Jonathan Rosenblum

It's been awhile now since Seattle approved a $15 minimum wage. How did it get passed there when the struggle was more prominent elsewhere? This book by a labor organizer tells exactly what went down.

Most publically, the $15 demand has been associated with fast-food chains, and judging from the experience many have at such places, sympathy is far from universal. This book is not really about them, however, it's about airport workers who, prior to 9/11, had good paying jobs working as ground show more crew, baggage handlers, cabin cleaners and the like. These people supported families and owned houses. After 9/11 and changes that allowed airlines to declare bankruptcy at a whim, all of these good jobs vanished...airline management hit the reset button and via outsourcing agreements determined these jobs were now just worth minimum wage. And the SeaTac community (the city encompassing Seattle's airport) suffered greatly.

It is stories like this one that shows organized labor is still relevant and needed today. I don't always agree they are a good thing, and when they kill the golden goose rather than come to terms out of pure stubbornness and cause permanent damage to their particular industry, they can be a destructive force. But today laws are friendly to business and wealth is concentrated at the very top -- in some cases cited in this story bonuses paid to a single executive could have provided the difference between minimum and $15 for hundreds or thousands of employees. And that ain't right.

There are a lot of industries that are extremely profitable on the backs of those making less than $15 per hour. They are not all drop-out burger flippers -- my wife is a nurse, started as a CNA making about $10 per hour changing diapers on elderly patients who had no control anymore. CNAs, by the way, are regulated and need to be educated and pass a government exam before they are allowed to change diapers for a pittance. This book does give a nod to them, but the prime story is still SeaTac workers vs. Alaska Airlines. It's a good story, one worth learning about. show less

Surprisingly readable and even enjoyable at times! I realize that reading a book about a labor movement and a ballot initiative might seem tedious and dry but I was pleasantly surprised that this book managed to be both informative and a pleasure to read. Rosenblum does stick to the tired tropes of the evils of capitalism but where the book soars is when he focuses on the lives and stories of the people involved in the movement. Putting together names of people I may have even interacted show more with at SeaTac airport made this book all the more real and why I enjoyed reading it as much as I did. show less

Do you get 2 consecutive days off from your job? Does your 10-year old child labor 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, in a coal mine? Hopefully, you answered yes and no, respectively, to those questions. Yet, truly so, a little more than a century ago, your answers might very well have been the reverse, were it not for the trade union movement.
The recently departed Dick Gregory, I had the pleasure of seeing him many times, always reminded his audiences that, "you got to ORGANIZE!!" And although show more he didn't mean it in the same vein, my Poppa often exhorted, "Organization spells success." Jonathan Rosenblum's book, "Beyond $15," is a tribute to those aphorisms.
It is an important work, not just in the story that it tells (the first successful effort to secure a $15/hour minimum wage), but also how a diverse community of interests -- workers, unions, community groups, faith workers -- can coalesce with a common idea.
Three decades ago, Reason-for-Living (hereinafter R-for-L)and I were employed at a well-known New England university. For over ten years, attempts at organizing the clerical and technical staffs of the colleges that comprised the university had been fruitless. Several times, Jesse Jackson appeared at our rallies, when there really wasn't much political capital in it for him. "How many of you own an MX missile?" Smiles and chuckles in response. "Well then, how many of you own a color TV?" 1000 hands in the air. "That's the problem; we don't make anything anymore except weapons." The difference isn't black and white," he would remind us. "It's GREEN!"
Literally, as this piece is being written, the president of the US is in Indiana, selling his "tax reform" plan that he claims will be a "yuge" benefit to the middle class; yet initial studies of the bill suggest that the biggest tax cuts will be for the proverbial 1%. Nothing new there; Reagan's tax "reform" of the mid-1980s did pretty much the same thing.
This same-ol' same-ol' often leads R-for-L to ask, and not always rhetorically, "WHY do people consistently vote AGAINST their own self-interest!?!?" One reason it happens is because the politricksters -- and apparently at least one real estate magnate as well -- love to peddle fear. Alas, we have seen it work too well and so often, throughout the world.
Which is why Rosenblum's chapter 4 is so important. "Bridging The Trust Gap" (pp. 56-72). Perhaps it should have been a much longer chapter, it is SO important a lesson. Yet the message is crystal clear: an "embryonic foundation of trust" among employees had been formed, truly and literally building a bridge across ethnic and cultural divides. With trust comes learning, and one "yuge" thing we learn is what unites us is stronger than any subterfuge that is designed and erected to divide us.
At that university where R-for-L and I worked, we would very often be asked, "But what will my boss THINK of me if I vote for the union???" Indeed, that was one of the college's main line of attack: that we should feel proud to be working at such an august university. But Congressman Barney Frank had a ready answer: "You can't eat prestige."
The more things change, the more they stay the same, the old folk-wisdom says. That often seems so true, doesn't it? But it doesn't have to be so forever. Mr Rosenblum's important tutorial can remind all of us of another eloquent quote: People see things as they are, and ask why ... but I dream of things that never were, and ask, why not?
Why not, indeed.

(PS: The campus where R-for-L and I worked did vote to organize. Approximately 1500 people voted, and it passed by all of 30 votes. The grad school where R-for-L worked, 65% voted for union represenation.) show less

Rosenblum's book appears to have two purposes: to describe the process through which a group of airport workers pushed for and obtained significant financial concessions from a large airline, and to describe how much more is needed to achieve true economic justice for workers. He provides excruciating details about how airlines used bankruptcy laws to break unions and rebuff workers' demands, and recounts the many strategies that were combined to achieve progress at SeaTac in Washington show more state. He stresses the involvement of clergy early in the process, to make the fight a truly moral one, rather than adding them late as window dressing. Above all, he focuses on the need for workers to achieve a better balance of power in the ongoing relationship with employers, rather than simply gaining economic concessions. Recommended for readers with a strong interest in collective bargaining, economic justice, the airline industry, and/or a story of workers of many faiths and nationalities working together toward a common goal. show less