This is such a well-rounded write up. Kudos!! I'm celebrating everyone who is positively impacted by this change. When I lived in France, there were strikes with different cohorts every single month. From elementary school cafeteria workers, to bus drivers, to carnival workers.
It's clear that organizing has a measurable impact on worker conditions, hours, and compensation. I'm not part of a professional union, but if it was an option for me I'd love to participate. Thanks for writing about this important news!!
Starbucks is a bad example of why store by store organizing “works” because they have no franchises. At the end of the day the campaign was able to push for and win coordinated bargaining with a national employer. Winning that at an employer like McDonalds which does utilize franchises is an entirely different campaign when they can hide behind franchise law to avoid any duty to bargain. This point also diminishes the struggle that fast food employees had to engage in to even get this law passed. There were literally hundreds of strikes.
No one is arguing that sectoral bargaining could replace worker organizing, that’s a straw man. I do think it’s interesting that when French neoliberals pushed to move away from sectoral bargaining to an enterprise bargaining model there were massive strikes in response. To favor enterprise bargaining over sectoral bargaining I think you need to address two questions:
1. Why are CGT and CFDU, two of the most militant trance union federations on the planet, wrong on this issue?
2. Why are you siding with the French neoliberals over the elected representatives of the French working class?
I am not diminishing anything that fast food workers did, I'm comparing different approaches. It's true the franchise vs corporate owned question changes the approach to the company but on the level of individual store organizing it is the same. Also to your questions at the end when you say I am "siding with" someone, please reread what I actually wrote.
I did read what you wrote. You dismissed the California Fast Food Workers Union as not a real union. Instead of getting into why people are excited by sectoral bargaining you shout "NERDS". You do acknowledge that sectoral bargaining is better than the status quo of nothing but then continue to equate it as reliant on union political connections with no connection to the shop floor.
The underwritten assumption of the entire piece is that sectoral bargaining is better than nothing but inferior to bargaining under the NLRA. It's very fair to question why you would make that assumption, and I think fair to ask you why you have come to a different conclusion than trade unionists in countries that have direct experience with both enterprise and sectoral bargaining.
You also leave out that taking wages out of competition and setting standards across an industry while not the bargaining regime in the US, has still been a goal of US trade unions for decades. There is a long history of master contracts in this country, were the struggles for those agreements reliant on union political connections and separated from the shop floor? I think the thousands of workers who have taken action to win a master contract would strongly dispute that assertion.
Finally, if you do a simple sumif formula for all of the NLRB elections in 2023, you get that there were 104k workers who won union recognition through NLRB elections that year. This was widely considered a pretty good year. The fast food bill covers around 500k workers. This law basically brings a voice at work to an entire presidential terms worth of workers compared to traditional NLRB elections, but there is no discussion of potential advantages or tradeoffs.
There is an interesting angle here on different approaches to building worker power, this piece does not explore them and does not give a fair assessment for proponents of sectoral bargaining.
My whole problem with this is: if you're 40 years old and working at Mickey D's you have failed. It's not societies fault that you failed to raise your station along the way. Flippin burgers and delivering pizza....when I was growing up....was reserved for high school kids. Personally....I will lmao when you are replaced by a machine. Enjoy that 25% bump... for as long as it last.
Here's what this article overlooks. It's not that FF businesses will fail directly due to $20 hr min wage requirement. Though some certainly will. They will begun to fall like domino's because folks will refuse to pay $20 dollars for a buger when the prices increase. And increase they will. 1 week ago I paid $15 for combo burritos and a reg fry no drink at Del Taco and that was before the forthcoming increase. My willingness to pay for substandard food for convenience sake has been exceeded. I won't pay it. And of you can read you will see this feeling is widespread. These businesses will fail from lack of business. We the average consumer cannot afford to pay the increase required to meet the $20 FF min wage. I'll be eating PBJ's at home or brown bag.
"In the mid-1980s, local authorities carried out a national job evaluation scheme, which awarded all manual workers, from carers to refuse collectors, the same basic pay. But local authorities failed to address the many added perks for male-dominated jobs, such as bonuses and generous allowances for overtime. 'Each local authority developed its own way of enhancing the pay of the men – and they were very creative in the way they did it,' said [Stefan] Cross [KC]. Glasgow had more than 120 bonus schemes for its employees, and every single one benefited jobs dominated by men. Often these schemes were the direct result of trade unions, which are traditionally male-dominated, lobbying hard for particular groups of employees. ...
