Building Anti-Capitalist Worker's Movements

$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of Labor and Urban Studies/CUNY For the New School conference in honor of Erik Olin Wright, September 26, 2019 DRAFT – not for citation Ten years after the economic crisis, there is little sign that any country has a clear path toward a sustainable economic and political model.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 “living wage.” 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 Ken Livingstone 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).

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