How To Put Money Directly Into Union Power

Union Now is here.

Today I want to tell you about something new and important that is about to be launched into the world.

How did America get to the horrifying place it is in today? While there is no single explanation, 20 years of writing about this question has led me to a fairly straightforward story. After World War 2, one in three American workers was a union member. The power of working people was high. As a result, we had the greatest shared prosperity this nation has ever seen.

Over the next 75 years, the power of unions was severely eroded by a legal and political assault led by corporate America and its allies. That this happened is not surprising. It is just the incentives of capitalism at work. Companies—even more than the public—understand that unions are powerful. They understand that unions are capable of moving wealth away from investors and into the pockets of working people. Attacking existing unions and making it very hard to build new unions is common sense for these corporations. They have been very successful. Today, fewer than one in ten American workers is a union member—despite the fact that a large majority of workers say that they would join a union if they could.

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The enormous rise in economic inequality that has produced our modern American oligarchy and gone a long way towards capturing our political system was directly enabled by the decline in power of unions. Battered as they are, however, unions still exist. Fifteen million people are still union members. After getting involved in unions myself, I witnessed firsthand their transformative ability to give power to formerly powerless people in a workplace. As a labor reporter, I have seen countless examples of how a union can create economic and political power for workers who were ignored and exploited before they had a union. Over the past decade, I came to understand that—contrary to conventional wisdom—unions are the most accessible, potent, and realistic road to power that most regular people can access. I also came to understand that because unions naturally fight against inequality, they have the ability to turn around the exact crisis that has gotten our country to where we are. In other words, despite their decline, unions remain the single most important tool to fix the single most important problem in America.

The first challenge to unlocking this potential is to help many more people organize unions. This is hard, but we know how to do it. It can be done. The second challenge is helping workers who have unions win contracts and other vital fights against companies. It is tragic to see a group of workers struggle and win a union, only to be thwarted when they try to get the contract they deserve. This problem, too, is hard, but not a mystery. It can be done.

Solving both of these problems requires a lot of resources. It requires money. Some of that money can come from existing unions, but that is not enough. We need help. We need a reliable pipeline of money from donors, from foundations, and from regular concerned people—a pipeline directly into union organizing, and winning hard union fights, including strikes. While there are many great nonprofits in the labor world, and many good small and large workers groups that you can donate to, there is not one clear, well-defined way for you to make a donation and know that it will go to directly build national union power.

A few years ago, I wrote a book about all this, called “The Hammer.” One of the main characters in the book was Sara Nelson, the head of the Association of Flight Attendants. Over the course of many months, she spoke repeatedly about her desire to build a new organization that would help to solve the problems I just described. I’m happy to say that after much work by many righteous people, that organization is here. It is called Union Now. It is going to formally launch tomorrow.

Tomorrow, there will be a launch rally in New York City, with Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, Sara Nelson, and a host of people from many different unions. The rally starts at 2 pm at Terminal 5 in Manhattan. If you are anywhere near New York City, you should come. The RSVP link is here.

I cannot count the number of times that people have asked me over the years: “If I want to help unions, where should I donate?” In response to this, I have always rattled off a list of independent unions and organizing nonprofits and political groups and publications. I have given and will continue to give money to all of those groups myself. But now, I will have an easier answer: You can give to Union Now. They will take the money and use it to support major, strategic union organizing campaigns that will move the needle. They will take the money and use it to support workers on strike, to help them stay out long enough to win. These are direct, targeted ways to build union power, period. This is the sort of credible pipeline of money directly into critical union fights that I have long wanted to see. The fact that people like Bernie and Zohran and Sara Nelson and many other union leaders and union members are taking the time to do this rally speaks for itself. The changes that progressives want to see in America will never become a reality unless we can rebuild the power of the working class. That means organizing more unions and giving them what they need to win hard fights. That’s what this is all about.

One of the greatest things about the labor movement is that it is filled with amazing people with righteous motives willing to fight for the cause. Because the fight is so difficult, it can be natural for people to feel the need to protect what they have. Union Now is exciting to me because it is meant to be a pure value add. It does not seek to suck up money that previously was going to other labor-related causes. It seeks to unlock funding from an entire universe of people who may not have known how to pull all of these threads together before, or where to give that would be effective in bolstering union power. Winning organizing drives or strikes or other labor battles against enormous companies like Delta or Amazon or Starbucks or REI is expensive. But it is necessary. So we gotta find a way to pay for it. We are growing the pie, baby. Up with the workers.

I have been helping informally with getting Union Now off the ground, but I have no formal role with the organization. Nor do I speak for it. I am only speaking for myself here. I think this is exciting and it is the fruition of something that can do a lot of good. As the group gets up and running in coming months, I will share more updates on it. In the meantime, come to the rally. Give to the cause. Organize your workplace. Kick ass. Union power comes from us.

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Union Now

• RSVP for the rally with Bernie and Zohran: Sunday, April 12 at Terminal 5, 610 West 56th Street, New York, NY. Doors at 12, event starts at 2.

• Donate.

• Union Now. Logo by the great Jim Cooke.

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Also

• Related reading: We Need a Big National Strike Fund; Three Crises of Labor; Trampoline Unionism; Ten Times This.

• Contact EWOC for help organizing your workplace. Join DSA. Order my book, “The Hammer.”

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