President Obama was greeted with rock star enthusiasm at this annual gathering of union members and labor activists at the Park Plaza Hotel.
Bounding onto the stage minus a jacket and tie, the President spoke off the cuff about his memories of Boston as a Harvard Law student, the city’s response to the marathon bombing AND the topic of the day: The challenges facing wage earners and the middle class.
“Right now about 40 percent of private sector workers, 44 million people, don’t have access to paid sick leave. You have parents who have to choose between losing income or staying home with their sick child. You have victims of domestic violence or sexual assault who can’t stay home because they might have their pay docked.”
And to that end the President did not arrive in Boston empty handed.
“Unfortunately, only Congress can give this security to all Americans, but where I can act I will. And by the way, I just did. As we were flying over, I signed a new executive order requiring federal contractors to allow employers who work on our contracts to earn up to seven paid sick days per year.”
Make no mistake. The annual Labor Day breakfast is a pro-union, Democratic Party affair. Although Governor Charlie Baker greeted the President at the airport, he was not a part of this year’s event, where politicians and union officials blasted a Baker Administration proposal to privatize certain MBTA bus routes.
Outside the Park Plaza hotel, members of the Carmen's Union demonstrated against the proposal while taxi drivers railed against Uber and an innovation economy that they say is driving them out of work.
Yet Uberhas won wide acceptance from some Democratic Party officials in the state, and it was Massachusetts Democratic majority lawmen and women who joined with Governor Baker to pass legislation making it easier to outsource public services. Still, organized labor is a key and reliable constituent of the Democratic Party.
And Senator Elizabeth Warren, speaking at the breakfast, accused Republicans of working to erode the middle class.
“One hundred percent of wage growth in this country under Republican trickle down economics has gone to the top ten percent. The rich and powerful have rigged the game and they want it to stay rigged. Now we can whimper, we can whine or we can fight back. Me, I’m ready to fight back!”
To thunderous applause, Warren repeated, “I am ready to fight back!”
President Obama also took a swipe at Republicans, whom he said target unions and their power to collectively bargain. He spoke sarcastically about one 2016 GOP candidate in particular. "He is bragging about how he destroyed collective bargaining rights in his state, and says that busting workers prepares him to fight ISIL. I didn't make that up!" This was a thinly veiled reference to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, whose crusade against labor unions is the hallmark of his once surging campaign.
While basking in the moment of the President’s visit to celebrate unions, some activists also see Labor Day as an opportunity to survey the larger political landscape.
The rich and powerful have rigged the game and they want it to stay rigged. Now we can whimper, we can whine or we can fight back. Me, I’m ready to fight back!” --Elizabeth Warren
Unions are only a fraction of the size they were decades earlier when they represented nearly 35 percent of private sector workers or nearly 21 million people at their height in 1979. Many American unions in the mid-part of the 20th century reflected society at large and worked to exclude African Americans, Latinos and new immigrants from their ranks; a point alluded to by Boston Mayor Marty Walsh in his comments.
While praising the Labor Movement as a force that “made America strong”, Walsh also said:
“We need the Labor Movement that helped lead the Civil Rights revolution in the 1960's. Instead, we see some unions still not doing enough to bring people of color and women into their ranks.”
Unions in the past were also rife with nepotism. Others were riddled with corruption.
Unions have also been diminished by a series of moves by anti-union initiatives, most notably President Reagan’s dismantling of the 12,000-strong Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) in 1981. Now, total union membership (all unions) nationwide is closer to 7 percent in the private sector and **13 percent in the public sector. Anti-union think tanks, like the Pioneer Institute locally, and the Heritage Foundation and American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC) nationally, have also served to rationalize anti-union policies, such as right to work laws. But Pete Moser, a management side labor and employment attorney in Boston, argues that some of the damage to unions was self inflicted.
“I think if you asked the organized labor folks what’s wrong, what would see that trend reverse, you would get a lot of different answers, but not the one I think is most important. You’d hear about ‘gee, corporate America has really developed an animus against unions. That needs to change.' (You'd hear) 'A whole cottage industry has cropped up to stop union drives. That wasn’t the way it was in the past,' ” says Moser.
