Increasing Unionism
As a union and social activist for most of my life I thought I had almost all the answers for questions related to unionism. Recently, a friend posed a question that I found to be much more difficult than it should be. His question was ‘what would be the first steps a person would take if they wanted to increase unionism from the current 9% to 20% by the year 2030’?
I have been thinking of how to respond. My first thought is that we need to do a better job of educating the public. Then, I thought about how many union members I’ve represented that are not only first-generation union members but are paying union dues for the first time in their lives. Most of today’s union members have no idea how they got the benefits they have today. Long forgotten are the sacrifices made by the generations that came before us. Long forgotten are the memories of blood spilled and lives lost. These sacrifices are not taught in schools, though they should be.
On March 25th, 2021 we will be celebrating the 110th anniversary of the Triangle Shirt Waist factory fire in New York where 146 workers lost their lives. The workers were mostly women in their teens and 20’s, some as young as 14 perished in the fire. At approximately 4:30 pm fire broke out on the 8th floor of the 10-story Asch Building. The fire department ladder trucks could only reach the 6th floor leaving many of the workers to leap to their deaths. An eyewitness to the tragedy William G. Sheperd described it like this; “I learned a new sound- a more horrible sound than description can picture. It was the thud of a speeding, living body on a stone sidewalk. Thud----dead, thud----dead, thud----dead, thud----dead. Sixty-two thud----deads. I call them that because the sound and thought of death came to me each time, at the same instant. There was plenty of chance to watch them as they came down. The height was eighty feet.
So many workers rushed to the elevator to escape the flames that it gave way to the weight of the workers and plunged to the bottom of the elevator pit killing most of the women on board. More than twenty women lost their lives when the fire escape on the exterior of the building collapsed hurling the women to the concrete street below. Fire fighters found a six-foot pile of charred bodies in front of a locked door.
With in a few days of the fire more than 350,000 men and women marched in the streets of New York for better working conditions and more regulations to protect working men and women. These actions spawned a renewed push for job safety and more labor rights and with those labor rights unionism grew.
Increasing unionism in the United States will not be an easy task. Fortunately, President Biden recognizes the role unions play in protecting all workers. His appointments to the National Labor Relation’s Board and the Department of Labor will be much more friendly to labor unions. This is the best opportunity labor unions have had in my lifetime to increase unionism. Let’s start by educating our members and encouraging them to talk about the benefits their union has given them.
