Amazon’s Staten Island union victory and America’s low-wage crisis

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Although unions continue to rack up significant victories, the most recent being a successful organizing vote at an Amazon factory in Staten Island, workers still face immense challenges in an economic and political landscape heavily tilted in favor of workers. employers.

In California, some 48,000 grocers at 540 stores stretching from central California to the Mexican border authorized a March 27 strike against two major chains, Kroger and Albertsons. Whether or not the strike is in effect when you read this column, or has been averted (or is still awaiting the outcome of negotiations), strike authorization itself is a powerful response to the conditions untenable for workers. These conditions underscore the deep inequality that continues to erode the quality of life for millions of people.

Over the past year, financial strains affecting grocers have attracted increasing attention. A recent survey of workers employed by Kroger-owned supermarkets found that nearly two-thirds of workers surveyed said they were unable to meet basic monthly expenses, and of this group a significant number (39%) indicated they were unable to pay for groceries and 44% said they were unable to pay rent. Fourteen percent said they were either currently homeless or had been in the previous year. A New York Times account began with the story of a young worker at a Kroger-owned store who sold blood plasma to make ends meet.

These circumstances, defined by low wages and corporate policies favoring part-time hours, stand in stark contrast to reports of substantial profits and payouts to investors, as well as high executive compensation. Kroger, the nation’s largest grocery chain with 465,000 employees, earned $4.05 billion in 2020, recently passed a stock buyback program to benefit its investors and rewarded its CEO, Rodney McMullen, with $22.4 million in compensation in 2020. This executive compensation is 909 times higher than the median salary of Kroger workers ($24,617).

For its part, Kroger defends its workers’ compensation, pointing to a 2017 increase in the average hourly wage from $13.66 to $16.68 – as well as benefits including health care, retirement savings and assistance. to tuition fees. Yet this average wage, when placed in the context of today’s cost of living, is a far cry from the wage full-time older workers earned 30 years ago, when the hourly wage (l equivalent of $28 an hour today) would help sustain a middle-class existence.

At stake is the concept of a living wage, a sufficient level of remuneration that allows individuals and families to maintain a decent standard of living, providing enough food, housing, medical expenses, transport, education, childcare and other essentials – and still provide enough to meet unexpected expenses that can push a precarious household into eviction and hunger.

This precariousness is the subject of a new report by Oxfam America, “The low-wage crisis in the United States”, which notes that nearly one in three American workers, or 51.9 million people, earn less $15 an hour. The report reminds readers that the federal minimum wage has not budged from $7.25 per hour since 2009 and the tipped federal minimum wage has remained at $2.13 since 1991. Whereas $15 per hour by itself is hardly a living wage in many parts of the United States, the report documents the extent of working poverty in a country where the top 0.1% earn 196 times more than the bottom 90% poorer.

This is why the recent union victories and the renewed interest in unions have become critical. As political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson explain in their seminal book, “Winner-Take-All Politics”, unions represent an “important organizational check on the power of those at the top”. Of all organized progressive interests, they note, “Labour is the only major focused on the broad economic concerns of those on modest incomes.”

The pandemic has helped raise awareness of the essential roles played by millions of low-wage workers in fields as diverse as health and home care, agriculture, construction, and food manufacturing and distribution. This awareness can certainly help a union like the United Food and Commercial Workers in its fight on behalf of those 465,000 workers who voted to authorize a strike.

But awareness alone will not compensate for the decline in union membership that has occurred over many decades, a decline propelled in large measure by hostile legislation and the vast corporate resources devoted to the fight. anti-union. Much hard work remains to be done – as does the need for a bottom-up narrative affirming the role unions play in leveling America’s economic and political playing field.

It’s a story that speaks to a collective reality – but also to the individual reality of each worker: a world in which someone surrounded by an abundance of food at work can be compensated enough, and enough, to share that abundance. at home.