Study Group 9 - Labor Movement

8/8/2019 Study Group 9 - Labor Movement

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1. Jane Slaughter and Mark Brenner, "The Lay of the Land for Labor"[2008]

2. Lee Sustar, “U.S. Labor in the Crisis: Resistance or Retreat?”[2009]

3. Erin Small, “Feminism At Work” [2007]

4. Steve Downs, “Review of Solidarity Divided ” [2009]

Jane Slaughter and Mark Brenner, "The Lay of theLand for Labor" [2008]

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 unionsnationally counting 16 million union members

• As the west coast dockworkers recent May Day work stoppage toprotest the Iraq war indicated, some unions continue to wieldserious economic leverage, capable of striking a blow to profits.

• Unions also have tremendous financial resources, taking in closeto $10 billion in dues each year (and holding another 19 billion inassets).

• 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 othervoter education and turnout. In the 2004 election 25 percent of voters came from union households.

• Despite some unions’ history of racism and exclusion, unionshave had an important positive impact on white working classconsciousness. Although it’s admittedly an imperfect measure,white working class voters who are union members (and notevangelical Christians) support Democratic candidates 60/40 inelections. 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 bydefinition and by law created to fight the boss, either a capitalistemployer or a government one. They remain organizationswhere workers are forced to come together across racial andgender lines and where hundreds of thousands of workers havethe experience of getting to know and working together withpeople 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 notalways seen).

Economic Landscape for Labor: Global Integration, Rise of

Finance and Logistics• With the entry of the former Soviet Union and China into the

world capitalist market, together with the opening of India’seconomy, we have experienced an effective doubling of theworld labor market.

• The rules of the global economy have been written by globalcorporations, though trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA,and are now being enforced by the WTO

• These two factors, together with the “logistics revolution” of thelast 30 years, have allowed corporations to truly globalizeproduction, stretching supply chains across countries andregions. One stark measure of this trend is shipping containertraffic 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 somesectors of the U.S. economy like manufacturing,they have alsotremendously increased the leverage of workers positioned atthe chokepoints of today’s cargo chain. Together, and in somecases individually, the clusters of ship hands, longshoremen,

truck drivers, railroad operators, and warehouse workers havethe power to cripple today’s “just-in-time” delivery networks,idling the ships, terminal yards and trucks now used as mobilewarehouses.

• The evolution of financial markets in the last three decades, bothglobally and inside the U.S., 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 U.S., forexample, 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 U.S., even more

unstable and “irrational.” It has also removed some of thetraditional leverage that workers have on the job (e.g., if GMmakes most of its profits through its financial arm rather thanmaking cars, this weakens the power of on-the-job activity byauto workers). It also has put workers involved in ‘production’ incompetition not just with workers in other regions or countries,



but with the choice of no production at all (that is, capital couldchoose to invest in speculative activity instead).

U.S. Economy Continues Long Trend of Getting Leaner and

Meaner • The recession that marked the beginning of this decade neverended in some sectors, and the situation will only get worsegiven the current economic turmoil.

o We have lost over three million manufacturing jobs thisdecade

2000: 17.2 million 2007: 13.7 million

o These losses have been especially concentrated in coreunion industries like automotive and heavy equipment.

o Part has been due to trade, given the enormous increase in

the flow of goods in and out of the country (see containertraffic statistics above).o 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. Theresults are now depressingly familiar. Lean production not onlyreduces the number of jobs through straightforward methods likespeed-up, it also fundamentally changes the way the workplaceis 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 collectiveaction. 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:o Gutting union contracts through the bankruptcy courts

(e.g. Delphi and Northwest)o 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 pensionsand retiree healthcare altogether for newer, second- tierworkers.

o Using large pools of capital (i.e. private equity), Wall Streetinvestors are now capable of taking over majorcorporations (even giants like Chrysler), often pulling aquick “strip and flip,” chopping the company into pieces,and/or piling on debt to goose up stock prices and line theirown pockets.

• The place where unions have had success organizing in the past40 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:

o Exploiting the gaps between higher public sector standardsand the private sector (for comparable work) to push for

privatization, contracting out, and the creation of charterschools.o Using the poor pay, pensions, and benefits of most private

sector workers to pit them against “overpaid” public sectorworkers, bolstering general opposition to taxes and publicspending, and deepening the general cynicism andmistrust of many voters towards government.

• Conservatives’ concrete strategy is to exploit thisdistain for taxes and mistrust of government to“starve the beast,” i.e., fight tax hikes or othermeans of increasing public sector revenue.

