Everyone Has a Top 5 List of Bargaining Agreements, Right?

This week on the podcast, we talk about why Americans have well-placed faith in unions to lower income inequality, and a bargaining method to supplement unionization drives.

Hey Optimists!

Maybe you remember back in 2021 when that first Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize. That union, Workers United, has since won elections at 600 of Starbucks’ more than 10,300 company-operated stores.

But it still doesn’t have a contract.

This situation is emblematic of what we’ll call the worker organization paradox in the United States today. Even as it gets more difficult to form a union and negotiate a contract (thanks to court rulings, gutted laws and corporate foot-dragging), the public approval of labor unions keeps rising.

Source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/12751/labor-unions.aspx

This week on the Optimist Economy podcast, we talk about how unions contributed to a strong middle class after World War II, and the broadening understanding that the economy is a more equal place when workers are collectively empowered and represented. In addition to traditional unions, that could also include “sectoral bargaining.” Here’s an excerpt:

Listen to all of episode 18, “Collective Bargaining Without the Unionization Battles,” on your podcast app of choice.

Kathryn’s Top 5 Bargaining Agreements

During the podcast recording, Kathryn donned her National Women’s Soccer League union T-shirt, and casually dropped that their 2024 contract was in her “top five” collective bargaining agreements. Normal non-economist humans have a list like this, right? Right?

Anyway, here’s the full top five:

Sit-Down Strikes (1936-1937). Though it wasn’t the first, the pivotal strike came when autoworkers at multiple General Motors factories in Michigan and Ohio refused to work but also refused to leave. With the machinery guarded in its place and strikebreakers kept out for weeks, GM eventually recognized the United Auto Workers union. This sparked hundreds of sit-downs, not only in industrial factories, but in clerical offices, retailers like Woolworths, between September 1936 and June 1937. The strike—involving everything from human chains of children bringing food to the strikers to Frances Perkins calling the head of GM a snake—is described in excellent detail in Beaten Down, Worked Up by Stephen Greenhouse.

Treaty of Detroit (1950). The landmark $1 billion five-year contract struck by the UAW and GM. In return for the longer contract, autoworkers got cost-of-living raises, pensions, and contributions to health insurance costs — a model soon followed by Ford and Chrysler. It became the template across major industries, helping to usher in the golden age of American manufacturing and the growth of the middle class.

National Women's Soccer League (2024). This contract gave players unprecedented control over their careers and where they play. It made the NWSL the first U.S. professional sports league to eliminate the college draft, and required player consent before any team can trade. In addition to raising minimum salaries, it created a revenue-sharing agreement allowing players to benefit from the growing popularity of women’s soccer. Kathryn bought her shirt from the union shop that made it for the players.

Kaiser Permanente (1997). The 1990s saw a growing and deep acrimony between Kaiser Permanente, an HMO, and its staff of health care workers. This culminated in 26 unions representing more than 50,000 of Kaiser’s workers threatening a strike in 1996. The two sides instead came to a historic coalition agreement called a Labor Management Partnership in which unions have a voice in business and management decisions. It has certainly benefited Kaiser, which saw spectacular growth in membership and quality in the decades since.

The Fair Food Program (2000s). The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) wrestled better wages and working conditions for tomato pickers in Florida through a decades-long pressure campaign that eventually became the Fair Food Program. The workers publicly pressured commercial buyers of tomatoes, like Taco Bell, to agree to pay more per pound to tomato growers so that workers for those growers could have a higher wage. (If you were in college in the early 2000s, you might remember the ‘Boot the Bell’ campaign to kick Taco Bell and other retailers off of campuses unless they complied.) In 2010, the CIW won an enormous concession from the growers’ association to agree to actually pass the money on to the workers. The Fair Food Program is not a single contract, but an ongoing agreement to get all parties involved to agree that workers deserve more.

What We’re Reading

Poll finds record high share of Americans view immigration positively (Washington Post, July 11) — A new Gallup survey finds that 79% of Americans say immigration is a “good thing” for the country in the face ICE sweeps and deportations. There was a jump in support — from 70% to 78% — for pathways to citizenship for those who meet certain requirements over a period of time.

Missouri Gov. Kehoe signs bill repealing paid sick leave (Missouri Independent, July 10) — Last November, Missourians passed a measure by 58% requiring that workers accrue paid sick time. Last week the governor signed a law that repealed that and repealed annual inflation adjustments for the minimum wage, which had been in effect since 2006. This isn’t over: Missouri Jobs With Justice has at the ready a proposed ballot initiative to make paid sick days a constitutional amendment.

Executive Order Vote

From Joshua Kelly in Baltimore: All four-way stop signs should be numbered (1-4) so you know who is next in order to cross the intersection. Numbers would be posted front and back (on the sign post) visible for all drivers, and numbers would go clockwise. (If all four drivers arrived at the same time, then the order would start with 1 thru 4.)

Should we ratify this for the Edwards and Rauzi republics?

Get in Touch

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