We're Here Because We Forgot About Unions

Look, I'll be honest with you, I resisted starting a newsletter for ages. I think it is incorrect that people in creative fields have to do so many things now, to make a living. I think it's good these things are available to do! I just don't think they should be mandatory.

I think that making the thing you make should be enough. But we are where we are, and where we are is late stage capitalism, where money is thrown by the billions at silicon valley's newest obvious con and none is given to anyone else. I could talk ineptly about the economic policies that have led to this, the deregulation, the failure to enforce the few anti-trust laws left to us, but instead I'll talk about something fun:

Parades.

A few weeks ago I went to see Hello Dolly at the London Palladium. It really slaps, a great time, a proper song and dance comedy musical. But the part I haven't stopped talking about is the closing number of act one.

Act one ends with a paraded. The 14th Street Association Parade – a parade of all the clubs and societies in the area. And a lot of the clubs are unions.

The teachers union is there, the firefighters union, the steelworkers union. It's not important to the plot, other than the fact that a lead character's schedule is built around the fact that he's marching in the parade. With his union.

(Odd, because he's a very capitalist man who is mean to his employees, but still.)

I think we need to bring this back.

I've heard smart economics people (Elizabeth Warren, mainly. I love her.) talk about how the US used to accept economic instability. Capitalism just was a boom and bust system. Largely unregulated, full of bubbles that would rise and then burst and drives the economy down. It wasn't until the Wall Street Crash in 1929 that people really started to question whether things had to work like that.

The Depression forced the issue. Regulation was needed to ensure economic stability, and it was put in place. But after a while people began to question whether they really needed to be hampered by all that regulation. After all, the economy was strong! Stable! Why should they have to keep holding themselves back?

Well, the way we're living now is why. We are back to boom and bust cycles, money is concentrated among a smaller and richer group of people, and the rest of us have to grind at a million side hustles to pay the bills.

A similar thing happened with unions. We had a great big fuck this shit labour movement, won a lot of protections, and then began to wonder if we really needed unions when we have all these protections.

They went out of fashion.

Now, I'm not going to pretend they aren't already making something of a comeback. Starbucks has been unionising! There have been successful artist strikes in Hollywood!

My argument is that the PR is still bad. We're letting the unions take the blame for our crumbling infrastructure and social systems. The media runs with the narrative that striking workers are to blame for disruption, not the hostile employment realities that are causing infrastructure to crumble.

We need good union PR. We need a parade.

A day out in the sunshine, with balloons and music and ice cream. People twirling batons. A float for the junior doctors. A float for rail workers. A float for my union, The Society of Authors, where we hand out books to the crowd.

We are in another labour movement, we need to be in another labour movement, but why shouldn't it be fun? Why shouldn't it have joy and dancing and glitter?

A parade is the answer. A parade is what we need and deserve.

It's time.