Why do I believe in worker power?
… even though I have the word capitalist in my job title
Work is a partnership between workforces and the people who lead them. Strong partnerships need each partner to be strong, and for their power to balance. I believe that for our economy and society to succeed, we need working people to have more leverage, to restore balance. The most likely path to that is for workers to organize in more (and different) ways.
Enough people have told me my view strikes them as unusual, even incomprehensible, especially given my job. (I’m a businessperson, who invests in startups as a VC.) So I want to explain why I believe this.
I’ve spent time in a range of professions — government, non-profits, academia, big corporations, media, and now startup investing. I’ve founded companies, taught kids in afterschool programs, and sat in boardrooms. And I’ve seen: work is broken in America, and it’s tearing our society apart.
People suffer either from having less work than they want (or need), or from the nature of modern work itself. Many who work full time still lack the basics (food, medical care, and stable housing). For those who can provide for their loved ones, work is often a lonely, unfulfilling place. And it’s the thing we do with more of our waking hours than anything else! Companies struggle to find and fulfill the workforce they want. They struggle to agree with their workforce on how to change. As a society, people feel they’re going going and lack rest; yet our innovations are somehow still agonizingly slow. We’re creating less, inventing less, caring for each other less, and in more anguish — because work fails us.
If we want to live up to our values — for anyone to be able to live with dignity, provide for a reasonable life, whatever that may mean to them, and for the economy to grow and thrive — then we must fix work.
For the past decade, I’ve put that issue — making work work — at the center of my professional life. (Our investment firm was the first to focus on the future of work, and it’s been all we’ve done since the beginning.) Over the years, we’ve consulted expert after expert, assembled our own studies, and talked with many people suffering in the toughest conditions. Companies have told us that they want to make the new arrive, faster. And working people told us what they want: stability and dignity, which will also help their employers thrive. So I ask: How can we create a society where people can provide for a stable, dignified life?
We need solutions that immediately tackle the crisis for workers and can reshape the rules of our economy to create abundance for all. That abundance depends on the success of companies, yet power is out of balance; a few people wield too much of it, in service of themselves. In the long run, that self-interest is hollow: it produces uncompetitive markets, a populace that often supports violent extremism, and plenty of other bads for all of us. Today’s dialed-to-11 corporatism is awful for many, many people, and many companies that struggle to compete in a fair market… even unabashed capitalists think it’s broken!
Before landing as a full-throated supporter of worker power, I looked at every other solution I could find: career development services (learn to code! better job listing sites!), new frameworks for management (Holacracy, anyone?), technology of course, government policy (guaranteed income, among others). The list goes on.
Ultimately, each of these is part of the answer — but the stew is missing ingredients. For one, each of these comes from the top down, as opposed to workers driving. Government policies are essential, but may require a different electorate, and arrive too slowly (ACA, IRA, CHIPS and Science, and a few big steps forward notwithstanding). Job training tools don’t change the fact that we will always need baristas, home health care aides, and millions of others who deserve stable, dignified work. Technology often hurts workers as much as it helps consumers. Markets can be great (even the Democratic Socialists of America saw that), but our current markets fail to provide enough people with the lives they deserve, build a resilient enough economy, or foster the innovation we need.
From this unsatisfied place, a few years ago I noticed a resurgent force that had been there the entire time, one I’d overlooked. In places from Staten Island to San Francisco, from Buffalo to Bessemer, I saw something new: an energetic wave of labor organizing, which invoked long-tested ideas and injected them with fresh life. This tide brought experimental approaches, fiery beliefs, and the magnetic desire to create something original. So I started paying closer attention — and I now believe this force, working people organizing more, in new ways, holds real promise for fixing work in America.
In my own home industry of tech, organized workers flexed muscles. Google employees blocked a Pentagon contract. Amazon workers lobbied the company to commit resources to climate change. Then, outside the tech industry, workers were striking and unionizing at companies from Frito-Lay to Starbucks. Companies find themselves negotiating with a newly-powerful partner: their organized workforce.
On the California Governor’s Future of Work Commission, I learned from labor giants like Mary Kay Henry about the potential of more worker power. I bent the ear of every labor organizer I met, went to their events, sat and listened. I listened to CEOs who’d had long experiences with unions. After the 2020 election, I came to believe the continued rise of organized worker power might be here to stay and that it might be essential for our democracy, too. (Because voting, in whatever forum, makes people more likely to vote, and fascist regimes often start by dismantling worker organizations.)
Meanwhile, public support for unions rose to the highest level since 1965. The rise of extremism, followed by the pandemic, and now inflation, on top of all the insecurity Americans already felt, deepened Americans’ panic. So it’s unsurprising that more Americans than ever say that, if they had the chance, they would join a union. And many are trying new forms of organized labor, beyond the traditional union.
