Workers stand in a line on strike outside the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, Oct. 18, 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

Is it possible that blue collar Kentucky workers could finally be reaching a turning point in the long slide in their standard of living? If so, history may credit the victories in the now-ratified new contracts of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the Teamsters.

After decades of stagnant wages and eroding job quality, these two unions won significant gains in negotiations with the Big Three automakers and United Parcel Service (UPS), respectively. While not everything workers hoped for was secured, the final ratified agreements contain substantial wage increases, including dramatic gains for part-time, temporary and lower-paid workers, improved working conditions, and even influence over plant closings and investments.

These wins come after years of forced concessions in union contracts and weakening economic security. Numerous public policy decisions have beat workers down and driven billionaire incomes up, from trade deals and deregulation to loophole-ridden labor laws and so-called right to work.

But things are changing rapidly. Labor is cool again and unions are popular, with organizing reaching even graduate students and Starbucks employees. And the new leadership of unions like the Teamsters and the UAW are raising the bar on what workers should expect and demand.

What is bringing about this potential renaissance? Discontent over growing inequality and a broken economy for most workers has been bubbling for decades. Federal pandemic stimulus and industrial policies are creating record-low unemployment, which allows workers to take greater risk knowing other jobs are out there. At the same time, unions like the Teamsters and UAW have emerged stronger after internal reform efforts.

And it’s right here in the commonwealth where these victories could bear their biggest fruit. The state’s central location has made Kentucky a key home to auto manufacturing and logistics, the primary UAW and Teamsters industries. While most people think of blue collar jobs as being in terminal decline, these sectors have been growing rapidly in the Bluegrass.

More than 137,000 Kentuckians work in transportation and warehousing, growth of 165% since 1990. And 68,000 work in auto and truck manufacturing, up 113%. In comparison, all Kentucky non-farm employment increased only 38% over the same time period. The state reports that unionized Ford and UPS are now our two biggest employers.

And the next two biggest? Amazon and Toyota. They operate in the same industries as UPS and Ford, but are non-union. For now.

The improvements UAW and Teamsters members won are rippling out to other employers, whose workers are taking notice. When Toyota announced a big raise right after the UAW tentative agreement was reached, auto worker president Shawn Fain called it the “UAW bump,” quipping that it stands for “U Are Welcome.” Axios quotes UAW staff reporting, “’We’ve had a tremendous amount of calls coming in from Toyota workers wanting to unionize in Kentucky.” Likewise, there are active Amazon warehouse organizing efforts all over the country.

In the mid-20th century, one-third of U. S. workers were union members compared to only 10% today. At that bigger scale, unions wielded significant political power and were also part of workers’ everyday lives, sponsoring sports leagues and social activities. When my father-in-law — a member of his teachers’ union — died recently, we found he’d kept and protected the union cards of both his father, a coal miner, and his mother, a hospital cafeteria worker.

There may be nothing more potentially transformative than the reawakened idea that workers should have a voice in their jobs and in broader society.

Autoworkers raise their fists as UAW Region 8 President Tim Smith speaks at a rally in Louisville, Sept. 21, 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

The United Auto Workers’ (UAW) Stand Up strikes came to Louisville last night when the 8,700 workers at the massive Ford Kentucky Truck Plant held a surprise walk out. They join the 25,300 employees now on strike at other Big Three facilities across the country.

And the movement they’re leading is gaining momentum — the strikes are popular with the public and infectious with workers. They’re drawing on the energy of recent labor efforts at Starbucks, UPS, Hollywood and elsewhere. And in the UAW’s case, they’ve struck a chord by calling out eroding compensation and unjust transitions that have harmed production workers across the economy in recent decades.

Now the members of Louisville’s UAW Local 862 could powerfully shape the outcome of these negotiations. The local says they are responsible for 54% of Ford’s North American profits including through the production of SUVs and Super Duty pickups.

Ford is now a special target of UAW after some progress in negotiations with General Motors, which recently conceded to putting new electric vehicle (EV) and battery manufacturing facilities under the master UAW contract. The need for good union jobs in the transition to EV production at Ford and Stellantis is still one of the major sticking points in the negotiations.

