Labor Unions Were Occupy Wall Street’s Key, Forgotten, Conflicted Ally
The labor movement played a key role in the success of Occupy Wall Street. But the alliance of unions and Occupy never succeeded in reaching its full potential.
Transport Workers Union Local 100 members join Occupy Wall Street activists in a protest at Zuccotti Park on December 15, 2011. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
Ten years since the sudden rise of the Occupy movement, its impact on the contemporary left has been dissected many times over. One aspect of Occupy that is frequently overlooked, however, is its relationship to the labor movement. Unions were essential to the initial survival and growth of Occupy Wall Street, although the two of them never managed to connect with each other as fully as they should have.
I was a participant in Occupy Wall Street, starting from the initial planning meetings and continuing with my involvement in the Labor Outreach Committee, where I tried to help deepen the alliance between OWS and New York City unions, so I had a front-row seat to both the successes and the failures of their collaboration.
An Overlapping Agenda
One of Occupy’s central messages was that the richest 1 percent of Americans had perverted American democracy by using their wealth to gain an outsized influence and control over the US political system. Unions were sympathetic to this message because it dovetailed with unions’ entire reason for being: to fight for higher wages and better treatment for workers against their bosses, the 1 percent. This shared opposition to the overwhelming power of the rich in American politics motivated unions to defend and help legitimize Occupy, although this contribution was never fully appreciated by Occupy’s activists.
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