“You'd hear: 'Ever since Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers that’s been the death knell for organized labor.' Never do you hear, 'hey we’ve got to re-look at our product.' At the end of the day, if you’re asking a worker to give you two percent of their wages, you’ve got to ask yourself ‘what are they getting for that?' ”
It’s a question I asked Jerry Works following President Obama’s speech. He's a wage earner at the Park Plaza hotel and a member of UNITE HERE Local 26, the Hotel and Food Service Union.
And Works says unions are now setting their sights on the lowest paid private-sector workers in fast food restaurants, which are seen by many union activists as one of the next frontiers in labor organizing. So too the nation’s airports. Roxanna Rivera is a Vice President with the local Service Employees International Union:
“The workers that work for contractors doing passenger service work at the airport do not have a union. They have struck this past summer twice to basically say to these companies and the airlines how important it is for them to have a better path to improved conditions of work. Again, to improve their lives but to also make this a stronger and safer airport.”
And although he has seen many union setbacks over the years, Massachusetts AFL CIO executive secretary, Rich Rogers, says of late they can also count many victories:
“The hotel workers in Boston organized two new hotels since last Labor Day, the Doubletree up in Cambridge and the Back Bay Hilton. The Teamsters Union organized seven hundred parking lot attendants in Boston and SEIU Local 1199, organized several hundred health care workers. This is labor’s untold story. The best way to address inequities is to put a union contract in people’s back pocket and we’re doing just that in Boston.”
A recent Gallup poll also finds that public attitudes toward unions---consistently negative over the last five years—are turning around. Americans' approval of labor unions—according to the survey--has climbed five percentage points to 58% over the past year, and is at its highest point since 2008.
Senator Elizabeth Warren in her remarks at the Labor Union breakfast said that unions are indispensable to the Middle Class. And President Obama in his Labor Day remarks evoked Patriot quarterback Tom Brady's Deflate-gate run-in with the NFL to suggest why unions are necessary:
“Even Brady’s happy he’s got a union. They had his back. So you know if Brady needs a union, we definitely need unions. “
REPORTED EARLIER DURING THE DAY: Labor Day
7:00 AM Labor Day
Phillip Martin
President Obama will travel to Boston later this morning to address that city’s union leadership and to announce an executive order providing sick leave for tens of thousands of government contract-employees.
President Obama will speak to the Greater Boston Labor Council at its annual Labor Day Breakfast at the Park Plaza Hotel. Rich Rogers, executive secretary of the Labor Council--AFL-CIO, says Massachusetts unions this year are celebrating a string of victories:
Rogers says these actions have attracted the President’s attention :
But local union successes have been tempered by passage of state legislation making it easier to outsource public services, over the objections of the Boston Carmen’s Union. Its members plan to protest outside during the President’s speech against a state proposal to privatize sections of the transportation system.
6:00 AM Labor Day
Air Force One will set down this morning in Boston where President Obama is scheduled to address a Labor Day Rally.
The President’s remarks will be delivered at the annual Greater Boston Labor Council breakfast that will be open to credentialed news media but closed to the public. Roxanna Rivera, a Vice President with the Service Employees International Union, will be among those in attendance:
But Rivera says much more needs to be done for the state’s lowest paid workers:
The Carmen's Union, representing transportation workers, will stage a protest during the President’s visit against a proposal by Republican Governor Charlie Baker to privatize sections of the state’s transportation system.
**But the membership of public sector unions grew steadily. After 1960 public sector unions grew rapidly and secured good wages and high pensions for their members. While manufacturing and farming steadily declined, state- and local-government employment quadrupled from 4 million workers in 1950 to 12 million in 1976 and 16.6 million in 2009.[17] Adding in the 3.7 million federal civilian employees, in 2010 8.4 million government workers were represented by unions,[18] including 31% of federal workers, 35% of state workers and 46% of local workers.[19]
