Is there an app for labor organizing? If there isn’t, how can we create one? Those were the type of questions President Obama and other administration officials raised at a White House event Wednesday dubbed the “Summit on Worker Voice.”
The event was intended to find “innovative strategies” to help workers in new, emerging industries join unions.
“You’ve got a whole millennial generation who knows that they are getting a bad deal [at work] but who do not want to join a union,” President Obama said.
He blamed that partly on “laws that make union organizing difficult” but said it was also because many millenials work in industries such as high tech or for companies such as the ride-sharing service Uber that by their very nature are hard to organize. New ideas and new technologies are needed to bridge that gap, he said.
“How do we change the public attitude so that people who feel frustrated feel empowered instead?” Obama asked.
In effect, the White House was declaring its support for “alt-labor” workplace organizing, a catch-all term used in the labor movement to describe strategies to improve worker conditions that do not involve traditional union tactics, instead looking at things like social media or nonprofit activism. Most alt-labor groups operate with the ultimate goal of getting workers into unions.
That was Obama’s goal, too. “Workers need a voice and leverage to guarantee middle-class security,” he said. “The bottom line is that as unions have fallen, inequality has risen.”
Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who hosted the event, was even more direct, arguing that unions are always a boon for businesses. “Collective bargaining is a win-win solution … It is a false choice to suggest that you support your workers or you support your bottom line.”
Organized labor needs help finding new members. Only 11.1 percent of workers nationally belong to unions, down almost half from 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year the Burea of Labor Statistics tracked the number.
Major labor groups such as the Service Employees International Union have embraced alt-labor tactics in an effort to crack union-resistant industries such as fast food. SEIU poured $23 million in 2014 alone into promoting the “Fight for $15” minimum wage movement. Obama was introduced at the event by Terrance Wise, an activist with the Fight for $15 movement.
Exactly what kinds of new organizing methods were going to be pursed was not clear, as only part of the White House event was open to the press.
Participants at the event included top Democrats such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, and labor leaders such as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
There was an almost a complete absence of anyone representing employers at the event about workplace issues. Officials from two pro-union companies, most notably Kaiser Permanente, participated, but the White House did not extend invitations to major business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce.
