Janice Fine , Mark Engler and Paul Engler recently published an article in the Boston Review that was picked up by Truthout and posted there under the headline Government and Grassroots Unite Against Labor Violations. The article-interview reviews what I think are commonsense points about how Labor and government can partner to work on enforcing legal protections for workers and talks about the concept of "co-enforcement," which is a bit deeper and more complicated than it sounds.
Janice Fine says, "The idea is that if you really want to enforce labor law in a systemic and strategic way, then you have to have the knowledge of the workers. You need that tacit knowledge to understand what’s really happening at an individual workplace — and more broadly than that, to understand the labor structures and schemes that are specific to a given sector. But in order to access that knowledge, you need to have groups involved who have built relationships and built the trust needed for workers to be willing to come forward" early on in the interview. She later goes on to distinguish between "thick" and "thin" enforcement.
Fine also says, "Whenever we start working with an agency, at the state or local level, we say to them: “Your job is not to play whack-a-mole. Your job is to think about how you can permanently raise standards across a sector. If you want to reach the workforce, you have to be in relationship with whoever the workers trust — particularly when it comes to undocumented workers.” We want them to see individual complaints not as the end, but as indications of something deeper — to see how they often connect to broader problems. Agencies need to think about what interventions would have ripple effects across the sector. And they should see that they have a role and responsibility in permanently raising standards. I bring up all this because I’ve found that even when progressives take over these agencies, if we haven’t given them a way to think about this stuff, they default to how it’s always been done."
There have been moments our labor history---in the 1940s and again in the 1960s and 1980s---when some progressive voices in Labor talked seriously about worker/union safety committees having the right to shut down unsafe work areas, strike over health and safety violations, and have a "community steward" system in place in which Labor allies with community organizations who are concerned about the environmental impacts of polluting factories and unsafe working conditions. The organizations would jointly process complaints and represent their allied interests much as unions might represent workers in grievances. I think that we need to explore and act on this now.
Of course, we need government officials who will cooperate with us, or listen and learn from us. If they won't cooperate, we need to know how to browbeat them into cooperating or how to work around them. That gives us an interest in progressive politics. We're talking here about community and working-class health and safety and well-being, not factional politics.
We need to be able to speak independently of candidates for public office and officeholders and the political parties and from a place that solely represents working-class and community interests. And we need to do this without getting coopted by the boards and agencies that we need to push hard on. How is it that the soil in Marion County is contaminated with pesticides, that truck and auto pollution are greater in working-class areas than elsewhere, and that we have on-going fights over the disposal of medical waste and Labor is largely silent and not allied with the community organizations taking up these issues? And how is it that we have many good union people serving on boards in our region who do not get the training and support from our unions that they need to be more aggressive and to organize us to support a strong push for better community and workplace health and safety?
Most unions do a great job on steward training these days. But so long as we keep serial violations of our safety and health and well-being within the confines of our grievance procedures and contract negotiations, and so long as we can't strike over health and safety and worker and community well-being and don't build relationships with people outside of our workplaces and unions, and so long as we refrain from taking united action, we're fighting with on hand tied behind our backs. The United Mine Workers and the Longshore Union (ILWU) have taken great steps in these areas over the years. Others should get on board.
The opinions expressed here are not those of the MPYCLC or the Oregon AFL-CIO.
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