These are heroes.
Recently, two heartwarming stories about good bosses have been circulating. First, the ouster of good boss Arthur T. Demoulas sparked massive worker protest at grocery store chain
Market Basket, ultimately leading to "Artie T" being reinstated at the head of the company. Second, Raymond Burse, the interim president of Kentucky State University,
gave up $90,000 of his salary to give raises to the school's lowest-paid workers. Both of these stories are legitimately heartwarming. But we should be asking ourselves why good bosses are the workplace heroes going viral right now.
If we look at it in a different light than "nice boss pays workers well, they repay him with loyalty," the Market Basket story says something really sad about the state of the American workplace right now. Workers there had the power to all but stop business, to empty shelves, to make news, and ultimately to force a turnover in ownership of the company. But it's clear that they were partly driven by fear—the fear that under another boss, they would lose their good pay and benefits and bonuses and humane treatment. They needed Artie T. back because they didn't believe they could fight hard enough to prevent the new boss from making cuts. It's a fear with a perfectly reasonable foundation when you look around at all the workplaces where unions are forced to accept pay and benefits cuts because the boss makes it clear that if they don't, they'll face an all-out union-busting campaign, at any cost. But the fact that it's reasonable doesn't mean it's not sad.
Similarly, the fact that at Kentucky State University it took an individual act of charity to get the lowest-paid workers above minimum wage is a sad statement about inequality in America. It's wonderful that Raymond Burse is a good guy, and that some workers are going from a poverty wage to a semi-livable wage. But decent wages and working conditions shouldn't be charity. They should be a right. Workers shouldn't have to hope for a good boss. They should be able to fight for and win decent pay and working conditions even if the boss would rather pay low wages and funnel the money to those at the top.
Sadly, the idea that the fate of workers is in individual, not collective, hands seems to dominate American workplace culture these days. Low-wage workers are told to hope for good bosses. Women are told to "lean in," even though, as Sarah Jaffe points out, that advice didn't work out for former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson and, given the Supreme Court's Harris v. Quinn decision limiting union rights for home health care workers, their jobs in one of the fastest-growing occupations in the country "are jobs at which, no matter how hard one leans in, the view doesn’t change." Workers in a few workplaces get good jobs from good bosses. A few women who are both privileged and lucky may advance by leaning in. But workers on the whole will only get ahead by leaning in to each other.
Coming out of Labor Day, it's important to remember that American workers didn't get weekends, or overtime, or the minimum wage, or workplace safety regulations, because good bosses decided to be nice. We got those things because workers joined together and organized and fought and demanded and built power and used that power to make change. And the only way the lot of workers now improves is if workers join together and organize and fight and demand and build power and use that power to make change. Like I say, leaning in, but to each other.
We also have to remember that, even if we're educated and feel firmly ensconced in the middle class, the fight of workers is also our fight, because even educated middle-class workers are starting to feel the squeeze. It may not have reached you personally yet, but you don't have to look far to see how this is going:
Specifically, how this is going is down, for the American middle class. So much of the national income growth in recent decades is going to the top that even households in the 81st to 90th percentile, people in the second-highest 10 percent in terms of income, had
income growth below the average, and that's costing middle-class households nearly $18,000 a year. Good bosses aren't going to be enough to reverse rising inequality and rebuild the middle class, let alone the ability of blue-collar workers to lead middle-class lives.
Without the power to pass better laws—to raise the minimum wage and pass paid sick leave and paid family leave and protect Social Security and reduce student loan debt—and to make sure that those laws are enforced; without the right to organize and the will to exercise that right, working people in America will just keep being squeezed, left watching more and more of the nation's income go to the top. Good bosses are fine, but they're not enough. They shouldn't be the heroes we think of when we think of good jobs. Rather than individual heroes, we need movements. At least, if we want good jobs more than we want heartwarming viral stories to share on Facebook.
