Reading List — The New Yorker Union

“What a Labor Union Is and How It Works” (Teen Vogue, March 12, 2018)

“Women are transforming organized labor” (The Lily, April 24, 2020)

The working class can succeed only by harnessing the power of all workers, regardless of gender. Today, public support for unions is at a record high, the feared fallout of the Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME failed to materialize, and fast-growing sectors like digital media and fast-food service have added thousands of members to union rolls. This renewed energy is coming disproportionately from women. In fact, women—and particularly women of color—remain on the front lines of worker-organizing in a variety of industries, including those our patriarchal society has long coded as “women’s work.” Workers in a slew of traditionally feminized labor sectors—from education and domestic work to food service and sex work—have driven some of the movement’s most important victories. That is critically important both because they now make up the majority of the working class and because their involvement is helping to reshape the priorities of organized labor.

“The Coronavirus Is Radicalizing Workers” (New York, April 1, 2020)

For some workers, like Smalls, the pandemic is the spark that turned them into activists. Others have been organizing for years. The pandemic takes them into uncharted waters. But the rage, they say, was inevitable. You can only exploit people for so long before they snap. COVID-19 may have just moved up the timeline. . . . As the pandemic decimates the economy, it may accelerate an older trend. Workers have been angry for years, and they haven’t been subtle about it. Strike activity increased in 2018 and 2019, and 2020 may follow suit. A crisis as major as ours cracks society apart at the joints. We’ll have to rebuild it ourselves. Workers are demanding a say in the process. “This virus demonstrates clearly that all work has dignity, that poverty shaming is a threat to everyone, and that driving high productivity while failing to increase wages or maintain manufacturing with good union jobs in the U.S. has put us in the worst possible position to confront this crisis,” said Sara Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, CWA.

“We’re Not Going Back to ‘Normal’ After the Coronavirus” (Vice, March 20, 2020)

One of the biggest takeaways from the coronavirus pandemic has been that all workers need paid sick leave (which should not be conflated with paid time off or vacation days), paid leave for parents, and healthcare. Without these protections, everyone’s safety and health is put at risk, particularly the most vulnerable members of our society. Studies show that paying workers to stay home when they’re sick substantially reduces the spread of the flu. Now more than ever is the time to imagine a better world for workers, which we’ve seen glimpses this week with the expansion of sick leave benefits. Unfortunately though, companies that have extended new benefits during the pandemic will roll those back when this comes to a close. And so, real and lasting change for workers will need to take place on a systemic level with new benefits and protections for gig workers, franchise workers, contracted workers, temps, and the service industry workers. These can be brought about with a robust union movement (unionized workers are more likely to have paid leave, healthcare benefits, and lower deductibles than their non-union counterparts) and politicians who are willing to fight for these changes at every level of government.

“Solidarity Is Our Only Chance” (Labor Notes, March 16, 2020)

The 2008 financial crisis damaged unions and working people badly. We had little ability to resist the restructuring that corporations did to their own advantage. But it's different today—we are starting from a place of greater fightback experience. In the last two years more unions and even non-union workers (say at Amazon) have been making far-reaching demands. They've been fighting for them with strikes, including unsanctioned strikes from below when necessary. More people are used to the idea that it's a whole system of injustice that we're fighting, not just our own employers. Employers and government will do their best to confuse us, to make us feel guilty, to tell us we have no power. But we have more union fighters now who are used to standing up to power. Some will argue that it's time to put our heads down and look for stability. But that strategy is part of what's gotten us into this mess. Instead, we should see this crisis as a call for bolder measures. . . . We should be stretching our ambitions beyond the narrow limits of our own contracts and playing the role that unions have played historically—as defenders of the whole working class, members or no. We should drop the “I've got mine, Jack” mentality forever—because if we don't protect everyone, we can't protect ourselves.

“The Essential Role of Unions in a Democracy” (Bookforum, February/March 2020)

McAlevey thinks US unionism and US democracy are both in crisis and that these emergencies are interrelated. The gutting of unions has intensified the political power of elites, and the loss of the skills learned in union fights has eroded the public’s ability to fight back. “Unions,” she writes, “have so much value not just to build the power required to undo the rot of democracy and rampant income inequality, but also to teach Americans how to unite again.” Unions, at their best, are models of democracy, “the most important corporate power-balancing force this country ever had.”

“I was skeptical of unions. Then I joined one.” (Vox, August 19, 2019)

“I thought unions could be good for some workplaces but others were good enough without unions and so they should be avoided. I was wrong. We need more unions everywhere.”

“How to Save Journalism” (The New Republic, July 11, 2019)

The biggest threat to the health of the media industry is Silicon Valley. And the antidote might just be organized labor.

. . .

