Portside

A decision in favour of Pamela Harris in the Harris v. Quinn case before the U.S. Supreme Court would seriously impact the quality of care provided to tens of thousands of seniors and people with disabilities who use state-supported home care services. It would do this by ruling the collective agreement covering more than 27,000 workers unconstitutional. More broadly, a ruling that the current system is unconstitutional threatens the future of collective bargaining.

Wisconsin was the first state to grant public-sector unions the right to negotiate contracts. Before Gov. Gaylord Nelson signed that law in 1959, only unionized workers in private companies had a government-protected right to bargain collectively. The Wisconsin idea soon spread around the country. Act 10 is an about-face, and Gov. Walker and his Republican supporters see it as a tough-minded strategy that other states can follow. History repeating itself, if in reverse.

The AFL–CIO is a multifaceted institution composed of scores of autonomous unions, so President Richard Trumka’s leadership can hardly turn around this cumbersome vessel all that quickly. But the new emphasis is clear: the unions should ally with progressive partners and devote more energy to make the kind of changes in social policy that can benefit millions of poorly paid and insecure workers.

Inequality across much of Europe has widened, but it is still quite modest when compared with the vast income gap in the United States.The question is whether relative equity can hold as workplace institutions that for decades protected European employees’ standard of living give way to a more lightly regulated, American-style approach, where the government hardly interferes in the job market and organized labor has little say.

Madison — Unions told two state labor officials Friday that if they do not promise to stop enforcing provisions of a law restricting collective bargaining by Monday, they will seek contempt-of-court orders against them.

“We are a small part of the 150 million Americans who work for a living,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in his keynote address Monday at the labor federation's convention in Los Angeles. “We cannot win economic justice only for ourselves, for union members alone. It would not be right and it’s not possible. All working people will rise together, or we will keep falling together.”

The decision on Friday by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a 2011 rule that required employers to post, physically or electronically, a notice describing workers' rights under the National Labor Relations Act. It was the second time in as many months that a federal appeals court has rejected the rule, after the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals said last month the poster rule violated employers' free speech rights.

Faced with the very real threat of extinction, unions have largely put collective bargaining on the back burner, and instead must try to remind American workers of the basic concept of worker solidarity. “We start from the point of view that, because so few people are in unions these days, very few people have personal experience with collective power,” explains Karen Nussbaum, the executive director of Working America.

Union leaders are exploring new forms of organization. One such form is the “minority” or “pre-majority” union. Under that framework, workers could sign up members and bargain on behalf of a smaller group until they reached the 50 percent threshold and went through the traditional certification process. This article explores a number of non-traditional avenues for unions.