Posted August 1, 2008
by Mark B. (NYC) and Jane S. (Detroit)
August 2008
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Despite Weakened State, Labor Still a Key Force for Social Change
- The labor movement is the largest mass of independent, working class organizations
in the country, with over 10,000 local unions nationally counting 16 million
union members - As the west coast dockworkers recent May Day work stoppage to protest the
to wield serious economic leverage, capable of striking a blow to profits. - Unions also have tremendous financial resources, taking in close to $10
billion in dues each year (and holding another 19 billion in assets). - Labor represents a key player in national elections, spending upwards
of $250 million in 2008, and mobilizing tens of thousands of people to walk
precincts, phone-bank, and do other voter education and turnout. In the
2004 election 25 percent of voters came from union households.
- Despite some unions’ history of racism and exclusion, unions have had
an important positive impact on white working class consciousness. Although
it’s admittedly an imperfect measure, white working class voters who are
union members (and not evangelical Christians) support Democratic candidates
60/40 in elections. Non-union white working class voters are the reverse,
supporting Republican candidates by roughly the same margins. - Unions are also, of course, the workers’ organizations that are by definition
and by law created to fight the boss, either a capitalist employer or a
government one. They remain organizations where workers are forced to come
together across racial and gender lines and where hundreds of thousands
of workers have the experience of getting to know and working together with
people of other races that they do not have in their communities. The union
(and the workplace) is where the reality of “an injury to one is an injury
to all” is there for all to see (even if it’s not always seen).
Economic Landscape for Labor: Global Integration, Rise of Finance and
Logistics
- With the entry of the former Soviet Union and
into the world capitalist market, together with the opening of
we have experienced an effective doubling of the world labor market. - The rules of the global economy have been written by global corporations,
though trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA, and are now being enforced
by the WTO
- These two factors, together with the “logistics revolution” of the last
30 years, have allowed corporations to truly globalize production, stretching
supply chains across countries and regions. One stark measure of this trend
is shipping container traffic in and out of the U.S: - 8.4 million in 1980
- 15.6 million in 1990
- 30.4 million in 2000
- 45.0 million in 2007
- While these trends have had a major negative impact on some sectors of the U.S. economy like manufacturing,they have also tremendously increased the leverage of workers positioned
at the chokepoints of today’s cargo chain. Together, and in some cases individually,
the clusters of ship hands, longshoremen, truck drivers, railroad operators,
and warehouse workers have the power to cripple today’s “just-in-time” delivery
networks, idling the ships, terminal yards and trucks now used as mobile
warehouses. - The evolution of financial markets in the last three decades, both globally
and inside the
has changed the dynamic of profit-making, shifting resources and attention
out of the sphere of production into what is often speculative activity.
In the
for example, in 2007: - 5% of all workers were in the financial sector
- 15% of gross value added came from the financial sector
- 40% of total profits came from the financial sector
- This has made capitalism, especially in the
It has also removed some of the traditional leverage that workers have on
the job (e.g., if GM makes most of its profits through its financial arm
rather than making cars, this weakens the power of on-the-job activity by
auto workers). It also has put workers involved in ‘production’ in competition
not just with workers in other regions or countries, but with the choice
of no production at all (that is, capital could choose to invest in speculative
activity instead).
Economy Continues Long Trend of Getting Leaner and Meaner
- The recession that marked the beginning of this decade never ended in
some sectors, and the situation will only get worse given the current economic
turmoil. - We have lost over three million manufacturing jobs this decade
- 2000: 17.2 million
- 2007: 13.7 million
- These losses have been especially concentrated in core union industries
like automotive and heavy equipment. - Part has been due to trade, given the enormous increase in the flow
of goods in and out of the country (see container traffic statistics above). - Also due to technology, owing to the heavy investment in capital equipment
in the 1990s. - Recent trends are a continuation of ‘Lean Production’ – a corporate squeeze
play that dates back at least 30 years. The results are now depressingly
familiar. Lean production not only reduces the number of jobs through straightforward
methods like speed-up, it also fundamentally changes the way the workplace
is structured (both physically and in terms of the balance of power on the
shop floor). Workplaces are redesigned to isolate workers and minimize opportunities
for solidarity and collective action. Work processes are re-engineered to
strip workers of discretion and reduce their power on the job, - Corporations have also found new ways to attack workers:
- Gutting union contracts through the bankruptcy courts (e.g.