"Not only did unions sign off on earlier job evaluation schemes, but some of the worst disparities came about as a result of union pressure that prioritised men over women. 'Obviously they’re meant to go hell for leather on getting the best possible deal in every dispute,' said one London-based council officer. 'But this is the public purse, and getting insanely preferential deals for refuse workers, which then means home carers are discriminated against, opens the door to public sector layoffs. So where does your socialism start and finish?'"
To achieve equal pay for men and women for equivalent work, the work first needs to be equated. What often happens is that unions will fight a cause that gets a victory rather than one that achieves equal pay, with fringe benefits lumped in for traditionally male-dominated industries, which get conveniently swept under the carpet as time goes by when female employees make claims for equal PAY. One must not forget that unions depend on union membership and, to be worthy of that, they must book results. Just like employers, they can tend to compromise and favour certain parts of their membership in order to be seen to be booking successes, instead of fighting for total victory. In Belgium, we have a National Labour Board and negotiations at sectorial level according to so-called "joint committees" and even then we suffer with unequal pay. Equal pay - a scourge that has not to this day been resolved in most civilised western nations - suffers continuously from fragmented bargaining structures.
If you have a chance, read the long article, which is an eye-opener to a massive success driven by workers themselves, and not the unions; but at what a price!
Because I’m dense, I’m ever bewildered by the failure to fight for a mandatory living wage for full time employment (which should be defined to 30 hours a week). Fighting for $15 or 20 an hour when a living wage is ~$35-45,000/yr depending on location is not a bad thing of course but I don’t know.
I guess my confusion is where is the energy pushing for a mandatory living wage? Am I missing something? Am I just wrong?
when the fight for 15 started it was doubling the minimum wage. that's certainly not "enough" but in 2012 it was ambitious. 30,000 also approached a minimal living wage. 8 years on that goal is still double the federal minimum wage (regrettably) but clearly needs an update for inflation - hence fighting for $20 in fast food and $25 in healthcare. fighting for the minimum to be an actual living wage and indexed to inflation seems a pretty good goal.
The Federal (national) minimum wage is the only tool to raise wages uniformly across the country and it hasn't been raised since 2009 and the US Congress has not been able to raise it regardless of which party is in control. The wages that different states, and sometimes even different municipalities, are aiming for are different due to different costs of living. On the west coast there's a general feeling that things cost a lot so there's some support for somewhat higher wages for lower wage workers. In the midwest and south things are very different.
the campaign slogan from the beginning was/is $15 and a union. turns out winning money is alot easier than winning "and a union" part. Moves towards Sectoral bargaining or wage boards are ways to try to create the structure for collective bargaining while trying to leapfrog over the "organize individual fast food joints one at a time".
The starbucks campaign is a proof of concept that doing it store by store isn't impossible - but they aren't franchises, are more vulnerable to pressure on image, have some advantages in workforce make up, and the customer support angle is unique and better. Leafletting a Starbucks customers know they are overpaying for coffee and support workers getting a better cut. You don't hear the same - "but if they make more the price will go up" argument at Starbucks. the price is already high. you do hear that when leafeting customers at McDonalds for example.
All of these wage board and council models include how workers will have a voice in the process - some of this is dancing around how to organize them into a union. I do take issue in the piece with saying the Fast Food Workers union isn't a union. It is as much a union as Amazon Labor Union. with as many workers under contract and a better track record of winning economic gains. Workers involved in Fight for 15 or FFWU have won shop floor victories. they have gone on strike to win air conditioning in hot stores and remove discriminating bosses. The question that remains to be answered is can you bargain concrete gains through the council/board and get workers protection like Just Cause and make it easier to join the union and then act like a union at the worksite level vs. having to start the organizing at the worksite level first.
I think there is evidence from when local unions have changed leadership and undertaken a program to build power that it is a lot easier to take a union worksite with the benefits of a union contract and then organize the workers to fight than organizing a nonunion workplace. Access alone makes it easier. So if workers have a sectoral arena where they are winning actual economic improvements can you use that as a springboard to organizing workers into the union to push additional demands and enforce rules at worksite.? we'll find out
This is such a well-rounded write up. Kudos!! I'm celebrating everyone who is positively impacted by this change. When I lived in France, there were strikes with different cohorts every single month. From elementary school cafeteria workers, to bus drivers, to carnival workers.
It's clear that organizing has a measurable impact on worker conditions, hours, and compensation. I'm not part of a professional union, but if it was an option for me I'd love to participate. Thanks for writing about this important news!!
Thank you Chloe great enthusiasm.
Great writing warrants great enthusiasm!
