Saving democracy starts in the workplace — and in the South
In all the discussion about how we build a healthy democracy, one battleground is often missing from the discussion: work.
Democracy isn’t just about voting for elected officials — it’s about whether working people have real power over the decisions that shape our lives. It must extend beyond electoral maps and the voting booth and into our workplaces.
Collective bargaining is our best pathway toward ensuring democracy. And workers in Atlanta — and across the South — may hold the key to expanding both.
When Renee Berry and her co-workers negotiated their first contract with Volkswagen, they raised standards for people throughout eastern Tennessee. When fast food workers first launched their Fight for Fifteen campaign in 2012, they raised the floor for minimum wage campaigns for the next decade.
And when Reyna Sorto and her co-workers at Tito Contractors organized to win protections for workers to stay in the country after experiencing wage theft, they opened a pathway for immigrant workers to stay on the job and organize.
Given free rein, corporations act as if they are not bound to follow the laws. It will remain that way until workers are at the table, creating and enforcing policies with these corporations.
Workers have fought back against unjust policies
Consider Amazon, which has repeatedly ignored laws designed to protect worker safety. Workers like Genesis, a southern California Amazon worker who asked only to use her first name and was featured in Mother Jones magazine, became homeless during her pregnancy because Amazon refused to provide her with a chair at her station, as required by law and ordered by her doctor.
Countless other workers have been harmed by Amazon’s authoritarian practices. But through organizing, these workers are inserting themselves into decision-making at the top levels at Amazon to change corporate policies.
Workers are also holding corporations accountable for aligning with authoritarian practices outside of the workplace.
Flight attendants refused to staff Avelo Airlines’ deportation flights to prevent the unjust separation of families. Grassroots coalitions formed to boycott and shame Avelo across the country until they dropped their contract with DHS.
If workers have no power in their economic lives, they will be increasingly — and rightfully — cynical about whether voting every two or four years will have any impact. The shop floor, after all, is where we most directly confront the people with powers over us — far more often than by voting or calling a member of Congress.
And shop floors across the South will be key to those confrontations.
Enhancing people’s economic lives is good for democracy
The Southern economy was shaped by a deliberate fusion of racial hierarchy and economic exploitation, where white supremacy was used to divide workers and suppress wages for all workers. That legacy did not disappear — it evolved.
Today, the same dynamics show up in the form of low wages, weak labor protections, and some of the lowest union density in the country, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
To give people in this country more control over the decisions that shape their lives, we need to expand democracy in the very place it has been most eroded — in the worksites and halls of government throughout the South.
While our efforts may feel small, isolated, and siloed, they are adding up in the overall fight for democracy.
When corporations can underpay workers or cut corners on safety, they have plenty left over to spend on politicians and campaigns to keep wages low and otherwise warp our democracy. But whenever working people fight back for the common good, they weaken that power. And the outcome is greater than the sum of its parts.
If working people have democracy in their economic lives, they will be more empowered to get involved politically. Now more than ever, it is time for us to strengthen our muscles to govern, starting where most of us spend the bulk of our time: at work.
Erica Smiley is the executive director of Jobs with Justice (JWJ). April Verrett is the president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Jimmy Williams Jr is the president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT). Their three organizations are co-hosting the Workers Revive Democracy conference in Atlanta May 14-16.