• Choking off new revenue creates a material crisis forthe state, forcing it to cut spending and services. These dynamics are only exacerbated by otherconservative policies like balanced-budget mandatesand new changes to pension accounting rules (whichforce governments to count all future pensionobligations as current liabilities).

o After decades of rightward political drift many public sectorunions are too willing to accept the stereotype of voters asconservative and anti-tax. This has led many to shy awayfrom high-profile “us-versus-them” campaigns—where the

risks are high—relying instead onincrementalism and theirstatus as “insiders” in the political process to protectmembers’ standards. Not only has this reinforced manyvoters’ picture of unions as a special interest, it has alsoensured 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.

o We can only expect these trends to intensify as the currentrecession deepens.

Private Sector Remains Hostile Territory 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.

o 12 % overall, 7.4% in the private sector• Large scale organizing in the private sector remains an elusive

goal.o Where unions have succeeded it has often been by getting

employers to agree to card check or neutrality agreements(see more below).



o Another successful strategy has been to use the leveragethat comes from ties to the public sector, such as forcingnew publicly-funded construction to use union labor, orrequiring vendors and contractors at public airports toremain neutral in union organizing drives, or even using

zoning and permitting processes to extract “communitybenefits agreements” (which typically include neutralityprovisions) from big developers.

• Today most newly organized workers come into the labormovement outside of a typical NLRB election procedure, usuallythrough a card check or neutrality agreement with the employer. There is wide variation in how unions secure neutrality deals andorganize within them.

o It is possible to win a card check/neutrality agreementthrough beating up on the employer.

• The 1999 card check agreement that eventually

helped CWA organize more than 17,000 retailworkers at Cingular Wireless was the product of fiveyears of struggle with Southwestern Bell, Cingular’spredecessor company.

• The 2006 neutrality agreement giving San Francisco-based UNITE HERE Local 2 the right to organize inthe suburban markets and outlying counties was theproduct of two years of “bargaining to organize” thatincluded strikes, lock-outs, and civil disobedience thetargeted hotels.

o 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 keepimprovements in workers’ conditions minimal. Suchagreements result in more members and more dues for theunion involved, and may even beef up the union’s politicalmuscle in elections, but the “union advantage” for newmembers is sub-par.

• For example, in 2002 the UAW secured a neutralityagreement with parts-maker Metaldyne and agreedto wages $10 lower than Big Three standards. Thisincluded forcing UAW members at

DaimlerChrysler’sNew Castle, Indiana plant to takepay cuts when their portion of the operation was soldto Metaldyne (or to transfer out of town).

• SEIU secured a quiet quid-pro-quo agreement withCalifornia’s Nursing Home Alliance that gave theunion organizing rights at facilities the companieschose, provided the union help get more money intothe nursing home industry through the state



legislature. The union spread “template agreements”to newly organized homes that gave up the right tostrike, limited workers’ ability to talk about patientconditions publicly, and contained wages andbenefits below those in other SEIU-organized nursing

homes. Ironically, SEIU organized more non-Alliancenursing homes during the time period of theagreement, usually with better contracts andstandards.

o While there is lots of variation with neutrality agreements,a few points are clear:

• Sweetheart contracts, or playing junior partner withmanagement, is not the way to rebuild the labormovement.

• The recent experience of the Steelworkers atDafasco in Ontario also illustrates that employer

neutrality is not enough. You still have to organizethe workers and convince them that there are goodreasons to join the union.

• You also still have to build a union. And how youorganize in the first place has a tremendous impacton what you are able to build down the road. If theunion is a product of struggle, of grassroots rank-and-file involvement, then it will be a differentorganization than if it’s the product of backroomdeals 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 neutralityagreements out of hand. The question is what kindof neutrality agreement is negotiated and, as always,the involvement of workers in fighting for their ownunion.

• Given the hostile terrain, raiding between different unions willcontinue, and may intensify (e.g., the war between the SEIU andthe CNA as seen in Ohio, California, Illinois, and Nevada and therecent raid on AMFA at United Airlines by the Teamsters). Raidingor unions fighting over the same members is very often

unproductive and wasteful, a substitute for organizing theunorganized. But sometimes it makes sense for members toswitch unions—to one that is more likely to fight concessions, forexample (as when United Airlines mechanics left the Machinistsfor AMFA), or when the incumbent union is hopelessly corrupt orundemocratic. Union officials don’t “own” their members, andwhile the burden of proof may be on the raiders, raiding shouldbe evaluated on a case-by-case basis.



