Unions Can Help Us Get Over the Mountaintop Towards the Promised Land

Today, as we commemorate the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, it's time for an honest assessment of just how far we've come towards achieving his dream of freedom and justice for all.

A quick snapshot of today's income inequality and continued health and educational disparities suggests that we haven't come too far. In fact, a report released earlier this week by economists Dr. Stephen Pitts and Dr. William Spriggs, Beyond the Mountaintop: King's Prescription for Poverty [PDF], provides a stark picture of how we've regressed since King called on all Americans to join together and "let freedom ring."

Economic disparity is higher today than it's been in this country since 1928. The minimum wage -- $5.85 an hour -- buys significantly less than the minimum wage of King's time. Healthcare disparities have actually grown. Today, more than one in five African Americans are uninsured, and African Americans have the highest rates of death due to diabetes, heart disease, and breast, lung, and colon cancer than any other ethnic group. Health disparities for the Hispanic community are similarly grim. And perhaps most sobering -- segregation and inequality continue to define our public school system. Most recently, we learned [PDF] that in 17 of the nation's 50 largest cities, less than half of the students who entered high school in 2003 graduated.

Dr. King was assassinated during a campaign to support striking Memphis sanitation workers trying to secure better pay and working conditions by joining a union. Forty years later, workers are still fighting for economic justice and equality:

* In San Francisco, security officers employed by Inter-Con to protect Kaiser Permanente patients and staff are preparing right now to strike to protest against Inter-Con's intimidation and coercion of workers.

* In Minnesota, in an historic act of non-violent disobedience, security officers were arrested last month as they continued their campaign to win health care for the more than 800 security officers.

* And in cities around the country, food service employees, janitors, and other workers employed by food service giant Aramark are working with SEIU, UNITE HERE, and community organizations to ensure the company provides quality jobs and services to communities nationwide.

Indeed, we've got lots of work to do. But there is hope. Drs. Pitts and Spriggs' report [PDF] offers prescriptions for change and key among them is a call for more union organizing.

As King knew so well, unions have long built bridges to those islands of poverty that stain our society and threaten the American Dream. In the service sector, unionized African American workers earn as much as $2.00 per hour more than their non-unionized counterparts. The access that unions can provide to affordable healthcare and a secure retirement plan are the most powerful tools for leveling the socio-economic playing field that we have seen in modern times.

Take the example of the Houston Organization of Public Employees (HOPE), a group of 13,000 mostly African American and Latino public service workers who just won their first ever union contract last March. In a right to work state where barriers to union organizing can seem insurmountable, these courageous workers raised their minimum wage by 45 percent from $6.56 an hour to nearly $10 per hour. They also secured a steady three percent annual raise over the next three years and established controls on their responsibility for rising healthcare premiums.

Their hard work -- organizing colleagues, gaining community support, and negotiating with the City of Houston -- means an end to poverty wages in a city with a long history of racial disparities.

In the words of Felix Harvey, a mechanic in the Solid Waste Department of the City of Houston and a HOPE bargaining committee member, "All men may be created equally, but when we work together to stand up for our rights, we can ensure that they're also treated equally. Every man and woman should be able to speak up for what he or she thinks is right; that's what we are fighting for."

In time, these seeds of change will overpower the seeds of division that have spurred on the hatred and inequality that continue to plague this great nation. If we follow the prescription, we will come closer to those sacred ideals of justice and opportunity that our nation was founded on.

So 40 years later, let's recall King's words, not as an opportunity to shame us for our failings, but as a reminder of the tools we have to change the status quo. Let's use his words as a beacon as we reinvigorate our journey up the mountain top and towards the Promised Land.

Comments

[Sundialsvc4]

A fine speech, sir. But do not think that your words are merely addressed to Americans of African descent. In this melting-pot of cultures, this land is precisely what we make it. Your words are true for us all.

We have lately settled for much too little; for much less than what our grandfathers or even our fathers took for granted. We have watched our own elected leaders rob us, waiting to see when their appetites for blood and money might be satiated, and we see now that there is no end.

