The prospect of losing our democracy and the resurgence of interest in labor unions have recently been the focus of much attention. Absent, however, from conversations about the fate of America’s democratic experiment and the explosion of interest in and support for unions is that democracies and free trade unions are symbiotic – one cannot exist without the other.
Some journalists, writers, and politicians have attempted to inform our history-challenged electorate about the traits and practice of fascistic, authoritarian regimes. They speak and write about the suspension of civil liberties such as:
- Free association and freedom of speech
- The persecution and imprisonment of political opponents
- Outlawing the free press and controlling the media to disseminate propaganda
- Mobilizing the military against the public
- Enacting anti-immigration policies
- Seizing control of historically independent government agencies and departments
Then at the end of that long list of transgressions against democratic laws, values, and constitutions, the outlawing of free trade unions and the right of workers to collectively bargain with employers.
In practice, outlawing free trade unions and control of the labor force is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes, which exercise ironclad control over workers in order to produce the goods, services, and armaments necessary for absolute control of all aspects of society.
In The Nightmare Years, 1930-1940, journalist-historian William L. Shirer’s authoritative first-hand account of how Adolf Hitler and the Nazis destroyed Germany’s fledgling democracy, Shirer recounts how soon after Hitler took power in 1933, he shocked Germany’s powerful unions who had opposed the Nazis by proclaiming May Day as a national holiday in honor of workers, many of whom belonged to unions.
On May 1st, 1933, Hitler flew union leaders from across the country to Berlin to help him celebrate the new “Day of National Labor” and promised that May Day would be celebrated to honor German labor ‘throughout the century.’
The next morning, May 2nd, the trade-union offices throughout the country were occupied by the police, the S.S., and the S.A. All union funds were confiscated, the union dissolved, and the leaders arrested, beaten, and carted off to concentration camps. Hitler decreed a law bringing an end to collective bargaining and outlawing strikes, and replaced the free and independent unions with the bogus German Labor Front, a Nazi puppet organization.
The essential role of free trade unions in democratic systems can be viewed from not only the perspective of how authoritarians squash free trade unions, but also from examples of free trade unions creating democracies. Such is the case of Poland’s Solidarity trade union movement founded in August 1980 and led by trade unionist Lech Walesa from the Gdansk shipyards.
After being outlawed under martial law by Communist President General Jaruzelski, Solidarity became a broad social movement opposed to the Soviet-backed authoritarian regime, and in 1989, after almost a decade of struggle, Poland’s Communist government was toppled. In 1990, Solidarity’s leader Lech Walesa became the first democratically-elected president in Poland’s history. The role of Solidarity in ushering democratic change across Eastern Europe is well recognized, and despite sharing an 800-mile border with Russia its democracy remains strong, largely due to the essential role of Poland’s free trade union movement.
The blueprint for dismantling and undermining America’s unions and collective bargaining has been mapped out on the pages of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” which envisions amending federal labor law to allow employers to establish company unions to supplant actual trade unions, and to let states opt out of federal labor laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act and National Labor Relations Act. Project 2025 would tilt the scale even further towards employers, who already capitalize on numerous methods to thwart unions and undermine collective bargaining.
With our democratic values and system under attack, the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively should be recognized as fundamental to our democracy. American corporate interests and the billionaire class must end their anti-union crusade of the past fifty-plus years, and recognize that without unions, democracy dies, and with it the purchasing power upon which their wealth depends.
America’s democratic free trade union movement is strong. But so were Germany’s free, democratic unions on May Day, 1933. Their destruction serves as a stark warning for 2024. Think the same can’t happen to our unions? Think again. Project 2025 lays out Donald Trump’s plans for undermining unions and collective bargaining.
Whether you are a union member or not, vote to defend our democratic system of government and your right to unionize and bargain collectively for better wages, benefits, and respect, before these rights are outlawed and democracy lost.
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Written by Bill Londrigan,
President Emeritus, Kentucky State AFL-CIO
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