and Northwest) - Shifting the social risks associated with pensions and retiree healthcare
onto unions (e.g. VEBA at Goodyear, GM, Ford, looming proposal at Verizon)
or eliminating pensions and retiree healthcare altogether for newer, second-
tier workers. - Using large pools of capital (i.e. private equity), Wall Street investors
are now capable of taking over major corporations (even giants like Chrysler),
often pulling a quick “strip and flip,” chopping the company into pieces,
and/or piling on debt to goose up stock prices and line their own pockets. - The place where unions have had success organizing in the past 40 years,
namely in the public sector, is increasingly becoming an island of decent
jobs, in terms of pay and pensions, in a sea of low-wage, no-benefit, non-union
private sector options. Conservatives are gunning for public sector workers: - Exploiting the gaps between higher public sector standards and the private
sector (for comparable work) to push for privatization, contracting out,
and the creation of charter schools. - Using the poor pay, pensions, and benefits of most private sector workers
to pit them against “overpaid” public sector workers, bolstering general
opposition to taxes and public spending, and deepening the general cynicism
and mistrust of many voters towards government. - Conservatives’ concrete strategy is to exploit this distain for taxes
and mistrust of government to “starve the beast,” i.e., fight tax hikes
or other means of increasing public sector revenue. - Choking off new revenue creates a material crisis for the state, forcing
it to cut spending and services. These dynamics are only exacerbated
by other conservative policies like balanced-budget mandates and new
changes to pension accounting rules (which force governments to count
all future pension obligations as current liabilities). - After decades of rightward political drift many public sector unions
are too willing to accept the stereotype of voters as conservative and
anti-tax. This has led many to shy away from high-profile “us-versus-them”
campaigns—where the risks are high—relying instead on incrementalism
and their status as “insiders” in the political process to protect members’
standards. Not only has this reinforced many voters’ picture of unions
as a special interest, it has also ensured that most public sector unions
won’t touch the “third rail” of U.S. politics—the tax system—since “insiders”
all agree that this is political suicide. - We can only expect these trends to intensify as the current recession
deepens.
for Unions, Low-Hanging Fruit in the Public Sector Has Mostly Been Picked
- Private sector union density is at its lowest point in 100 years.
- 12 % overall, 7.4% in the private sector
- Large scale organizing in the private sector remains an elusive goal.
- Where unions have succeeded it has often been by getting employers to
agree to card check or neutrality agreements (see more below). - Another successful strategy has been to use the leverage that comes
from ties to the public sector, such as forcing new publicly-funded construction
to use union labor, or requiring vendors and contractors at public airports
to remain neutral in union organizing drives, or even using zoning and
permitting processes to extract “community benefits agreements” (which
typically include neutrality provisions) from big developers. - Today most newly organized workers come into the labor movement outside
of a typical NLRB election procedure, usually through a card check or neutrality
agreement with the employer. There is wide variation in how unions secure
neutrality deals and organize within them. - It is possible to win a card check/neutrality agreement through beating
up on the employer. - The 1999 card check agreement that eventually helped CWA organize
more than 17,000 retail workers at Cingular Wireless was the product
of five years of struggle with
Cingular’s predecessor company. - The 2006 neutrality agreement giving San Francisco-based UNITE HERE
Local 2 the right to organize in the suburban markets and outlying counties
was the product of two years of “bargaining to organize” that included
strikes, lock-outs, and civil disobedience the targeted hotels. - But in many of these agreements, the union explicitly or implicitly
agrees to mute struggle against the employer, before or after the contract
is signed, and to keep improvements in workers’ conditions minimal. Such
agreements result in more members and more dues for the union involved,
and may even beef up the union’s political muscle in elections, but the
“union advantage” for new members is sub-par. - For example, in 2002 the UAW secured a neutrality agreement with parts-maker
Metaldyne and agreed to wages $10 lower than Big Three standards. This
included forcing UAW members at DaimlerChrysler’s
when their portion of the operation was sold to Metaldyne (or to transfer
out of town). - SEIU secured a quiet quid-pro-quo agreement with California’s Nursing
