$15 and a Revolution: Building Anti-Capitalist Worker’s Movements

Stephanie Luce School of Labor and Urban Studies/CUNY

For the New School conference in honor of Erik Olin Wright, September 26, 2019 DRAFT – not for citation

Ten years after the economic crisis, there is little sign that any country has a clear

path toward a sustainable economic and political model. Instead we see growing tensions

between right-wing and left-wing movements, building off of people’s tremendous anger

and frustration at the failures of political parties, trade unions and corporations. Alliances

appear to be shifting in unexpected ways, as we witness surprising political outcomes.

Politicians and parties now know they need the support of at least some working people to

rule. Employers and investors fear too much social unrest, and also know that they need

workers to build and buy their goods. There is space for workers to make demands and

win.

Workers are, in fact, winning. At least on a small scale, workers have won notable

victories in many countries in the years since the 2008 crisis. Conservatives took early

control of the narrative coming out of the crisis, managing to shift blame from Wall Street

and banks to public sector workers and unions. But with the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall

Street in 2011 the left gained ground. Movements grew to democratize, overthrow

dictators, and build bottom-up solutions to inequality. Despite falling union density,

weaker political parties, and massive corporate power, workers were winning higher

minimum wages, restrictions on temporary and subcontracted worker and even major

1 labor law reform. Even in China, there was a push to allow workers to elect their own trade

union representatives and engage in collective bargaining.

Some of these victories were a complete surprise. In 2012, a group of fast food

workers went on strike in New York City, demanding a union and $15 hour. At the time, the

state minimum wage was only $7.25. It seemed impossible to imagine how McDonald’s

workers could more than double their wages. Politicians agreed - even Democratic Party

leaders like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the issue was a “non-starter.” Yet only

a few years later, Cuomo signed a $15 minimum wage bill for the state. Mayors around the

country were signing off on citywide minimum wage laws. And in the UK, the conservative

party raised the national minimum wage to a “.”

Of course, a $15 hour minimum wage won’t solve poverty. It is barely a living wage

in Manhattan or London and doesn’t help those who are unemployed. But the large

increases were shocking for several reasons. First, neoliberal orthodoxy asserts the need

for so-called labor market flexibility: making it easy for employers to hire and fire at will, and deregulating labor markets as much as possible. In the neoliberal world, minimum wage laws should be abolished altogether. The fact that politicians were re-regulating labor

markets after decades of deregulation was a surprise. This included raising minimum

wages but also regulating the use of temporary and contract workers, and even giving

unions more rights in some countries.

Second, the raises were surprising in that they were so large. Economists had begun

to find that prior minimum wage increases could be absorbed with little or no negative

impact on employment or prices. But the jump to $15 was much larger than usual. Even a

few economists supportive of higher minimums urged caution on raises this high.⁠i

2 At least on paper, it seemed workers were winning significant gains. But as Erik Olin

Wright has persuasively argued, capitalism is harmful for the working class. To have lasting gains, workers must challenge exploitation at the heart of the capitalist employment relationship. Working class movements must fight for true democracy.

* * * In 2016 and 2017 I set out to visit a few of the countries that had recently raised wages or changed labor laws. I chose countries of very different types: the UK, Indonesia,

Slovenia and Chile. I also spoke with activists and academics in South Africa, Canada,

Germany and the US. I wanted to learn how the victories were won, and whether these victories were in fact victories. Were the gains won through major compromises that undermined workers in other ways? In this paper I explore whether these campaigns have elements of anti-capitalist movements.

Labor Reform and Anti-Capitalism

Wright describes five strategies historically employed in anti-capitalist movements: smashing, dismantling, taming, resisting and escaping capitalism. He argues that the most effective strategy is to combine these approaches to erode capitalism.

When workers demand higher wages or better treatment from their boss they are primarily resisting capitalism. Whether done as an individual or a union, workers assert their right to a greater share of profits. These are plays in the game that serve to neutralize the harms of capitalism. But even if they succeed, they have done nothing to change the rules of the game – to transcend capitalism.

3 But as Wright argues, when workers come together in unions across workplaces, as

voters, and in alliances with other social actors, they have the potential to change the rules

of the game. As movements, they can make demands on the state to regulate capital, such as

through minimum wage laws or labor standards.

Some scholars have suggested labor’s increased reliance on legislative strategies to

reflect weakness: if workers can no longer win wage increases through strikes or direct

labor resistance, they have turned to trying to win through the state. Others claim that

demands such as wage increases are non-reformist reforms that will only solve problems

of capitalism, making it stronger in the end.

