably Democratic Party conservatives behind the scenes, who scuttled the country's once-in-a-generation chance for the progressive change we need to achieve a prosperous, fair and sustainable society. We could have had a progressive breakthrough of the kind that Biden proposed last year but later abandoned, when conservative members of his party sided with the rich and powerful lobbies rather than the interests of the working people of this country.
A staggering 85% of Americans say that the country is on the wrong track. We are often told that this is because America is divided. The real reason is that our political system represents narrow interests, not those of the vast majority of Americans. Alas, there is far too little to celebrate in this regard with the new legislation.
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