Can Democrats change the game for labor organizing in America?

Bernie Sanders is leading the push for a whole new way for workers to bargain with their employers

American unions are not exactly having their best days. Nationally, membership is down to 10 percent of the workforce. While the labor movement isn't going down without a fight, it remains a shadow of its former self.

But among some of the biggest unions, and the more ambitious Democrats, a reform effort is afoot. This effort isn't simply about rolling back some of unions' more egregious losses in recent decades. Rather, their theory is that the entire legal framework for how unions operate in the United States is broken and needs to be reworked. "The current law is so broken and so defective" that "the right to organize doesn't exist anymore," as Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), recently told Vox.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.