In A City With Historically Few Unions, The Labor Fight Comes to Columbus, Ohio
“They want us to do our job because it’s the ‘right thing to do,’ not because we need money to live.”
Columbus, Ohio: The Non-Traditional Union Town
One could be forgiven for assuming Columbus, Ohio, has always been ripe for unions. After all, the American Federation of Labor was founded there in 1886, and is still going strong as half of the AFL-CIO, a coalition of labor unions fighting for workers’ rights across the country.
However, as Mark Fluharty, Executive Director of the Central Ohio Labor Council can attest, “Columbus is not a traditional labor town and never has been. It doesn’t have traditional industry.”
Typically, unions form to secure worker protections around blue-collar jobs — physically demanding, often dangerous positions like mining and manufacturing. But unlike the older, industrial cities of Cleveland and Cincinnati, Columbus has historically been a city of white-collar jobs, those done in an office. Stretching from the late 1800s to today, Columbus’s best-known industries have been insurance and banking, industries that have avoided unionization.