But Marx saw the early legislative campaigns to limit the workday and raise minimum wages as an advance for the working class. Marx wrote of the Ten Hour Day campaign in England: “the workers have to put their heads together and, as a class, compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier by which they can be prevented from selling themselves and their families into slavery and death by voluntary contract with capital.” It wasn’t just that the Ten Hours Bill resulted in concrete material gains for workers. It was also that the Bill challenged “the blind rule of the supply and demand laws.”ii Furthermore, wage and labor standards campaigns can be spaces to educate

workers about the nature of exploitation and the limits of capitalism.

Wright agrees that worker movements, an anti-capitalist movements, should engage and challenge the state. While many reforms may solve problems of capitalism, such as minimum wages creating a boost in aggregate demand, they can still at the same time undermine or erode capitalism.

4 How can this happen? What characteristics of worker movements can help build anti-capitalist movements? How can wage campaigns move beyond taming and resisting, to eroding?

I argue that many current worker movements include a range of actors, sometimes with different interests vis a vis capitalism. These actors have varying goals and values that motivate their participation in raising wages. Anti-capitalists can promote anti-capitalist values within these alliances, and beyond that, engage the state in a way that could possibly erode capitalism.

I begin with the story of the UK living wage movement as an example of the complex alliances that are pushing for higher wages. I then discuss the ways in which wage activists can promote anti-capitalist values and engage the state.

New Alliances and Mixed Motives

In each of the cases I studied, labor unions and working class organizations worked in coalition with other forces to push their demands. The UK is a great example. The living wage movement began in London in 2001, launched by community-based organization, the

East London Community Organization (TELCO). TELCO (now called Citizens UK) comes out of the Alinsky tradition in the US, and primarily organizes faith-based organizations and their members.

The Labour Party began to push for the establishment of a statutory minimum wage in the 1990s. The UK passed its first-ever national minimum wage in 1999, at a fairly conservative rate. TELCO kept hearing from members that the rate was too low so they launched the living wage campaign, calling on large employers to voluntarily adopt a living

5 wage policy, committing to pay all direct employees as well as any sub-contracted

employees working on the premises, a living wage. They were successful with a number of

large institutions, such as the international accounting firm KPMG, large banks, and

universities. They then pressured local politicians, particularly the London mayor, to adopt

living wage for government agencies and contracts. The leftist mayor was

the first to agree during his re-election campaign in 2004. Surprisingly, the next mayor,

Boris Johnson, not only agreed to the living wage in 2008, but became a fairly vocal

advocate. He was joined by business leaders, such as Guy Stallard of KPMG, in publicly

pushing UK employers to voluntarily adopt a living wage. In another surprising twist, the

Conservative exchequer George Osborne announced in 2015 that the national minimum

wage rate would be raised to a living wage level.

Many unions remained skeptical of the living wage movement as it was calling for a

voluntary wage increase. But UNISON, the public sector union, was an active participant

from the start. Sampson Low notes that the union had pushed for the national minimum

wage to be a living wage. That did not happen so when they were approached by TELCO to

join the living wage campaign in 2000, UNISON was ready to sign on.iii Over time, a few

other unions have become involved as well, particularly unions of low-wage workers as well as the Trades Union Council (TUC).

Over the past 20 years, the Labour Party, Tories, unions, employers and community organizations have all played a role in promoting and passing higher wages, either through the voluntary Living Wage campaign, or the statutory regulations. Clearly this broad assortment has different goals and values in relation to higher wages.

6 By 2018, over 4,300 employers had signed up to voluntarily pay the living wage,

above and beyond the statutory rate. Their reasons varied. Some, like the international

bank HSBC, were pressured relentlessly until they agreed to sign on. Others wanted to

avoid public shame and signed up before protestors came. Some saw a value to their own

brand: by accrediting as a living wage employer they could improve their image and

perhaps increase customer demand. Some may find that paying the higher wage is less

hassle than continuing to resist. But a sizable number of employers said they signed up for

living wage for moral reasons or because they felt the idea represented their company

values. Over 95 percent of living wage accredited employers reported in a poll they wanted

to be part of a mission.⁠iv IKEA signed up for living wage accreditation in 2015, stating,

