Ryan Cooper: Bad laws are suffocating workers who want to unionize. We can change that.
into a worker tent encampment to put down a coal strike, killing four women and 11 children.
This overreaction can be explained in part by the American cult of the entrepreneur. Workers’ being the primary creators of corporate surplus or having a right to a say in the business’ operation strikes directly at the status, ego and self-conception of the “bootstrapping” capitalist, who responds with a slavering frenzy.
There is still hope under the current system. NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is quite possibly the most pro-labor agency chief in its history. As Harold Meyerson, Abruzzo is dusting off several bolder legal doctrines from early in the agency’s history and taking more aggressive steps to punish employers who violate the law.
But Abruzzo could still use some help. Two strategies are obvious: First, update the basis for union recognition from the individual workplace. Instead, labor law should transition to “.” Under this system, the government requires employers and union representatives in a particular area to come together periodically to negotiate a union contract. That agreement is then automatically extended to every worker in the sector.
At any rate, it is a basic fact that employers enjoy a gigantic advantage when it comes to dividing up the corporate surplus. The only way workers have a chance to get a fair share of those profits is by banding together in unions. The workers at Starbucks are taking the best advantage they can of the laws on the books — but now they’re being handicapped by those same laws. It is only right and fair that they be given the tools they need to succeed against such overwhelming odds.