Dear friends,
Yesterday, the good news didn’t feel very good to me. Then, I watched a chunk of the impeachment trial, and I felt buoyed by facts and reasoning. The Democrats prosecuting the case against Trump were polished; the lawyers for the defense were rambling and then yelling, neither of which seem like winning strategies.
Meanwhile, I detect an exciting trend in American life that bodes well for justice. The Fight for $15 may not succeed in Congress yet, but unions may be having a resurgence. Amazon workers in Alabama have begun voting on whether to unionize this week. The National Labor Relations Board shot down the company’s efforts to insist on in-person voting. Although the vast majority of union elections since the beginning of the pandemic have been conducted by mail, the company insisted that absentee voting would depress turnout and be more vulnerable to fraud.
Instead, Amazon proposed setting up a tent in the warehouse parking lot, testing all participants for COVID, conducting temperature screening, and monitoring the line for social distancing, either using a “digital assistant” or with human teams. Amazon also proposed renting a floor of a local hotel for NLRB election agents and providing them with chauffeurs and food.
The NLRB denied Amazon’s appeal, reaffirming its position that mail voting is safer, and that letting Amazon rent out hotels and monitor voting lines would create an impression of bias and surveillance.
Workers at the bookstore McNally Jackson joined the same union, the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU), in 2019. Late last month, “RWDSU members at six McNally Jackson stores in NYC ratified their first union contract” (in a vote conducted by mail). There must be something in the air, because journalists at The Daily News organized newsroom staff and rejoined the union they were in before Mortimer Zuckerman took ownership of the paper in 1993 and fired 170 of the 540 workers before his first day ended.
In less than three months, new legislation in the state of Virginia will allow employees in the public sector to unionize.
This is a major change. Previously, localities such as counties, cities or towns were not allowed to recognize or negotiate with labor unions or associations representing their public sector employees. This new law will affect all different types of public sector employees, which will vary from locality to locality. Under the new law, the county or city has to authorize labor unions in their jurisdiction for them to exist.
This might sound like weak tea, given that localities must approve an an ordinance to authorize the creation of a public sector union (they have 120 days from “receiving certification from a majority of public employees in an appropriate bargaining unit”), but this important legislation reverses a 44-year-old ruling of the Virginia Supreme Court ruling prohibiting local governments from bargaining collectively with workers.
And finally, I want to mention the Chicago Teachers Union, which voted yesterday on the reopening of the public schools there, after threats from and an acrimonious negotiation with Mayor Lori Lightfoot. The CTU stood firm for a reopening framework that includes a phased reopening, vaccination planning, and a “side letter” to rescind disciplinary actions taken against teachers who didn’t return when ordered to do so in January.
Davis Gates (VP of the CTU) said Sharkey (President of the Union) was being too generous with his depiction of the bargaining table.
“It was deeply dysfunctional. It was a master class in gaslighting,” Davis Gates said, later referring to pointed news conferences hosted by Lightfoot and Jackson and adding: “Those press conferences, that was the table.”
Early this morning, the CTU approved the reopening.
I believe that, in spite of the continued demonization by folks like Lightfoot and David Brooks, the public attitude toward organized labor has shifted. Last year was the first in a long while in which union membership grew. Many more workers express a desire to be unionized, which isn’t surprising, since unionized workers have been less likely to lose jobs during the pandemic. Biden, who is vocally pro-union, fired the Trump-appointed head of the NLRB, which was consequential in the ruling about the election in Amazon’s Alabama operation.
You may be wondering where the action is in this email. In the spirit of A.A. Milne, I will simply say that it isn’t the kind of day when you want to do something:
Christopher Robin came down from the Forest to the bridge, feeling all sunny and careless, and just as if twice nineteen didn't matter a bit, as it didn't on such a happy afternoon, and he thought that if he stood on the bottom rail of the bridge, and leant over, and watched the river slipping slowly away beneath him, then he would suddenly know everything that there was to be known, and he would be able to tell Pooh, who wasn't quite sure about some of it (The House at Pooh Corner, 105).
We’re not going to know everything, but it’s nice to feel that one can know something, even for a moment, before that feeling slips away.
Have a good day!
with love,
L