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I'm a Veteran of Organized Auto Boycotts. My Advice to Tesla? Dump Musk
During the Great Recession, I organized a Toyota boycott that accidentally paved the way for Musk’s rise. Musk probably won’t tell that story, so I will.
Jul 03, 2025
Elon Musk's alliance with Donald Trump may be over for now, but the Tesla brand has yet to recover from Musk's high profile foray into far-right politics.
Tesla stock has plummeted precipitously ever since Musk’s embrace of Donald Trump last year. It’s been enough to alarm board members, who are now considering replacing Musk as CEO as public “Tesla Takedown” protests have spread across the country.
Ironically, Musk himself was the beneficiary of a similar boycott years ago — a boycott I ran. And since Musk himself is unlikely to relay the story, I will.
In the aftermath of the 2008 market collapse, Toyota announced plans to shutter its Fremont, California factory and move production to Japan, Canada, Mexico, and Mississippi. Not surprisingly, outrage ensued. Soon after, I received a call from the incoming United Auto Workers president Bob King, who asked me to devise a campaign to challenge the Toyota closing.
For Toyota, it was about abandoning California. For Musk, it’s been about dismantling our government and attacking union rights, among other misdeeds.
The strategy we landed on was to reframe this struggle from one borne by workers alone to one that emphasized the broader damage to California’s economy that the closure would cause.
Back then in California, one of every four vehicles sold was a Toyota. As the New York Times’ Bob Herbert wrote in 2010, the U.S. was “the largest market for Toyota vehicles in the world, larger even than Japan.” And the Corolla, built at the Fremont facility, was “the best-selling car of all time.”
But it was that very success that made them vulnerable.
We knew Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays were the prime sales days for most car dealerships. We dispatched our ground troops to cover those three days of the week, in shifts of 8 to 10 people, to 50 dealerships in California and 50 more throughout the United states, holding banners proclaiming, “Toyota Kills California Jobs.”
The company’s sales managers panicked, with several complaining to me personally that their sales were hurting. On April 1, 2010, Toyota shuttered the Fremont factory as they had previously announced, but our boycott continued.
Two weeks later, faced with our ongoing boycott, Toyota president Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the company's founder, called Elon Musk, flew to Los Angeles to meet Musk for dinner, and offered a $50 million cash infusion if Musk would take over the old Fremont plant and hire from the laid off workforce.
Musk had been on the brink of signing a deal to open a Tesla plant in Southern California, but this offer — and the boycott that prompted it — abruptly changed his plans.
Not long after, those Fremont workers were making Teslas instead of Toyotas — and employment at the plant has skyrocketed from 4,700 then to over 20,000 today. Musk went on to become the world’s wealthiest man.
Now, Toyota president Akio Toyoda wasn’t exactly like today’s Musk when it comes to public notoriety. But there are some striking similarities between the two cases.
Both car companies claim to be leaders of environmentally sustainable transportation. Like the Prius before it, a drive through any upscale retail parking lot from Los Angeles to New York City today will similarly show a high proportion of Tesla sedans, bought during less fraught times by environmentally conscious consumers.
And both companies have suffered from a strong sense of betrayal among their most loyal customer base. For Toyota, it was about abandoning California. For Musk, it’s been about dismantling our government and attacking union rights, among other misdeeds.
Today, the cratering of Tesla’s stock value, coinciding with nationwide anti-Musk protests at Tesla dealerships, reinforces two important truisms fundamental to a free market: public opinion of brands still affects stock value, and a CEO's behavior can trigger lasting backlash against their brand.
So as the organizer of the boycott that accidentally helped along Musk’s rise to prominence, what’s my advice for the Tesla board today? Make Musk divest his shares and move on.
It’s likely that nothing else will quell these protests.
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UAW President Shawn Fain Throws Weight Behind NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani
The United Auto Workers on Monday released a video highlighting former Democratic New York governor and mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo's "failures for working-class New Yorkers."
Jun 03, 2025
With only a few weeks to go until New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, the United Auto Workers released a video on Monday denouncing former New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo and featuring mayoral candidate and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, whom UAW Region 9a recently announced as their first pick in the race.
The video includes clips of Mamdani, fellow mayoral candidate and city Comptroller Brad Lander, and UAW officials, who highlight episodes from Cuomo's tenure as governor which they indicate make him a unfit to lead New York City as mayor.
Mamdani highlights Cuomo's backing of "Tier 6," an unpopular policy approved in 2012 that cut pension benefits for future public employees and raised the retirement age to 63. Cuomo has said on the campaign trail that he would roll back that policy.
Wence Valentin III, Region 9a Community Action Program director, said in the video that in 2019, when thousands of UAW workers at General Motors were on strike, Cuomo did not sign legislation that would have given striking workers in New York State earlier access to unemployment benefits.
The video concludes with text on screen that says: "UAW says no to Cuomo."
"In the UAW, our endorsements are earned," said UAW International President Shawn Fain in a statement released with the video on Monday. "We support politicians who stand with us, and who have the courage to fight for the working class."
"Zohran Mamdani has stood shoulder to shoulder with us in our fight against some of the toughest bosses in New York City. He's been to countless UAW picket lines. He's fought for better wages, for our livelihoods, and for a livable city for UAW members," added Fain.
Mamdani, who recent polling shows is now solidly in second place behind Cuomo, was endorsed by United Auto Workers (UAW) Region 9a, which includes several union locals based in New York City, back in December alongside two other candidates in the race, Lander and state Senator Jessica Ramos.
New York City uses ranked choice voting for certain elections, including primary and special elections for mayor. The system allows voters to rank multiple candidates on their ballots. Because voters can rank multiple candidates, many entities that offer endorsements have given out endorsements as a slate and given guidance on how to rank the candidates.
On Friday, Region 9a announced that it is recommending voters rank Mamdani first on their ballot. Region 9a is calling on voters to rank Lander second and Ramos third.
Also on Friday, the Working Families Party released the ranking of its endorsements. The political party is urging voters to rank Mamdani first, Lander second, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams third, state Senator Zellnor Myrie fourth, and Ramos fifth.
While the UAW has been critical of Cuomo, other influential unions are supporting him in the race. Two affiliates of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), SEIU 32BJ and 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, have endorsed Cuomo, as has the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council.
The primary is on June 24 and early voting begins on June 14.
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10 Wins Against Inequality to Celebrate in 2024
Champions in the fight against inequality face formidable challenges in 2025. But by working together at all levels—from the shop floor to state houses to the halls of Congress—we can still find ways to build power.
Dec 31, 2024
In dark times like these, shining a light on successful efforts to reverse our country’s extreme inequality is more important than ever. As we looked back on 2024, we actually found plenty to celebrate. Here are 10 inspiring wins that deserve more attention.
