The Future of Labor Unions and Community Coalitions

Over the last 30 years, the American labor movement has periodically gone through wrenching discussions of its failures to organize new workers and grow its membership. See, for example,  “The Changing Situation of Workers and Their Unions” (February, 1985), “New Voice for American Workers” (June, 1995), and “Change to Win” (July 2005). Almost every time, unions promise to listen to their members and allied non-governmental organizations more carefully and rethink union structures, organizing strategy, alliances, and engagement. In the past, despite the best of intentions, the results — especially in terms of membership growth — turn out to be negligible due to lukewarm leadership support, insufficient resources, and/or poor planning and execution. More importantly here, past strategic plans have left many community groups and political allies feeling betrayed by the process when the labor movement did not fully embrace their issues.

In March, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka called for yet another reevaluation because membership continues to decline and unions have lost political power and relevance. From now until the September 2013 convention, Trumka has asked the labor movement and its supporters to entertain new directions, strategies, and partnerships in the common struggle for social and economic justice. Trumka hopes this reexamination will result in a more sustainable new plan. In speaking to past initiatives and union leadership failures, Trumka says that the AFL-CIO is serious and that the time is over for leadership “bluster or head-in-the-sand insistence that everything is fine.”

But labor’s coalition partners are suspicious of the new initiative, especially community groups with working-class ties. Specifically, many feel that labor/community coalitions remain largely one-sided, primarily serving the interests of labor rather than working-class communities. For example, in the fight against the Ohio anti-union bill SB5 in 2011, community groups loaned labor groups, particularly SEIU, many of their best neighborhood organizers. Despite promises of continuity and reciprocity, SEIU brought the neighborhood organizers to Columbus just three days after the election and announced that they were no longer useful – but they should turn over all their organizing materials to the union. So ended the first experience of many neighborhood organizers with the labor movement. Later, many openly wondered how much union support they would receive for their organizing objectives, such as foreclosures, vacant housing, and human trafficking.

Community groups have to bear part of the blame for such actions. Clearly, since the destruction of ACORN by conservative groups, the rebuilding of sustainable community organization has been episodic, at best. In part, this is because of the difficulty of raising funds locally, which has led to the call for “monetizing organizing efforts.” The result is that community groups and working-class organizers have been forced to chase resources provided by labor unions and foundations, which means their campaigns often coalesce around other people’s issues. Often this has been done under the guise of “capacity building.” But, one might ask, capacity building for whom? While there is always tension around which local or national issues should receive organizing energy and resources, the net effect has been a general decline in grassroots organizing around sustainable neighborhood issues over the last few years. Regardless, community groups are undergoing their own reexamination of issues, structures, and coalitions.

As unions reconsider their futures, what should they consider? While there is no one answer, several key questions should be part of any reexamination.

First, will the organization in the future ask for participation or cooperation from its membership as it develops issues, strategies, and tactics? Participatory models stimulate and involve members in problem solving, group process, and collective action rather than just asking for support.

Second, will the relationship between labor and community groups be transformative or transactional? As Marshall Ganz has suggested, “Transformational” leadership engages followers in the risky and often exhilarating work of changing the world, work that often changes the activists themselves. Its sources are shared values that become wellsprings of the courage, creativity and hope needed to open new pathways to success. Transactional leadership, on the other hand, is about horse-trading and operating within the routine, and it is practiced to maintain, rather than change, the status quo.”

Third, will new labor and community coalitions be built on a transformative culture of organizing and education that builds skills, capacity, and sustainability among all parties rather than transactional policies and actions that are situational and episodic?

Fourth, will the new labor-community coalitions develop goals and strategies that will build capacity, or will they just develop a series of tactics? Will they be able to go beyond creative tactics that are unsustainable, unlike the Occupy Movement?

Fifth, will the new coalition be based around the values of social and economic justice and reciprocity, not just material advantage and one issue politics? That is, more attention, not just lip service, must be given to injustice, inequality, and discrimination? And will coalition efforts include more direct action and broad public protests?

Finally, will the labor movement develop a real plan to move forward, remembering that hope is not a plan and that any plan needs real resources? This means no unfunded mandates.  Substantial resources must be directed at outside organizing rather than to internal struggles, as we saw recently in California.

Obviously, the stakes are high for the labor community, as the labor movement must change if it is to remain relevant. But can it really change? There are some indications that it can. For example, the AFL-CIO leadership has recently changed its policies regarding immigration. As a result, union activists have joined with pro-immigration allies and become a force at pro-immigration events and the lobbying of Congress.

