The nation’s economy is a wreck.

We are all living through a very troubling period in U.S. history.  Perhaps what most clearly defines why times are so tough, especially in recent years, is high chronic unemployment. The New York Times says that real unemployment in the U.S. hovers closer to 20 percent rather than the official 9.1 percent. That includes all the people who are not counted in the weekly report of applications for new unemployment benefits--people who have given up looking, people who have been out of work more than six months and people forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time work.

Lessons of the Great Depression

The period we are living through has only one comparable period in modern U.S. history, and that is the Great Depression of 1929-1941.

In 1933, President Roosevelt first took office, and he moved quickly to lead the creation of the New Deal. When he was nominated to run for President, he said:

Throughout the nation men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government, look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth... I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people. This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms.

An important part of the New Deal was the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act.

The policy section of the National Labor Relations Act, which was signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1935, states:

It is declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self- organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection. (Emphasis added.)

Seventy-six years ago, with unemployment at 25 percent, courageous leaders redirected wealth to rebuild the nation. The New Deal included public policy that encouraged collective bargaining to improve the economy.

Why we need unions today

Wilma Liebman retired this past week as the chair of the National Labor Relations Board.  In an interview in the New York Times this past week, she said:

“Some say collective bargaining is antithetical to the economy. I don’t buy that at all. This was a statute that worked. It created the middle class. It created good jobs.”

She said the nation’s sagging economy would benefit from having more, not less, collective bargaining because it would put more money in workers’ pockets. “If you increase workers’ purchasing power, that can create a stronger, more sustainable economy,” she said.

Today, with only 7 percent of private sector workers in this country belonging to unions, collective bargaining is truly at risk.  If you agree with Liebman, this risk is antithetical to the rebuilding of the economy.

President Roosevelt saw the value of unions and collective bargaining. Liebman sees the same dynamic today:

Workers voices must be heard and respected if we are to rebuild the economy

At Kaiser Permanente we go beyond wages and benefits

We here in Kaiser Permanente are all committed to collective bargaining. The Labor Management Partnership has modernized and updated collective bargaining in a visionary way:  we have extended the meaning of collective bargaining from a focus only on wages, hours and working conditions to a much broader meaning.  We must also work together to improve the quality of our services and create value through a truly collaborative, patient-focused approach to the delivery of care to our members and to the community.

I believe our work is in the great tradition as envisioned by our predecessors in the labor movement, in government and in all the great social movements of the past 75 years.  It is up to us to succeed with collective bargaining and show the nation that indeed it is a necessary institution to “mitigate and eliminate the obstructions to the free flow of commerce”.