“Introducing the Living Wage is not only the right thing to do for our co-workers; It also makes good business sense. This is a long-term investment in our people based on our values and our belief that a team with good compensation and working conditions is in a position to provide a great experience to our customers.”⁠v

Conservative politicians used similar arguments. Neil Jameson, Executive Director of

Citizens UK, says that while Ken Livingstone was the first major political supporter of living

wage, his successor was an even better proponent for the living wage than

Livingstone because he had access to the private sector:

Pretty much every speech he made he recommended paying the London living wage. With different arguments. Ken Livingston used the sort of moral argument and the socialist argument; and Boris Johnson used the business argument. It’s good for business. It’s good for London. It’s good for money is circulating in our neighborhoods and he is very proud to be a champion. And he did, and was.vi

7 Johnson paid the living wage in all the significant contracts of the Mayorality, including

cleaners, security staff, fire, police, and transport. Johnson’s support for the living wage

was a big step. The idea that living wages were good for business and for the economy

spread. In 2010, Citizens UK held an Assembly to invite the candidates for prime minister

and once again, asked them, “if elected, would you build living wage into all government

contracts?” All said they would. Conservative Party candidate went so far

as to say, “The living wage is an idea whose time has come.”vii

After the Conservative Chancellor George Osborne announced the national living wage in 2015 critics noted it wasn’t really a living wage, in that it isn’t based on the cost of living, and it only applies to people 25 and older. Others suggest that the Conservatives wanted to cut government spending on in-work tax credits and used the living wage as a

(failed) ploy to do that. Still, it was a huge increase. In the first year after implementation, the number of workers covered by the national minimum wage went from 1 million to 1.6 million, and by 2020, it is projected to cover 3 million workers (going from 5 percent to 14 percent of the labor force).⁠viii

What seems likely is that the Conservative Party was shrewd enough to understand

the popularity of minimum wage and living wage. As more and more employers voluntarily

agreed to pay a living wage, and as even Tory politicians such as Boris Johnson and David

Cameron argued in favor of higher wages, the Conservative Party read the signs that

promoting a living wage would cut into the Labour Party’s base. John Neal, from the union

UNITE observes, “The Conservative Party – they are a very clever party. And they have

done a lot of things that have hurt a lot of people in terms of their traditional right side of

their politics and people are suffering out there. But they’ve been clever in their spin and

8 stepping into traditionally left areas – with the national minimum wage being one.” As TUC staff Paul Sellers put it, the Tories were “camping on Labour’s ground.”ix

In other words, a significant number of employers and politicians have recognized that capitalism is losing legitimacy: whether due to faltering growth rates or shaky political support, they understood that raising wages was a smart move for morale and political reasons, and possibly economic. Their push to raise wages came from a desire to restorer capitalism.

What about the other voices in the alliance? Neil Jameson of Citizens UK says the campaign was about more than just money:

We are mainly an alliance of faith institutions for whom family is very important. Any family – we don’t make a distinction of what families looks like. The obscenity of being on a low wage and therefore having to work to two jobs and therefore for the children a very poor standard of child care was a big incentive for us being ambitious enough to say, you have to pay this – family life is so precious, you can’t leave it to the state to decide what you need to live on. And you certainly can’t leave it to business. So there is an undergirding behind the campaign which is very important and is often missed by journalists completely, which is that it is really about giving people enough time to spend with each other. And with their children.x

One worker remarked, “This campaign isn't just about money and what's fair. It's also about a society in which we are all citizens. People show each other respect; we say,

'Hello, how are you?' to each other. We care. People aren't invisible.”xi

While most unions would rather push for higher wages through collective bargaining and legislation they have also come to see that the initial living wage campaign has led to increased public support for higher wages as well as pressure on politicians to increase the statutory wage. Sampson Low points out the UK outsources more than any other country in Europe, so the living wage campaign was a way to assert, “You Can’t

Outsource Low Pay.” xii

9

The story varies in other countries. The alliances and nature of the campaign look a

bit different. But in each case, worker organizations have operated in alliance with other

social forces to pass higher wages and re-regulate labor markets.

Anti-Capitalist Values

Neoliberal orthodoxy is to put business needs first and foremost. This “common

sense” in the Gramscian sense filters throughout the economy, even impacting worker

campaigns: Paying a living wage is good for business. Paying a living wage is fair to workers

who “work hard.” Even Bernie Sanders remarked, “No one who works 40 hours a week

should have to live in poverty.” While these slogans may be smart tactically, they buy into

the idea that capitalism should and can be fair, and that those who play by the rules should

be treated better. But what about those who don’t have paid work? Or don’t work 40 hours

a week? Or what happens when a high minimum wage cuts into an employers profits

enough that they cannot stay in business?