1. Labor Breakthrough in the South
Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted overwhelmingly in April to join the United Auto Workers (UAW), a landmark win for labor organizing in the South. The region has suffered deeply because of its low-road, anti-union economic model. Seven out of ten states with the highest levels of poverty are in the South, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Whatever happens on the national political stage over the next four years, local communities can still win important fights for a more just society.
Another UAW election, at a Mercedes-Benz facility in Vance, Alabama, where management was more aggressively anti-union, went the other way in May. But the union has vowed to continue organizing in the region. “This is a David and Goliath fight,” UAW President Shawn Fain said after the Mercedes loss. “Sometimes Goliath wins a battle. But David wins the war.”
2. Union Momentum at Amazon
Organizing workers at Amazon—now the nation’s second largest private employer—has been a white whale of the labor movement for years. Aside from a breakthrough union election win in Staten Island, puncturing the e-commerce giant’s anti-labor strategy has been challenging. That is, until this year, when the Teamsters made sizable gains.
The National Labor Relations Board ruled this summer that Amazon should be considered a joint employer of the delivery drivers it subcontracts, opening up that class of workers to organize. And organize they did—according to the Teamsters, over 5,000 drivers have joined the union at nine Amazon locations. Warehouse workers have made advances as well. In California, Amazon employees in San Francisco and at the company’s air hub in San Bernardino are now demanding union recognition.
3. Grocery Mega-Merger Blocked
For the past two years, the United Food and Commercial Workers union has led a coalition of more than 100 organizations against the proposed merger of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons. The union predicted the mega-merger would result in “lost jobs, closed stores, food deserts, and higher prices.”
By contrast, corporate executives stood to make a killing. At Albertsons alone, the proposed merger agreement would’ve delivered as much as $146 million to the firm’s top 10 officials.
On December 10, one federal court judge and another in Washington state sided with the Federal Trade Commission and issued temporary injunctions against the deal. The following day, Albertsons threw in the towel on what would’ve been the biggest grocery store merger in U.S. history. “This is the first time the FTC has ever sought to block a merger not just because it’s gonna be bad for consumers, but also for workers,” FTC chair Lina Khan said shortly after the decision.
4. Ballot Wins on Taxes, Wages, Paid Leave
Despite the red wave on November 5, voters in several states passed ballot initiatives to adopt inequality-fighting policies that most Republican politicians oppose.
In the red states of Nebraska, Missouri, and Alaska, voters approved guaranteed paid leave, while Missouri and Alaska also passed state minimum wage hikes.
Washington state voters rejected a hedge fund-financed ballot proposal to repeal the state’s path-breaking capital gains tax on the rich. They also beat back an effort to gut a state-operated long-term care insurance program. In Illinois, voters adopted a nonbinding measure expressing support for an extra 3% tax on income of over $1 million.
5. TurboTax Got Turbo-Trounced
In 2024, for the first time ever, over 100,000 Americans filed their tax returns digitally directly to the IRS. The agency’s Direct File system went live in 12 pilot states, breaking the dominance that for-profit tax preparation companies have enjoyed for years.
“This is an important fight to ensure greedy tax prep companies don’t continue to rake in money from filers who are simply doing their civic duty,” wrote Public Citizen’s Susan Harley for Inequality.org.
Direct file also advances racial justice. Color of Change and the Groundwork Collaborative exposed how Intuit’s TurboTax and H&R Block target Black and low-income communities for costly and unnecessary services.
Unfortunately, this fight is not over. House Republicans are urging President-elect Donald Trump to kill the IRS’s free direct file service on day one of his second administration.
6. Biden’s Worker Protection Spree
President Joe Biden adopted a range of pathbreaking executive actions to protect U.S. workers—including safeguards against toiling in extreme heat, broader overtime pay coverage, and new measures protecting organizing rights. He also authorized rules to crack down on bosses who misclassify employees as independent contractors or force them to sign noncompete agreements.
The beauty of executive actions: no need for Congressional approval. The downside: The next president has the power to roll them back.
Will that happen under Trump, a self-declared but dubious champion of the working class? We shall see. In the meantime, the National Employment Law Project and several other organizations have put together a guide on how state policymakers could enact similar standards at the subfederal level.
7. Grounding Private Jets
Did you know that private jets pollute 10 to 20 times more per passenger than commercial airplanes? And the typical private jet owner, with a net worth of nearly $200 million, actually pays a far smaller share of air safety fees than commercial coach passengers, according to Institute for Policy Studies research.
In 2024, Stop Private Jet Expansion, a 100-organization coalition, won two major victories in their campaign to block the expansion of New England’s largest private jet airport, Hanscom Field outside Boston. Massachusetts state rejected the developer’s environmental impact submission, demanding supplemental information. As part of a comprehensive climate bill, the state legislature also updated the charter of Massport, the agency that will decide the future of the airport, to require them to consider carbon emissions and climate change in their decision-making.
8. Arming Millions of Davids Against Wall Street Goliaths
Elon Musk has called for “deleting” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. What’s his problem with this federal agency? For Musk and his finance bro buddies, it appears the CFPB has been overly effective in helping ordinary Americans stand up to big money interests.
Recently the agency announced it’s forcing shady “credit repair” companies to return $1.8 billion in illegal junk fees to 4.3 million Americans. The agency also just issued new limits on overdraft fees that will save consumers billions more. During its nearly 14-year history, the CFPB has won nearly $21 billion in compensation for victims of fraud, racial discrimination in lending, and other financial abuse.
“Weakening the CFPB, slowing its work, or steering it to favor industry over the public interest,” explains the advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform, “would give bad actors a green light to do their worst and further deepen this country’s racial wealth gap.”
9. Public Money for the Public Good
For four decades, procurement rules made it difficult for local and state policymakers to ensure that federally funded projects create good jobs. With megabillions in new public investment about to flow into infrastructure and clean energy projects, a labor-community alliance known as the Local Opportunities Coalition led the charge to get rid of these anti-worker vestiges of the conservative Reagan era.
Finally, in 2024, the Biden administration got the job done. Now state and local governments can give companies a leg up in bidding competitions if they commit to creating specific numbers of jobs with minimum levels of pay and benefits. They can also require hiring preferences for local workers and disadvantaged communities, ban the use of contract funds for union-busting, and prohibit employers from misclassifying workers as “independent contractors” to skirt labor laws.
10. Communities Standing up for Quality Care
Whatever happens on the national political stage over the next four years, local communities can still win important fights for a more just society.
One particularly inspiring example from 2024: the battles to protect county-owned nursing homes in rural Wisconsin against privatization. Study after study has shown that private equity-owned facilities have lower-quality care and higher mortality rates. And yet many Republican lawmakers are backing for-profit corporations’ efforts to take over this critical service.
