Collective bargaining: A worker’s most critical tool

At the AFT’s Collective Bargaining Conference July 23 in Washington, D.C., AFT President Randi Weingarten argued that collective bargaining is not only an essential tool for securing better wages and working conditions, but also for enshrining civil rights and defending our basic freedoms at a time when they are under assault.

Speaking to a packed room of union leaders from across the country, Weingarten said, “This tool and this right is probably the most important economic right that a worker has in the United States.”

That is why, Weingarten said, collective bargaining has always been crucial to moving civil rights forward, from equal pay for equal work to safe working conditions. And why, at a time when masked police officers are disappearing people off the streets and a single word―diversity―is being weaponized to wipe out decades of civil rights progress, it is a frontline tactic to keep pushing.

“If you have an equity provision in your contract, like parental leave—not women's leave, not the mother's leave, but say you got parental leave; all of a sudden what you're doing in a contract is creating the equity that's taken years to try to get to. It’s the same in terms of wages. A contract is a huge tool to do the equity work.”

Her remarks came just weeks after what she called the “big ugly bill” slashed safety net programs like Medicaid, student loan forgiveness and income-driven repayment plans—policies that directly impact the communities AFT members serve. She warned that rural medical centers, which depend on Medicaid funding, will most likely close and that school budgets, from kindergarten all the way through higher education, are going to suffer.

Defending democracy

A couple of years ago, defending democracy may not have seemed like a task with much urgency, Weingarten noted. But just six months into the second Trump administration, “There is a real assault on our democracy right now. If we want our children to have a public education, to have freedom, to have a voice, we have a lot to do if we want to turn it around. We need to start thinking about what we do locally and how we deal with this.”

Contracts won through collective bargaining, she said, are a reliable way to protect our rights and our communities. She pointed to the New Jersey-based Health Professionals and Allied Employees, who―after growing tired of being called heroes while working dangerously short-staffed shifts―organized, bargained and finally went on strike. They stayed on the picket line and at the table until they won 11 new contracts with language guaranteeing staffing levels that were safe for nurses and patients.

“That is collective bargaining,” she said. “It’s taking the aspiration of our members and our communities and making it into a contractual provision that you can rely on again and again and again.”

It is also the basis of the AFT’s theory of power: Collective bargaining is building power that empowers. “Engagement is the most important thing we can do,” she said. “People have to feel this is their contract.”

Five principles of collective bargaining

That theory of power, Weingarten told attendees, rests on five principles that must guide every campaign:

1. Prepare, prepare, prepare. “Write the word ‘prepare’ five times if you must,” she advised. “We should always know more about the employer’s budget than the employer.”
2. Engage members. “Engaging members every step of the way so that they see themselves in the aspirations of their union is the foundation on which we build everything.”
3. Embrace the community and build a community-centered narrative. “We must find common cause with the communities we serve. When the community supports us, we win. That’s why in our campaigns, we emphasize the schools students deserve, safe patient staffing, high-quality public services, well-funded higher education.”
4. Adopt a solution-driven mindset. “When you study what’s important to the other side, when you ask the right questions, you can frame your goals not as things they are giving up, but as solutions to a problem they’re facing.”
5. Identify and exercise leverage. “It comes in many forms—as ‘small’ as relationships with decision-makers, or as ‘big’ as a member mobilization in support of the contract campaign. We need to use all of it.”

Weingarten ended on a hopeful note: “If we stay together, pursue this strategy, I believe we will turn this around. I hope you walk out of this conference with the knowledge and skills to build your power and the confidence to use it. But when you go home, be part of the larger fight.”

[Melanie Boyer]