To build anti-capitalist movements, workers must assert their own values in the

campaign. This is the Gramscian idea that movements must challenge dominant ideology by building counter-hegemony, a “new common sense.” Worker campaigns must center anti-

capitalist values. Wright emphasizes three in particular: equality/fairness,

democracy/freedom, and community/solidarity.

Equality/fairness

10 Many worker campaigns do utilize the frame of fairness, but this is done is an

incomplete and thin way. Organizers need to go beyond a “fair wage for a fair day’s work.”

Instead, they must use campaigns as a space to educate about class and exploitation.

Left unions in Indonesia have been doing exactly that. For example, in the midst of

the labor uprisings of 2011 and 2012 the labor confederation KSPI hired a leftist organizer

Daniel Indrakusumah to work for them and do political economy training for the members.

Daniel and his colleagues developed sophisticated material teaching workers about Marxist

theory and exploitation. They taught workers to collect their paychecks and calculate their

own living wages, based on surplus value. One of Daniel’s associates explained to me,

“Many unions demand wages hike based on the regulation, based on the law, but we

changed their mind. They should demand wages based on the company’s profit. We start to

collect the paycheck of workers and start to count the labor cost. So in the negotiation the

workers give the employer this calculation.”xiii

I spoke with members of another left federation, the Federasi Serikat Buruh Karya

Utama (FSBKU) in Tangerang, about their school, which adopted a similar approach.

Workers attend basic training programs on labor law and labor history, and if they do well,

they are invited to attend night school. The school consists of two curriculums: skills and

perspectives. The skills training includes things such as writing, how to do direct action,

how to negotiate, and how to analyze the social situation. The perspectives classes include

history of the labor movement at the national and international level, political economy,

dialectics, and Marxism. Workers attend classes that run two to three hours in the evening,

for 35 sessions.

11 I asked some of the workers there about their experiences in the school. One person

told me:

They gave us knowledge on how to argue with the employer when we bargain about the living wages. It is not only the components, the number of items that we talk about when we calculate the living wage. It is also about what is surplus value? We learned how to calculate what are the labor costs, what are the things that they have to keep in mind when we see the product.xiv

The night school provides workers with knowledge of the law and basic skills, but the FSBKU has a vision of building a democratic rank-and-file led labor union that can challenge not only unjust employers, but capitalism altogether. One of the orientations of the Perspectives curriculum is teaching workers the criticisms of capitalism and how to build socialism. This requires going beyond the bread-and-butter demands of basic unionism and teaching a larger critical perspective. One participant told me: “It has changed me a lot. There are many new things. It seems like we are in the new world. When we think about the system we are talking about it is a completely different system. Before the school and after the school.”

For FSBKU and other left unions the living wage struggle is not just about getting a better formula and higher hourly wage but using the living wage as a way to organize and educate about capitalism and exploitation. Not all unions share that goal. But KSPI, a large mainstream confederation, was among the first to adopt this political economy curriculum, and they as well as other mainstream unions have been moved left in their political economy analysis.

Democracy/freedom

12 Wright’s second set of anti-capitalist values, democracy/freedom, can also be a component of labor struggles in several ways.

First is the basic demand that the state regulate capital. Organizers must challenge the premise that the state must serve the needs of capital first and foremost; that the state’s first goal is to create a “business-friendly” environment. Living wage campaigns assert that the state should use other criteria for awarding public contracts or giving out public subsidies: that the state has a responsibility to pay a living wage even if it costs money. By demanding that the state set and raise minimum wages, advocates assert that businesses that cannot pay a living wage and survive should not exist. Human need should be as important, if not more so, than profit. This is a claim to make the state more democratic by answering the demands of workers and voters rather than simply acquiescing to capital. In this way, worker movements are not just pushing back against the state but engaging it.

This moves from resisting capitalism to taming it.

In the past few years worker movements have succeeded in pushing anti-union

Democrats Andrew Cuomo and Rahm Emmanuel to adopt significantly higher minimum wages. Angela Merkel eventually supported establishing the country’s first-ever minimum wage in 2014. Indonesian politicians backed significant minimum wage increases, over the objections of employer associations, in 2011-2014. No doubt these politicians have responded to worker demands in the form of strikes, protests and voter pressure.

