Liz Medina: ‘Same old rich man strategy’ used to oppose workers’ rights — with a new twist

This commentary is by Liz Medina, executive director, VT AFL-CIO.

What keeps the few in power over the many?

It’s simple: divide and conquer. The “same old rich man strategy” — in the words of the artist collective the Peace Poets – is as old as the institutions of colonization and slavery. The British Empire and the emerging plantation class in the United States stoked racial resentments to prevent landless Europeans and enslaved Africans from standing together across racial lines to demand freedom and justice.

In the 20th century, it was a growing interracial industrial labor movement that frightened the ruling class. These business owners were becoming even more rich and powerful than the plantation owners before them, commanding workforces in the thousands. Legendary labor organizers such as Phillip Murray and Walter Reuther were executing ambitious and successful plans to organize hundreds of thousands of workers on an industrial basis across racial lines.

In 1947, Chamber of Commerce President William Jackson was so shaken by these efforts that he gave a speech in Milwaukee calling “the Philip Murrays and the Reuthers” “extreme elements,” who were “exploiting their authority and monopoly position.”

That same year, the Taft-Hartley Act was passed, which amended the National Labor Relations Act. “Right-to-Work” was part of it — a provision advanced by white supremacist Vance Muse, who used explicitly racist arguments to justify the policy and sell it to white workers. “Right-to-Work” laws made it harder for workers to organize and overcome the extreme imbalance of power.

Today’s bosses are weaponizing race in new ways to prevent workers from regaining some of the ground they have lost over the decades.

A coalition of 27 Vermont labor unions and allied organizations are trying to pass S.102 , also known as the Vermont Protect the Right to Organize “PRO” Act. The bill passed the Senate last year with overwhelming support and is now being considered by the House Committee on General and Housing alongside a complementary constitutional amendment, Proposal 3 , the Workers’ Rights Amendment.

The Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce and the Associated Industries of Vermont, like their McCarthy-Era predecessors, are using the same divide-and-conquer tactics to push back against the advance of workers’ rights.

S.102 would achieve greater equity and fairness in Vermont’s labor laws by expanding the right to organize to agricultural and domestic workers, who were excluded from the protections of the National Labor Relations Act for racist reasons; giving employees free choice to engage with employer’s political or religious speech; and simplifying union elections in the public sector by allowing for majority sign-up or card check elections.

In their testimonies, the chamber and Associated Industries cynically expressed concern that employers would be prevented from holding mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, meetings with employees should S.102 pass. This is false. In reality, it seems they want to preserve their power of coercion to dissuade their workers from organizing.

The definition of political and religious speech is narrowly defined in the bill and would not prohibit DEI meetings — even mandatory ones. The commitment of these employer organizations to the cause of diversity, equity and inclusion appears to be conditional. Their members include banks, real estate companies and health insurance companies, some of whom have profited from discriminatory practices, including steering homebuyers who are Black, Indigenous or people of color into subprime mortgages. The Lake Champlain Chamber itself fought against raising the minimum wage, a policy that has been shown to bridge the racial wage divide.

Now, they are once again fighting labor unions, which have been an effective means of overcoming racial resentment, building support among white workers for policies that benefit African Americans, and lifting BIPOC workers into the middle class by securing higher wages and benefits for jobs disproportionately held by non-white workers.

Let’s hope our legislators remember our history, see through this new twist on the same old rich man strategy, and pass S.102 to protect the right to organize.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Liz Medina: ‘Same old rich man strategy’ used to oppose workers’ rights — with a new twist .