As veteran community organizer George Goehl has reported, Wisconsin seniors put up a strong fight this year. They succeeded in ousting pro-privatization members of at least three county boards and are continuing to organize to protect their healthcare from corporate greed.
Champions in the fight against inequality face formidable challenges. But by working together at all levels—from the shop floor to state houses to the halls of Congress—we can still find ways to build power and move our country towards a just economy that works for everyone.
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US Workers Won Key Victories in 2024, But They’ll Have to Fight Even Harder in 2025
When Trump takes office, expect attacks on immigrant workers, public employee unions, safety regulations, climate protection, and the very idea of labor law.
Dec 29, 2024
Union workers broke open the cookie jar in 2024, after years of stagnant wages and rising prices. With strikes and the threat of strikes, workers did more than forestall concessions: They gained ground. Union workers in the private sector saw 6% real wage rises for the year.
Just the fear that workers would organize drove up wages at non-union employers like Delta Airlines, Amazon, and Mercedes.
Meanwhile, unemployment rates of around 4% made strikes easier to maintain. For instance, many Boeing workers were able to get side jobs during their 53-day strike this fall. Relatively plentiful jobs have also made it easier for workers to organize new unions, since the threat of getting fired is less daunting.
Workers’ demands for union democracy have fueled more fights, more wins, higher expectations, and more new organizing. It’s obvious that workers want and need unions that can match and defeat the billionaires.
Nearly 28,000 school employees in Virginia and 10,000 nurses in Michigan joined unions in the two biggest organizing victories of the year. At the first Southern auto plant to organize in decades, Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, 5,000 workers won a union in April by a decisive 73%.
But even with a union, working conditions are often abominable. Speed-up and long hours make work risky and wear us out.
And storm clouds are on the horizon. Even our current weak labor laws and safety enforcement are on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s chopping block. Expect attacks on immigrant workers, public employee unions, safety regulations, climate protection, and the very idea of labor law.
Wage Gains—Finally
After a strike that shut down production in the Pacific Northwest, Boeing Machinists bagged a 38% general wage increase over four years. A three-day port strike netted 20,000 Longshore (ILA) workers 61% over six years. It was the first East Coast-wide longshore strike since 1977.
Continuing the uptick in strikes since the onset of Covid-19, 2024 is on track for as many strikes as 2022, though it didn’t match the huge walkouts of 2023 in Hollywood, at Kaiser, and at the Big 3. Johnnie Kallas of the Cornell Labor Action Tracker reported 34 strikes in manufacturing through November.
Workers gained just by threatening a strike. At Daimler Truck in North Carolina, 7,400 workers chanted “Tick tock” as the contract deadline approached. They defeated tiers and won a 25% increase, with more for lower-paid workers.
After a vigorous contract campaign and 99.5% strike vote, American Airlines flight attendants (APFA) secured an immediate 20% pay increase, back pay from their 2019 contract expiration, and boarding pay for the first time. (Most flight attendants aren’t paid till the aircraft door closes.) Southwest flight attendants (TWU) won big wage gains; United flight attendants (AFA) voted 99.9% to strike, and may still do so. Airline workers have to navigate a lengthy obstacle course sanctioned by the Railway Labor Act, if they want to strike.
Teacher strikes yielded gains for teachers and students. In Massachusetts, where reformers lead the statewide union, but strikes are illegal, teachers in several districts struck anyway. They won more student services, time to plan classes, and raises for the lowest-paid aides—60% in 10 schools in Andover in January.
Gains from 2023’s strikes raised expectations for 2024. Unions that pushed sub-par contracts on their members faced revolts. Machinists leaders at Boeing backpedaled furiously when a contract they recommended was voted down by 95% in September. Letter Carriers are organizing a vigorous “vote no” campaign after union leaders submitted a contract with 1.3% annual wage increases.
Employers often coughed up pay but fought union demands on overtime, staffing, automation, and the moving of work. Longshore workers, for example, suspended their strike with a big pay promise, but job-killing automation issues remained unresolved, with negotiations ongoing.
The strike threat at Daimler Truck, and the strike at Boeing, did extract contractual promises on where work would be done. But enforcement may require additional job action. Stellantis has so far broken its promise to the Auto Workers to reopen its Belvidere, Illinois, assembly plant—a condition of ending the UAW’s 2023 Stand-Up Strike. Auto workers are debating how to enforce that demand, and many Stellantis locals have taken strike votes.
In the Daimler contract, workers won a renewed promise of a guaranteed daily truck output, to dispel fears that the work would be moved to Mexico—a threat the company deployed regularly in negotiations.
At Boeing, the new contract promises to locate production of the next passenger jet in the Puget Sound area. But the work will likely start after the contract expires, and union leaders expect it may require another strike to enforce the agreement.
Despite big strike leverage, Boeing workers didn’t get a ban on mandatory overtime, though they can no longer be forced to work two weekends in a row. “I don’t think that people should be required to work more than 40 hours a week to keep their jobs,” said Boeing Machinist Mylo Lang.
Continuing 2023’s trend of defeating solidarity-crushing tiers at UPS and the Big 3 automakers, tiers were eliminated at Allison Transmission and Daimler Truck, while solar Ironworkers in California were able to end tiers in a multi-year effort to make commercial solar installation a union job.
Reformers Spur Organizing
Reform movements and new leadership in the Auto Workers and Teamsters led to big investments in new organizing. In February, the UAW announced it would spend $40 million to organize non-union auto and battery plants through 2026.
In October, the Teamsters announced they had added 50,000 members in the two years since new leaders took office. The Teamsters have made organizing Amazon a priority, and the Staten Island Amazon Labor Union voted to affiliate in June, as ALU-IBT Local 1. The New York Times reported that the Teamsters have committed $8 million toward organizing Amazon as well as access to their $300 million strike fund.
Amazon warehouse workers in California and New York have been marching on their bosses, demanding recognition. Newly organized Teamster drivers at Amazon have been setting up roving picket lines to disrupt operations until the company recognizes the union.
In these two unions, effective strike threats and dedication to organizing are no accident. They started with reform movements: Unite All Workers for Democracy in the Auto Workers and Teamsters for a Democratic Union in the Teamsters. More victories are coming down the pike: Rail Machinists (IAM District 19) elected reform leadership in 2024, as did New York City teacher retirees (UFT), a 70,000-person chapter. Up next are reformers in the Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE), Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), and maybe soon the Letter Carriers (NALC), thanks to an insulting contract offer pushed by the leadership.
The troublemaking wing of the movement continues to grow, as evidenced by the 4,700 workers who showed up at the April Labor Notes Conference, and the thousands more who wanted to attend. (There just wasn’t space!)
Most Elections in a Decade
Unions continue to be more popular than at any time since the 1960s, with 70% public approval. Private sector union elections this year involved 107,000 workers, the highest in a decade, up from 63,000 in 2022 and 93,000 in 2023.
More than 20,000 new graduate student workers won unions since last December.
After changing state law to allow bargaining, 27,000 Virginia school employees won wall-to-wall representation in Fairfax County, creating one of the largest K-12 unions on the East Coast.
In November, 10,000 nurses at the Corewell hospital chain in southern Michigan won the biggest unionization election in recent memory, organizing with the Teamsters.
However, the pace of organizing “is not enough to keep up with employment growth, let alone meaningfully increase [private sector] union density,” wrote union researcher Chris Bohner.
Starbucks is a case in point. In February, Starbucks Workers United forced management to negotiate after two years of organizing. Ten months later, they’re still in contract talks, and 130 more stores have voted union. That adds up to 522 union stores, with 11,000 workers. But Starbucks operates 10,000 stores in the U.S.
Plant-Building Boom
The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act stimulated a building boom for electric vehicle and battery plants—many in the South—opening the possibility of organizing drives at dozens of facilities as they ramp up production. The UAW extracted a promise during its 2023 Stand-Up Strike to include in the master contract 6,000 new General Motors jobs at four planned battery plants.
Workers at the first of these, Ultium Cells in Lordstown, Ohio, signed a contract in June. The union announced a majority at BlueOval SK Battery Park in Kentucky in November.
New Flyer electric bus manufacturing workers in Anniston, Alabama won their first contract in May, scoring raises up to 38%, through the Electrical Workers (IUE), a division of the Communications Workers.
After the big win at Volkswagen, the UAW hit a speed bump in its drive to organize German, Korean, and Japanese-owned plants when workers at Mercedes in Alabama voted down the union 2,642 to 2,045. Companies have been pulling out all the stops on the propaganda Wurlitzer, enlisting hostile politicians (and even preachers!) to stop workers from uniting.
Cease-Fire Switch
Unions opposed a Democratic presidential administration on a military issue for the first time in memory. Advocating “cease-fire in Gaza” had been something staffers faced discipline for. But it came to be viewed as common sense by most of the labor movement.
Support for a cease-fire started with unions like the United Electrical Workers (UE), whose members had long studied and debated the situation. It spread as dissenters—from teachers to painters—began speaking up, insisting that it was the place of unions to oppose mass death supported by our government. “The main question that came up was, ‘What does this have to do with us?’” said Texas IBEW member Dave Pinkham. “We made an appeal to humanity: ‘U.S. military support to Israel is supporting violence there. Let’s stop.’”
In October 2023, Postal Workers (APWU) President Mark Dimondstein was alone in calling for a cease-fire at the AFL-CIO executive council, and was denounced by others. By February, the AFL-CIO was calling for a cease-fire. By July, seven unions representing nearly half the union members in the U.S. were calling for a stop to military aid to Israel.
At some colleges, workers struck to defend members who had faced discipline and even attacks by campus police for protesting U.S. support for Israel.
Israel is still raining U.S.-made bombs and missiles on Gaza and Lebanon, showing the limits of union resolutions. But a Cold War-era taboo has broken. Perhaps unions can go one step further and figure out how to block the manufacture and transport of weapons destined for wars of aggression and genocide.
Storm Clouds
Federal workers and immigrants are likely to be the first targets of the incoming Trump administration and Republican-dominated Congress. Trump and his lackeys plan to slash federal spending, install a corporate-friendly National Labor Relations Board, stop subsidies for the electric vehicle transition, and dismantle public education.
Tools to protect immigrant workers from labor law violations, like the Department of Homeland Security's Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement program, are likely to be shelved, along with speedy elections and other efforts at labor law enforcement that we have become used to from the NLRB. Mass deportations are unlikely, given that Trump’s corporate sponsors rely on the labor of immigrants for their profits. But some showy raids are likely, and the terror of arrests will make it even harder to stop abusive bosses—which is the main point of the policy, as Magaly Licolli writes. Solidarity will be needed from all of us.
But even an NLRB determined to enforce labor law has been unable to force big corporations like Amazon to comply, so it’s not clear that organizing these companies will be significantly harder with a hostile board. As Chris Bohner and Eric Blanc point out, it was during Trump’s first term that the “Red for Ed” illegal teacher strike wave swept the country.
Workers’ demands for union democracy have fueled more fights, more wins, higher expectations, and more new organizing. It’s obvious that workers want and need unions that can match and defeat the billionaires.
If there are enough of us, and our bonds are strong enough, bosses, politicians, and even the law will give way. As strikers proved, the power is in our hands.
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Will Kamala Harris and the Democrats Listen to Shawn Fain?
Corporate greed in the form of stock buybacks piled on top of mass layoffs should be a laser focus of the Democratic Party if it wants to win back the nation's working class.
Aug 30, 2024
On the first night of the Democratic convention, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain showed how to build working class support for the Harris-Walz ticket. And it wasn’t his “Donald Trump is a Scab” line and t-shirt.
It was his discussion of corporate power:
“Corporate greed turns blue-collar blood, sweat and tears into Wall Street stock buybacks and CEO jackpots.”
As far as I know, Fain was the only convention speaker who mentioned stock buybacks. He also zeroed in on job instability, as he called out Stellantis for refusing to honor its contract commitment to reopen a plant in Michigan.
And then he called out Trump for gloating over the firing of striking workers—a reference to Trump’s recent interview with Elon Musk, during which Trump said:
Well, you, you’re the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in and you just say, “You want to quit?” They go on strike. I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, “That’s okay. You’re all gone. You’re all gone. So, every one of you is gone,” and you are the greatest. You would be very good.
Fain knows that Trump is not just praising Musk for illegally firing workers who want to organize a union. “Greatest cutter” also refers to the tens of thousands of workers Musk slashed from Twitter’s headcount to reduce costs to cover the debt service of his purchase. Trump showed his true affinity to corporate greed as he relished being with “the greatest cutter,” a man who knows how to get richer by slashing jobs.
Trump showed his true affinity to corporate greed as he relished being with “the greatest cutter,” a man who knows how to get richer by slashing jobs.
Fain also understands the intimate connection between stock buybacks and job insecurity. All too often mass layoffs are used to finance stock buybacks, the corporate method of choice for moving tax-free money into the coffers of Wall Street investors and CEOs. (A stock buyback is a form of stock manipulation. A corporation uses its revenues to buy back its own shares, reducing the number of shares available, thereby raising each share’s price. This increases the value of the stock incentives owed to corporate executives as compensation and to Wall Street investors, who own most of the corporate stock. The increased value is eventually subject to the capital gains tax, which is only owed when the stocks are sold, and is taxed at a lower rate than regular income, including dividends.)