Second, the campaigns can promote democracy by pushing the state to improve monitoring and enforcement. Almost a dozen US cities have established citywide offices to monitor local labor and employment laws, including minimum wages, paid sick days, and wage theft. Some cities have launched innovative experiments in co-enforcement, where the

13 state partners with community organizations to investigate complaints and monitor

workplaces.

Perhaps the most expansive effort to date is in Seattle, Washington. After the city

passed its $15 minimum wage, a taskforce comprised of unions, community groups,

business and government created a plan for a new city agency that would enforce the law

and other local ordinances. The Office of Labor Standards was created in 2014 and has 22

staff members. The Office contracts with local non-profits to do education and outreach with workers, providing them information about their rights from more worker-friendly labor organizations rather than government officials. Workers receive training and get assistance filing complaints. The agency has developed new approaches to monitoring that don’t rely on surprise visits from a limited number of government inspectors. Instead the community organizations develop on-going relationships with workers to maintain knowledge about industries and workplaces.xv

In the UK, the Low Pay Commission has researched enforcement and made

recommendations for improvement. According to their Chief Economist Tim Butcher,

“We’ve been at the forefront of making the nudge to get government to increase the

penalties and increase the effectiveness of enforcement and compliance. Do more naming

and shaming.” The tax collection body, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, is in charge of

enforcing the national minimum wage. They adopted a number of the Low Pay

Commission’s recommendations in 2012/13, increasing penalties, coordinating monitoring

with other agencies, and “naming and shaming” the large violators in order to rely in part

on community pressure. They have also increased the number of inspectors, from under

100 ten years ago to over 400 in 2018.xvi

14 These kinds of efforts are increasing the capacity of the state, by increasing the staff

and resources allotted, making the state more effective and responsive to worker issues,

and integrating community partners.

Finally, Wright asserts that part of democracy and freedom is self-determination: to

make decisions about things that impact their own lives. As Neil Jameson of Citizens UK

puts it in the quote above, the living wage is not just about money but about time. People

should not have to work all hours of the day, but instead have time to spend with families

and building communities.xvii

These developments are not anti-capitalist in their own right. They are small

demands and improvements to enforcement regimes in selected areas. But these kinds of

experiments are pushing states to be more responsive to human need and more capable of

regulating capital. By deepening democracy they help expand the anti-capitalist values and

foundations for anti-capitalist movements.

Community and Solidarity

The third anti-capitalist set of values that Wright promotes are community and solidarity. This says that people ought to cooperate with one another not just for their own material gains but also a “moral obligation that it is the right thing to do.”xviii

Most all of the wage campaigns I studied involved some degree of solidarity. As mentioned, the campaigns bring together a diverse set of actors, many of whom do not usually work together – or groups that have even been adversaries in the past.

But there are different types of community and solidarity. As Wright notes, there can be a dark side when a rigid sense of community draws a line between insiders and

15 outsiders. I argue that many of the wage campaigns and current worker movements are walking a dangerous line by promoting higher labor standards in the context of globalization. Again, the movements are diverse and complex, but there are elements that have framed grievances about low pay as an issue of global trade and immigration. Worker organizations have joined with nationalist demands to restrict migrant flows and tighten borders. In the UK, this has manifested in the form of nationalist support for Brexit. In the

US, through the calls for increased tariffs and “Buy American.” In Indonesia, an anti-Chinese sentiment has returned, blaming labor market problems on migrants. This isn’t new: historically, workers have framed some of their wage demands as against foreign workers, against outsiders.

When worker movements frame their struggles as shaped by globalization, trade and migration, they may be able to win short-term gains but will undermine their own interests in the long-term. Instead, the values of community/solidarity must be understood not as national community, but an international working class community. While there is a growing consensus that neoliberalism has failed, some see the underlying cause as globalization. Worker movements must assert that the foundational problem of neoliberalism is capitalism rather than globalization per se.

If worker organizations see globalization as the key problem, they will emphasize building alliances with employers and politicians against trade and immigration. Instead they must unite domestic workers with international, wage workers with unemployed, high wage union workers with low-wage precarious workers against capitalism.

Fortunately, there are elements of this in most of the campaigns I studied.

16 The Fight for $15 campaign started with fast-food workers, but even from the start,

it was a campaign of workers, community activists, faith-based organizations, unions and even a few high-profile employers. The $15 concept soon spread to other sectors, and the

“days of action” included child care providers, airport workers, domestic workers, adjunct professors and more. SEIU, the union behind Fight for $15, launched an internal Racial

Justice Task Force to study structural racism and develop proposals for union functioning.