Starbucks is a bad example of why store by store organizing “works” because they have no franchises. At the end of the day the campaign was able to push for and win coordinated bargaining with a national employer. Winning that at an employer like McDonalds which does utilize franchises is an entirely different campaign when they can hide behind franchise law to avoid any duty to bargain. This point also diminishes the struggle that fast food employees had to engage in to even get this law passed. There were literally hundreds of strikes.
No one is arguing that sectoral bargaining could replace worker organizing, that’s a straw man. I do think it’s interesting that when French neoliberals pushed to move away from sectoral bargaining to an enterprise bargaining model there were massive strikes in response. To favor enterprise bargaining over sectoral bargaining I think you need to address two questions:
1. Why are CGT and CFDU, two of the most militant trance union federations on the planet, wrong on this issue?
2. Why are you siding with the French neoliberals over the elected representatives of the French working class?
I am not diminishing anything that fast food workers did, I'm comparing different approaches. It's true the franchise vs corporate owned question changes the approach to the company but on the level of individual store organizing it is the same. Also to your questions at the end when you say I am "siding with" someone, please reread what I actually wrote.
I did read what you wrote. You dismissed the California Fast Food Workers Union as not a real union. Instead of getting into why people are excited by sectoral bargaining you shout "NERDS". You do acknowledge that sectoral bargaining is better than the status quo of nothing but then continue to equate it as reliant on union political connections with no connection to the shop floor.
The underwritten assumption of the entire piece is that sectoral bargaining is better than nothing but inferior to bargaining under the NLRA. It's very fair to question why you would make that assumption, and I think fair to ask you why you have come to a different conclusion than trade unionists in countries that have direct experience with both enterprise and sectoral bargaining.
You also leave out that taking wages out of competition and setting standards across an industry while not the bargaining regime in the US, has still been a goal of US trade unions for decades. There is a long history of master contracts in this country, were the struggles for those agreements reliant on union political connections and separated from the shop floor? I think the thousands of workers who have taken action to win a master contract would strongly dispute that assertion.
Finally, if you do a simple sumif formula for all of the NLRB elections in 2023, you get that there were 104k workers who won union recognition through NLRB elections that year. This was widely considered a pretty good year. The fast food bill covers around 500k workers. This law basically brings a voice at work to an entire presidential terms worth of workers compared to traditional NLRB elections, but there is no discussion of potential advantages or tradeoffs.
There is an interesting angle here on different approaches to building worker power, this piece does not explore them and does not give a fair assessment for proponents of sectoral bargaining.
My whole problem with this is: if you're 40 years old and working at Mickey D's you have failed. It's not societies fault that you failed to raise your station along the way. Flippin burgers and delivering pizza....when I was growing up....was reserved for high school kids. Personally....I will lmao when you are replaced by a machine. Enjoy that 25% bump... for as long as it last.
Here's what this article overlooks. It's not that FF businesses will fail directly due to $20 hr min wage requirement. Though some certainly will. They will begun to fall like domino's because folks will refuse to pay $20 dollars for a buger when the prices increase. And increase they will. 1 week ago I paid $15 for combo burritos and a reg fry no drink at Del Taco and that was before the forthcoming increase. My willingness to pay for substandard food for convenience sake has been exceeded. I won't pay it. And of you can read you will see this feeling is widespread. These businesses will fail from lack of business. We the average consumer cannot afford to pay the increase required to meet the $20 FF min wage. I'll be eating PBJ's at home or brown bag.
Sectoral bargaining bodes dangers. It's not wrong, but the problem arose in the UK cities of Glasgow and Birmingham. From https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/01/they-were-dying-and-theyd-not-had-their-money-britains-multibillion-pound-equal-pay-scandal:
"In the mid-1980s, local authorities carried out a national job evaluation scheme, which awarded all manual workers, from carers to refuse collectors, the same basic pay. But local authorities failed to address the many added perks for male-dominated jobs, such as bonuses and generous allowances for overtime. 'Each local authority developed its own way of enhancing the pay of the men – and they were very creative in the way they did it,' said [Stefan] Cross [KC]. Glasgow had more than 120 bonus schemes for its employees, and every single one benefited jobs dominated by men. Often these schemes were the direct result of trade unions, which are traditionally male-dominated, lobbying hard for particular groups of employees. ...
"Not only did unions sign off on earlier job evaluation schemes, but some of the worst disparities came about as a result of union pressure that prioritised men over women. 'Obviously they’re meant to go hell for leather on getting the best possible deal in every dispute,' said one London-based council officer. 'But this is the public purse, and getting insanely preferential deals for refuse workers, which then means home carers are discriminated against, opens the door to public sector layoffs. So where does your socialism start and finish?'"