Not coincidentally, on the same day the Louisville Truck Plant workers hit the bricks, Ford Blue Oval SK battery facilities under construction in Kentucky and Tennessee announced a starting salary increase for their not-yet-union job openings. Solidarity is contagious, and these corporations are worried.

That’s why the Big Three are starting to make other concessions as well. That includes over 20% wage increases, agreements to bring back cost of living adjustments that had disappeared in recent years, and a shorter path for workers to reach top wage rates. But along with the need for a full just transition to EV jobs, the companies’ wage proposals fall short after years of failing to keep up with inflation and in the context of soaring CEO pay. And the UAW is rightly calling for an end to employment tiers that have denied pensions to workers hired after 2007.

I got to hear directly from UAW President Shawn Fain last week at a policy conference in Detroit. Fain grew up in Indiana as the grandson of unionized auto workers who moved there from Kentucky and Tennessee. His refrain is common sense: these corporations have never been more profitable, and “record profits must mean record contracts.” Auto workers made huge sacrifices when the Big Three nearly failed after the Great Recession, and it’s past time that the workers share in the industry’s tremendous gains.

But Fain is also unflinching in his vision that the UAW’s fight is about the future of the broader American economy. We’ll either continue on the path that enriches billionaires and squeezes the working class, or we’ll build something better. To the plutocrats claiming the UAW aims to wreck the economy, Fain clarifies that they only aim to wreck “their economy.”

Now these Louisville workers are joining the growing picket line, and marching for a place in history.

UPS is a microcosm of what’s happened to workers across the state and country in recent decades. In 1982 and again in 2018, the company established new compensation tiers that meant much lower wages for newly-hired and part-time workers, the latter of whom are now 60% of the UPS workforce. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Intense contract negotiations between an emboldened Teamsters union and package delivery giant United Parcel Service (UPS) are nearing a July 31 strike deadline. The outcome of this showdown has massive implications for every Kentucky worker facing inadequate wages, difficult working conditions and lack of respect on the job.

That’s because Kentucky is ground zero for national UPS operations as the home of the company’s largest sorting facility, UPS Worldport in Louisville. At this 5.2 million-square-foot behemoth, more than 10,000 employees sort 416,000 packages an hour. UPS is arguably Kentucky’s largest employer once you add in other distribution facilities, seasonal workers and drivers of their ubiquitous brown trucks.

When UPS workers win, all Kentucky workers win because what happens there influences what happens at similar fast-growing jobs. Kentucky’s central location in the eastern half of the United States has made it a prime location for package distribution, with the state now also home to major Amazon, FedEx and DHL facilities. A good contract for UPS workers adds pressure for improvements at these competitors, some of which are non-union. All told, there are 124,000 Kentuckians working in transportation and warehousing, a 143% increase since 1990. The wages and working conditions at these jobs, which can’t be offshored, ripple out to all workers at jobs that don’t require a college degree.

In fact, every Kentuckian has a stake in this fight because UPS is heavily subsidized with public tax dollars. Our state has given the company $157 million in tax breaks going back to 2005. It’s only reasonable to ask that subsidized jobs help lift up workers and communities rather than further fueling a race to the bottom. That’s especially true since UPS booked record profits of $13.9 billion last year as the pandemic accelerated the shift to online shopping — a profit increase of 70% compared to 2019.

UPS is a microcosm of what’s happened to workers across the state and country in recent decades. In 1982 and again in 2018, the company established new compensation tiers that meant much lower wages for newly-hired and part-time workers, the latter of whom are now 60% of the UPS workforce. Package handlers and drivers face growing surveillance and constant pressure to work harder and faster, but without basic protections like air conditioning. Workers face mental and physical strains that range from injured fingers and backs to heat exhaustion.??

