Viewpoint: Durham Should Copy NYC's New Office of Worker Power

In September, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the creation of an Office of Worker Power, which will help workers understand their rights, connect with unions, and organize for better pay and conditions. The Office will also crack down on abusive employers. Union density in NYC stands at around 10 percent. Durham's is 2 to 3 percent, far below similarly sized cities in rich countries such as Japan's Kasugai (21 percent) or Germany's Mannheim (17 percent). After the announcement, a corporate envoy told the New York Times that, "Government should set fair rules and be the referee, not put its thumb on the scale especially when other cities aren't doing the same." But Durham should do the same. An Office of Worker Power would raise wages, deepen local democracy, help to unite Durham's divided progressives, enrich working people's lives, and spread the city's progressive politics across North Carolina.

Unions help workers to improve their pay and conditions, but employees trying to organize are vulnerable to swift, illegal retaliation. During the New Deal era, unions helped the working class win a larger share of national income, and union workers today still earn roughly 10 to 20 percent more than their non-union peers. The Duke Graduate Students Union, one of Durham's largest new unions, won recognition in 2022 and has since raised stipends from $34,660 to $42,500, a 12 percent increase after inflation. Workers who tried to organize at Durham Food Hall in 2025 might eventually have won similar gains, but key leaders like Kai Bradley were fired. Firing workers for organizing is illegal, but the law is not enforced. Isolated workers under pressure from their boss can be made to feel that organizing is almost illegal. By lending new unions the prestige of local government when they are weakest, the Office of Worker Power could dispel that impression.

Firms often threaten to relocate when workers organize, but many of Durham's largest employers can't leave or would have little reason to. Duke University and Duke Health, together the county's biggest employer, aren't going anywhere. The rest of the health sector also needs to stay near its patients. Delivery services like Amazon and chains like Starbucks wouldn’t be able to escape the Office's reach without giving up their Durham customers. Restaurants, which commonly rely on low-wage labor, are also fixed in place. The area’s second-largest employer, Durham Public Schools, is already organized. The Durham Association of Educators has used a "meet and confer" strategy to fight for better pay and resources. It has majority membership and growing political clout despite North Carolina's right-to-work law and its ban on formally recognizing public-sector unions. The third-largest employer, Cisco, pays an average salary above $120,000, so its workers are less likely to push for a union, or would probably focus on quality-of-life issues if they did. Either way, the Office could focus on workplaces that would find it hard to relocate.

The Office of Worker Power could help revive Durham's moribund democracy. A 2024 Bull City Public Investigator article found that two PACs, the People's Alliance and the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, dominate local politics: "In the past decade, every winning candidate in local races has been endorsed by at least one of these two PACs" [1]. The article also covered two other influential groups, the Friends of Durham and the Durham Association of Educators, noting that fewer than 650 people often decide all four groups' endorsements in a city of over 300,000. Turnout in local elections hovers around 20 percent. Unions have traditionally been the backbone of worker power in advanced economies. Democracy can't function with union density in the single digits, since workers have no vehicle to enter the political arena. If the Office can boost union density, the elected representatives of those unions would give a strong, influential voice to thousands of people. Farther down the road, if unions spread and federate, government could come to mirror the structure of the economy, fitting it like a glove.

Making Durham a labor stronghold is one of the best ways to counter the NC GOP's undemocratic grip on state government. Republicans have used gerrymandering to weaken progressive cities like Durham in both the General Assembly and Congress, but unions can't be gerrymandered. UE Local 150, for example, has significant strength in liberal areas like Durham and Mecklenburg counties but has also organized workers in Granville, Lenoir, Wayne, and other Republican-voting counties. Durham could punch far above its political weight if the unions it incubates spread outward and reshape the political economy of surrounding areas.

The Office of Worker Power could also help unite Durham's progressive leaders, who have been divided for years over development, especially annexations and rezonings. Yet both camps, roughly the factions led by Nida Allam and Nate Baker, strongly support unions. In June 2025, the city council unanimously passed a resolution encouraging Amazon workers to unionize with CAUSE. Baker, Javiera Caballero, and Matt Kopac attended a CAUSE rally at Amazon's DRT8 facility in February 2026. Allam, unable to attend, sent a message of support. Building the Office together wouldn't heal a divide with complex roots, but it would give both blocs a worthwhile shared project. A focus on unions could also do more for working people than almost anything else. Housing affordability and rational urban planning matter, and the city should fully use its zoning powers toward them, but much of the power over these issues is locked away at the state and federal level. Raising union density is incredibly difficult, but nothing stops the city from directing staff to support labor activists.

An Office of Worker Power would give Durham's people more room to reach their full potential. Most workers spend their lives in corporations, private dictatorships where orders flow from the top down. At the bottom, people rent themselves out for a wage and are treated as tools, with only a fraction of their talents put to use. That leaves unmet basic human needs such as freedom, creative work, and self-improvement. Unions help meet those needs by forcing corporations to let some decisions and ideas come from the bottom up. Labor activism can also enrich members' lives far beyond the workplace. REI Union Durham, for example, is fighting for a first contract with better pay and working conditions, but its members also helped establish the Durham Labor Choir, which draws hundreds of people to sold-out shows. Proceeds go to strike funds. By loosening the grip of corporate power, more unions would give Durham’s people the breathing room to develop their full potential and varied talents.

The Office of Worker Power should focus on strategic goals with implications beyond Durham, such as helping workers form a union at a McDonald's, Walmart, or Amazon warehouse. CAUSE spent years trying to unionize the RDU1 Amazon warehouse in Garner but lost its NLRB election in February 2025. On top of the usual challenges, the campaign got little public or political support in the town. Durham is much friendlier to unions, which is part of why CAUSE started organizing several Amazon sites here in late 2025. Successful organizing at one of these corporations, all notorious for union-busting, could inspire working people across the state and country and spark more wins elsewhere. It would give a blue-dot city like Durham a way to exercise major power, slipping the fetters of the NC GOP's gerrymander. An Office of Worker Power can help Durham do more than its share to move history forward.

Work Cited

1. "Do PAC Endorsements Matter in Durham Politics?" Bull City Public Investigators, 1 March 2024, bcpi.substack.com/p/do-pac-endorsements-matter-in-durham.