The Democratic Party platform mildly addresses stock buybacks by proposing to raise the tax on them from one percent to four percent. It also comes very close to adopting a proposal I have been hawking over the past year: that tax-payer money awarded through federal contracts (about $700 billion per year) should not be used to lay off taxpayers and finance stock buybacks. The language in the platform states, “Taxpayer money should not be used to pay out dividends, fund stock buybacks, or give raises to executives,” (p 12). Unfortunately, the reference covers only past Covid-19 relief funds and not all federal contracts.
More importantly, the platform does not make the all-important connection between stock buybacks and mass layoffs. In fact, the 91-page platform avoids any mention at all of mass layoffs. Instead, it features “Building a Stronger, Fairer Economy,” which includes “Investing in the Engines of Job Creation.” That’s because it’s easier to talk about providing corporate incentives to create jobs in the future, rather than stopping corporations from slashing jobs to finance stock buybacks right now.
But Fain knows that the working class needs the Democrats to stop financialized mass layoffs. Hardly a day goes by without another corporation announcing layoffs while also engaging in stock buybacks. It’s a disease.
Hardly a day goes by without another corporation announcing layoffs while also engaging in stock buybacks. It’s a disease.
Most importantly Fain is telling the Democrats that job stability is the key to what “the economy” means to working people. In our society, if you don’t have a job, you have next to nothing. Studies show that losing your job is one of the most traumatic experiences anyone can experience. Sure, if you are highly skilled and plugged into elite networks, you can easily if not painlessly find new employment. But if you live in a rural area and a facility shuts down, you and a thousand of your neighbors will be scrambling to land the last jobs at the Dollar Store and Walmart.
It's not too late for the Democrats to attack Trump and Vance with one simple proposal—no compulsory layoffs at any corporation that conducts stock buybacks. If the corporation has the money to return to Wall Street and CEOs, then corporations have more than enough money to fund a program of non-compulsory layoffs. That means reductions in the workforce would only be achieved voluntarily through corporate offers of pay and benefit packages. No one would be forced to leave. In fact, many corporations already use non-compulsory buyouts for their higher-level employees.
Think for a second about how that might work. Some workers, especially those nearing retirement or who have sufficient savings, might jump at the offers. So might those who already were eyeing new careers. But workers in more difficult economic situations would still have their jobs and avoid the painful hardships associated with mass layoffs. This proposal is more than affordable considering the hundreds of billions of dollars that go to stock buybacks each year—$773 billion in 2023 alone. Let’s see some of that go into the pockets of workers, rather than exclusively to executives and shareholders.
This proposal is more than affordable considering the hundreds of billions of dollars that go to stock buybacks each year—$773 billion in 2023 alone.
Trump and Vance, for all their talk about supporting working people, could never support such a program. Their Wall Street backers and corporate sponsors would go bonkers. Their unimaginable wealth was built stripping money out of the system, not investing in it. That leaves the door wide open for the Democrats to follow Fain into the heart of the working class, especially in the all-important states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
But it won’t be easy for many Democrats to break free from the debilitating fatalism that layoffs are just a natural part of capitalism, more like a law of nature that cannot be controlled. It means breaking away from the notion that the unstoppable march of new technologies like AI and trade are the real job killers. They are not. It means waking up to acknowledge what we all sense—corporate greed is destroying job stability, and it’s got to stop.
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CEO Greed Feasts on the Sweat of Low-Paid Workers—And Here’s the Proof
One-hundred S&P 500 firms with the lowest median wages, a group we’ve dubbed the “Low-Wage 100,” blew $522 billion over the past five years on stock buybacks.
Aug 29, 2024
The Lowe’s home improvement store spent $43 billion on stock buybacks over the past five years. With that sum, the big box chain could’ve given each of its 285,000 employees a $30,000 bonus every year between 2019 and 2023.
The extra cash would’ve meant a lot to Lowe’s workers—half of whom make less than $33,000 per year. Meanwhile, the retailer’s CEO, Marvin Ellison, raked in $18 million in 2023.
The evidence is stark. CEOs of leading U.S. corporations are focused on short-term windfalls for themselves and wealthy shareholders rather than on long-term prosperity for their workers—or their companies.
Another sign of Lowe’s skewed priorities? The company plowed nearly five times as much cash into buybacks as it invested in long-term capital expenditures like store improvements and technology upgrades over the past five years.
Lowe’s ranks as an extreme example of a corporate model focused on pumping up CEO pay at the expense of workers and long-term investment. But such skewed priorities are actually the norm among America’s leading low-wage corporations.
The Low-Wage 100
This year’s edition of the annual Institute for Policy Studies Executive Excess report finds that the 100 S&P 500 firms with the lowest median wages, a group we’ve dubbed the “Low-Wage 100,” blew $522 billion over the past five years on stock buybacks. Nearly half of these companies spent more on this once-illegal financial maneuver than they spent on capital investment vital to long-term competitiveness.
Why the fixation on buybacks? This is a CEO pay-inflating financial scam, pure and simple. When companies repurchase their own shares, they artificially boost share prices and the value of the stock-based compensation that makes up about 80% of CEO pay. An SEC investigation confirmed that CEOs regularly time the sale of their personal stock holdings to cash in on the price surge that typically follows a buyback announcement.
Our Executive Excess report also looks at low-wage corporations’ expenditures on employee retirement security. The answer? Peanuts, compared to their buyback outlays.
The country’s 20 largest low-wage employers spent nine times as much on stock buybacks as on worker retirement plan contributions over the past five years. Many of these firms boast of their “generous” matching benefits, typically a dollar-for-dollar match of 401(k) contributions up to 4% of salary. But matching is meaningless for workers who earn so little they can’t afford to set aside anything for what should be their “golden years.”
Take Chipotle, for instance. The Mexican fast food chain spent over $2 billion on stock buybacks over the past five years—48 times as much as the firm contributed to employee retirement plans. Meanwhile, 92% of Chipotle workers who are eligible to participate in the company’s 401(k) have zero balances. That’s hardly surprising, since the chain’s median annual pay is just $16,595.
The evidence is stark. CEOs of leading U.S. corporations are focused on short-term windfalls for themselves and wealthy shareholders rather than on long-term prosperity for their workers—or their companies.
As UAW President Shawn Fain put it in his primetime DNC convention speech: “Corporate greed turns blue-collar blood, sweat, and tears into Wall Street stock buybacks and CEO jackpots.”