A wheel does not turn until enough people, with determination but also with a plan, set their shoulder to it and make it move ... having already carefully thought the matter through to its consequences. The people who founded this nation, and every one who subsequently sustained and preserved it, did thusly, and it is only because of them that the wheel now spins. It has been entrusted to us now. Let us never say, "well, I guess it's okay if we let it stop..."

Let us hold our nation, and ourselves, and most-especially those who lead us, to the highest standards of conduct and to the highest expectations. As Dr. King did. As all of our forefathers did. This land is precisely what we make it; it is doomed to be no more than the least that we demand.

[tea in the harbor]

I have to take issue with the targeting of your post, even while agreeing wholeheartedly with it's general thrust. If you analyze the data from economic, as opposed to racial standpoint, I believe you will find an even more compelling case. Gains in equality have been made, but they have been made by divesting lower paid white workers of pay and benefits they they once enjoyed, making the norm more equal, yet less acceptable! I in no way mean to imply that race bias does not exist, it most certainly does! But by using it as a basis for this particular argument, I believe you make the problem harder to address, it puts it into the category of a minority problem,(wrong as it may be, this puts blinders on many white eyes!), when it is, in fact, a structural problem with our entire economic system.

[peterg76]

Unions help themselves - that's their weakness.

[Mike169]

Where, my friend, is the evidence of this?

[wt7investigator]

Do away with the Corporation. The result will be to place accountability and responsibility back on the ownership of capital where it belongs. Enterprises can then grow as big as their taste for liability allows.

[Ramirez]

I think education and hard work will get you to the promised land quicker than unions and legislation.

[PioneerKing]

Gerry:

Unions have been divisive and effective at keeping blacks out of jobs in fire and police departments Unions have been divisive and kept blacks out of jobs in construction in NY and other citys
Unions have been divisive and kept blacks out of jobs in the auto and steele industries and out of jobs at our ports et. cet..
Simply because an organization calls it self a union does not mean that entity conducts its business free of racisim and sexisim.
Workers organized is what is optimal but don't portray unions as some sort of entities free of bigotry.

[midwestvoter]

Fortunately, the Unions are catching on to Hillary's games:
http://www.changetowin.org/for-the-media/press-releases-and-statements/mark-penn-has-to-go.html

[pmag88]

Our nation was founded on collective bargaining.

Ben Franklin employed it to keep the English at bay long enough for us to build an army and defend ourselves.

Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks proved that if a company loses even 15 or 20 percent of profits due to bad policy, eventually they will change that policy.

Ghandi used it free India in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

[SamThornton]

The key piece of anti-union legislation passed by Congress in the last century was the Taft-Hartley Act. Until provisions of this Act are rescinded and replaced by legislation that permit individuals to come together freely to petition for labor rights, nothing will improve for working men and women in this country.

It's official US policy to promote labor movements in other countries. The reason for this is that US policy makers see this as a clever way to create political dissension in target countries. That's the same reason labor activism has been suppressed in this country. Politicians and their corporate sponsors correctly realize that effective organization of the labor movement spells the end of their monopolies on wealth and political power.

[LivingStardust]

Unions will remain irrelevant until lobby reform puts EVERYONE on equal footing to petition the government. Until then, they are just another self-serving special interest group and have been for a loooooooong time.

[nopomo]

Unions have lost the respect and relevancy that they once had because of the people within their ranks who fight tooth and nail for a free ride. Yes, NAFTA is travesty to the American worker, but unions need to step up and take some responsibility too.

Unions don't serve anyone's interests when they make it impossible to fire incompetent, do-nothing employees or when they demand exorbitant salaries, pensions for life, et al. I used to be completely pro-union, but I've seen too many county employees who don't do anything at work except get paid.

And in hospitals it's way worse because people's lives are at stake when useless healthcare workers forget to hook up a heart monitor or don't distribute medication properly. The worst that can happen to them is that they get transferred to another hospital. Unions need to step up and cut away the dead weight. Otherwise they will continue to lose the public's trust and respect.

[Chinampas]

The Unions are fighting for higher wages and better benefits in a market that has to be competitive with the world due to free trade. The worker wants more money and the consumer wants cheaper prices. The problem is that the consumer always wins, and we will see more companies continue to source a larger portion of their manufacturing outside of the US.

