Trump could mean ‘extinction’ for US unions
AS PENNSYLVANIA, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin – states that once were the stronghold of the United States’s industrial union movement – dropped into Donald Trump’s column on election night, one longtime union staff member told me that Trump’s victory was “an extinction-level event for American labour”. He may be right. A half-century ago, more than a third of those Rust Belt workers were unionised, and their unions had the clout to win decent wages, benefits and pensions. Their unions also had the power to turn out the vote.
They did – for Democrats. White workers who belonged to unions voted Democratic at a rate 20 percent higher than their non-union counterparts, and there were enough such workers to make a difference on Election Day.
That’s not the case today. About 7 percent of private-sector workers in the US are union members, which gives unions a lot less bargaining power than they once had, and a lot fewer members to turn out to vote.
The unions’ political operations certainly did what they could: an AFL-CIO-sponsored Election Day poll of union members showed 56 percent had voted for Hillary Clinton and 37 percent for Trump, while the TV networks’ exit poll showed that voters with a union member in their household went 51 percent to 43 percent for Clinton, as well.
In states where unions have more racially diverse memberships, Clinton’s union vote was higher (she won 66 percent of the union household vote in California).
In states where union membership is predominantly white, Trump did better – actually winning the Ohio union household vote with 54 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 42.
The very economic and social wreckage the unions had warned against when they had opposed NAFTA and permanent trade relations with China ended up diminishing their own numbers and that of Democratic voters, and helped spur Trump to victory.
Now, Trump, the Republican Congress and the soon-to-be R e p u b l i c a n - d o m i n a t e d Supreme Court are poised to damage unions – and the interests of working people, both union and not – even more.
Indeed, within the GOP, the war on unions engenders almost no dissent. Since Republicans were swept into office in a host of Midwestern states in the 2010 elections, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin have all effectively eliminated collective bargaining rights for public employees and s u b j e c t e d p r i v a t e - s e c t o r unions to “right-to-work” laws that enable workers to benefit from union contracts and representation without having to pay their union any dues.
Previously, such laws were largely confined to Southern states, whose respect for workers’ rights has improved only somewhat since they were compelled to abolish slavery. As the GOP has become steadily whiter and more right-wing, those Southern norms have become national.
The advances that workers and their unions have made under the Obama presidency came chiefly as a result of executive orders and departmental regulations, which Trump can reverse with the stroke of a pen.
Obama’s Labor Department rules that extended eligibility for overtime pay to millions of salaried employees making more than $22,000 a year, and that compelled federal contractors to offer paid sick leave to their employees, may well be struck down.
National Labor Relations Board rulings that employers cannot indefinitely delay union representation elections once their employees have petitioned for a vote, and that university graduate students who work as teaching and research assist- ants are employees who can elect to unionise, will probably be undone.
Within the next 18 months, a court ruling in Friedrichs or a similar case will almost surely decree that members of these and other public employee unions can receive full benefits from union representation without having to pay their union so much as a dime.
One thing is certain: i f Trump’s victory does indeed become “an extinction-level event for the labour movement”, it would also extinguish any prospect America could ever become “great again”.
No country in history has ever achieved decent working-class living standards (and the social and political stability they engender) without a vibrant labour movement. Anyone who hopes for American greatness must also hope that labour has the strength to survive what’s coming.