Maine needs candidates who will reverse the decline of organized labor

Cynthia Phinney is the president of the Maine AFL-CIO, a federation of over 200 unions and 42,000 workers and retirees in Maine. Eighty years ago this past August, 4,000 union workers joined 200 Portland Public Works Department (PWD) employees in a massive general strike that shut down the city for two days. Bus drivers, painters, carpenters, laborers, electrical workers, truckers, plumbers and steamfitters, machinists, longshoremen and even barbers walked off the job in solidarity with the members of the American State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 946 who had been on strike for 17 days. Public employees didn't have the legal right to strike in those days, but conditions had become so bad for the PWD workers that they were left with no other option. They had gone without pay raises for several years during the Great Depression and had dutifully done their jobs to maintain the city during the war. But with the war over, the workers demanded to be paid what they were worth and to be granted benefits like sick leave, overtime pay and an eight-hour day. The Portland General Strike was part of a massive post-war strike wave that erupted across the nation as more than 5 million workers spanning several industries walked off the job to demand fair wages and better treatment. For more than two weeks, Portland City Manager James E. Barlow tried to wait out the PWD workers as garbage piled up on the streets uncollected and roadwork ceased. But after thousands of bus drivers, construction workers, truckers and other unionized workers joined the strike on the 17th day, Barlow and the City Council finally relented and recognized the union. As the Portland General Strike teaches us, the post-war boom in working-class prosperity was not just handed to us. We had to fight for it by organizing and occasionally withholding our labor to get a better deal. It was the power of organized workers who brought us living wages, the eight-hour day, workplace safety standards and more. Advertisement By the 1950s, 65% of American households were able to get by on a single income. However, the 1946 strike wave shook business elites to their core and they poured in money to weaken the power of organized labor. A year later, an anti-labor congressional majority, including Maine's entire congressional delegation, voted to pass the infamous Taft-Hartley law that severely restricted union power and allowed states to pass so-called 'right-to-work for less' laws that weaken unions by allowing workers to get the benefits of collective bargaining without paying dues. In Maine, James E. Barlow tried to take revenge on the strikers who humiliated him by launching a right-to-work for less referendum, which ended up getting crushed 2-1 on Election Day. Unfortunately, anti-labor state legislatures all over America did pass these laws and now they are the law of the land in more than half of the states in the U.S. Taft-Hartley and years of anti-labor legal decisions helped create a $1.5 billion union avoidance industry to prevent workers from exercising their right to form unions. For decades, worker pay and productivity rose together, but by the late 1970s, offshoring of union jobs and rampant union busting had eroded the bargaining power of the American worker so much that productivity began growing faster than typical worker compensation. Since 1979, productivity has outpaced wages by threefold. What changed? In the 1950s, approximately 1 in 3 American workers were members of labor unions, but today just 10% of workers are union members. This didn't happen by accident. We have reached jaw-dropping levels of economic inequality in this country because of deliberate policies that can be reversed. U.S. Senate candidate Troy Jackson and 2nd District congressional candidate Matt Dunlap have pledged to support the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would repeal the most damaging parts of Taft-Hartley, crack down on union busters and level the playing field to give workers a fair chance to join a union if they desire. Year after year polls show public support for unions is at near record highs, crossing political, age and demographic lines. It's time to end this 80-year experiment and return bargaining power to the American worker. In November, let's elect candidates who will give us a shot at the American Dream.