One of the primary contradictions of the present moment is that unionism in the United States is enjoying its biggest surge in decades, while union membership is at one of its lowest points in history. Decades of neoliberalism, privatization, outsourcing, and the erosion of full-time direct employment have resulted in a weakening of the American workforce that has rendered it almost unrecognizable to anyone who remembers the robust union movement of the post-war consensus; but these same factors have emboldened workers, who correctly surmise that they have nothing to lose, to pursue unionism at an unprecedented speed.
Even as unions in the skilled trades have atrophied, hobbled by a graying membership and conservative leaders, unionism has caught fire in industries previously considered immune to labor organization, particularly in the burgeoning service industry. Unions across the board struggle with leaders and staff who become risk-averse when they become too influential or comfortable, and the answer has been a galvanizing growth of rank-and-file radicalism in both expected and surprising quarters. The language of labor vs. management has not been this adversarial in my lifetime; unions who once saw themselves as partners with the bosses in preserving the industries that kept them both afloat are now using language that’s straight out of IWW polemics.
For Marxists of old, it has been an adjustment, and some have not risen to the moment. Over the last several years of radical labor action, Trotskyist groups have reliably scolded strikers for settling with the bosses, no matter how favorable the terms of the agreement; their line — stay on strike in perpetuity until you get everything, and encourage general strikes that they can’t be bothered to organize themselves — hasn’t shifted meaningfully since the 1920s. This would be more understandable if they had any kind of presence in the unions they so condescendingly lecture to, but they are almost invisible among the ranks of the workers they talk down to. Most are aging academics or radical students with no experience of labor outside of academia, and they have generally been met with scorn when they show up on the line to sell their newspapers and lecture desperate workers who are one lost paycheck away from disaster.
But the radicalization of labor unions has not avoided Marxist analysis; it has simply adapted it to the modern era. Shawn Fain, the new president of the United Auto Workers, led a successful strike that was the most anti-capitalist in character as any industrial action of the last half-century; Sara Nelson, leader of the Association of Flight Attendants, has emerged as a leader powerful enough to galvanize her comrades to shut down air travel completely, and has proudly appeared at gatherings of the Democratic Socialists of America. Workers once considered passive and dutiful — teachers, librarians, nurses — have emerged as among the most radical in the country, commanding massive clout and willing to use it to promote not just favorable contracts, but wider social change. The color of unionism has changed both figuratively and literally; nonwhite workers are now represented in unions like never before, and are among the loudest voices in their movements. Queer, trans, and disabled workers are in unions (and union leadership) at the highest rate ever, and non-profit workers have become aware of their own exploitation. Even the entertainment industry — actors, screenwriters, video game workers — are not just organizing and striking, but winning, with a more radical line than anyone would expect from such public-facing groups.
What is the reason? There are many, but if there is a common through-line, it is this: Blood is in the water. The bosses are going for the throat; their profits are stratospheric, and they have shown absolutely no intention of giving up even a single penny of the money they swindle from the workers who make them rich, no matter how aware everyone is about the massive disparities of wealth that get worse every day. Not a week passes that some industry faces embarrassment (if they are capable of being embarrassed) as the degree to which they have cooked their books is exposed. Money has never been real, but its unreality is become impossible to ignore as millionaires claw to be billionaires and billionaires dream of being trillionaires; meanwhile, the people on whom their wealth depends lose their jobs, their homes, their health care, their security, their lives. Their salaries buy half of what it did a decade ago, and their real wages have stagnated since Nixon was president. There is no longer any point in denying there is a class war, and people will not tolerate being told they can save money by living in their cars for long when they can see the people who run their companies hoarding wealth that would shame Croesus.
Fain has done something that outdoes all the online ultras who call for a general strike at the drop of a pencil: He has outlined a practical way for this burgeoning movement to flex its muscles. He has encouraged other workers in other industries to line up their contract schedules with those of his union, so that sympathy strikes can set off like lines of firecrackers. He understands in a practical way what so many leftists only understand in a theoretical way: the value of solidarity. What we are seeing now in the new union movement is something that we have not seen in America in a century: Unions gaining an understanding not only of their power, but the way that it can be used to trigger change beyond the workplace, to shake the power of capital not just at their jobs but everywhere in their lives.
It is possible to lose hope. It is easy to forget that union membership is still at a historical low, that entire sectors of the economy are disorganized by design and nearly impossible to unionize, that there are huge swaths of the United States where unions are almost nonexistent. It is tempting to ignore the fact that we live in the most capitalist country in history, and that there is no political and social foundation for left labor parties here the way there is in Europe. But the light has come on in many peoples’ eyes. It is more obvious than ever why labor is the only path to power for the left, and that only labor can accomplish what NGOs, bought-off politicians, and unorganized radical groups cannot. There is power in a union, yes; but there is power that we did not see, that we did not anticipate, that we cannot ignore.