• After decades of growth, new public sector organizing has alsoslowed down.

o New, large-scale organizing requires moving into largelynon-union, right-to-work states in the South andSouthwest. 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 oroffering limited “meet and confer” options).

o Unions have also branched out in the public sector toorganize new kinds of workers. In fact, it is important thatthe largest single chunk of new organizing in the lastdecade has moved unions pretty far away from theirtraditional model, namely, the organizing of more than half a million homecare and childcare workers. These workershave become new union members through ballot initiatives

and/or gubernatorial decree. By creating public entities toserve as the employer of record for such workers—whoultimately receive their pay from the public purse—unions(usually SEIU or AFSCME) were able to sign them up asmembers.

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 manyways, Change to Win is a paradox.

o The public rationale for breaking with the AFL-CIO was theneed for a stronger federation, one that could forceaffiliates into line and “on program”.

o But in practice CtW has even less infrastructure andresources as a federation than the AFL-CIO.

o

Despite their weak center, CtW projects an even moreintense program of revitalization “from above” through itsdriving force the SEIU. Since the split in the AFL-CIO, forexample, 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 controlover bargaining in the hands of SEIU’s national leaders.



• Now, top leaders of unions in both the AFL-CIO and the CtW aremanaging the decline of union standards (and sometimes thedecline of unions themselves) as we’ve known them for the past60 years.

o Some unions are trying to manage the decline

straightforwardly.• The UAW and the Steelworkers, for example, have

argued that global competition is too tough,thatU.S. workers can’t compete with workersin Chinawho are paid so little.

• The UAW has openly said that a large portion of itsmembers 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/benefitsof the past, and has enshrined this point of view inevery 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-sectorworkers, but in reality it had no strategy to win, withpredictable results.

o Some are trying to manage the decline via spin, acceptinglower standards (which will ultimately serve as a drag onbetter union standards everywhere) and claiming they areimmense victories. Unions in the “spin zone” are primarilyassociated with Change to Win.

• At UPS Freight, a formerly non-union division of UPS, Teamsters refused to use their leverage inside therest of the company to bring UPS Freight workersinto the union and up to the standards of theNational Master Freight Agreement. Instead, theywon a neutrality agreement which forced them toorganize each UPS Freight terminal one-by-one, withcontract standards that will undercut Teamsters inother parts of the freight industry.

• In 2002 SEIU launched a janitors strike in Boston.Rather than organize an effective work stoppage

(there was never more than 15 percent participationin the strike), the union waged a series of highlyvisible and even militant public actions in the streets,counting on political pressure from city leaders andstate officials to coerce the contractors associationinto a decent settlement. While the strike wastremendously important in terms of making the workof Boston’s immigrant community visible, the



contractors held out and the union took a weaksettlement, which it trumpeted as a major victory.

• Where unions do exist they have continued to cede theworkplace, not even showing up for the continuous bargainingthat should be happening daily between workers and

management, both over the ordinary give-and-take on the shopfloor and over the changes that management is continuallyintroducing (technological, workplace organization).

• The most ominous trend is for outright acceptance of thecorporate 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 fightcontinue to try to represent their members, including throughmilitant and sometimes innovative struggles. Unfortunately, theirhands are often tied by their national unions’ policies or lackthereof.

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 athorough one; there are still many areas where retreat—or evenresistance—are still the order of the day. But the growing trendamong top union officials is to surrender.

• The “retreat” line that top leaders have enforced for over twodecades says to the members “We have to take givebacks nowbecause we’re not strong enough [though they usually don’torganize any fight to in fact test the balance of power betweenemployer and union]. In order to level the playing field betweenemployers and unions, we need to get the politicians to carry ourwater.” So unions have focused all their hopes (and theirconsiderable 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.”

o That something is the Employee Free Choice Act, which ismade to sound like a cross between the passage of thecivil rights legislation in the 1960s and the second coming

of Jesus Christ.o The drumbeat has gotten even stronger with the

Democrats in (bare) control of Congress and with a chanceto win the White House. But there are a few holes in thelogic:

o First, these are the same politicians who gave us NAFTA,refused to ban permanent replacements for strikingworkers, and worked so hard on behalf of Wall Street



during the Clinton years that we’re now left with thebiggest gap between rich and poor since the GreatDepression.

