After a sequence of union victories at Amazon and Starbucks, a gaggle of distinguished progressive grant-givers are searching for to pool a complete of $20 million right into a coalition of organized employees that can channel funds to organizing and advocacy campaigns within the South.
A controversial struggle over unionizing an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, offered a serious impetus for the creation of the brand new fund, says Jennifer Epps, government director of the Labor Improvements for the 21st Century Fund (LIFT), a 10-year-old philanthropist Working cooperation that can address the trouble.
“If the folks of Alabama say they’ll arise and struggle for the issues they consider in and deserve, why should not philanthropy and different organizations that work to assist folks enhance their lives be part of them.” be?” she says. “This is a chance to place our assets the place our mouth is.”
The fund, known as the Southern Staff Alternative Fund, has obtained commitments totaling $14 million from foundations which have contributed to LIFT over its 10-year historical past, together with the Ford and Kellogg Foundations. The fund additionally contains contributions from the AFL-CIO, Service Workers Worldwide Union, the Babcock, Surdna, Tara Well being and Robert Wooden Johnson Foundations. Selections about which charities obtain cash are made by a steering committee made up of basis and union leaders.
The help raised by the Southern Staff Alternative Fund displays the foundations’ rising curiosity in supporting employees’ rights extra broadly. The truth that philanthropy and unions work collectively on the fund, and its deal with the South, a area that has lengthy been inhospitable to organizing, displays a shift in focus from foundations devoted to working with organized employees and supporting Southern employees largely written off as a misplaced trigger, says Epps.
The renewed curiosity in supporting employees’ campaigns has additionally drawn criticism from union opponents, who say such efforts run counter to the spirit of legal guidelines that bar charitable donations from politics.
If the fund raises as a lot because it intends, it’ll considerably improve LIFT’s grant funds, which is roughly $2 million per 12 months. Grants can be awarded beginning within the fall to working class teams advocating for racial, gender and financial justice.
The pandemic has heightened consciousness of the difficulties confronted by low-wage employees, Epps says, making it a really perfect time for employees to channel the heightened consideration to political positive factors and organizing victories. As producers and warehouses have flocked to the South during the last decade, largely on account of “right-to-work” legal guidelines that make it tough for employees to arrange, activists like Epps, who most not too long ago joined the LIFT Funds got here falling after a profession as a union chief, saying the necessity to strengthen employees’ campaigns has develop into extra vital.
Epps and others concerned within the fund acknowledge that union efforts within the South face challenges. Certainly one of their key short-term objectives is to help small, profitable tasks that goal to draw extra philanthropy, significantly regional donors, to the trouble.
Southern Staff Alternative Fund grants are awarded to non-profit organizations devoted to supporting employees’ facilities, that are group organizations that help low-wage employees who will not be represented by a union. Assist is given to teams pushing for group profit agreements that maintain firms accountable for creating a selected variety of native jobs with particular wage ranges and advantages once they open a facility in a metropolis.
However in the end, Epps stated, profitable contract negotiations with employers are key to empowering employees.
“Collective agreements are the gold commonplace,” she says.
Anti-union critics see one thing extra nefarious within the mixture of union and basis dollars: using philanthropic cash earmarked for charitable functions to steer political debate in favor of progressive causes. The grants made by the fund don’t go on to unions organizing workplaces. However the truth that they’re being made in collusion with unions falls right into a authorized grey space, says Richard Epstein, a legislation professor at New York College College of Legislation.
“It is not group service,” he says. “That is political advocacy.”
Epstein didn’t know the specifics of the LIFT fund pledge. However he stated foundations would “refine” grants to help political work in order that they’re technically non-political, though they’re designed to realize a political purpose.
José Garcia, senior program officer on the Ford Basis, says grants aren’t designed to affect coverage.
“We search the advantage of all employees,” he says. “It is not political. We see the poverty. We see that folks can not put meals on the desk. This isn’t a political problem, it’s a human rights problem.”
The eye that foundations and donors have given to employees’ rights, and to unionization specifically, could be very completely different from what Amy Dean skilled as AFL-CIO chief in Silicon Valley within the 1990s. When foundations make grants associated to organized labor, she says, they’re usually aimed toward rooting out corruption in particular areas.
“I used to be informed, ‘Neglect her. They’re by no means going to boost cash for the labor motion,’” recalled Dean, now a marketing consultant. “The connection of philanthropy to labor was hatred or ambivalence at finest. Philanthropy has all the time been form of skeptical – they felt the labor motion was too massive, highly effective and influential.”
Foundations are starting to consider that the change they need to see will solely occur when employees have extra say within the office, Dean says.
It is a lesson realized from the #MeToo motion, the wave of protests that adopted the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, and the string of union victories at locations like Amazon and Starbucks, which had beforehand been resistant to makes an attempt to arrange appeared, says Christian Sweeney, deputy director of group on the AFL-CIO.
“There is a rising sense that the massive issues in our nation will not be solved by political intervention or charity work alone,” Sweeney says. “What comes out from the inspiration facet is that folks see the labor motion broadly as a spot the place the stability of energy will be modified.”
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This text was offered to The Related Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Alex Daniels is senior reporter on the Chronicle. E mail: alex.daniels@philanthropy.com. The AP and Chronicle obtain help from the Lilly Basis for reporting on philanthropy and non-profit organizations. The AP and the Chronicle are solely liable for all content material. For all of AP’s philanthropy protection, go to https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