Solutions to Executive Excess
Public outrage over CEO shakedowns helped the UAW win strong new contracts last year with the Big Three automakers. Support for policy solutions is growing as well. The Democratic Party platform calls for quadrupling a new tax on stock buybacks. And a recent poll shows huge majority support among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike for proposed tax hikes on corporations with huge CEO-worker pay gaps. The Executive Excess 2024 report offers an extensive menu of additional commonsense CEO pay reforms.
It’s important to remember that it hasn’t always been this way. Forty years ago, big company CEO pay was only about 40 times higher than worker pay—not several hundreds of times higher, as is typical today. And just 20 years ago, most big companies spent very little on stock buybacks. At Lowe’s, for example, buyback outlays between 2000 and 2004 were exactly zero.
Corporate America’s perverse fixation on enriching those at the top is bad for workers and bad for the economy. With pressure from below, we can change that.
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Will Billionaires or Workers Decide the 2024 Election?
Regardless of the sums that the ultra rich drop into the process, whether transparently or as dark money, the election, ultimately, will be decided by voters.
Aug 17, 2024
Former U.S. President Donald Trump was “interviewed” this week on the X social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The interviewer was none other than X owner Elon Musk. Musk’s questions to Trump were so deferential that End Citizens United, an election watchdog group, quickly filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, calling the two-hour-plus livestream “a flagrant corporate in-kind contribution that violated campaign finance laws.”
This event represents just one moment in a highly charged national presidential election, and highlights the increasing power of billionaires attempting to hijack the political process for their own ends.
Elon Musk is the wealthiest person on the planet. The Wall Street Journal has published some of the most revelatory reporting on his increased political activity, especially his newly revealed commitment to helping Trump win in November.
The Harris-Walz campaign is hoping that a reinvigorated base, with major support from organized labor, will propel them to victory in November.
The Journal’s Dana Mattioli and colleagues wrote an article published in mid-July, exposing Musk’s plans to donate a whopping $45 million per month to elect Trump, or $180 million in all. “Formed in June, America PAC is focused on registering voters and persuading constituents to vote early and request mail-in ballots in swing states,” they reported.
Mattioli’s latest article, headlined “Inside Elon Musk’s Hands-On Push to Win 800,000 Voters for Trump,” details Musk’s direct involvement in the super PAC’s operations. The article opens, “Beginning in the spring, Elon Musk quietly blocked out an hour on Fridays for a new pursuit: national politics.”
“As early as a few months ago, Elon Musk said he would not be contributing any money to either presidential candidate. What we’ve seen is a complete 180,” Dana Mattioli said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “Not only did he start this super PAC with lots of money to help Donald Trump win, he is really taking on the get-out-the-vote aspect of the Trump campaign. He also had a big endorsement for Donald Trump after the assassination attempt. So he’s become a very big political player this presidential cycle.”
She continued, “The super PAC is looking to get 800,000 low-propensity voters in swing states to the polls for Donald Trump. Elon also wants his workers in those states to register new voters to get them to the polls.”
But, as Mattioli’s latest reporting suggests, Musk’s personal involvement has sparked chaos at the super PAC. With only months until election day, key vendors were abruptly fired and replaced with others drawn largely from the failed presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Since the outcome of the U.S. presidential election hinges on just a handful of swing states, the infusion of so much cash with a focus on grassroots voter mobilization in those states could prove decisive. America PAC’s efforts are up against renewed enthusiasm in the Democratic Party and the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Democrats have their own billionaires contributing to PACs and super PACs. Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and current Microsoft board member, has already given $10 million to help Harris. He has also stated that he hopes a future President Harris would fire Federal Trade Commission chairperson Lina Khan. A Biden-appointed regulator, Khan has aggressively pursued antitrust cases. As The Lever reports, antitrust action might hinder Microsoft’s acquisition of an AI company in which Hoffman is heavily invested.
Regardless of the sums that billionaires and millionaires drop into the process, whether transparently or as dark money, the election, ultimately, will be decided by voters. The Harris-Walz campaign is hoping that a reinvigorated base, with major support from organized labor, will propel them to victory in November.
One of the nation’s largest and most powerful unions, the United Auto Workers, has endorsed Harris and is actively organizing its membership to ensure her victory.
Following the Trump/Musk livestreamed conversation on X, the UAW filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing Trump and Musk of “illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers.” Musk laughed as Trump praised his willingness to slash jobs:
DONALD TRUMP: “You’re the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in, and you just say, ‘You want to quit?’”
Elon Musk: “Yeah.”
DONALD TRUMP: “They go on strike. I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike. And you say, ‘That’s OK. You’re all gone. You’re all gone. So, every one of you is gone.’ And you are the greatest.”
The UAW alleged the threat to fire striking workers was directed at Musk’s non-union workforce at Tesla. The UAW has more than a million members nationally, many in Michigan, a critical swing state. Come November, it may be the workers, not the billionaires, who get the last laugh.
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'Holy Sh*t This Ad Is Powerful': UAW Says It Knows How to Defeat Trump and the Billionaire Class
"This is brilliant," said author Naomi Klein in response to new United Auto Workers ad. "It's also the message we need to be sending non-stop."
Aug 10, 2024
"There is only one answer to the threat we face as a nation. The answer is solidarity."
That is the core message directed at the American working class from the United Auto Workers (UAW) in a new ad that frames the nation's current political battle as one between organized workers and the billionaire and corporate classes.
"We stand at a historic crossroads in this country right now," says UAW president Shawn Fain to begin the 2-minute video. "And it's clear Donald Trump represents the billionaire class—that's his base."
"We let working-class people lead the fight."
Calling Trump a "scab" who will "ruthlessly fight for a vision of America in which the wealthy rule everyone and everything, and the working class is left behind and forced to settle for the scraps," Fain argues that "what we win or lose now" will ultimately impact "whether we go forwards or backwards for a generation—everything is at stake."
"In the wealthiest country in the world, working class people shouldn't have to scrape to get by, paycheck to paycheck," Fain says before championing the UAW's historic strike last year in which the union's members stood up to the Big Three automakers—and won historic contracts.
"We united the entire working class," he added, "that's the winning formula."
"The dream of a man like Donald Trump is that the vast majority of working class people will remain divide," says Fain. "They divide us by race. They divide us by gender, by who we love, or where we were born. That's the game of the wealthy, divide and conquer."
The UAW's framing accumulated praise Friday and into the weekend from progressives who share the idea that working-class solidarity remains the key to defeating the fascist threat posed by Trump and that also must serve as the foundation for enacting the vision of more equal, just, peaceful, and sustainable society.
"This is brilliant. It's also true," said author and social justice activist Naomi Klein in response to the ad. "It's also the message we need to be sending non-stop."
Andy O'Brien, a columnist for The Bollard magazine, reacted with: "Holy shit this ad is powerful."