o Yes, organizing is hard, but unions could do a lot of it withthe quarter of a billion dollars labor will spend in the 2008

election.o This logic reverses the history of our labor movement, the

civil rights movement, and every significant advance evermade in the U.S. We didn’t take those steps forwardbecause a light bulb went off in somebody’s headinWashington.

o They were the product of struggle: the hard-won fruits of millions of ordinary people, convinced of the righteousnessof their cause, acting together, willing to face fire hoses,attack dogs, employer goon squads, Pinkertons, and eventhe 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 workersanywhere, it is certainly true that labor needs a political programbacked up by mass action in the streets. Many of the battlesworkers 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. AlthoughDC insiders in both the AFL-CIO and CtW are maneuvering tosideline 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 Iraq war andoccupation. In both cases, what is missing is any vision for howto spark a movement that can take these struggles into thestreets and communities.

• In the big picture, however, we still face an uphill battle, trying tofoster consciousness for which there is no concrete politicalexpression. The U.S. working class has no political party of itsown, and when shifts do occur in working class consciousnessthey usually cross squarely through the Democratic Party. TheDemocrats remain stumbling block on the road to a socialistalternative, and labor’s allegiance is not just at the level of the

officialdom but among most rank-and-file activists as well. Ourtask remains finding a working class solution to the currenteconomic and political turbulence and achieving that task willforce us to moves past the tremendous barrier of not having ourown political organization.

• The surrender mode of operation goes further than retreat. Inthis mode, unions volunteer to carry the corporations’ water. Gostraight 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 lookingfor ways to “add value” to their bottom line—and unions are justthe people to help them. This is the ideology of partnership thathas infected nearly every corner of the bureaucracy. It comes in

different flavors.o 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 towin a strike. The Canadian Auto Workers’ earlycontract negotiations, before expiration, inorder to make preemptive concessions, isanother example.

• At Chrysler during the last Big Threenegotiations, union leaders put down rank-and-

file efforts to fight back.o New School: Implicit and explicit promises are made

to employers that if the union is allowed to signworkers up, it will help corporate profits. Not only willthe union promise not to strike and not to disparagethe company, and to keep wages down, it may alsoput its political apparatus at the company’s service.

• For example, in California SEIU initially backedlegislation to make it harder for nursing homeresidents to sue the homes, until their quid proquo 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 publicrationale that sometimes dismays (andshafts)even its Change to Win partners. SEIUputs itself forward as fighting for all workers,not just union members (“Justice for All”). Butthe more in bed the union is with thecorporations, the less tenable that posture is.

• It is important to note that the new-schoolsurrender mode requires more discipline in the

union, to carry the line and to keep resistancefrom breaking out. Megalocals, appointment of local officers from above, armies of appointedstaffers, bullying, and a general corporatemodeling of union functioning are almost aprerequisite 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.o In this decade there were about 200,000 workers in any

given year idled by strikes and work stoppages.o 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 fileactivists and our interventions in the labor movement?

• This moment coincides with the end of an arc for many of theinterventions we’ve made in the labor movement:

o New Directions in transit and various reform movements inauto.

o Consolidation of Hoffa’s power inside the Teamsterso We’ve also seen the disappearance of some newer reform

movements in other unions, and the immigrant rightsmovement that pulled off massive marches in 2006 haspulled back in the face of repression and political backlash.

• What does all this mean for class consciousness?o Most workers have not had the experience of fighting back

on the job, or any experience they had was quite a longtime ago.

o The 1970s upsurge is gone, and the generation whothought open combat with their bosses—or civil war withintheir own unions—was a sensible idea are now retiring oralready gone.

• Organizing and fight-back, however, continue, whether at labor’sgrassroots or in new formations like pre-majority unions, orworkers centers.

o Rank-and-file union members and local leaders continue toprove that the fight—on the shop floor or in the streets—isnot over and that winning is even possible.

• On May Day dock workers up and down the WestCoast shut down the ports to protest the Iraq war, amove initiated by rank-and-file longshore workers.

• Union reformers inside the 40,000-member LosAngeles teachers union put more than a quarter of their membership in the street demonstrating during



their last contract fight, winning reduced class sizesand more control of school curriculums in someschools. Just last month LA teachers delayed thestart of school to protest looming budget cuts, withclose to 15,000 community members joining them on

the picket lines.• Healthcare workers from Massachusetts to California

have struck to protest mandatory overtime andunsafe staffing levels. They have also been at theforefront of political fights to save public hospitals incities like Los Angeles and Buffalo.

