[W]ASHINGTON — As the crowd of hundreds waited in a Senate committee room Wednesday, one man kicked off a sing-along.
“Solidarity forever,” he began, leading the room in a booming chorus of the longtime union anthem set to the tune of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
When, a few minutes later, Sen. Bernie Sanders arrived, the audience erupted.
It was a warm reception for the Vermont independent’s latest piece of legislation — a suite of measures designed to bolster labor unions.
“This is nothing radical,” Sanders said to the group, a sea of people in red and blue T-shirts, signifying their affiliation with various national labor groups. “This simply says that when working people want to come together to form a union for decent wages and decent benefits, we will no longer tolerate corporate America denying them that right.”
Sanders cited the decline of unions as one of the “key reasons” behind economic inequality and mounting pressures on the middle class.
“What we are here to say loudly and proudly is that workers in America have the constitutional right to come together in unions and bargain collectively,” he said.
The legislation would make a series of changes to labor laws designed to make it easier for workers to organize, and would establish protections for unions.
The bill would change the requirements for unions to be recognized, so that the union could be certified if the majority of eligible workers sign on — a provision that would make it easier for workers to form collective bargaining units.
It would eliminate measures some states have adopted which have hampered unions’ ability to collect dues.
It also puts in place requirements for companies to negotiate with unions, and calls for a crackdown on some practices, like classifying workers as contractors rather than full-time employees.
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., introduced a partner bill in the House.
Sanders’ sponsors in the Senate include Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Kamala Harris, D-Calif. — all figures floated as possible 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.
Gillibrand, the only Senate cosponsor to speak at the event, said unions are key to improving wages and benefits for employees.
“I believe to my core that this country needs to start rewarding work again,” Gillibrand said.
Speakers included representatives from unions representing machinists, nurses, higher education academic staff and others.
The event coincided with the annual meeting of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Washington, D.C., so the crowd included representatives from across the country.
But while the bill got a warm reception from the crowd Wednesday afternoon, it is unlikely to advance under the current Republican leadership in Congress.
Jeff Wenger, a senior policy researcher with the Rand Corporation, said the ideas behind reviving unions have been floating around for a while.
In order to gauge how effective the proposal would be at stimulating economic development for workers, he said, it is critical to consider the underlying cause of the current situation.
“We’ve seen very paltry wage growth for the middle class for a really long time,” Wenger said. “So the question is: What’s going on with American middle class wages?”
There are a number of hypotheses. One reason could be that technological developments have produced substitutes for human labor. Another theory is that a decline in unions has led to the conditions today.
A third theory, Wenger said, is that there is less competition among employers within certain labor markets. If an employer controls most of the opportunities in a town, workers would have to be willing to move to a different area to find a job.
Having stronger unions may help workers in some of those scenarios, but unions might not be as effective in other cases he said.
“Diagnosis of the problem in some cases dictates different solutions,” he said.