A key to the potential worker gains from these negotiations is new leadership at the Teamsters that’s willing to more aggressively fight for a fair deal. Louisville plays a central role in this as well, with the new secretary-treasurer of the Teamsters (the second-highest position in the union) Fred Zuckerman hailing from Louisville’s Local 89. Zuckerman and President Sean O’Brien have succeeded in uniting workers behind an aggressive bargaining stance, with 97% of UPS Teamsters voting to authorize a strike if a new and better contract isn’t ratified by the July 31 deadline.

And the union’s approach is already winning victories at the bargaining table. They’ve secured concessions for air conditioning in trucks and the elimination of driver-facing cameras. But major issues remain unresolved, including the need for significant wage increases that finally allow the company’s many part-time workers to make ends meet.

All eyes will be on the negotiation and on these Kentucky workers in the coming weeks. If the Teamsters are forced to walk out, it will be the country’s largest strike since the 1950s. UPS workers are testing for all of us whether the old tradition of solidarity can be a renewed path to better lives in the 21st century.

Kentucky public school teachers protested outside the House chamber in April 2018. The month before the legislature rushed through changes in their retirement system in a single day. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

Public schools are at the heart of our communities, yet powerful interests have led a decades-long national effort to undermine them. Their strategy is morphing, but the ultimate goal remains the same: replace the grand American tradition of “common schools” with private education.

The corporate lobbyists and free-market ideologues working to dismantle public education have many motivations.

Teachers’ unions are a powerful voice, and breaking them is part of a broader effort to weaken worker power. Public schools are the biggest item in state budgets, so defunding them makes room for tax cuts that benefit the wealthy and corporations. And there’s money to be made by for-profit privatizers offering computer-based schools staffed with low-wage proctors rather than well-trained and adequately paid teachers.?

For these proponents, moving away from public schools is also about narrowing the purpose of education to that of creating a compliant workforce. Without strong public schools, we have a weaker democracy with fewer knowledgeable and engaged citizens that can question authority. And a workforce-only focus could even funnel kids more quickly into low-wage jobs, a corporate goal revealed by recent policy changes that are rolling back child labor laws in 11 states.?

But the original, head-on approach of replacing public schools with private school vouchers has been unpopular, forcing proponents to modify their strategies. One approach was the halfway measure of charter schools, which once had bipartisan support but have now lost that luster. Another is private school tax credits enacted across the country. Some states are now dramatically expanding these credits into full voucher programs.

In Kentucky, a pilot voucher program passed the legislature in 2021. But in December a unanimous state Supreme Court threw the law out, ruling that the state Constitution requires public money go to public schools unless approved by a vote of the people.

There’s a second prong to the strategy: slowly cut funding for public schools to make them less effective and thereby fuel calls for privatization. Since it’s politically hard to do that directly, proponents begin with tax cuts that then result in less money for the budget, a process that started decades ago in Kentucky.?

The next step is to “never let a serious crisis go to waste.” The Great Recession and the weak subsequent recovery hammered tax receipts, and states like Kentucky claimed they had no choice but to cut school funding for more than a decade. That’s also when Gov. Matt Bevin went on the attack against teacher pensions, though the backlash from his abrasive approach caused him to lose his bid for re-election and put a temporary halt to the strategy.

However, the COVID-19 crisis is allowing the process to restart. Congress passed strong economic stimulus legislation that helped the economy soar, while the pandemic hampered supply chains, spurring inflation. Those factors created large but temporary budget surpluses, which Kentucky is using not to reinvest in schools but as an excuse to permanently and deeply cut the revenue source for nearly half of the state budget, the individual income tax. That will force inevitable cuts to public services down the road.?

COVID also plays a role in a culture war in which fighting “woke” schools is the newest element of the anti-public education strategy. Frustration over school closures mutated into manufactured moral panics ranging from alleged “critical race theory” in school curriculum to attacks on support for LGBTQ+ students.

Which brings up the other flank of the coalition for school privatization: those backing a cultural ideology tinged with religious nationalism and race and gender hierarchy. There’s a long history here as well, with “school choice” efforts rooted in attempts to maintain racial segregation after Brown v. Board of Education. That part of the coalition has a somewhat energized base, though its mean-spirited positions are sparking an organized backlash.

