How to Revive Workers’ Rights in a New Economy

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6401/how_to_revive_workers_rights_in_a_new_economy/

Tuesday September 7 12:21 pm

By Amy Dean

We must consider how a new generation of unions can become relevant in a transformed economy.

Every Labor Day, we hear about the landmark achievements of working people and their unions. Advocates of the past successfully worked to prohibit child labor and to create the 40-hour workweek. They closed sweatshops and ended systems of industrial homework, in which factory employees were made to do labor-intensive tasks for businesses late at night and in their own homes.

These achievements were indeed historic. At the same time, one wonders if these hard-fought rights are still meaningful for American workers today. In our global economy, many of us bring our work home with us, few enjoy an eight-hour workday, and everyone is forced to compete with sweatshops and child labor in far corners of the world.

This year, when so many Americans are struggling just to get by--rather than working to make a decent living--we must rethink what type of labor institutions are needed to restore and protect workers rights and make work pay again.

Since the 19th century, our economy has cycled through a radical transformation every fifty to seventy-five years. Just as America went from having an agrarian economy to an industrial one in the late 1800s and early 1900s, we have more recently shifted into an information economy. During every period of transition, many people get left behind and our democracy feels the strain of growing inequality. Too often, the insecurity and resentment fostered by rapid structural change provokes harmful waves of scapegoating and anti-immigrant nativism.

It takes the organized efforts of working people to reverse these trends toward exclusion and to ensure that each new epoch will bring a shared prosperity. During the transition to the industrial economy, it was not preordained that the auto, steel, or textile industries would provide living wages, health care, pensions, and other benefits that allowed for a stable, thriving middle class in this country. Rather, employees needed to use the institution of collective bargaining to come together, negotiate with their employers, and demand the conditions that would provide a healthy quality of life for working people.

FULL story at link.