Mary Kay Henry had one huge success and one huge disappointment in her 14 years as president of the Service Workers Worldwide Union, which is among the largest and most politically highly effective in the US.
Henry, who selected to not run for re-election and stepped down on Monday, spearheaded the profitable marketing campaign to lift wages to $15 an hour or extra for a lot of of America’s lowest-paid employees, significantly in quick meals and residential care. “Since 2012, greater than 26 million employees have received increased pay to the tune of $150 billion,” almost half of them employees of shade, the Nationwide Employment Legislation Challenge mentioned in a tribute to Henry after she introduced she wouldn’t search re-election.
The frustration is that Henry didn’t handle to extend membership in her personal union. The truth is, S.E.I.U.’s membership fell to beneath 1.9 million now from about 2.1 million when she took workplace. These employees at McDonald’s, Burger King and different chains who’re having fun with increased pay aren’t paying dues to any standard union. (Extra on this beneath.)
The decline in membership is just not one thing S.E.I.U. dwells on. It continues to declare “about” two million members. However in a submitting with the Division of Labor in March, the union acknowledged that it had 1,845,500 members, of which 30,015 had been retired.
To make sure, Henry doesn’t deserve the entire credit score for increased wages, nor does she deserve all — and even most — of the blame for the membership erosion. But it surely’s clear that the “Struggle for $15 and a Union” marketing campaign, which she advised me final week was a spotlight of her time in workplace, was solely half profitable.
In November 2012, about 200 fast-food employees in New York Metropolis walked off the job in what Steven Greenhouse described in The Instances as “the most important wave of job actions within the historical past of America’s fast-food trade.” The job motion was the spearhead of a unionization drive sponsored by S.E.I.U. together with a number of group and civil rights teams. The marketing campaign had deployed 40 organizers to rally fast-food employees behind unionization and a increase in wages to $15 an hour. On the time, $8 or $9 an hour was typical for fast-food eating places within the metropolis.
Henry advised me {that a} committee of employees got here up with the $15 demand “primarily based on doing their very own math,” figuring in hire, groceries, subway fares, clothes for youths and different necessities. “On the time Obama was saying $9 and Harkin” — Senator Thomas Harkin, Democrat of Iowa — “was saying $10.10. Fifteen {dollars} simply sounded out of this world. It unfold to 10, 30, then 300 cities.”
The restaurant chains might simply afford to pay extra, Henry mentioned on the time. “Individuals who work for the richest companies in America ought to be capable to afford a minimum of the fundamental requirements to help their households,” she mentioned.
Now seven states have wage flooring of $15 or extra for non-tipped employees, and several other extra are on monitor to achieve that stage quickly. In keeping with my calculation primarily based on the newest information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, earnings have grown one-third sooner since 2020 for individuals on the tenth percentile of wages than for individuals on the ninetieth percentile.
I requested Henry whether or not she thought a few of these wage will increase would have occurred with out “Struggle for $15 and a Union,” since wages are being pushed up anyway by low unemployment and, till not too long ago, excessive inflation. Which may be the case now, she allowed, however it wasn’t within the early days of the marketing campaign. “These weren’t macroeconomic forces,” she mentioned. “These had been canine fights. The trade fought us tooth and nail, each step of the way in which.”
Henry confronted some pushback from contained in the union that rallying fast-food employees was a distraction. The union didn’t have any members in that sector. Its membership is principally in authorities, hospitals, long-term care and janitorial and different constructing companies. However Henry noticed it as complementary to union organizing. “We created a brand new type of organizing, which is movement-based organizing,” she advised me.
Henry mentioned she’s additionally proud that S.E.I.U. “linked the combat for employee justice with racial justice.” The union web site contends that “race is weaponized to maintain working individuals divided whereas grasping company bosses stay on the prime.”
The 14 years by which Henry ran S.E.I.U. had been tough ones for all of organized labor, not simply her union. The share of employees who belong to labor unions is caught at round 10 %, half what it was in 1983, when the federal government first collected comparable statistics. The share is way decrease within the personal sector (6 %) than within the public sector (32.5 %). Additionally, unions which have shaped at employers corresponding to Starbucks and Dealer Joe’s haven’t managed to acquire contracts but, probably leaving employees disillusioned.
Henry ticked off a number of causes for the hunch in unionization, together with the Covid pandemic, a number of states’ adoption of right-to-work legal guidelines that hamper unions and adversarial choices by the Supreme Courtroom. In 2018, the court docket dominated 5-4 that authorities employees who select to not be a part of unions might not be required to assist pay for collective bargaining. Throughout her time in workplace the union has misplaced necessary charges from greater than 200,000 nonmembers, placing a gap in its funds.
Having hassle organizing fast-food employees the standard method, S.E.I.U. shaped this 12 months a California Quick Meals Employees Union, an unconventional union that didn’t require profitable elections at 1000’s of eating places. It didn’t kind via a federally licensed election, so it will possibly’t do collective bargaining, however it’ll advocate higher pay and dealing circumstances throughout the trade.
Organizing within the historically anti-union South has been a prime precedence for S.E.I.U., in addition to different unions. A brand new unit of S.E.I.U., the Union of Southern Service Employees, is making an attempt to prepare service, care and retail employees in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. “Now we have huge plans for this summer time,” she advised me.
As Henry steps down, she will be able to take satisfaction that quite a lot of issues are going proper for organized labor. Writers and actors received improved contracts after hanging final 12 months. President Biden walked the picket line with hanging autoworkers, who received substantial concessions from Basic Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis. Public help for labor unions is the very best it has been because the Sixties.
The information isn’t all good, although. Whereas union membership is rising in some sectors — graduate college students in universities, for instance — it isn’t rising total as a result of membership continues to erode in different sectors. Whereas the United Vehicle Employees received its first factory-wide foothold at a significant overseas automaker within the South final month, at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., the U.A.W. misplaced on Friday its organizing try at two Mercedes vegetation close to Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Henry advised me she will be able to’t predict the place the following president of S.E.I.U. will take the union, however she’s optimistic. “I believe that we’ll develop” in membership, she mentioned. “It is a key inflection level for the entire labor motion.” That’s proper: Rising membership is crucial as a result of the one method labor unions can countervail the ability of employers is thru power in numbers.
Elsewhere: Jobless within the Golden State
California continued to have the nation’s highest unemployment charge in April, at 5.3 %, the Bureau of Labor Statistics mentioned on Friday. Employment within the state grew by simply 5,200 jobs from March, a rise of 0.03 %. Employment declined in manufacturing, building, monetary actions, {and professional} and enterprise companies. North Dakota and South Dakota shared the nation’s lowest jobless charge, at 2.0 %.
Quote of the Day
“Philosophy, as I’ve mentioned, is a delicate self-discipline. It approaches individuals with respect for his or her full humanity, and is in that sense a type of love.”
— Martha Nussbaum, “The Monarchy of Worry: A Thinker Appears to be like at Our Political Disaster” (2018)