Home Alliance that gave the union organizing rights at facilities the
companies chose, provided the union help get more money into the nursing
home industry through the state legislature. The union spread “template
agreements” to newly organized homes that gave up the right to strike,
limited workers’ ability to talk about patient conditions publicly,
and contained wages and benefits below those in other SEIU-organized
nursing homes. Ironically, SEIU organized more non-Alliance nursing
homes during the time period of the agreement, usually with better contracts
and standards. - While there is lots of variation with neutrality agreements, a few points
are clear: - Sweetheart contracts, or playing junior partner with management,
is not the way to rebuild the labor movement. - The recent experience of the Steelworkers at Dafasco
in
that employer neutrality is not enough. You still have to organize the
workers and convince them that there are good reasons to join the union. - You also still have to build a union. And how you organize in the
first place has a tremendous impact on what you are able to build down
the road. If the union is a product of struggle, of grassroots rank-and-file
involvement, then it will be a different organization than if it’s the
product of backroom deals or sweetheart contracts. - Given the prodigious difficulties of organizing today, because of
employers’ ability to break the law at will, it would not be tenable
to dismiss neutrality agreements out of hand. The question is what kind
of neutrality agreement is negotiated and, as always, the involvement
of workers in fighting for their own union. - Given the hostile terrain, raiding between different unions will continue,
and may intensify (e.g., the war between the SEIU and the CNA as seen in
Ohio, California, Illinois, and Nevada and the recent raid on AMFA at United
Airlines by the Teamsters). Raiding or unions fighting over the same members
is very often unproductive and wasteful, a substitute for organizing the
unorganized. But sometimes it makes sense for members to switch unions—to
one that is more likely to fight concessions, for example (as when United
Airlines mechanics left the Machinists for AMFA), or when the incumbent
union is hopelessly corrupt or undemocratic. Union officials don’t “own”
their members, and while the burden of proof may be on the raiders, raiding
should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. - After decades of growth, new public sector organizing has also slowed
down. - New, large-scale organizing requires moving into largely non-union,
right-to-work states in the South and Southwest. It also requires actually
establishing the right to collective bargaining for public employees (just
over half of all states permit public employees to bargain collectively,
with the rest either denying bargaining rights explicitly or offering
limited “meet and confer” options). - Unions have also branched out in the public sector to organize new kinds
of workers. In fact, it is important that the largest single chunk of
new organizing in the last decade has moved unions pretty far away from
their traditional model, namely, the organizing of more than half a million
homecare and childcare workers. These workers have become new union members
through ballot initiatives and/or gubernatorial decree. By creating public
entities to serve as the employer of record for such workers—who ultimately
receive their pay from the public purse—unions (usually SEIU or AFSCME)
were able to sign them up as members.
Top Union Leaders Recognize Crisis, Abandon the Fight
- For the first time in its modern history, the bureaucracy recognizes the
crisis it’s in. - The first outward response was the contested election for AFL-CIO president
in 1995, which brought John Sweeney and the “New Voices” slate into office. - But 10 years of trying to rebuild the labor movement “from above” brought
few results, leading to the 2005 split in the AFL-CIO and formation of the
Change to Win federation. In many ways, Change
to Win is a paradox. - The public rationale for breaking with the AFL-CIO was the need for
a stronger federation, one that could force affiliates into line and “on
program”. - But in practice CtW has even less infrastructure
and resources as a federation than the AFL-CIO. - Despite their weak center, CtW projects an
even more intense program of revitalization “from above” through its driving
force the SEIU. Since the split in the AFL-CIO, for example, SEIU has
created a wave of mega-locals—administrative units of tens, sometimes
hundreds of thousands of members that often span multiple states—and the
union has centralized more resources and control over bargaining in the
hands of SEIU’s national leaders. - Now, top leaders of unions in both the AFL-CIO and the CtW
are managing the decline of union standards (and sometimes the decline of
unions themselves) as we’ve known them for the past 60 years. - Some unions are trying to manage the decline straightforwardly.
