Labor Day Celebrates Freedom
We hear so much about freedom these days. Everyone talks about it. Everyone writes about it. Some comments and thoughts are so relevant while others appear to be misguided.
Last September I read and kept an interesting opinion piece by Washington Post columnist, E. J. Dionne Jr., entitled Labor Day is a Celebration of Solidarity and Freedom. I always find his columns insightful, and this one particularly so.
Dionne pointed out that discussions on freedom often focus on negative liberty, freedom from, rather than positive liberty, freedom to. He equates the American labor movement with the freedom to accomplish one’s end, and cites Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute, who provided examples of enhanced individual freedom that grew out of goals of the labor movement.
The 40-hour week that increased the time workers had to themselves — freedom to pursue personal obligations.
Social Security provided a decent retirement without scraping to save and invest in the market – freedom to spend one’s earnings wisely today, knowing there was future security.
Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare created health security and freedom to obtain affordable health insurance.
Look at what is happening with the labor movement today. Big-name companies including Apple and REI have experienced union campaigns. Baristas at more than 190 Starbucks stores have unionized. And Trader Joe’s store in Hadley, MA, recently voted to unionize, with other stores organizing campaigns and filing for elections.
The most noteworthy: A former Amazon employee, Chris Smalls, formed the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) and launched a successful organizing campaign at a Staten Island warehouse, JFK8. The employees voted in a federally recognized election to join the union—the first U.S. warehouse to do so.
Smalls demonstrated the freedom to organize and form a union; the workers, the freedom to join it.
It’s worth paying attention to Smalls and the ALU, which is not backed by any national union with resources and connections.
Along with freedom, comes responsibility. The ALU has the responsibility to the workers at the JFK8 warehouse to put into place the infrastructure that will allow it to negotiate a contract and to represent workers who file grievances. There are costs to obtaining the expertise to do so.
Since the April 2022 victory in Staten Island, other Amazon warehouses—in North Carolina, Kentucky, and Albany, New York—have launched independent union campaigns seeking to join the ALU. Does the ALU have the bandwidth to support multiple campaigns? They have already acknowledged they don’t.
Smalls was successful in Staten Island because he worked at the JFK8 warehouse. He had first-hand knowledge of the workers and managers in that warehouse and issues those workers faced. Are the issues at other warehouses are identical? Of course, there may be similarities, but they can be nuanced. Likely each warehouse has a unique culture that takes into account it’s unique geographical location. Could this be a barrier to ALU’s continued success?
ALC’s experience will make an interesting case study in years to come.
In the meantime, as you celebrate Labor Day 2022, remember the words of Samuel Gompers, the first and longest-serving president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL): “Our labor movement has no system to crush. It has nothing to overturn. It purposes to build up, to develop, to rejuvenate humanity.”