Fain's speech that acts as the narrative of the new video was delivered last month when the UAW leader spoke at the national convention of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) in Detroit.
"In the wealthiest country in the world, working class people shouldn't have to scrap to get by, paycheck to paycheck."
The UAW has endorsed the Democratic presidential ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Meeting with the candidates earlier this week at a local union hall in Wayne, Michigan, Fain said, "To me, this election is real simple. It's about one question, a question we've made famous in the labor movement: Which side are you on?"
"On one side, we've got a billionaire who serves himself and his billionaire buddies. He lies, cheats, and steals his way to the top. He is the lapdog of the billionaire class," said Fain. "On the other side, we've got a badass woman who has stood on the picket line with working-class people. Kamala Harris is a champion of the working class."
Though not featured in the new ad, Fain also told the APWU members in July that the key to the UAW's victory against the Big Three was that "we let working-class people lead the fight" against management.
"We gave our members the information, we gave them the tools, and we gave them the courage to stand up for themselves," he said. Like the broader concept of working-class solidarity, he said, that's the "winning formula" for workers and their families to take control of their economic and political destinies.
"If you follow those core principles," he told the postal service workers, "you will not lose. And I guarantee you, the UAW will have your back every step of the way."
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US Unions Must Look Beyond Themselves to Save Themselves
Either we think about unionism in new ways and establish new ways of joining other movements, or most of our unions die a long, slow, painful death.
May 26, 2024
The labor movement in the United States used to be respected and looked to for leadership; people cared about what positions labor took, watched when they mobilized, and noticed the causes they supported. This was especially true among the left. Today, for most of the country, crickets. Including much of the left. And yet, labor is a source of potential power unrivaled by any other bottom-up social grouping in the country.
As one who has written extensively about labor around the world and in the United States—see my list of publications with many links to the original articles—I have been thinking over a number of years about the future direction of the U.S. labor movement. But this thinking is not just based on writing or academic research; I’ve done that and also have years of experience as a labor activist and as one who has worked in blue, white, and pink collar jobs over the past 40+ years and in multiple locations across the country.
I argue that we haven’t had a labor movement in the U.S. since 1949, when the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) expelled 11 so-called “left-led” unions with somewhere between 750,000 and 1 million members; we’ve had only a trade union movement. What’s the difference? A labor movement looks out for the well-being of all working people in the country, while a trade union movement only looks out for members of its member unions.
We see workers creating reform movements trying to transform their unions for the benefit of the entire membership, if not all workers.
And, especially since 1981, when the trade union movement failed to defend the striking air traffic controllers in the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strike when attacked by then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan, the trade union movement leaders have done little but watch its ranks shrink, its prestige fall, and its power decline. Millions of jobs have been shipped overseas while the manufacturing economy has been decimated, and most of the service sector jobs since created have remained ununionized, underpaid, and with many fewer protections for workers. Yes, acting together, the trade union movement has worked to elect Democrats such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to office, but between signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, and the failure to pass a bill to enhance labor organizing, I’d say neither could be considered blazing successes. Individual unions have succeeded here and there, but only episodically and not consistently, and usually only because of some tactical feature that gave them a winning advantage in a particular struggle. Inspiring not.
The only consistent trade union success since the early 1980s has been in sucking up U.S. government money—often between $30-75 million annually—which has allowed AFL-CIO foreign policy leaders to act behind the backs of most of the organization’s leaders and all of its affiliated union members, in our name, in efforts generally intended to undercut foreign workers’ struggles against multinational corporations and U.S. government foreign policy projects.
Worse, even while nonetheless being helpful to foreign workers in a few cases, the AFL-CIO has acted to legitimize the imperialist National Endowment for Democracy (NED) by serving as one of its four “core institutes,” along with the international wing of the Democratic Party, the international wing of the Republican Party, and the international wing of its domestic archenemy, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in NED’s on-going project of supporting and advancing the U.S. Empire.
Thus, the trade unions’ leadership has generally done little to advance the interests and well-being of U.S. workers, while acting in differential manners—usually bad—with foreign workers. I don’t think this was what Karl Marx and Frederick Engles were expecting when they echoed the French feminist, Flora Tristan, urging, “Workers of the World, Unite!”
Yet, despite the general failure of the trade union movement leadership, especially since 1981, the reality is that unions are one set of institutions that, at their best, are of the workers, by the workers, and for the workers. You see workers fighting to make their unions “real”—trying to make them part of a labor movement that serves the interests of all workers if not the entire society—over the years. We see workers creating reform movements trying to transform their unions for the benefit of the entire membership, if not all workers.
Perhaps the most famous of late has been the reform organization Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) inside the United Auto Workers. UAWD came together to fight for direct elections of UAW leadership instead of the convention elections, which had led to a one-party state since 1946 and the election of Walter Reuther. Over time, a number of top-level UAW leaders were charged with corruption, and in a consent agreement with the federal government, the UAW had to shift to direct elections for top officers. UAWD put forth a partial slate headed by Shawn Fain, and then proceeded to win every leadership position they sought, ultimately gaining control of the international union’s executive board.
In turn, Fain and his administration led the 2023 fight against the Big Three auto companies—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler—and won the strike in the fall. While the UAW did not win all of its demands in the strike, it clearly demonstrated the power of organized workers who have a leadership that will fight for and with them. And following that successful strike, Volkswagen workers at Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted to join the UAW, with help from the German union, IG Metal, although in the face of governors from six southern states telling them to not do so.
It is critical to understand that unions are important to many workers; that they make a difference in the workplace; and that they usually mean higher wages, better benefits, seniority systems, and a recognizable “rule of law” in the workplace, the latter which places some limits on management authority and discipline; a big difference from the situation of most workplaces where workers give up most if not all of their rights when they enter company grounds.
So, where does this lead us?
I want to build off a study that I did originally for my doctoral dissertation in 2003. It was a comparative-historical sociological study of unionization in the steel and meatpacking industries in the greater Chicago area (including northwest Indiana) between 1933-1955, examining how the unions addressed racial oppression in the workplace, union, and communities in which these workers operated. Long story short: Despite drawing from the exact same labor pool—white ethnics from Eastern and Southern Europe, African Americans from the rural South, and some Mexicans—the steelworkers’ organizations ignored the issues of white supremacy and racism, while the packinghouse workers directly confronted it. In 1939, in racist, segregated Chicago, 8 out of 14 packinghouse local unions were headed by African Americans!
From this study, and differing from much research on the CIO—the labor organization both of these unions ultimately joined—I recognized there were two different conceptualizations of trade unions within the CIO; ultimately, I referred to that of the steelworkers as a “business” union and that of the packinghouse workers as a “social justice” union. And this was important because I found that how the members thought about their union determined subsequent organizational behavior.