Whether the coalition of market and cultural fundamentalists is big enough to continue the move away from public schools is yet to be seen. A trial may be coming soon in Kentucky, as some say they’ll push next session to put a school choice constitutional amendment on the ballot. And at some point the economy will stumble, weakening tax revenues and eventually forcing difficult public school funding decisions due to a lower income tax.

This emerging debate is one of the toughest tests this commonwealth has ever faced. The outcome depends on how many people understand the stakes, and join the fight.

Unemployed men queuing for food during the Great Depression, Iowa, USA, circa 1935. (Photo by FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Addressing the long list of pressing modern challenges facing Kentucky requires a unified effort from all of us. How will we create good jobs in a globalized economy, stem climate change and deal with its effects, protect public health against the threat of future pandemics, and more?

Instead of tackling the dilemmas of our age, the state legislature is bringing back old problems solved long ago with two new Kentucky laws that went into effect on January 1st.

The first of these laws begins reducing the state’s individual income tax, which funds 41% of the state budget, while the second dramatically slashes the number of weeks of unemployment benefits available to workers laid off through no fault of their own.

Both Kentucky’s income tax and the U. S. unemployment insurance program were responses to the Great Depression, with the state’s individual income tax first imposed in 1936 and unemployment benefits established in 1938. And both were major successes.

In the early 20th century, Kentucky was a state of vast inequality and extreme vulnerability to recessions. In 1928, the richest 1% of Kentuckians took home a staggering 18.3% of the state’s income, but a combination of state and federal policies ushered in a fairer economy that cut that share in half by the early 1970s. It did so through strong and broadly-shared economic growth that created a middle class in Kentucky for the first time.

It wasn’t “mission accomplished” by the end of the New Deal-era in the 1970s. The state still faced unacceptable levels of poverty, especially in Eastern Kentucky and among Black Kentuckians, but major strides were made.

Prior to the income tax, Kentucky was a poorer, less educated and sicker state, but the tax helped finance vast improvements in quality of life. In 1940, only 16% of adult Kentuckians had at least a high school diploma, compared to 88% today. In 1930 only 9,000 people were attending the state’s public colleges and universities, according to A New History of Kentucky, compared to nearly 200,000 now. Health care advances since 1930 have added an average of 16 years to life expectancy, for which the Medicaid program — which didn’t exist until the 1960s, and is funded in significant part by the state — has been a major contributor.

However, recent decades have seen a reversal of some key 20th century policy advances and a resulting near-return to pre-Great Depression levels of inequality. That trend will continue with the new restrictions on unemployment insurance and cuts to, and potential elimination of, Kentucky’s income tax.

The new unemployment law, which faced bipartisan opposition, makes the first reduction in the duration of benefits in the program’s 85-year history, restricting laid-off workers to only 12 weeks of benefits instead of the 26 weeks available since the program began.?

This cut in unemployment insurance is a response to lobbying by corporate interests intent on keeping wages down by making workers more desperate for any available job, no matter if it matches their skills or pays enough to live on. The unemployment cuts are a particular harm to workers in rural areas, Kentuckians of color, and other people facing structural barriers to re-employment.?

And the new income tax cuts are a giveaway to the wealthy and powerful. The wealthiest 1% of Kentuckians will get an average $11,056 annual tax cut if the income tax rate drops from 5% to 4%, as the legislature is now considering under House Bill 1. Typical workers, in contrast, will get between $20 and $278 a year. Nearly two-thirds of the dollars will flow to the highest-earning 20% of people, the least in need of any aid.

The legislature also put new sales taxes on some services, but they only replace $1 for every $12 in lost revenue if the income tax rate drops to 4%. The more the legislature reduces the rate, the bigger the hole in future state budgets that must be closed by either eliminating vital funding for public services, raising regressive sales taxes and applying them to everyday needs like groceries, or both.

We can’t roll back policies that allow more Kentuckians to thrive unless we are willing to sacrifice the life-enhancing gains that came along with them. Let’s face what’s in front of us, and not bring back the bad old days to struggle through again.

Jason Bailey is executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, www.kypolicy.org.