- The UAW and the Steelworkers, for example, have argued that global
competition is too tough, that
workers can’t compete with workers in - The UAW has openly said that a large portion of its members in auto—parts
supplier workers, “non-core” workers in the Big Three, and new hires
in the Big Three—should not be paid the decent wages/benefits of the
past, and has enshrined this point of view in every major contract negotiation
in the last five years. - The spring 2008 strike at American Axle,
was, on the level of International leaders’ wishful thinking, a last-gasp
resistance to the pauperization of parts-sector workers, but in reality
it had no strategy to win, with predictable results. - Some are trying to manage the decline via spin, accepting lower standards
(which will ultimately serve as a drag on better union standards everywhere)
and claiming they are immense victories. Unions in the “spin zone” are
primarily associated with Change to Win. - At UPS Freight, a formerly non-union division of UPS, Teamsters refused
to use their leverage inside the rest of the company to bring UPS Freight
workers into the union and up to the standards of the National Master
Freight Agreement. Instead, they won a neutrality agreement which forced
them to organize each UPS Freight terminal one-by-one, with contract
standards that will undercut Teamsters in other parts of the freight
industry. - In 2002 SEIU launched a janitors strike in
was never more than 15 percent participation in the strike), the union
waged a series of highly visible and even militant public actions in
the streets, counting on political pressure from city leaders and state
officials to coerce the contractors association into a decent settlement.
While the strike was tremendously important in terms of making the work
of
and the union took a weak settlement, which it trumpeted as a major
victory. - Where unions do exist they have continued to cede the workplace, not even
showing up for the continuous bargaining that should be happening daily
between workers and management, both over the ordinary give-and-take on
the shop floor and over the changes that management is continually introducing
(technological, workplace organization). - The most ominous trend is for outright acceptance of the corporate agenda,
in hopes that corporations will let their “partners” survive. More on this
below under “Survival Era.” - Meanwhile, many local leaders who have not given up the fight continue
to try to represent their members, including through militant and sometimes
innovative struggles. Unfortunately, their hands are often tied by their
national unions’ policies or lack thereof.
Union Strategy in the ‘Survival Era’
- The shift in union policy we are seeing today can be described as a shift
from retreat to organized surrender. This shift is not a thorough one; there
are still many areas where retreat—or even resistance—are still the order
of the day. But the growing trend among top union officials is to surrender. - The “retreat” line that top leaders have enforced for over two decades
says to the members “We have to take givebacks now because we’re not strong
enough [though they usually don’t organize any fight to in fact test the
balance of power between employer and union]. In order to level the playing
field between employers and unions, we need to get the politicians to carry
our water.” So unions have focused all their hopes (and their considerable
financial and staff resources) on the political arena. The message is that
“Organizing in the private sector is too hard. Corporations are too powerful.