But questions remain.  Will this round of reform be episodic? Can it change at the local level? The latter will take a commitment to broad-based internal organizing that might involve more change than union leaders can endure. But it could unleash the formidable powers of a rank and file that has been beat down by concessions and anti-union attacks. But now, more than ever, they are ready to fight.

John Russo

Debating Economic Development: Downtown versus the Neighborhood

Last week, the Center for Working-Class Studies distributed a commentary on how proponents of economic development and local government leaders were ignoring the continuing struggles of Youngstown’s neighborhoods.  “A Renaissance for Whom? Youngstown and Its Neighborhoods” attempted to capture community discontent over the idea that developing downtown would, in and of itself, solve the city’s problems.

What’s happening in Youngstown will, we expect, sound familiar to readers from around the country. Widespread job loss affects not just individuals but also communities, and for deindustrialized areas, the latest economic wounds exacerbate old injuries.  The same can be said for the tension between promoting economic development and addressing the needs of working-class people in urban neighborhoods.

Between us, we have been studying Youngstown for well over a decade.  In preparing our analysis of the current situation, we attended dozens of community meetings and interviewed over 50 local residents and community organizers. We found that long term unemployment (see the CWCS’s discussion of the de facto unemployment rate), the loss of unemployment benefits and savings, the housing crisis, and the reductions in social services were devastating to the area’s already struggling neighborhoods. The Youngstown area has lost over 9000 jobs since the beginning of the ”Great Recession” and has 22,000 vacant parcels of land and another 4000 homes in delinquency or foreclosure.  Yet local leaders have largely ignored problems of unemployment and housing in working-class neighborhoods, choosing to accentuate the so-called “Youngstown Renaissance” that has brought new high-tech jobs and several new restaurants and clubs to downtown.  Yet many economic development staffers and most of those who have moved to the area to work in new downtown businesses live outside of the city.  No wonder they prefer to tout the transformation their work brings to downtown rather than the conditions of neighborhoods they prefer to avoid.

Over the past decade, Youngstown’s media image has changed, as reporters have praised Youngstown’s 2010 plan to adapt to its shrinking population and identified the city as a good place to start a new business.  New business and more efficient local government do contribute to the overall strength of the local economy.  We applaud efforts to bring new businesses to town or support new restaurants and activities downtown.  But in order to thrive, deindustrialized communities need good working-class jobs and neighborhoods, not just professional jobs and nice suburbs.

Unfortunately, Youngstown’s efforts to shrink wisely have been uneven, and city government has too often failed to address local problems effectively.  In response, local neighborhood associations are growing, taking on the roles usually played by city governments.  These neighborhood associations, many formed with assistance from the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, have become the de facto community planning agency.  No doubt, similar moves are happening in communities around the country, especially as the recession decimates state, county, and local budgets.

Organizing around the goals of stabilization and sustainability, neighborhood groups are tackling everything from forming block watches to studying home ownership, the amount and quality of rental property, and vacant housing.  Yet, they have limited economic power.

In our commentary, we made a point of suggesting some strategies for addressing the community’s problems.  For example, small businesses can help stabilize neighborhoods, but community banking and support has been minimal. Local banks and governments could do much more to foster local microeconomies.

The area might also benefit from more efficient, consolidated local governance.  The county’s population has dropped to the point that it is now smaller than many urban centers that have a single local government.  But it is also highly balkanized, and racial and class divides have made even discussion of consolidation impossible.    A few Joint Economic Development Districts (JEDDs) have been negotiated, but those efforts have been hard-fought, and most suburban communities in the Mahoning Valley reject that option, even though it’s been shown to work well in similar areas, such as nearby Akron.

What could happen in Youngstown and cities like it if not just city governments but also the creative, educated, technically sophisticated, and energetic young professionals who advocate for downtown development made neighborhood revitalization a priority?  What role do non-governmental institutions, like local universities, the media, and community groups, have to play?   Urban universities, like Youngstown State, should not just support research that could generate new businesses but must also pursue local community research involving urban blight, crime, and breaking down long-standing barriers of race and class. Local media should investigate neighborhood issues and serve as a watchdog for local development efforts.  Community groups must move beyond blockwatches and research to engage in community actions that hold economic and political leaders accountable.

The response to the article was somewhat predictable. Many called or sent us notes saying how much they appreciated the piece.  A few who generally agreed with the points expressed frustration that their own efforts were not acknowledged.  Some in local government and economic development organizations dismissed the piece.  Youngstown’s Mayor brushed it aside as the work of know-nothing “academics,” for example. This reluctance to engage with the broad arguments about neighborhood deterioration, racism, organizational inefficiency, crime, unemployment, vacancy, and high rates of concentrated poverty is disturbing. It suggests a refusal to recognize, never mind to address, the problems that continue to exist in Youngstown and America. Too many leaders are ignoring the decreasing access of most Americans to prosperity and the “American Dream.”