“It’s really a culture shift at The New Yorker, where some people feel that being paid in prestige is acceptable and expected,” said Natalie Meade, a fact-checker and bargaining committee member at the magazine. “One thing we’re trying to instill in the culture is that we are intellectual workers, and a union is something that is worthwhile in the long run for the longevity of the magazine.”

“Journalists and Self-Organization” (Notes from Below, June 8, 2019)

Digital journalists are keenly aware of journalism’s precarity, workers’ mobility, and companies’ tendencies to routinely announce layoffs or closures. Since winning a better deal from a current employer is not a long-term strategy for securing a livelihood in such a volatile business, journalist-organizers have recognized that unionization is not only about improving conditions at a single workplace, but about building solidarity and raising standards across their sector. From this perspective, “movement” is more apt than “wave” to describe the union push in digital media. Framing it as a movement also acknowledges the networks of solidarity that support these organizing campaigns. Journalists hold no illusions that unionizing is a panacea, but they recognize nonetheless that a union can be, in one media worker’s words, “a living and breathing mechanism to distribute power more evenly.”

“How Unions Help Moms Take Maternity Leave” (The Atlantic, October 29, 2018)

A team of researchers led by the Vanderbilt University professor Tae-Youn Park found that union-represented women in the U.S. are 17 percent more likely to take maternity leave than women not represented by a union. . . The researchers found that women with union representation tend to take leave more often than women without union representation due to factors that aren’t typically found in nonunionized workplaces—most notably, the presence of union representatives who serve as educators and advocates, as well as union meetings and newsletters.

“What’s Driving the New Wave of Unionization Sweeping Digital Newsrooms?” (Columbia Journalism Review, Spring/Summer 2018)

Newsroom unionizing has become a way to ask what it means to be a journalist in the 21st century. Ought journalists hold the institutions that employ them to the same standards of behavior as the organizations they cover? Does failing to do so compromise the work of an individual journalist? Can a reporter cover sexual harassment if one’s manager has also been accused? What, if anything, separates a journalist from the public actions of their employer?

. . .

The speed at which unionization has proliferated might look precipitate, but the nature of workplaces tends to change faster than both the laws that govern them and the business models that shape them. As they live through the ever-shifting existential crisis within the business, young journalists are evaluating the conditions in which they work, and doing it in public so as to show their relationship to that work. It’s clear, at least, that they see themselves as workers.

“The Reasons for Unionizing Haven’t Changed Much in the Last 80 Years” (Columbia Journalism Review, Spring/Summer 2018)

In addition to pushing for better pay and job security, many reporters in the Newspaper Guild’s early days were looking for guarantees that they could do their work without powerful publishers like William Randolph Hearst and Frank Gannett, a fierce critic of Franklin D. Roosevelt and a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1940, pressing them to tilt their journalism to the right. Ben Scott, a senior adviser at New America who wrote his dissertation on the Newspaper Guild’s early years, says its founding “was all about creating a way to wall off the integrity of professional journalists from the political interests and concerns of the publishers.”

. . .

Today’s journalists are streaming into unions for many of the same reasons as reporters in the 1930s: poor wages, long hours, skimpy benefits, and worries about layoffs. “It’s the same issues that motivate people to unionize throughout history: How are they treated, how are they paid, what are the benefits?” says Linda Foley, who was president of the Newspaper Guild from 1995 to 2008. “And there’s always a job security component.”

Another parallel: Many of today’s digital journalists, like their predecessors in the 1930s, are keen to have a union to help ensure they can do their work insulated from pressures by business interests or advertisers. Nowadays, many also want to ensure that their websites have a clear line between journalistic content and so-called sponsored or native content.

“How Unions Keep Inequality in Check” (The Nation, May 23, 2018)

If we want to change whom our economy works for, we must change who gets to exercise power. And this paper makes it clear: There is power in a union.

“Millennials Are Keeping Unions Alive” (The Nation, February 5, 2018)

Millennials may experience unique push-and-pull factors that drive them into unions. As EPI details in a separate analysis, unionization counters the characteristics that make jobs lousy today: gender and racial discrimination, wage gaps and lack of advancement opportunities. Union jobs provide a net wage premium for women, especially in service-sector jobs that often lack stability and livable wages. Collective bargaining and union representation are associated with significantly higher wages for black and Latino workers. Nationwide, unionized workers are more than 50 percent more likely to have an employer-sponsored pension, and the vast majority have health insurance through their employer—a virtual financial unicorn for millennials who are often tracked into freelance and gig work with few benefits. Workers under age 25 who are unionized earn roughly a fifth more than their non-union counterparts. Because unions give workers a voice in their workplace, unions offer young people a progressive support network at work, including legal support if they suffer harassment and want to bring a grievance against an abusive supervisor, and a community of solidarity for organizing colleagues against biased or inequitable treatment.