The discourse around worker organizing is often depressingly negative. Workers fired for supporting a union. CEOs and their consultants deriding unions as self-interested third-party interlopers. Justifiably angry workers condemning their employers’ unsafe, unfair, discriminatory, exploitative, or just plain stupid policies and practices. Brand-name companies violating labor laws. With these story lines and more dominating the news, worker organizing and collective bargaining can feel like endless, unrelenting economic combat.
Obviously, we cannot and should not close our eyes or shut our mouths in the face of injustice, unfairness, and lawbreaking. They must be called out and, where possible, used to galvanize workers into organizing. Yet, on Labor Day 2023 and throughout the year, we also must remind ourselves that, at its core, organizing is an optimistic act. This core can get lost in a negative discourse. In this post, I will explain why I believe organizing is optimistic. My hope is that, at the very least, my arguments can enrich our discourse around organizing without minimizing the important discussions already underway. Even better, perhaps lifting up the optimism that is fundamental to organizing can help begin to restore faith in our society and its future. High hopes, no doubt, but Labor Day celebrates those who build toward a better world.
In that spirit, here are five reasons why organizing a union is optimism in action:
First, in order to choose to organize, workers must be optimistic they can improve the world, or at least their small part of it. Organizing begins with the belief that change is possible. If workers believed otherwise, organizing would be futile. Moreover, workers' organizing demonstrates a belief that their actions can improve their lives, their workplaces, and their future. This is not naive optimism. It is the very definition of empowerment: workers believing in themselves and each other.
Modern society consistently seeks to squelch both optimism and workers’ empowerment. We are made to feel too small and too weak to bring change. Powerful forces with awesome capabilities are paraded in front of us, almost like a taunt. Powerful men and women (but usually men) are elevated as soothsayers handing down wisdom and foresight. “Ordinary” Americans are rarely heard. We are encouraged not to “make trouble,” as though fighting for yourself and your family is troubling. We are told we don’t know enough. That we should leave the decision-making to those who purportedly know more: politicians, business leaders, religious leaders, media companies, and even the magic hand of markets.
These are not mere messages. We experience disempowerment every day in the institutions where we spend most of our lives. A few unaccountable people make the decisions about our workplaces, our schools, our faith institutions, and even the entertainment and news we consume. Autocracy is presented as (and can feel like) an inevitable norm, even though it is fundamentally incompatible with our democratic traditions.
Worker organizing chooses democracy over autocracy, and active optimism over negativity-driven resignation. Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta said it best, simply and optimistically: "si se puede" (yes, we can). We can be powerful enough. We can make the right choices for our own lives and our own communities. We can and do know what is best for us. We can act on that knowledge. We can rebuild an American norm of democracy in our institutions. Only optimistic people can hold and act on those beliefs.
Second, making the choice to organize means workers are optimistic they can come together with their co-workers to achieve common goals. Powerful forces in American society and the human psyche seek to drive us apart: the myth of American individualism; the realities of race, ethnicity, disability and gender in America; differences in class, education, and culture; jealousy and envy; and a complex set of heuristics and personal choices, to name just a few. Each of these facts of our lives are used by opponents of worker organizing to undermine worker power. Workers who choose to organize necessarily believe they can overcome those differences, or at least set them aside to identify and serve shared interests. In brief, they are optimistic that solidarity is possible, even if it is only instrumental.
Third, in order to organize, workers must be optimistic that unions are an effective means to change the world. That’s a difficult position to sustain in the face of a long-term decline in the percentage of American workers represented by unions. Many American workers have never experienced a union in their workplace or have a close relationship with a family member represented by a union. They may not know how a union works or why it’s a good idea. They have not derived the benefits of organizing. Yet, they have almost certainly heard about the potential costs. These costs are frequently and prominently portrayed in the media, which almost always discuss unions in the context of a strike, a highly conflictual organizing drive or negotiation, or an egregious labor law violation by an employer. For workers who are understandably hesitant to enter into conflict with their employers, these media reports stoke their fears and nourish negativity.
Also, workers have alternatives to a union. In particular, they can quit their jobs and find new ones. Four million workers per month quit their jobs, on average, for months on end, and that number remained at 3.5 million in July 2023. Staying in one’s workplace and organizing, on the other hand, requires an optimistic belief that the workplace can be improved by a union and collective bargaining. Perhaps more powerfully, organizing expresses a willingness to play a role in that effort, and accept the grievous risks, motivated by a commitment to co-workers and the better outcomes that will result. That’s a sacrifice only optimism makes possible.
Fourth, in choosing to organize, workers must be optimistic they will be able to negotiate with their employers about how to address important workplace issues, despite the fact that their employers most likely opposed their organizing efforts. As I noted in an earlier post, the principal reason workers organize is to secure a collective bargaining agreement that ensures they will receive the benefits of unionization, like higher wages, better benefits, and a fairer, safer workplace. If workers believed negotiating a deal with their employer would be impossible, it might not be worth organizing in the first place. That’s why some rabidly anti-union employers make it extremely difficult or impossible to negotiate a first union contract, even going so far as to violate labor laws. They are sending a message: "vote any way you want; we decide whether you will get a contract, and you won't." Yet, despite high-profile examples of employers illegally refusing to bargain, organizing continues and collective bargaining agreements are being negotiated and signed regularly across many industries.
Finally, in order to organize, workers must be optimistic that they and their co-workers will be able to sort out truth from falsehood and honest discourse from propaganda. Most workers in the midst of an organizing campaign will be inundated with anti-union rhetoric from their employers. They will be forced to sit through captive audience meetings and one-on-one meetings with supervisors. They will be swamped with anti-union material through other communications channels. Unions will be portrayed as outsider third parties and collective bargaining as a gamble. Threats are common, as are broader efforts to sow doubts and fears. In a haze of overwhelming and intentionally confusing materials, workers must decide what they should believe and what they should discard.
Optimism allows worker organizers to believe that their co-workers will figure it out. They must trust that co-workers will rely on their own experiences and their own eyes and ears rather than the words of an expensive “persuader” consultant hired by the employer, or even those from the CEO. They will listen to their co-workers rather than the supervisors who either cozy up or seek to intimidate as a union representation election approaches. They will acknowledge the nuances and uncertainties inherent in any collective human endeavor and understand that life does not deliver guarantees. In an era in which our political discourse is dominated by the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump, it is difficult to be optimistic that the truth will prevail. But workers who organize necessarily live by that optimism.
It should be apparent that I do not believe workers’ optimism about organizing requires donning rose-colored glasses or ignoring reality. To the contrary, I believe optimism is an expression of true toughness, resilience, and empowerment. It requires forward-looking, clear-eyed vision. And it requires a deep faith that human beings can control their own fates. In a word, it is admirable. I hope you agree.
Happy Labor Day.
