Sanders, Mamdani Back New Manhattan Nonprofit to Fund Union Drives as Inequality Grows

As New York’s economic divides widen, labor leaders and left-leaning politicians are betting a new nonprofit, Union Now, can leverage collective muscle— and cash— to bolster worker power.

A familiar chant echoed down West 18th Street on a recent Sunday as labor leaders and politicians gathered not, for once, on a picket line, but behind a lectern. Flanked by banners and flanked, too, by a city whose skyline is built as much by union labour as by capital, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the Manhattan event to unveil “Union Now,” a nonprofit with audacious ambitions: not just to sustain strikes, but to reknit the city’s famously tattered social contract.

Launched as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit under the stewardship of Association of Flight Attendants-CWA president Sara Nelson, Union Now aims to act as both benefactor and backroom tactician for New York’s swelling ranks of union activists— as well as for campaigners far beyond. Its mission: to raise funds and materials for workers engaged in organizing drives, to help coordinate city-wide campaigns against major employers, and to underwrite movements that might otherwise wither on starvation rations.

Unions in America, and especially in New York, are having a bit of an improbable moment. Starbucks baristas, Amazon warehouse pickers, and hospital nurses alike have staged more strikes over the past three years than in any period since the Reagan era. Yet the proportion of private-sector workers who belong to a union stands close to a historic nadir: just 6% nationwide. In New York City, there is still muscle— about 21% of the workforce is unionized— but that number, too, is falling.

For the city’s leaders and labor brass, the implications are as urgent as they are personal. “New York City has been, is now, and will forever be, a union town,” boomed Mayor Mamdani, referencing not mere nostalgia, but the fact that subway trains, classrooms and hospitals still depend on union labor. The city’s ability to weather crises— from the pandemic to the housing crunch— owes much, they argue, to the solidarity of its workforce.

Union Now’s approach is to address an age-old problem with a touch of modernity (if plenty of old-fashioned cash, too). The nonprofit intends not just to collect donations for strike hardship funds, but to create a formal network enabling unions to share tactics, legal resources, and strategic intel— a kind of mutual-aid society scaled to the behemoths of modern capitalism. Its leaders tout “organizing at the scale needed to win big fights against big employers.”

This, backers argue, is more than sentimentalism. The numbers are stark: a recent report from City Hall estimates that 62% of New Yorkers— over five million inhabitants— fail to meet the city’s “true cost of living.” Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve pegs national wealth inequality at an eyebrow-raising extreme: the top 1% now command nearly a third of household wealth, as much as the bottom 90% combined.

If the first order effects of Union Now’s launch are logistical (more money for strikers’ rent and groceries), the second-order implications run much deeper. A coordinated labor front could embolden new organizing— especially among the young and precarious, from gig drivers to adjunct professors— and could make New York’s perennial traffic jams on the picket line a more frequent, if potent, inconvenience.

City Hall’s embrace of Union Now is also telling. Mamdani’s rhetoric takes aim at automation, AI, and what he calls “weakening worker protections”— a nod to the changing shape of employment itself. Should the nonprofit grow beyond its early adopters, it may serve as a rare bridge between classic blue-collar trades and the city’s burgeoning workforce of coders and creatives— as likely to join Slack as to walk a slack line.

Nationally, New York’s initiative echoes a wider revival of labor activism. Major strikes at UPS, the UAW’s bruising campaigns against automakers, and high-profile walkouts in Hollywood have put union density (or the want thereof) back on the political agenda. Senator Sanders, whose progressive bona fides are rarely in doubt, cast the Union Now approach as “a new boldness in our thinking and a new boldness in our ideology.” His bet: that the status quo— economic or political— cannot withstand the pressure of today’s angry, cost-squeezed middle and working classes.

A new handbook for old struggles

International comparisons provide some perspective. Where American unions have splintered, some European counterparts have managed to maintain not just their dues rolls, but a broader political relevance. Swedish trade unions, for instance, still secure robust wage growth for their members and coordinate strikes with alacrity. Yet those same Nordic models are under pressure, and those who reckon nonprofits alone can bridge the gap between labor and capital may be courting disappointment. The American labor law framework, at once unwieldy and employer-friendly, gives unusually little legal clout to unions— and nonprofits like Union Now, though potentially useful, are not a substitute for collective bargaining or legal reform.

Still, there is cause for cautious optimism amidst the wry jokes and rousing speeches. A well-financed, tactically savvy support organization could provide lifelines to workers whose strikes are otherwise a losing gamble. Unions that can pool and target resources, rather than scatter them, might surprise doubters with their stickiness and scale. Even employers, faced with more persistent opposition, could rethink their own approaches to hiring and retention.

Ultimately, Union Now will be judged not by the rhetoric of its Manhattan launch but by the material changes it delivers. Can it tilt New York’s stubborn economic inequalities? Will it inspire a new generation to see solidarity, not atomization, as the best route to security and dignity at work? Or will it find itself, like so many labor crusades before it, exhausted by the very scale of the fights it picks?

New York has always thrived on tension—between Wall Street titans and City Hall, between innovation and tradition, and between labor and capital. If Union Now and its backers can bridge those divides, even marginally, the experiment may indeed bode well not just for the city, but for the country whose labor movement began— and whose economic future may well be decided— on its crowded streets. ■