Public Employee Press

You are the Union

HENRY GARRIDO
Executive Director, District Council 37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO

Nearly 10 years ago, billionaire investor Warren Buffett famously observed: "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."

What he was referring to is the growing gap between the ultra rich and the rest of us, the economic inequality that President Obama has called "the defining challenge of our time."

Consider this:

. In the 1950s, corporate CEOs made 10 times the salary of the average worker. Today, CEOs make 300 times workers' salaries.

. In New York City, the top 1 percent earns an incredible 44 percent of all the income generated here.

. In the 2010 recovery from the Great Recession, 93 percent of the additional income created in the country that year went to the top 1 percent.

None of this happened by accident. The economic inequality that now imperils working and middle class families is the result of policy choices that favor the wealthiest and make it harder for the "average" American to get by - policies such as giving tax breaks to the ultra-rich and taking collective bargaining away from workers.

The "trickle-down" theory of economics is that if those at the top of the economic ladder flourish, everyone benefits.

But that hasn't happened. And a systematic attack on the U.S. labor movement has made things even worse.

In the 1950s, 35 percent of U.S. workers were part of the labor movement. And guess what?

That's when workers' wages were at their highest.

Today, a mere 11 percent of U.S. workers belong to a union. And that does hurt everyone, because collective bargaining benefits all working people by lifting the floor for wages and benefits.

Again, make no mistake: to a great extent, the shrinking of the labor movement is the result of laws and policies that make it harder to for unions to organize and negotiate. Deep-pocketed, anti-union forces have been manipulating state legislatures and the courts to bust unions in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana.

And now our bargaining rights and our ability to function as a union are under fire again, this time in a case called Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association that's worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court with the support of union-bashers like the National Right to Work Legal Defense Fund.

Some important background: In 1977, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the right of public employee unions to operate as they do today. In a case called Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the court 1) affirmed that public employees "are not basically different from private employees" when it comes to representation and collective bargaining, and 2) upheld the idea that even those who oppose unions can be mandated to pay a fair share for what they receive from their union representation in the way of wages, benefits and retirement security.

But led by Justice Samuel Alito, the current court - which decided just a few years ago that corporations are people and therefore entitled to spend massive amounts of money to express their right to free speech - has agreed to re-examine the 1977 Abood decision. If Abood is reversed, the entire country will essentially be one enormous "right-to-work-for-less" state.

At a time when inequality threatens the future stability of our country, it is deeply troubling to see the Supreme Court revisit decisions that make it possible for hard-working men and women to come together for a voice in the workplace and in their communities. But a court decision only defeats us if we are complacent or silent. That's why we're building DC 37/AFSCME Strong, a crucial initiative that you can read more about here.

Become a part of it. After all: You are the Union.