EditorIn a rather thought-provoking LA Times op-ed last year, Harold Meyerson, editor-at-large of the American Prospect and an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post, wrote about the “new labor movement” and its efforts to raise wages for workers who may never, ultimately, become dues paying members.
Since that time, it is estimated that the SEIU has spent approximately $80 millions in its multi-year Fight For $15 campaign to unionize the fast-food industry, as well as to unionize it.
While the movement has morphed to a larger political campaign now. Thus far, the SEIU has not garnered a single new member.
This begs the question that Meyerson wrote last year: How many resources can the union [SEIU] afford to spend on a campaign unlikely to generate any new members for the foreseeable future?
More importantly, to Meyerson’s larger question: By taking their current approach, are today’s unions headed in the direction that the 19th century Knights of Labor took? And, if so, will it end with the same results?
For better or worse, the new labor movement is beginning to look a little like the 19th-century Knights of Labor, a workers’ organization that didn’t seek contracts between workers and their employers, but rather worked to advance workers’ interests through legislation. The problem with that model is that the Knights fell apart after two decades, unable to financially sustain itself, while the unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, which did have workplace contracts and dues-paying members, managed to survive. This is a problem that today’s unions are compelled again to confront: SEIU’s fast-food campaign is the prime mover of the minimum-wage momentum sweeping much of the nation, but how many resources can the union afford to spend on a campaign unlikely to generate any new members for the foreseeable future? [Emphasis added.]
At this point, no one really knows the answer.
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