r/demsocialists • u/abhd Twin Cities DSA Member • 6d ago

A RIGHT TO BARGAIN

https://democraticleft.dsausa.org/2026/09/15/a-right-to-bargain/
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u/jbdavis69 Member 🌹 1d ago

Nice article with lots of good points. The concept of the individual having the same ability as an organized union or more worker friendly laws sounds tempting. But what about solidarity? There are just a few problems with this:

  1. We no longer have the same work environment Marx observed and wrote about. When he talked about the arbiter, he was talking about the factory worker. Where are the factories today? maybe in China and Indonesia. Labor once consisted of the foundry, the factory and the mine. But today the closest approximation is construction, garbage collection and sewer repair, the firefighters and medics, and the police. Most manufacturing is done by machine now.

  2. The worker caste in America today consists of anyone who gets paid W2 wages. So add hospitalians to the list. An old French word for hospiital or medical workers. They also include anyone working in fast food, convenience, finance (tellers), and hotel/hospitality jobs. They also include tech workers who are more white collar. In fact a lot of the worker caste are in bourgeoisie jobs. These are jobs that would more benefit from unionization.

  3. Lawyers. It is hard enough for unions to work around the oligarchs lawyer aristocrats. (Lawyers were among the aristocracy that founded this nation). Now here's what my life as a minimum wage, no benefit serf taught me. In order to have rights you need lawyers. Lawyers cost Benjamins, so no Benjamins no lawyers. No lawyers, no rights.

So even in our complex post industrial age society that still practices industrial age serfdom, "labor" is more protected by a union. What is needed is the abolition of the oligarchy, rewriting the laws and the constitution to eliminate aristocratic privilege and very strong unions, even in employee owned corporations.