They sought out contact with Black Lives Matter organizers and related organizations, and asked them to endorse Fight for $15. Charlene Carruthers, founder of the Black Youth

Project 100 (BYP100), told Jacobin magazine why her group agreed: “Black and brown workers are at the forefront of the Fight for $15. We wanted to make sure their narrative was representative. We tried to shift the messaging and make sure that the Fight for $15 was more squarely centered in racial and gender justice.”xix

Together, Fight for $15 and BYP100 sponsored the second day of fast food strikes,

on April 4, 2013, the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination.

The alliance between the movements continued, helping to bring a racial justice

component to the wage fight, and an economic justice analysis to Black Lives Matter. The

Bay Area, California chapter of Black Lives Matter stated:

The movement for Black lives is about more than criminalization and incarceration. Because the lives of Black people are not one dimensional, the fight for justice must also be multi-layered in its approach. As Black people, we are fighting for our basic humanity; the ability to watch our children grow up, to live in communities free of fear, and to have the resources that we need to survive.xx

When workers testified at the New York State Wage Board hearing in 2015, they wore t-

shirts that called for a $15 wage, and included the slogans used in Black Lives Matter

protests, “I Can’t Breathe,” and “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.” On April 3, 2017, activists held

17 teach-ins and demonstrations around the country on the theme, “Fight Racism, Raise Pay.”

An organizer from the Movement for Black Lives, Chelsea Fuller, stated,

White supremacy and corporate greed have always been linked in America. The fast-food workers who are going on strike for $15 an hour and the right to a union are resisting the same institutional racism and oppression that fuels police violence across the country. We are stronger when we stand together, and so our movements are going to keep fighting back against the twin evils of racial and economic inequality that continue to hold back black and brown people.xxi

This alliance has helped win significant raises for tens of thousands of black and

brown workers. It has not yet succeeded in unionization for most, or curtailing police

violence, but Fight for $15 is an example of how wage struggles can build solidarity across

sectors and movements.

Beyond these alliances, Fight for $15 has spread across international borders. The

historian Annelise Orleck writes about McDonald’s workers from the US, Brazil, South

Korea and Japan all meeting at a Fight for $15 international gathering and realizing they all

shared identical burn marks from working on the fryer. Fight for $15 activist Bleu Ranier

describes the moment as unforgettable, realizing the global connections he had with

workers around the world. xxii

There are other examples of working class solidarity, including unions and students

working together in Slovenia and Chile, of people of various faiths coming together in

London, of unions uniting with peasant movements in Indonesia. The fight to raise wages

and improve labor standards can serve to unite people as well as divide.

Michael Lebowitz argues that capitalism has survived because of its ability to divide

workers. Capitalism cannot exist without workers. It needs workers to exist both as producers and consumers. But it benefits when workers are divided, competing against one another to keep wages down. Lebowitz writes, "Much of capitalist globalization, indeed,

18 may be driven by the desire to weaken workers – by an attempt to decentralize, disunite

and disorganize workers."xxiii

Eroding Capitalism

In addition to promoting anti-capitalist values, Wright argues that in order to erode

capitalism movements must engage the state. The campaigns I’ve studied all do that to

some degree. All have demanded that the state intervene in the capital-labor relationship: to pass wage laws, enforce labor and employment legislation, regulate precarious work, or to side with labor in tri-partite wage setting. These all are interventions that can help stabilize capitalism, and indeed, some supporters certainly have that goal. In order for the movements to counter that – to become reforms with a “double character” – they must also help foster the growth of non-capitalist processes or spaces.

This is where the realities of actual organizing come in. It can be tempting for organizers to rely on insider tactics to pass legislation: lobbying politicians, utilizing experts to write bills, calling on candidates to pass a law in order to get an endorsement.

But while unions and their allies must lobby and ally with governments, they cannot rely on inside relationships to carry them through. This may seem obvious, but in practice, unions continue to forget this, particularly when they elect supposed allies to office.

