A Bigger Lesson Learned: The Verizon Strike and the U.S. Economy

For the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), as well as Verizon management – at least on the surface – there’s been no bigger story this Spring. The unity of the CWA and IBEW, other Unions who’ve rallied around Verizon Workers, and even the public reflects how normal cuts have become and how unusual resistance on this scale is in the United States of the 21st century.

For working women and men, and retirees in the US, there is little structural economic support. We can pretend otherwise, but look at nearly every other industrial democracy, where high level and cost effective health care is the norm, retirement security means much higher income replacement, public policy supports retaining jobs in key industries and most important, there is widespread public and political support for collective bargaining.

We are in an economic free fall. Pretending that we are consumers and not working Americans first will not fix it. Tax cuts will not fix it. Attacks on working Americans and their rights will make the landing even harder.

We need to restore workers’ rights in a meaningful way so that we all can negotiate and engage our employers in a meaningful way. Human resource leaders at major US based employers should be ashamed of looking to cut costs at every turn, then collaborating with multi-billion dollar political machines to fight every political attempt to restore balance through public policy. For example, nearly without exception, US management opposed federal legislation mandating that all employers pay for quality care. Even those employers like Verizon that provide decent health care end up subsidizing employers that are health care deadbeats by ensuring spouses who work for those companies.

RELATED: 5 Key Reasons to Back the Working People at Verizon

Collective bargaining can make a difference. Look back to 1938, when the United States still was gripped by the last of the recessions that made up the Great Depression. Well known economist John Maynard Keynes wrote to President Franklin D Roosevelt, stating that the jobs program and financial regulation were important, but “I regard the expansion of collective bargaining as essential.”

 

Keynes was not particularly a union supporter but he understood, as did economists for decades to come, that collective bargaining is a critical engine to fire up the demand curve and enable workers to improve their conditions in discussion with management, thus improving the economy. We will never have an economic recovery in this country if instead very profitable employers automatically cut wages, cut benefits and ship more good jobs overseas because their colleagues at other firms are all doing it. That remains a race to the bottom.

We can’t have a recovery based on a “dollar store” economy. Unless workers can truly use bargaining rights to better their conditions, that’s exactly where we’re headed. The strike at Verizon demonstrates the severity of the problem, but it will take a majority based political movement to fix it.