A Collective Bargain Quotes

“To win big, we have to follow the methods of spending very little time engaging with people who already agree, and devote most of our time to the harder work of helping people who do not agree come to understand who is really to blame for the pain in their lives.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“If the governance systems encourage participation by the best and most diverse workers, the union will reflect the best and most diverse workers’ values.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“These workers are taking on a range of issues both in the workplace and in their communities, and they’re winning big and changing lives. Though”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“It’s telling that each of these examples is pulled from growth sectors in today’s economy—health care, education, and hospitality—led chiefly by women.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“Strikes are uniquely powerful under the capitalist system because employers need one thing, and one thing only, from workers: show up and make the employer money. When it comes to forcing the top executives to rethink their pay, benefits, or other policies, there’s no form of regulation more powerful than a serious strike. The strikes that work the best and win the most are the ones in which at least 90 percent of all the workers walk out, having first forged unity among themselves and with their broader community. To gain the trust and support of those whose lives may be affected, smart unions work diligently to erase the line separating the workplace from society.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“Futility, the tactic union busters use to subtly convince people nothing will change and they should just stay home and not bother voting, is best combatted by having lots of examples at the ready to describe the many real achievements ordinary people have made despite stiff odds.”
― Jane McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“The spin doctors in the health care industry say this is because, unlike a factory or a school, the facility doesn’t close when workers vote to strike in a health care setting. Patients still need care. Health care employers use the excuse that the agencies that specialize in recruiting scab labor (strikebreaker workers, usually hired from Southern states) require them to sign contracts that schedule this replacement labor for a minimum of five days. The scab agencies say it’s worth it only if they can charge for at least five days because they have to pay strikebreakers top dollar (often twice as much as the regular staff), put them in premium hotels, give them equally premium meal per diems, fly them last minute, and generally spend a ton of money—all to defeat mostly women workers demanding an end to income inequality and fighting for fair work rules.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“the owners of PetCo and Lucky Brand Jeans, Prospect Holdings, purchased the longtime community hospital shortly after the election. That’s right: suddenly decisions about patient care would be dictated by people who pored over quarterly numbers of whether sales of dry kibble versus wet food or skinny jeans versus bell-bottoms made more money, and for whom the bottom line—and not how quickly your aunt is recovering from a heart attack or cancer—is paramount.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“phase two of forming a union: negotiations. This involves finding out what everyone wants in their first union contract, drawing up proposals that reflect top priorities, ratifying the proposals, electing the workers who will represent them, and starting negotiations with management. Good union contracts reflect the workforce and are tailored to whatever the workers themselves want, provided they can muster the power required to win those demands.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“When they work well, unions are the voices of all of the workers in negotiations with management and can leverage worker solidarity to not only prevent management from treating workers poorly, but to force management to create a safer, equitable, and more joyous workplace.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“Some unions do live up to the pejorative labels given to them by corporate media, but most do not. People are flawed, and unions are made up of people, so unions, too, can be flawed.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“there’s nothing comforting about creating millions of close-to-slavery working conditions in faraway lands that Americans can’t see when they happily upgrade to the latest phone. We don’t need robots to care for the aging population. We need the rich to pay their taxes. We need unions to level the power of corporations.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“Corporations had to manipulate the process to attack the public sector in similarly clever but different ways from when they set out to destroy the private-sector unions. They sought to offshore the most heavily unionized jobs in the 1970s as they increased spending to fight unions workplace by workplace. Today, driven by Silicon Valley, they are weaponizing technology, using AI and robots not only to help rid the country of the remaining unions but—hell—to eliminate the need for workers at all.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“states’ rights” is the rhetoric first devised by segregationists in the South in defense of slavery,”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“WORKERS WHO FOUGHT TO BUILD STRONG UNIONS turned horrible jobs in the auto factories into the kind of employment that became the backbone of the American Dream.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“Before workers decided to build power through collective action and form the United Auto Workers in 1935, conditions in auto plants essentially weren’t different from the abysmal ones in today’s average Amazon warehouse.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“Unions’ track record of redistributing power—and therefore wealth—and changing how workplaces are governed is what led to a war waged against them by the business class.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“To gain the trust and support of those whose lives may be affected, smart unions work diligently to erase the line separating the workplace from society.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“Strikes are uniquely powerful under the capitalist system because employers need one thing, and one thing only, from workers: show up and make the employer money.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“despite the tech elite’s rhetoric of building a new society, nothing much has changed, unless you count the creation of the new generation of Silicon Valley billionaires as progress.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“Democrats have been smashing teachers’ unions—the largest single segment of unionized workers remaining in America—as they zealously drive their corporate-backed, pro-charter-school agenda.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“Turns out, talking about the gig economy is a bit of a red herring; it avoids dealing with the vast majority of workers whose work is merely dull and doesn’t pay enough to live, let alone live well.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“Disrupting the concept of a worker isn’t any better than disrupting democracy, and it has had a big hand in both, thanks to its creation of antisocial media.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“while they talk a pro-immigration line in public, they are quietly aiding mass deportation schemes by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency by developing and selling high-tech facial recognition and tracking technology.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“The big-tech elite cleverly disguises their right-wing, anti-worker politics with Democratic-backed social positions, like support for gay marriage and trans rights (rich ones only, please), pro-choice legislation (for wealthy women), ethnic diversity (but for unicorns of color), and immigration.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“When it comes to political spending, the Party of Inequality leaves every other institution in the dust. To get a sense of this, consider that by the 2016 election cycle, the ratio of big business versus union donations to political candidates and the two main parties was 16:1.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“The legacy power players long associated with the Republican side of the aisle, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, argue without proof that further slashing taxes on themselves will create more jobs because they will invest their savings in job creation. The data wildly contradicts their assertions”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“With the rise of Silicon Valley, we now argue over whether a worker is even a worker.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“The impact of economic, political, and social inequality in America is real and dangerous, and not up for debate. We are, however, in a hot debate about how to reverse course. Ironically, the billionaire class now dominates and frames the national discussion on inequality.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy

“the bottom 60 percent of America not only doesn’t have any financial wealth; they are, on average, in debt. But 2016 is now ancient history. By 2017, a new study on inequality showed that just three people—Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett—“have more wealth than the bottom half of the country combined.” Bezos’s wealth increases by $13 million per hour. In 2018, half of all people in the world experienced an 11 percent drop in their wealth; the billionaire class increased their riches by $2.5 billion each day.”
― Jane F. McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy