The Good Union
2022 America is in the middle of a union resurgence. How can you ensure your tech union is working for the cause, instead of against it? Bonus: what can we learn from dentist unions?
2022 America is in the middle of a union resurgence and the tech industry is a big player in all of it. From Amazon warehouse workers to New York Times tech workers to my own days at the Google union, everyone’s talking union now in a way that we just weren’t even 5 years ago. But… It’s not really a hot take that not all unions are inherently good. Unions are a powerful tool that can be wielded in the fight for liberation. They’re also a tool that can be wielded to reinforce systems of oppression. How can you ensure your union is working for the cause, instead of against it?
Spoiler alert: you’re going to learn more about dentists today than you might have expected. I promise it relates to tech leftism! 🦷🦷
Unions that historically uphold oppressive systems
Police Unions - Read: this New Yorker piece titled How Police Unions Enable and Conceal Abuses of Power
The American Dental Association - Read: this WaPo article titled The unexpected political power of dentists
Homeowners Associations - Read: this NYT article titled How Homeowners’ Associations Get Their Way in California
Unions that have recently led great liberatory work
Teachers unions - Read: this Jacobin piece titled Labor Renaissance in the Heartland
Student unions - Read: Teen Vogue’s article Grinnell College Becomes First Fully Unionized Undergraduate School in U.S.
Tenants unions - Read: this AJ+ article titled Meet the Tenant Organizers Taking On NYC’s Landlords and Cops
For the purposes of this article, I’ve expanded the definition of ‘union’ as follows – any collective of people with shared interests who come together to protect or further their own rights. They might be people who work at the same company, or who work in the same industry, people studying at the same university, or neighbors sharing a building or block. These unions can consist of anywhere from 10 people to 10,000. They can be recognized formally by their government or institution, or they can be an unofficial entity that pools their power with equal effectiveness. The purpose of this broad definition is so that we can tease apart the traits that make any of these organizations helpful or harmful to our liberatory goals – every union is going to be different, but they all still bear a responsibility towards the collective good. We can learn from these organizations as we build out our own collectives.
So what’s the difference between a good union and a “bad” one?
At first glance at this list, it might seem like the difference between a good union and a “bad” one is simply a matter of proximity to power and privilege. Property-protecting police, wealth dentists, and landowners vs the marginalized people who more traditionally constitute the working class. But the makeup of a union’s members are not the sole decider of the union’s impact. While it is true that many unions that we have categorized here as working counter to our movements do protect privilege, it is due to their practices and priorities, instead of the makeup of their membership. Think of it more like… a “bad” union’s members hold disproportionate power in our society because their union hoards their power as a primary goal, not because the members were inherently overpowered to begin with.
It is in fact very important for organizers to not fall for this false dichotomy if we aren’t to massively kneecap our own movement scale and solidarity potential. Unions have the ability to reshape the distribution of power and privilege in our society. So of course if an organization’s goals are to hoard as much power as possible, with no regard for anyone outside of their group, they will leave a legacy of harm. If a group’s goals, however, are to pool their power for the greater good, working collaboratively with others to push and pull and challenge existing systems of power, they have a much greater potential for net positive impact.
Tech worker organizers in particular are faced with the question – why do you need a union when you already have the privilege of a cushy job with a high salary? I expand more on this in my piece for the Tech Workers’ Coalition newsletter entitled Googlers Are Forming a Union, but the short answer is that a union does not have to be a selfish entity. Some goals that my comrades and I pooled our power for included:
Challenging the traditional hierarchies between blue-collar and white-collar workers. We dreamt of a union that walked out when a Black researcher in AI was retaliated against, as well as when a cafeteria worker faced that same discrimination. We believed that we were stronger together.
Raising our voices for the greater good – we fought against our company taking on ICE contracts, environmentally harmful projects, and appointing sexual harassers to powerful positions. We were able to take on responsibility that we previously had no access to before we came together.
Protecting each other from injustice - high salaries are not the final frontier of liberation. If women were still sexually harassed, if Black engineers were still facing retaliation for speaking up against discrimination… our work wasn’t done. We were willing to risk the promises of cushy salaries that were holding us hostage against our moral compasses.
These aren’t the only reasons people joined our union, but they’re some of mine.
Rax, why are you angry at dentists today?
I have a very specific bone to pick (hah!) with the American Dental Association! Is this because I had to use a Groupon to see a dentist in NYC this week, despite having marketplace insurance? Maybe! But specifically, we’re going to be talking about the evils of the American dental lobby and how tech workers can avoid becoming like them.
If you didn’t catch it at the top of this newsletter, I’m going to link this WaPo article titled The unexpected political power of dentists again, as well as a few more on the subject.
According to former dental lobbyist, Wendell Potter, “The main reason Medicare hasn’t covered dental care since its inception in 1965 (except when oral health problems become so severe they require hospitalization) is that organized dentistry staunchly opposed it.” (read more in Fortune). Becoming a dentist, an orthodontist, an endodontist, or a periodontist is extremely lucrative in America because the ADA has lobbied for narrow access to their fields. They’ve manufactured a massive divide between oral care for the wealthy and the marginalized in America (read: The painful truth about teeth in WaPo and Why Dentistry Is Separate From Medicine in The Atlantic).
Dental professionals are highly comparable to tech workers – both fields are not thought of immediately as political (everything is political, but that’s an article for another day), and both workforces comprise of high paid specialists with relatively high and specific barriers to entry. Dentists weren’t the obvious villains of American politics – the ADA became that way by very active choice! They are a highly organized labor force that advocates for themselves aggressively.
A union that works against the people is a union that should not exist. If you want to prevent your budding union from becoming the next ADA, consider the following principles of organizational checks and balances.
1. The Good Union sees itself as a piece of the greater puzzle.
It does not fight a zero-sum game where the union’s members profit over all others. The Good Union remembers that the happiness and well-being of its members in the long term comes from a happier and healthier society overall.
2. The Good Union practices internal democracy with great intentionality.
Any organization runs the risk of replicating power structures within itself. A union might find itself entirely fighting for the interests of those already with privilege – potentially more senior members or its white male members. The Good Union examines the makeup of its leadership and its diversity of voices so that it can be better prepared for solidarity outside of its ranks.
3. The Good Union does not fight for the status quo for its own sake.
This point is fraught, I’ll admit. Labor unions have traditionally had a reputation of fighting against change – for good reason too, when we look at the history of how American miners and factory towns were abandoned when they stopped being profitable. But The Good Union can protect its members without fearing the future – it can rise to new challenges and adapt to circumstances with an eye progress. Unions that cannot do this risk the likelihood of becoming vehicles of perpetuating existing power systems, instead of joining in the collective imaginings for a better future. The Good Union should not be limited by the past when organizing for the collective future.
4. The Good Union organizes out of love instead of fear.
Building power is hard. Maybe it’s easier to get people to come together for more money than it is for more justice. But we don’t build power because it’s easy – we do it because we want to leave a better world than the one we came into. We deserve a labor movement for all. It’s our responsibility as organizers to believe that our communities can be driven by motives for good. If you need a reminder today on why it’s important for you to believe in progress when you organize, maybe re-read abolitionist educator and activist Mariame Kaba’s words in Hope Is A Discipline.
Joining an organization like a union is an important step for achieving any liberatory goals – grassroots power is our only way forward. It is all of our responsibilities to build Good Unions.