Transforming business unions into social justice unions offers a solution: They build on their foundation in the workplace but join with community members—however defined—to work together in ways to improve life for all concerned.
And that brings things to where we are now: There are still two forms of unionism available to unions and their members. Business unions focus the power they are able to mobilize to fight for workers in the workplace, such as wages, working conditions, seniority, “rule of law,” etc. However, they generally ignore anything beyond the workplace, despite workers having lives outside of the workplace. Social justice unions focus that power in the workplace to not only address workplace issues, but they use the power in the workplace to also address things in workers’ lives beyond the workplace, including things such as racism, misogyny, and homophobia, as well as things like healthcare, education, the climate crisis, etc. Ideally, unions becoming or transforming themselves into social justice unions would consider the range of interests from the local to the global, ultimately seeking to join with unions and other people’s organizations around the world to make things better for all.
Recognizing these two different possibilities and what union members want to do in light of this understanding is important. It is important that these issues get discussed by the members of each union themselves; this is not limited to union leadership or even activists.
The reality is that the trade union movement today is so weak that unions rarely have a chance to win their battles without gaining public support. Unions have often recognized this and have appealed to community support to help them win. Yet, what do the communities get back from the unions? Often nothing. This one-way form of “solidarity” is simply not sustainable; you can only withdraw from the well so many times without giving back before it runs dry.
Transforming business unions into social justice unions offers a solution: They build on their foundation in the workplace but join with community members—however defined—to work together in ways to improve life for all concerned.
There are issues that simply cannot be solved on a local, regional, or even national basis; the climate crisis jumps immediately to mind, although there are other issues such as global sexual slavery and related issues, pandemics, war, and empire that can only be approached from a global perspective. We have to understand issues such as these from a global perspective and begin educating and organizing our union sisters and brothers on this level. But our ideas about our unions must at least allow for this, if not actively encourage work on this level by all members. Key to this is implementing an educational program that confronts these issues and encourages workers to think about how their union could work to address issues key to workers in this larger sense. The old slogan, “Think globally, act locally,” encapsulates these ideas.
This, however, is not going to change by itself: Activists in each union need to stimulate discussion within their organization about whether they should confine their unionism just to the workplace, or to use that power for the good of all.
I would suggest trying to find a group of union members that think having this debate within one’s union is crucial, and work to unify this core. Then they could create a campaign to spread this issue throughout the union, initially through one’s workplace and local and then through the national or international union they are affiliated with. It should be run the same way as any organizing campaign; and that is to win.
When confronted by this question—how do we want our union to go forward, alone or with our neighbors (from the local area to the globe)?—this is a question that encourages workers to think about these issues and get involved in participating in strengthening the union. Once a union is seen as something everyone participates in, or at least as many as possible, instead of just something that “others” do, we strengthen our individual unions. When we come to common responses, then we can extend our conceptualization of the union to other unions, locally, regionally, and nationally.
This can be extended globally when we find out what is happening elsewhere: There are workers across the planet seeking to join to fight for a better world for all. Yes, this is happening among workers in other imperial countries but, as we see in the case of Southern Initiative on Globalization and Trade Union Rights, workers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are finding ways to unite across their geographical regions and the globe to organize. I think they would be delighted to have North Americans join in their project, and that can only happen when unions take that broader, social justice union approach.
In short: innovate or stagnate. The business unionism of the past 40 years (in particular) has been a failure. Either we think about unionism in new ways and establish new ways of thinking about and joining other movements, or most of our unions die a long, slow, painful death.
It’s time we start rebuilding the labor movement: for the good of all!
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Can the UAW Turn It Around for Labor in the South?
If roughly 5,000 Alabama Mercedes workers vote to unionize in the coming weeks, the ripple effects could empower workers nationwide.
May 04, 2024
The United Auto Workers recently scored the largest union victory in decades in the South. Their success at a Tennessee Volkswagen plant could be a turning point for labor in a region long known for governmental hostility to unions.
The next test will be a UAW election scheduled for the week of May 13 at a Mercedes-Benz factory in Alabama, a state that has attracted so much auto investment it has earned the nickname “the Detroit of the South.”
If the roughly 5,000 Mercedes workers vote to unionize, the ripple effects could empower workers nationwide.
We need a New South economic structure based on fairness and equity.
For decades, Southern states have pursued “low-road” development strategies, luring investors with massive public subsidies and repressive labor policies. This has pitted workers across the country against each other, undercutting everyone’s ability to secure fair compensation.
Alabama has spent $1.6 billion to woo Mercedes, along with Toyota, Hyundai, and Honda. All these foreign companies’ operations in the South are non-union, in contrast to the unionized Big Three of Ford, GM, and Stellantis.
This foreign investment has created thousands of Alabama jobs—but with weak worker protections, the state remains one of the nation’s poorest. And while these companies have enjoyed rising corporate profits, they have left workers behind.
An in-depth report by the nonprofit group Alabama Arise found that inflation-adjusted average pay for the state’s autoworkers has dropped by 11% over the past 20 years to $64,682. Meanwhile, CEO pay stands at $13.9 million at Mercedes and $6.9 million at Toyota.
The foreign-owned firms’ payrolls also reflect Alabama’s long history of racial discrimination, with Black and Latino workers earning substantially less than their white counterparts. By contrast, the Economic Policy Institute has found that union workers make 10.1% more on average than non-union workers.
The benefits are even greater for workers of color. Unionized Black workers make 13.1% more than non-union Black workers in comparable jobs—and Latino union members make 18.8% more than non-union Latino workers.
Equitable pay practices boost local economies by putting more money in workers’ pockets for groceries, housing, and other goods and services from local businesses. And that’s good for families of every color.
But Alabama Governor Kay Ivey doesn’t see things that way. Before the UAW vote in Tennessee, she joined GOP governors from Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas to discourage VW workers from voting yes with unfounded threats of mass layoffs.
When 73% of those autoworkers voted for the UAW, it was a strong rebuke of the region’s low-road, anti-worker model. So corporate lobbyists in the region have enlisted state legislators and cabinet officials in a sustained campaign to blunt organizing momentum.
How will the election turn out in Alabama?
A new poll indicates that 52% of residents in this deep-red state support the autoworkers’ union drive, while just 21% are opposed. This echoes a 2022 poll commissioned by the Institute for Policy Studies in Jefferson County, Alabama, where workers were attempting to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer. That survey showed nearly two-thirds support.
While the Alabama Amazon campaign fell short in the face of aggressive anti-union tactics, increased public approval of unions is a testament to many years of community and labor organizing.
The fact that a large majority of workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant signed petitions earlier this year in support of the election is encouraging. We need a New South economic structure based on fairness and equity. Organized labor is an essential partner in that mission.
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