Op-Ed: An Urban Agenda for Cleveland Workers or the Chamber of Commerce?

Cleveland and Cuyahoga County leaders met at a room at the Greater Cleveland Partnership offices in January to sign a memorandum of understanding to reduce povery in the city. Credit: Mark Oprea

On Friday, the City Club of Cleveland is hosting a conversation on “An Urban Agenda for Cleveland.”

This comes on the heels of the January 31st ceremonial execution of an “Urban Agenda 2025 Memorandum of Understanding” by a number of key Cuyahoga County elected leaders, and civic and business partners at the Greater Cleveland Partnership offices. We’ll come back to the GCP in a moment.

The MOU outlined the following three laudable economic mobility goals:

Reduce the poverty rate in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County.
Increase median incomes for Black and Hispanic/Latino households to be on par with White households.
Close the Black/Hispanic/White wealth gap.

Unquestionably, the most important partner is missing from the discussion – the labor movement. History and research is clear: a collective bargaining agreement for workers is the single greatest tool to address the persistent racial and gender wage gaps.

Moreover, the best anti-poverty program is a union. Research is also clear that unions improve workers’ lives outside of work. The Economic Policy Institute found that “high unionization levels are associated with positive outcomes across multiple indicators of economic, personal, and democratic well-being.”

As we watch the creation of a new gilded age with the accompanying authoritarianism and rule by oligarch, it is hard to fathom the logic of excluding workers from this conversation.

But there is a reason for not listening to the collective voices of workers. The GCP is playing a central role in convening this conversation. The GCP’s parent organization – the US Chamber of Commerce – has led the war nationally on working people for more than 50 years, dating back to the Powell Memo. The Powell Memo provided a roadmap for corporate America to strip workers of workplace and political power and basic dignity. Today if you check-out the Chamber’s website, it still reads as a standard issue anti-union textbook.

Locally, don’t forget that the GCP runs to Columbus every chance it gets to undermine home rule. The GCP regularly is on the side of preemption, stripping power from local governments to craft solutions for our communities that counter the reactionary governing at our state capitol. One look no further than the GCPs “advocacy” for preemption on the $15 minimum wage and participatory budgeting.

Clevelanders know that the GCP is not on our side when it comes to improving our economic well being or democratizing decision making.

Clevelanders understand full well that no one is coming to save us. We’re going to have to fight for the future our families deserve. We’re under no illusion that the GCP is a partner to us in building better lives and neighborhoods across every zip code of this town.

Imagine a City Club forum with Cleveland workers discussing proven solutions for an “Urban Agenda” – an agenda that would actually benefit Clevelanders.

Bluntly stated: Nothing about us without us. This is a “which side are you on” moment politically. The question is whether our elected and civic leaders are on the side of the GCP or the side of Cleveland residents.