• A two-hour wildcat strike by 100 train dispatchers inFort Worth, Texas in 2005 snarled train traffic fromSeattle to Chicago, as union workers walked off the job to protest unilateral changes to the company’svacation policy.

• Even after losing two organizing drives, workersatSmithfield’s largest hog processing plant, in NorthCarolina, continue to fight for a union. The primarilyAfrican American and Latino workforce has stagedwildcat strikes and walked off the job to win theMartin Luther King Jr. holiday, and workers arewaging in-plant protests in support of the union.

o Faced with intense employer opposition, some unionsforego representation elections and contracts, organizing“non-majority” unions using Section 7 of the National LaborRelations 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 engineplant in Whitakers, North Carolina, have gotten firedworkers reinstated, forced the state government andthe company to pay unemployment benefits duringslow periods, won a paid holiday for MLK Day, andforced the company to deliver on its broken promiseto pay out more than a million dollars in bonuses.

• Philadelphia security guards, working with Jobs with Justice, formed a non-majority union for guards at

the University of Pennsylvania and TempleUniversity,winning paid sick days, significant raises and at U-Penn a new building for the guards’ office. They arenow moving their organizing campaign city-wide.

• In Texas nurses are organizing non-majority unionstogether with the National Nurses OrganizingCommittee (the national arm of the California NursesAssociation), forming patient care committees inside



the hospitals to fight for patients’ rights, and pushingfor a safe-staffing bill in the state legislature.

o And many entirely new workers organizations—mainly inthe form of workers centers—are sprouting up across thecountry, 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 haveforced Taco Bell, then McDonalds, and now BurgerKing to pay more for the tomatoes CIW memberspick.

• Others have won millions in back wages andovertime (e.g. the New York RestaurantOpportunities Center’s recent victory

against the Fireman Hospitality Group).• These are organizations with strong internal political

education, typically organizing workers of color(especially immigrant workers), and tackling thechallenge of organizing where there are largenumbers of workers in the economy overall (e.g.restaurants and retail). They are also moreorganically rooted in communities than most unions,despite their overall small size and limited leverageat any one workplace and their heavy reliance onstaff direction and foundation funding.

• At the same time that resistance continues so too does thedevelopment of working class consciousness. The reality of “us”versus “them” is still present, and if anything spreading. Butcollective solutions to what are indeed collective problems don’tseem viable, so people resort to individual solutions.

o Looking up the corporate (and social) ladder, rather than tothe people standing right beside them (going back tocollege, starting own business, going into management,making deals with supervisors).

o Taking no action on the things that outrage and disgustthem (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 U.S. working class has any hope of achieving itsrevolutionary potential. A militant, class-conscious labor



movement is needed if we want to reconnect the U.S. workingclass to socialist politics in any large-scale fashion. (“Labormovement” is broadly defined to include not just unions butother kinds of workers’ organizations as well.)

• The building blocks of union transformation are no mystery:

o Struggling to defend workers’ gains against the employeroffensive.o Expanding labor’s ranks through large-scale member-

driven organizing.o Re-connecting labor to its community roots and linking it to

other social struggles.o Enabling women and people of color to take the lead.o 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 differentdirection. 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 blocksfor further organizing and organization.

o Particularly important are winning shop floor victories—everyday skirmishes with the boss to try to make the workday bearable—because the workplace is typically whereclass conflict is most apparent, where workers are thrown

together across racial, ethnic, and gender lines, and whereall workers have a chance to participate in struggle,whether they are active at the union hall or not.

o The fight for union democracy has a similar long-runimpact, building the possibility for workers to look uponunions as truly their own organizations. This sense of ownership is a precondition for renewed engagement withthe life of the union, and a necessary condition for workersto take the kinds of risks needed to win against today’saggressive employers.