To achieve equal pay for men and women for equivalent work, the work first needs to be equated. What often happens is that unions will fight a cause that gets a victory rather than one that achieves equal pay, with fringe benefits lumped in for traditionally male-dominated industries, which get conveniently swept under the carpet as time goes by when female employees make claims for equal PAY. One must not forget that unions depend on union membership and, to be worthy of that, they must book results. Just like employers, they can tend to compromise and favour certain parts of their membership in order to be seen to be booking successes, instead of fighting for total victory. In Belgium, we have a National Labour Board and negotiations at sectorial level according to so-called "joint committees" and even then we suffer with unequal pay. Equal pay - a scourge that has not to this day been resolved in most civilised western nations - suffers continuously from fragmented bargaining structures.
If you have a chance, read the long article, which is an eye-opener to a massive success driven by workers themselves, and not the unions; but at what a price!
Because I’m dense, I’m ever bewildered by the failure to fight for a mandatory living wage for full time employment (which should be defined to 30 hours a week). Fighting for $15 or 20 an hour when a living wage is ~$35-45,000/yr depending on location is not a bad thing of course but I don’t know.
I guess my confusion is where is the energy pushing for a mandatory living wage? Am I missing something? Am I just wrong?
(signed) Deeply Confused
$20 an hour = $40k per year at full time hours.
I knew I had it screwed up some how.
So I supposed I’ll do the math and figure out how $15/hour was a living wage in the parts of the country where I’ve seen it advertised.
Thanks!
when the fight for 15 started it was doubling the minimum wage. that's certainly not "enough" but in 2012 it was ambitious. 30,000 also approached a minimal living wage. 8 years on that goal is still double the federal minimum wage (regrettably) but clearly needs an update for inflation - hence fighting for $20 in fast food and $25 in healthcare. fighting for the minimum to be an actual living wage and indexed to inflation seems a pretty good goal.
Sooo… a nationwide mandatory wage is still not all that much of a goal, likewise a minimum wage linked to automatic raises linked to inflation?
Oops! $15 x 40 hours x 50 weeks is $30,000.
As for $40,000, that obviously is not a living wage nationwide.
I suppose my ignorance or whatever what efforts are pushing for same?
The Federal (national) minimum wage is the only tool to raise wages uniformly across the country and it hasn't been raised since 2009 and the US Congress has not been able to raise it regardless of which party is in control. The wages that different states, and sometimes even different municipalities, are aiming for are different due to different costs of living. On the west coast there's a general feeling that things cost a lot so there's some support for somewhat higher wages for lower wage workers. In the midwest and south things are very different.
is it possible for the SEIU to act as an advocate for union organizing?
They are one of the biggest unions in the country so yes they do both.
I was confused I think
the campaign slogan from the beginning was/is $15 and a union. turns out winning money is alot easier than winning "and a union" part. Moves towards Sectoral bargaining or wage boards are ways to try to create the structure for collective bargaining while trying to leapfrog over the "organize individual fast food joints one at a time".
The starbucks campaign is a proof of concept that doing it store by store isn't impossible - but they aren't franchises, are more vulnerable to pressure on image, have some advantages in workforce make up, and the customer support angle is unique and better. Leafletting a Starbucks customers know they are overpaying for coffee and support workers getting a better cut. You don't hear the same - "but if they make more the price will go up" argument at Starbucks. the price is already high. you do hear that when leafeting customers at McDonalds for example.
All of these wage board and council models include how workers will have a voice in the process - some of this is dancing around how to organize them into a union. I do take issue in the piece with saying the Fast Food Workers union isn't a union. It is as much a union as Amazon Labor Union. with as many workers under contract and a better track record of winning economic gains. Workers involved in Fight for 15 or FFWU have won shop floor victories. they have gone on strike to win air conditioning in hot stores and remove discriminating bosses. The question that remains to be answered is can you bargain concrete gains through the council/board and get workers protection like Just Cause and make it easier to join the union and then act like a union at the worksite level vs. having to start the organizing at the worksite level first.
I think there is evidence from when local unions have changed leadership and undertaken a program to build power that it is a lot easier to take a union worksite with the benefits of a union contract and then organize the workers to fight than organizing a nonunion workplace. Access alone makes it easier. So if workers have a sectoral arena where they are winning actual economic improvements can you use that as a springboard to organizing workers into the union to push additional demands and enforce rules at worksite.? we'll find out