When workers hold more power, they point a spotlight on the most invisible form of power in America: class. They fight for a dignified and secure life for themselves, and they can also fight for issues that benefit everyone: demanding their powerful employers live up to their stated values, lobbying government to build more housing, and much more.
More worker power might even make business work better! The labor organizations that may help business the most are the ones that are the strongest — deeply connected to their member workers, capable of a wide range of actions (including everything from friendly collaboration to going on strike), and appealing to the point where every person has the opportunity to join a labor organization that represents their interests faithfully. Good partnerships require both partners to hold real power, especially the power to walk away. Deals are the currency of modern business, and business needs a better counterparty. Not to mention, as so many CEOs have discovered, workers often know the right answer better than their managers do.
If we want our economy and society to prosper, we need many possible solutions — new services for working people, changes in government policy, technological innovation, all of it. But without more, and different, organized worker power I fear we won’t get there. Workers need leverage for the deals to get done that can solve problems modern companies face. And we’ll find the best answers outside of ivory towers, at the table, reaching deals to try better ways.
So I now find myself straddling two worlds with often-conflicting ideologies: business and labor. Businesspeople often agree organized labor should be different, but not that workers need more power. Labor organizers agree that workers need more power, but not always that labor organizations need to work differently.
Neither business nor labor truly understands the other, and many don’t even care to try. Businesspeople have an almost tragically low level of knowledge about organized labor (“Amazon Labor Union… is that like Amazon Prime?”); and, among people in labor, few understand how companies actually function (for example, the often-existential need for speed and the ability to hire and fire based on performance). If they understood each other better, both could be more successful. And many business critiques of unions are valid (there are unions that impede company performance to the point of near-paralysis), while many are outdated or oversimplified caricatures. Despite their impressive solidarity with each other, “unions” are not one creature, and the labor movement is diverse in almost every way I can imagine — as is modern business.
I’m aware that a businessperson like me looking to be an ally to organized labor (offering perspectives on business, for example) might, if he weren’t careful, actually end up causing damage inadvertently, or benefiting inappropriately. And I’m also aware that some in labor think my occupation inherently exploits workers (a subject that would need its own essay, or book, to get at fully, though I think there’s a way to succeed in doing what I do while supporting worker power).
The ownership for re-inventing organized labor, of course, lies with working people. I try to center their priorities, share (sometimes uncomfortable) truths about how companies work, and act in a supporting role (a role that feels familiar to me, since it’s also how our firm supports the founders of companies in which we invest).
I recognize that this growth of organized labor will require me to give up power. The professional-managerial class, privileged in many ways, will need to cede roles we otherwise claim. (Maybe in a better-functioning economy and society, there might be fewer roles like mine!)
It’s time for business leaders to realize we need a new, more constructive way of relating to organized labor. Without the involvement of all sectors of American life, I doubt we can get to the best answers. To start doing my part, I’ve been funding new stories to help us imagine and understand worker power more fully, continuing to learn all I can, teaching a class on leading an organized workforce at Berkeley’s business school (where I’ve been faculty for more than a decade and also joined the faculty union), and convening other business leaders to re-imagine our role. (If you know a business leader who wants to join our business group of “labor open” leaders, the Aspen Business Roundtable on Organized Labor — please reach out. We’re exploring everything from voluntary recognition of unions to worker-elected board members; we’re offering resources, from recommendations of labor-constructive lawyers to connections with other business leaders encountering similar questions, and we’ll do much more with time.)
To get where we need to go, we’ll all need to stretch, get uncomfortable, and invent new ways. We might discover plenty of ways to succeed, hand in hand — and, like any real relationship, navigate the inevitable conflict successfully.
America has made progress like this before: by building bridges between interests. The Treaty of Detroit, which established the current American template for employment (like regular raises, paid vacation, and more), was negotiated by Walter Reuther, the head of the United Auto Workers. He inspired General Motors factory employees to organize so they held more bargaining power.
Walter Reuther became an icon in American labor history, and we rarely ask who sat on the other side of the table: Charlie Wilson, “Engine Charlie,” the CEO of GM. They forged the deal together. They weren’t two angels, nor an angel and a devil, but two savvy human beings representing powerful interests, reaching a deal to make the future work.
The future that Walter Reuther and Engine Charlie negotiated was imperfect. And it was an enormous step forward for labor and for business — and for America. Maybe, today, we need more Walter Reuthers and more Engine Charlies, and more business leaders and people with means who have supported changes in society (people like Edward Filene, Anne Morgan, and others). Today, the leaders who pull us forward are more likely to be women, people of color, and others from a wide range of backgrounds. I’m prepared to support the leaders who will pull us forward, for as long as it takes. If you’re interested in collaborating, I’m easy to find.
