Students and the Labor Movement

Today is labor day. I want to take a moment to highlight an essay I wrote a few months ago about how labor unions can attract young people. Here are the key paragraphs:

While these programs are excellent, training young people to be organizers isn’t enough. It’s hard to fill organizing schools if students and youth aren’t even interested in the labor movement in the first place – organized labor needs to make itself relevant to us. To reach out to the next generation, organized labor needs to make a concentrated effort to become involved in movements led by young people.

This includes initiatives led by groups like United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) and living wage campaigns. Besides the reaching out to young people, these campaigns are obviously in the self-interest of labor unions. The Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), as a joint effort between Jobs with Justice and the United States Student Association, is an important attempt to build alliances between young people and the labor movement. These campaigns in support of workers rights are often an important educational experience for progressive student activists.

But if labor wants ongoing support from young people, it must in return provide support for student struggles. Several unions in the education industry take an active role in campaigns for fully funded public schools and higher education, but many sectors of the labor movements are absent from these fights. Sadly, when students assemble a list of possible allies for these campaigns, unions are often left out. The labor movement can correct this oversight by actively reaching out to students fighting for quality education. By showing support for a broader social justice agenda, unions can develop a pool of potential organizers and activists.

Moreover, supporting broader educational justice campaigns tends to involve larger segments of the student population than campaigns like sweatshop labor. While groups like USAS and SLAP are almost exclusively composed of left-leaning students, campaigns centered on education engage less partisan young people as well. While these individuals might be less likely to become organizers, receiving support from the labor movement might favorably alter their disposition towards unions in the future. Young people have to be conditioned not just to want to work for the labor movement, but to join unions as well.

And this is the biggest hole in the AFL-CIO’s current strategy to reach out to young people. Too much effort is spent on idealistic activists and not enough on making regular students more sympathetic to unions. Young people must be conditioned to become pro-union. When campus workers go on strike, students need to know why honoring picket lines is important. College students are often tempted to be scabs during labor disputes. If more young people become pro-union, the labor movement would be strengthened during campaigns that rely on community support to succeed.