The deck is stacked against us. Congress needs to do something.” - That something is the Employee Free Choice Act, which is made to sound
like a cross between the passage of the civil rights legislation in the
1960s and the second coming of Jesus Christ. - The drumbeat has gotten even stronger with the Democrats in (bare) control
of Congress and with a chance to win the White House. But there are a
few holes in the logic: - First, these are the same politicians who gave us NAFTA, refused to
ban permanent replacements for striking workers, and worked so hard on
behalf of Wall Street during the
years that we’re now left with the biggest gap between rich and poor since
the Great Depression. - Yes, organizing is hard, but unions could do a lot of it with the quarter
of a billion dollars labor will spend in the 2008 election. - This logic reverses the history of our labor movement, the civil rights
movement, and every significant advance ever made in the
take those steps forward because a light bulb went off in somebody’s head
in - They were the product of struggle: the hard-won fruits of millions of
ordinary people, convinced of the righteousness
of their cause, acting together, willing to face fire hoses, attack dogs,
employer goon squads, Pinkertons, and even the
National Guard. Politicians aren’t the motor force of history, people
are. - While labor’s current knee-jerk spending on Democrats—usually with little or no
accountability required—won’t get workers anywhere, it is certainly true that
labor needs a political program backed up by mass action in the streets. Many
of the battles workers are now in cannot be won workplace by workplace. Pensions
and health care are essentially political problems. - There
are also positive signs on the political horizon. Although DC insiders in
both the AFL-CIO and CtW are maneuvering to sideline their efforts, more and more
unions are endorsing single-payer legislation. In the same vein, the center
of gravity within the labor movement is solidly against the
both cases, what is missing is any vision for how to spark a movement that
can take these struggles into the streets and communities. - In
the big picture, however, we still face an uphill battle, trying to foster
consciousness for which there is no concrete political expression. The
political party of its own, and when shifts do occur in working class consciousness
they usually cross squarely through the Democratic Party. The Democrats remain
stumbling block on the road to a socialist alternative, and labor’s allegiance
is not just at the level of the officialdom but among most rank-and-file activists
as well. Our task remains finding a working class solution to the current
economic and political turbulence and achieving that task will force us to
moves past the tremendous barrier of not having our own political organization. - The
surrender mode of operation goes further than retreat. In this mode, unions
volunteer to carry the corporations’ water. Go straight to the source,
and try and prove your worth to the corporate bosses. “If we help you, you
will let us live, right?” Everyone knows that CEOs are reasonable people,
just looking for ways to “add value” to their bottom line—and unions are just
the people to help them. This is the ideology of partnership that has infected
nearly every corner of the bureaucracy. It comes in different flavors. - Old School: Union leaders surrender in two ways here:
- At American Axle the union was so timid that it didn’t take the minimum
steps necessary to win a strike. The Canadian Auto Workers’ early contract
negotiations, before expiration, in order to make preemptive concessions,
is another example. - At Chrysler during the last Big Three negotiations, union leaders
put down rank-and-file efforts to fight back. - New School: Implicit and explicit promises are made to employers
that if the union is allowed to sign workers up, it will help corporate
profits. Not only will the union promise not to strike and not to disparage
the company, and to keep wages down, it may also put its political apparatus
at the company’s service. - For example, in California SEIU initially backed legislation to make
it harder for nursing home residents to sue the homes, until their quid
pro quo with nursing home operators was discovered and they had to disavow
the deal. - SEIU represents the vanguard of this trend, with a well worked out
and even public rationale that sometimes dismays (and shafts) even
its Change to Win partners. SEIU puts itself forward as fighting for
all workers, not just union members (“Justice for All”). But the more
in bed the union is with the corporations, the less tenable that posture
is. - It is important to note that the new-school surrender mode requires
more discipline in the union, to carry the line and to keep resistance
from breaking out. Megalocals, appointment of local officers from above,
armies of appointed staffers, bullying, and a general corporate modeling
of union functioning are almost a prerequisite for this survival strategy.
Can The Ranks Save Labor?
- We can’t ignore the facts. Private sector union density is as low as it’s
been in the last 100 years. - Worse still is action where it counts – strikes and work stoppages – face
to face confrontation with the boss, wielding our economic muscle. - In this decade there were about 200,000 workers in any given year idled
by strikes and work stoppages. - To put that in perspective
- 1910s 581,000
- 1930s 889,000
- 1940s to 1970s roughly 2 million
- 1980s 718,000
- 1990s 384,000
- What do ‘survival era’ politics at the top mean for rank and file activists
and our interventions in the labor movement? - This moment coincides with the end of an arc for many of the interventions
we’ve made in the labor movement: - New Directions in transit and various reform movements in auto.