We see this most dramatically when critics dismiss policies aimed at ensuring equal opportunity and access to resources. The pattern played out in the health care debate and again as Congress delayed extending unemployment benefits.  It isn’t just that critics don’t seem to care what happens to poor and working-class people.  They define any effort to provide support for the have-nots as “socialism.”  So we shouldn’t have been surprised when a member of the Youngstown Office for Economic Development suggested that the idea that the city should force corner stores to carry fresh produce – something we did not advocate — was “Stalinist.”

The working class, and indeed much of the middle class, is erased and ignored every time someone claims that America is “recovering” from the current recession. Companies may be earning record profits, but millions remain unemployed, and the data consistently shows that the poor and working class have suffered most during the recession.

A healthy city demands that wealth, opportunity, and resources are shared as equitably as possible. While any “renaissance” of Youngstown is welcomed, such a rebirth must benefit the majority of people. Until we see declines in crime, poverty, and unemployment and increases in home ownership, education levels, and economic prosperity, then any talk of a renaissance is premature.  The same is true for the nation: until our leaders pay more attention to ordinary families than to the wealthy and privileged, until our economy creates not just profits for investors but also good jobs, until our neighborhoods thrive again, we haven’t recovered from the Great Recession.

John Russo is a professor of Labor Studies at Williamson College of Business Administration and codirector of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University.

James Rhodes is the Simon Research Fellow at Manchester University (UK) and visiting scholar at the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University.

Health care for all: caring for the uninsured

As Jack Metzgar wrote last week, health coverage is an important issue for the working class.  As health insurance becomes less available and as urban hospitals around the country restructure, working-class people are bearing the brunt of the health care crisis.  The situation here in Youngstown is a case in point.

Forum Health is the largest health care network in the Youngstown-Warren area. Like other urban health care networks, it has been faced with “radical restructuring” that disproportionately impacts the poor, the working class, people of color, and the elderly. Should parts of Forum Health close, Youngstown’s other major hospital, Humility of Mary Health Partners and the Ohio North East Health Systems, would have to shoulder an ever greater share of the areas $81 million charity care.

In 2006, when the restructuring plans were announced, Sherry Linkon and I argued that access to health care was public health issue (Op-ed “Questions raised by Forum’s Restructuring” The Vindicator, 4/08/06).  We proposed that local leaders and regional Boards of Public Health should develop a comprehensive community health care network. Two years later, I’m pleased to see just such a system being created in our area.

In 2007, a group called the Mahoning Valley Access to Care coalition (MVACC), with representatives from the areas’ major healthcare providers, began to gather information and develop a guide to local health care resources. With assistance from the United Way and local healthcare providers, they created the Mahoning Valley Resource Guide.  It was distributed at a recent “summit” on community access attended by over 150 people.

At the summit, MVACC took the next step in developing a community health care system by bringing together community leaders and speakers from other Ohio communities (Akron and Toledo) that had already created such networks.  The most interesting model was the Toledo-Lucas County Carenet. It provides “comprehensive access to healthcare for low-income residents” who are uninsured and do not qualify for other government healthcare programs. By coordinating access to charity care through its providers at no-cost or reduced rates, Carenet dramatically increased primary care visits and outpatient services while simultaneously reducing inpatient days and emergency room visits between 2004 and 2007.  Carenet succeeded in expanding basic care for the uninsured while reducing health care costs. As Carenet Executive Director Jan Ruma explained, the success of program shows what can be done if people work together, if organization and community leaders will pursue the community’s interests instead of their own, and if each organization and health care provider contributes and is held accountable.

The Carenet model can not replace the need for universal health care.  But its cooperative approach can provide a stopgap. The need for access to low-cost health care is growing, as more middle-class workers, like the working class, are losing access to health insurance amid a struggling economy.  A September report entitled “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States 2007,” details the challenge:  long term inequality is rising, median household income is falling, and fewer employers are providing subsidized health insurance.  As a result, the ranks of uninsured, underinsured, and those of Medicaid have increased dramatically. This isn’t just about whether you can get treatment for a cold.  Researchers have long understood that socioeconomic condition contributes to your overall physical and mental health and life expectancy.  Unless we find a way to give more people access to health care, our well-being and longevity will falter.  As economic conditions become harsher, and as health care providers become more stressed, the need for community care models grows.  Such approaches may fill the gap, but ultimately, we all need universal health coverage.  And that’s not just a working-class issue anymore.

John Russo