Name: How Workers Can Win in the Age of COVID-19
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How Workers Can Win in the Age of COVID-19

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Photo by Johan Fantenberg, courtesy of Flickr. Photo by Johan Fantenberg, courtesy of Flickr. May Day has a of worker unrest behind it, even if the United States doesn’t technically celebrate International Workers’ Day.&nbsp;The day first became a working person’s holiday after the movement for an eight-hour workday, in 1886, set off a strike wave that roiled the country. May 1 was the day the strikes kicked off, though it was the subsequent violence at Chicago’s Haymarket Square on May 4 that led to a and an international outcry over the execution of several labor leaders.&nbsp;COVID-19 has forced thirty million of us to file for unemployment already, while others are pulling double duty in riskier-than-ever conditions.&nbsp;That history reappears in the United States whenever political unrest is high, so it is not surprising that this year’s May Day has come with calls for a general strike (and rent strikes, too, since rent bills often come due on the first of the month). After all, COVID-19 has thirty million of us to file for unemployment already, while others are pulling double duty in riskier-than-ever conditions.&nbsp;But a general strike is to coordinate, and much of the American labor movement has been in a defensive crouch for decades. So what, as we look out on today’s political landscape, can we do?&nbsp;There have been moments that helped us imagine things otherwise: from the of 2011 to Occupy Wall Street to the Chicago Teachers Union’s in 2012 and 2019 and the “red state wave” of teachers strikes beginning in 2018.One feature of teachers unions’ demands in recent years has been something&nbsp; known as “Bargaining for the Common Good.” Essentially, unions make demands that extend beyond “bread and butter” concerns and involve the broader community in their struggles.In , teachers have worked alongside parents, students, and community organizations. Before the strike, they aligned with representing school staff and park service workers to focus their demands—and their leverage. Three unions in the city setting one strike date increased the pressure on the city to try to divide and conquer by making concessions, and eventually to many of the unions’ demands, including groundbreaking wins around homelessness that the mayor had initially said were not up for bargaining.&nbsp;What if we could do what Chicago’s teachers did, but on a grander scale?That’s the ambition behind a new project from the network. , the project aims “to collect and map as many union contract expirations as we can across the United States” in order to align contracts and launch common good demands across the economy, bridging divides of time and space to build power and solidarity. “Are there critical moments where [we can]&nbsp; imagine doing what I call, ‘Chicago teachers times a hundred?,’ ” asks Stephen Lerner, one of the organizers behind the new project, which aims to map union contracts and organize campaigns in the workplace and the community, in order to visualize the points of leverage that workers still have.&nbsp;Nearly five million workers will be in bargaining or preparing for it in 2021, according to the Bargaining for the Common Good network’s research. How do those workers align their campaigns, and their demands, to exponentially increase their wins?&nbsp;The COVID-19 pandemic also makes it easier for workers to understand themselves as interconnected, for unions to understand that if they think small, they will be crushed.&nbsp;“There’s a lot of talk that we should have mass strikes. We should have general strikes,” Lerner says. “Because there’s this natural alignment that exists, that lets us imagine doing something much bigger.”&nbsp;The labor movement has been playing defense for so long, Lerner adds, continually refighting older battles or attempting to get “back to normal” after a crisis— after the 2008 financial collapse. Power mapping is a time-honored tool for union organizers, and moments like this one make it more urgent. The COVID-19 pandemic also makes it easier for workers to understand themselves as interconnected, for unions to understand that if they think small, they will be crushed.&nbsp;Bargaining for the Common Good’s map is designed to allow workers and organizers to share their contract expiration dates, locations, and needs and demands, along with new organizing efforts. They can add budget cycles for cities and states where public sector unions are at work, and connect private sector workers to one another across the country by common employer (and with all the corporate consolidation of recent years, likely to only be by the coronavirus crisis, many of those workers do have, at the top, a common employer). Using that information to make connections will allow workers to create bigger, broader “common good” demands.“We’re not going to prescribe what [those demands] should be, but some will be climate, some will be sanctuary. Some will be around banks or housing,” Lerner tells The Progressive. “It becomes a heat map of the country.”&nbsp;The project builds on the work of the Chicago teachers, who argued that the schools were in fact “broke on purpose,” and that austerity was a choice, not an inevitability.&nbsp;With the coronavirus lockdown a for states, it is important for public sector workers to be ready to fight that crisis being balanced on their backs—and for private sector workers, whose bosses might be in this moment, to note that there’s plenty of money, it’s just being accumulated by a few.&nbsp;“This is very appropriate for COVID-19,” Lerner says. “We’re doing a giant jigsaw puzzle together, asking, what’s going on with my specific employer? Where else is my employer? How does this relate to budget cuts? And how does this relate to wealth?”&nbsp;Workers around the country are already making demands for the common good. are fighting for better health care. staff and processing workers are demanding safety precautions that will protect customers.. And teachers in New York City recently organized a to force school closures when the coronavirus began spreading in their schools. Amazon tech workers have organized around .&nbsp;If those workers can come together to push for things like more funding for schools and hospitals, and safety equipment for postal workers and warehouse workers, their demands can expand even more.&nbsp;The map also will make it possible for people not yet in unions or organizing around other issues in their communities to identify unions with whom they might partner (or join). Researchers at Bargaining for the Common Good have already started collecting data on contract expirations and organizing campaigns, but they’re also asking for organizers and rank and file members to share that information.&nbsp;“We’re creating a roadmap of how workers go from being rhetorically essential to actually being essential in changing the world and our whole future,” Lerner says. “If people start working on this now, the combination of those demands could reveal what a labor left vision for the future of the country is. If people start working together geographically, then you go on the offense and have really big fights, and the potential for major strikes.”&nbsp;Sign-up for our free weekly e-mail newsletter.Sign up for our free email newsletter!The Progressive Inc. publishes The Progressive magazine plus Progressive.org and Public Schools Advocate.© 2022 • The Progressive Inc. • 931 E. Main Street, Suite 10 • Madison, Wisconsin 53703 • (608) 257-4626Built with

Photo by Johan Fantenberg, courtesy of Flickr. Photo by Johan Fantenberg, courtesy of Flickr. May Day has a of worker unrest behind it, even if the United States doesn’t technically celebrate International Workers’ Day.&nbsp;The day first became a working person’s holiday after the movement for an eight-hour workday, in 1886, set off a strike wave that roiled the country. May 1 was the day the strikes kicked off, though it was the subsequent violence at Chicago’s Haymarket Square on May 4 that led to a and an international outcry over the execution of several labor leaders.&nbsp;COVID-19...

How Workers Can Win in the Age of COVID-19

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