- Consolidation of Hoffa’s power inside the Teamsters
- We’ve also seen the disappearance of some newer reform movements in
other unions, and the immigrant rights movement that pulled off massive
marches in 2006 has pulled back in the face of repression and political
backlash. - What does all this mean for class consciousness?
- Most workers have not had the experience of fighting back on the job,
or any experience they had was quite a long time ago. - The 1970s upsurge is gone, and the generation who thought open combat
with their bosses—or civil war within their own unions—was a
sensible idea are now retiring or already gone. - Organizing and fight-back, however, continue, whether at labor’s grassroots
or in new formations like pre-majority unions, or workers centers. - Rank-and-file union members and local leaders continue to prove that
the fight—on the shop floor or in the streets—is not over and that winning
is even possible. - On May Day dock workers up and down the West Coast shut down the ports
to protest the
war, a move initiated by rank-and-file longshore
workers. - Union reformers inside the 40,000-member Los Angeles teachers union
put more than a quarter of their membership in the street demonstrating
during their last contract fight, winning reduced class sizes and more
control of school curriculums in some schools. Just last month LA teachers
delayed the start of school to protest looming budget cuts, with close
to 15,000 community members joining them on the picket lines. - Healthcare workers from
overtime and unsafe staffing levels. They have also been at the forefront
of political fights to save public hospitals in cities like
Angeles and - A two-hour wildcat strike by 100 train dispatchers in Fort Worth,
Texas in 2005 snarled train traffic from Seattle to Chicago, as union
workers walked off the job to protest unilateral changes to the company’s
vacation policy. - Even after losing two organizing drives, workers at
largest hog processing plant, in
Carolina, continue to fight for a union. The primarily African American
and Latino workforce has staged wildcat strikes and walked off the job
to win the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and workers are waging in-plant
protests in support of the union. - Faced with intense employer opposition, some unions forego representation
elections and contracts, organizing “non-majority” unions using Section
7 of the National Labor Relations Act to “fight like a union” before they
are recognized or have a contract. - Organized through Black Workers for Justice and UE Local 150, workers
at the Consolidated Diesel engine plant in Whitakers, North Carolina,
have gotten fired workers reinstated, forced the state government and
the company to pay unemployment benefits during slow periods, won a
paid holiday for MLK Day, and forced the company to deliver on its broken
promise to pay out more than a million dollars in bonuses.
formed a non-majority union for guards at the
raises and at U-Penn a new building for the guards’ office. They are
now moving their organizing campaign city-wide.- In
non-majority unions together with the National Nurses Organizing Committee
(the national arm of the California Nurses Association), forming patient
care committees inside the hospitals to fight for patients’ rights,
and pushing for a safe-staffing bill in the state legislature. - And many entirely new workers organizations—mainly in the form of workers
centers—are sprouting up across the country, primarily organizing immigrant
workers or those in the freewheeling segments of the service sector (restaurant
workers, domestic workers - Some worker centers have been able to win impressive victories against
corporate behemoths, like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, who have
forced Taco Bell, then McDonalds, and now Burger King to pay more for
the tomatoes CIW members pick. - Others have won millions in back wages and overtime (e.g. the
- These are organizations with strong internal political education,
typically organizing workers of color (especially immigrant workers),
and tackling the challenge of organizing where there are large numbers
of workers in the economy overall (e.g. restaurants and retail). They
are also more organically rooted in communities than most unions, despite
their overall small size and limited leverage at any one workplace and
their heavy reliance on staff direction and foundation funding. - At the same time that resistance continues so too does the development
of working class consciousness. The reality of “us” versus “them” is still
present, and if anything spreading. But collective solutions to what are
indeed collective problems don’t seem viable, so people resort to individual
solutions. - Looking up the corporate (and social) ladder, rather than to the people
standing right beside them (going back to college, starting own business,
going into management, making deals with supervisors). - Taking no action on the things that outrage and disgust them (war, healthcare,
rich getting richer) because action doesn’t seem viable.
A Bridge to Socialism?
- Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to transforming organized labor
into a true social movement. This is an essential task if the
its revolutionary potential. A militant, class-conscious labor movement
is needed if we want to reconnect the
in any large-scale fashion. (“Labor movement” is broadly defined to include
not just unions but other kinds of workers’ organizations as well.) - The building blocks of union transformation are no mystery:
- Struggling to defend workers’ gains against the employer offensive.
- Expanding labor’s ranks through large-scale member-driven organizing.
- Re-connecting labor to its community roots and linking it to other social
struggles. - Enabling women and people of color to take the lead.
- Re-creating unions as consciously pro-immigrant, LGBTQ-friendly, anti-racist
and anti-sexist organizations. - All of this requires breathing life into limp local unions, rebuilding
them as ‘instruments of struggle’ and equally importantly as ‘schools of
democracy’ where workers become, in Marx’s words, ‘fit to rule.’ - In the here and now this requires taking unions in a different direction.
That is why we’re involved in building—or leading—reform movements within
unions. Victories, even small ones, change consciousness, offer lessons
and serve as building blocks for further organizing and organization. - Particularly important are winning shop floor victories—everyday skirmishes
with the boss to try to make the work day bearable—because the workplace
is typically where class conflict is most apparent, where workers are
thrown together across racial, ethnic, and gender lines, and where all
workers have a chance to participate in struggle, whether they are active
at the union hall or not. - The fight for union democracy has a similar long-run impact, building
the possibility for workers to look upon unions as truly their own organizations.
This sense of ownership is a precondition for renewed engagement with
the life of the union, and a necessary condition for workers to take the
kinds of risks needed to win against today’s aggressive employers. - It also requires a different vision for the labor movement, which is why
we’re involved in building cross-union formations and networks, like Jobs
with Justice, Labor Notes, and the many local variants, together with projects
that expand the political and social vision for labor— embodied in initiatives
like the Labor Party, U.S. Labor Against the War, and the myriad labor-community
and international solidarity campaigns that have sprung up in the past two
decades. - These efforts at sparking a grassroots labor revival stand in sharp contrast
to other alternatives. For example, Steven Lerner, architect of SEIU’s
Justice for Janitors campaign, has recently argued that their current “Justice
for All” program is much bigger than their union, that in fact it represents
a comprehensive vision for advancing the interests of the entire working
class. While most of their goals (expanding healthcare, raising the minimum
wage, making it easier for workers to form unions) are unobjectionable,
their method for achieving these ends leaves members largely on the sidelines,
and minimizes the role of struggle. Gains are secured from above, within
the system, and the role of the rank-and-file as the agents of their own
emancipation is short-circuited. This approach misses the critical point
that how we get where we want to go matters. It also ignores the fact that
struggle is the best school for socialism, not just because of its transforms
consciousness, but also because it forces us to grapple with profound questions,
like how to build a democratic movement, or what change do we actually want
to see in the world. - Our job, as always, is to engage in struggle, whether it’s fighting over
discrimination in daily job assignments, circulating a petition, spearheading
a contract fight, organizing drive, or a strike, contesting in a union election,
picketing a boss’s house, or arguing politics. Struggle changes consciousness
on a scale and to a depth that we cannot match through any other means.
It’s also important to recognize that even in better times we lose more
fights than we win. As such, our challenge is to build struggles which offer
a greater sense of power and a deepening sense of history and social purpose,
even when we lose. Thus the way we build fights and organizations is not
predicated only on winning a victory—though we want to win—but also on fighting
in way that means we come out the other end with more committed fighters,
a clearer sense of which side we’re on, stronger organization, and a sense
of the bigger picture historically and socially, so that even if we lose
today we are increasing our capacity to win tomorrow. - A socialist labor activist first and foremost is a reliable ally. We
have our co-workers’ backs in a way that inspires them to have ours. We
get to know what moves our co-workers and what gets in their way. We experience
camaraderie not as a tactic but as part of our own survival. We know our
co-workers quirks, their warts, and their sometimes astonishing moments
of bravery, solidarity, and kindness. - We cannot necessarily foresee the clash of forces that will spur masses
of workers into motion. What we do know is that we want to be there when
they move.