Does anyone remember the "Made in America" campaign? It was a creative idea to get consumers to buy US made goods. What happened? The consumer preferred to buy goods based on price, and the corporations were forced to source cheaper labor.

Take a look at Levi Strauss & Co. There is not a company that is more American than them. They had 28 owned and operated sewing facilities in the US in the early 1990's, and they almost went broke. All of their plants were unionized. Today they have zero, and their business is on the rise once again.

[hoopesaz]

Informative post. It's sad, but true.

[SteveClements]

Corporations will always go where they can squeeze the most out of workers. But, though I was no Perot supporter, he was right years ago when he said the problem was not with the wages and benefits that workers, even union workers get. What would drag our economy down was the excessive compensation of top management. The CEO of Wal-Mart makes in one year what it would take the average worker there a thousand years to make. EXXON and the other oil companies make excessive profits while we have to figure what to cut out of our budgets to fill our gas tanks. It should be obvious that if we don't have a revitalized labor movement to speak on these issues, who will?

[hoopesaz]

Ross was wrong. CEO's are overpaid, but they are a product of supply and demand. Back to the auto unions. It's been estimates that close to $1,700 for every car GM sells goes directly to pay for worker healthcare. It's the fault of the big Pharma companies, right? WRONG. It's the direct result of union contracts. GM continues to pay excessive health care costs to current union workers and just about every union worker still living that once worked at GM. How much money per car do you think they pay in executive salary? Nothing close to $1,700.

Executives never should have agreed to those contracts. At the same time, unions squeezed them via strikes and threats of strike to agree to such UNREASONABLE terms.

[SteveClements]

Confusing cause and effect. People have become more concerned with buying at lower prices because of lower purchasing power for the dollars they make. Because corporations have been given government help and encouragement to export jobs to lower wage areas, wages have been virtually stagnant for years. Actually, when people can afford to, they take pride in not buying at places like Wal-Mart. Most people hate Wal-Mart but continue to shop there because 1) Wal-mart has forced out all too many competitors, and 2) because of the lowering wages that remaining competitors have to pay to try to compete with them leave people unable to afford to shop at a place that does pay and treat their workers decently.

[hoopesaz]

For every union standing up for basic rights of workers, there are 2 more fighting for luxuries not afforder under any reasonable definition of work. The auto unions are the most obvious example. Their fight to pay the janitor $40+ per hour has resulted in loss of jobs to thousands of blue colar workers. While not alone (poor management) they have consistently played a key role in the destruction of an american industry.

As is human nature, once unions accomplish the goals of providing safe and fair working environments, the power of their negotiation position goes to their head and they negotiate the businesses that employ them out of existence.

I say stand up for GOOD unions, not just any union.

[tedbear]

Right on!

People today have no idea how much unions have done for everyone. I saw a bumper sticker saying "Have a nice weekend and thank the Labor Movement," people just don't remember or know how things were for everyone before the labor movement. No weekends, no benefits, horrific conditions, etc., etc., etc.

Dr. King died trying to make a difference and lots of people gave their lives for the labor movement in this country, trying to make a difference for everyone of every color. Do some research. I get tired of listening to young people spout off about how worthless unions are, realizing they are hearing this from their stupid parents doesn't help. Blind stupidity got us into this "global" mess.

[Chavez08]

So many people who can afford an ivy-league education are apathetic and believe they're safe but they don't realize the advanced degree perks were a "trickle-up" effect from strong labor unions and slavery is working it's way up the pyramid.

[Chavez08]

Bush supplies Uribe (Colombia) with taxpdollars, weapons and wink-and-a-nod for him to assassinate unarmed union organizers.

Bush cabinet members refer to unions as "Terrorist Organizations" and it's not by mishap that Bush has a better track-record on harassing/terorizing union people than he does catching Islamic Jihadists. Yes, he hates the working-class THAT much!

We've gone through 50 years of attacks against collective bargaining. Unions need a myriad of media endorsements, propaganda reversals, cash and fast-to-law legislation to help this country get back to where it once was (and repeal Taft/Hartley)