Marc Doussard and Jacob Lesniewskixxiv argue that Chicago living wage activists

were able to win a $13 minimum wage in 2014 despite the anti-union mayor (Rahm

Emmanuel) precisely by turning away from the “inside game” of lobbying around a specific

bill, to a “persuasion game” aimed at broad around a broader

agenda. This organizing work wasn’t enough on its own: they also needed national

19 networks and the luck of political openings, but if they had continued with the “inside

game” it is unlikely they would have won such a big victory. There are countless examples

of unions that gain enough power to elect a “friend” to office, or get pro-union legislation into debate in Congress, but then fail to follow through with on-the-ground, in the streets organizing. On-the-ground organizing isn’t just a strategy to win: it is precisely part of what it means to expand democratic space and build alternatives.

Conclusion

Worker movements are not anti-capitalist necessarily and in fact, they can be

anything but. There has been much historic debate about whether labor unions are

inherently revolutionary or reactionary. But movements themselves are contradictory

spaces, especially in moments of crisis and shifting alliances. Worker movements can be

spaces to advance anti-capitalist organizing. However, to do that they must assert anti-

capitalist values within the campaigns. They may have to work in alliance with others who

do not have the same class interests and same values, but they cannot cede the terrain of

which values frame the struggle.

Neoliberalism is increasingly discredited, opening up new space for political action

and shifting alliances. Workers are losing but they are also winning. Since the recession,

and particularly since 2011, workers have won a surprising number of victories,

particularly from states: dramatic increases to minimum wages, reregulation of labor

20 markets, and new attention to precarious work. There is the chance to win short-term

gains as employers and policymakers look to restore capitalism and maintain legitimacy.

Erik Olin Wright gives us a useful framework for understanding this moment.

Worker movements cannot fall into the trap of accepting short-term gains that undermine

long-term movements. They must use their campaigns to promote anti-capitalist values,

engage the state and erode capitalism. Perhaps most crucially in this moment, worker

movements must use their campaigns as a space to promote internationalist solidarity; to

unite wage and non-wage workers across borders in a fight against capitalism rather than against globalization.

i See, e.g., Alan Krueger, 2015. “The Minimum Wage: How Much is Too Much?” New York Times. October 11. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/the-minimum-wage-how- much-is-too-much.html ii As cited in Michael Lebowitz, 2003. Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class. Palgrave-Macmillan. iii Sampson Low interview, May 24, 2017. iv Neil Jameson interview, May 30, 2107. London; Amy Hulme interview, May 26, 2017. poll. v Elizabeth Anderson, 2015. “Ikea to introduce living wage for all staff from next April.” The Telegraph. July 20. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/11750143/Ikea-to- introduce-living-wage-for-all-staff-from-next-April.html vi Neil Jameson interview. May 30, 2107. vii Neil Jameson interview. May 30, 2107. viii UK Low Pay Commission. ix Paul Sellers interview. May 24, 2017. x Neil Jameson interview. May 30, 2107. xi Yvonne Roberts, 2012. “He cleaned 's office – and was punished for wanting a living wage. . November 10. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/nov/10/living- wage-cleaner-clegg xii Sampson Low interview, May 24, 2017. xiii Anonymous interview, February 14, 2017. xiv FSBKU interviews, February 2, 2017. xv Janice Fine and Tim Bartley, 2019. “Raising the floor: New directions in public and private enforcement of labor standards in the United States.” Journal of Industrial Relations. Vol 6(2): 252- 276. xvi Tim Butcher interview. June 2, 2017. xvii Neil Jameson interview. May 30, 2107.

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xviii Erik Olin Wright, 2019. How to be an Anti-Capitalist for the 21st Century. Verso Books. Page 8. xix Brendan McQuade, 2015. “A United Front.” Jacobin. September 2. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/fast-food-forward-black-lives-matter-police-labor/ xx Statement on the Partnership Between BlackLivesMatter Bay Area and the #FightFor15. 2015. November 10. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/10/1448366/-Black-Lives-Matter-Joins-Fight-for-15- Today-in-the-Bay-Area xxi Justin Miller, 2017. “Fight for 15 and Black Lives Matter Join Forces on Anniversary of MLK's Death.” The American Prospect. April 4. http://prospect.org/article/anniversary-mlk-death-fight-15-and-black-lives-matter-join-forces xxii Annelise Orleck, 2018. ’We are All Fast-Food Workers Now’: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages. Beacon Press. xxiii Michael Lebowitz, 2003. Beyond Capital. xxiv Marc Doussard, and Jacob Lesniewski. 2017. “Fortune Favors the Organized: How Chicago Activists Won Equity Goals Under Austerity.” Journal of Urban Affairs. Vol 39(5): pp 618-634.

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