Labor Day 2015: People Are Sticking Together and Winning Together -- Hopefully for Good

In a country where wages have been held down by powerful corporations for decades, and where 42 percent of working people are now paid less than $15 an hour, a growing desire to raise wages is inevitable.
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By any standard 2015 has been a remarkable year for working people throughout the United States.

Working moms and dads have won more protection and more power at the municipal, state and federal levels. In late August, the National Labor Relations Board made it easier for people employed by contractors and franchises to negotiate directly with the big corporations that influence their working conditions. In July New York's Wage Board endorsed $15 an hour for the state's fast food workers. City after city -- San Francisco, Los Angles, Seattle, Birmingham, Ala. and Kansas City, Mo. -- has moved to raise wages for people whose pay falls well short of their contribution to our communities.

In a country where wages have been held down by powerful corporations for decades, and where 42 percent of working people are now paid less than $15 an hour, a growing desire to raise wages is inevitable.

But real change is only inevitable if people stick together and start winning together. That's what's happening now. Collective action and steady victories are fueling the growth of the Fight for $15 movement, which is empowering airport workers, janitors, security officers, laundry workers, home care workers, child care workers, college faculty, fast food workers and others to come together and demand higher wages.

For years working people in both the public-sector and the private-sector have been under attack. Those attacks keep coming -- to the detriment of our health, our families and our communities. But working people are not standing still. This Labor Day there is real hope we can bring our off-kilter economy -- and our stressed out, hectic, off-kilter lives -- back into balance.

In 2015 alone we've seen how people in the private sector are forming or using unions to win improvements on the job:

  • So far this year nearly 5,000 airport workers have stuck together and won the right to form a union. Nationwide, airport workers are pushing for 15 and union rights, and 45,000 airport workers around the country have already won job improvements.
  • Some 25,000 janitors -- from Chicago to Detroit to D.C. -- have won historic new contracts. More than 50 percent of these janitors will be paid more than15 an hour by the end of the contract.
  • Security officers in Indianapolis, Sacramento, Baltimore and New Jersey have won their first-ever union contracts. They are uniting with 50,000 other officers in the largest union of security officers and winning guaranteed raises, quality healthcare and dignity and respect on the job.

Experience tells us that progressive change happens in America when a huge people's movement interacts with more elite power brokers in government to move the entire country forward. The partnership is difficult. Sometimes it's not pretty. But it's devastatingly effective.

This is what happened in the 1930s, when a powerful socialist people's movement pushed FDR's New Dealers to write the rules of a more stable and fundamentally healthier economy. The result? The largest middle class the world has ever seen -- and decades of broad prosperity.

But not everybody was living the good life. The great post-war American middle class was fundamentally flawed. For the most part, people of color were excluded -- from decent housing, from quality education, from good jobs.

The exclusion of African-Americans from the post-war middle class led to its downfall. Billionaires, demagogues, and conservative media celebrities used and still use racial rhetoric -- whether of the "dog whistle variety" or overt -- to divide working people in our country from one another. They have stolen away the broader prosperity the country once enjoyed. Today far fewer people even identify themselves as middle class.

So here we are again. In 2015 hundreds of thousands of people are marching. The Fight for $15 is a juggernaut -- destroying barrier after barrier. Black Lives Matter is in full swing. The immigration reform movement is getting stronger. Many elected officials are doing what they're supposed to be doing in our democracy -- representing our highest aspirations. Change is happening. Progress feels inevitable.

But this time around needs to be different. We need to resist the attempts Republican presidential candidates are making to divide us. As we build American Middle Class 2.0, we need to make sure that everybody -- African-Americans, immigrants and whites -- are fully included.

We're not there yet. But when we get there, the new middle class must be as diverse as our country. It must be built to last. It must be for good.

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