• It also requires a different vision for the labor movement, which

is why we’re involved in building cross-union formations andnetworks, like Jobs with Justice, Labor Notes, and the many localvariants, together with projects that expand the political andsocial vision for labor— embodied in initiatives like the LaborParty, U.S. Labor Against the War, and the myriad labor-community and international solidarity campaigns that havesprung 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 recentlyargued that their current “Justice for All” program is much biggerthan their union, that in fact it represents a comprehensive visionfor advancing the interests of the entire working class. While

most of their goals (expanding healthcare, raising the minimumwage, making it easier for workers to form unions) areunobjectionable, their method for achieving these ends leavesmembers largely on the sidelines, and minimizes the role of struggle. Gains are secured from above, within the system, andthe role of the rank-and-file as the agents of their ownemancipation is short-circuited. This approach misses the criticalpoint that how we get where we want to go matters. It alsoignores the fact that struggle is the best school for socialism, not just because of its transforms consciousness, but also because itforces us to grapple with profound questions, like how to build a

democratic movement, or what change do we actually want tosee in the world.• Our job, as always, is to engage in struggle, whether it’s fighting

over discrimination in daily job assignments, circulating apetition, spearheading a contract fight, organizing drive, or astrike, contesting in a union election, picketing a boss’s house, orarguing politics. Struggle changes consciousness on a scale andto a depth that we cannot match through any other means. It’salso important to recognize that even in better times we losemore fights than we win. As such, our challenge is to buildstruggles which offer a greater sense of power and a deepening

sense of history and social purpose, even when we lose. Thus theway we build fights and organizations is not predicated only onwinning a victory—though we want to win—but also on fighting inway that means we come out the other end with morecommitted fighters, a clearer sense of which side we’re on,stronger organization, and a sense of the bigger picturehistorically and socially, so that even if we lose today we areincreasing our capacity to win tomorrow.

• A socialist labor activist first and foremost is a reliable ally. Wehave our co-workers’ backs in a way that inspires them to haveours. We get to know what moves our co-workers and what gets

in their way. We experience camaraderie not as a tactic but aspart of our own survival. We know our co-workers quirks, theirwarts, and their sometimes astonishing moments of bravery,solidarity, and kindness.

• We cannot necessarily foresee the clash of forces that will spurmasses of workers into motion. What we do know is that we wantto be there when they move.



Lee Sustar, “U.S. Labor in the Crisis: Resistanceor Retreat?” [2009]

The election of Barack Obama last November seemed to promise anew era for organized labor. With Obama in the White House and asolid Democratic majority in Congress, it appeared that unions wouldfinally be able to get action on their main legislative agenda—passageof the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a measure that would make iteasier for workers to join a union. And with the world’s press gatheredoutside Obama’s Chicago home during the transition period, avictorious factory occupation at the Republic Windows and Doors plantin that city captured the imagination of the country, and even gotsome encouraging words from Obama himself. Soon afterwards,workers at the huge Smithfield pork processing plant in North Carolinavoted to unionize after more than a decade of vicious anti-unionactions by the company. Hopes were high that unions were set to goon the offensive.

A few months later, the picture is quite different. The chances for thepassage of EFCA appear bleak. The biggest union in the country, theService Employees International Union (SEIU), was embroiled in theundemocratic takeover of its 150,000-member West Coast health carelocal.1 At the same time, the SEIU intervened in the internal conflict of another union, UNITE HERE, once its closest ally, to annex 150,000members of a breakaway faction. The old UNITE leader, Bruce Raynorsought refuge in the SEIU because, he claimed, the HERE side was

spending organizing money wastefully; the top HERE official, JohnWilhelm, accused Raynor of bargaining for low wages and poor workingstandards, Stern style, in order to convince employers to allowunfettered organizing. At stake is not only union jurisdiction over hotelsand casinos, but control of the only union-owned bank, theAmalgamated Bank, which had $4.47 billion in assets in 2008.2

As a result of this internecine battle, the SEIU-dominated Change toWin group of unions was in tatters. A 2005 split from the AFL-CIO, theChange to Win unions had failed to deliver a promised breakthroughfor labor. Instead, it was edging toward some sort of reunification with

the labor federation—but only under pressure from the Obamaadministration, which insists on the convenience of one-stop shoppingwhen it deals with the unions.3

1Dan Clawson, “A battle for labor’s future,” Z Magazine, June 2009.2Ruby Wolf, “Civil war in UNITE HERE,” SocialistWorker.org, March 31, 2009,socialistworker.org/2009/03/31/civil-war-in-unite-here.3 Harold Meyerson, “Unifying unions,” Washington Post, April 7, 2009.



Certainly the Republic Windows and Doors occupation to win workers’severance pay—and the solidarity and excitement that this actiongarnered—remains an inspiration. But what followed wasn’t similarvictories, but one of the most catastrophic setbacks in the history of the U.S. labor movement. Private employers were demanding, and

obtaining, concessions from unions in industries ranging fromnewspapers to trucking companies. Even as expectations of Obamamounted in advance of Inauguration Day, Chrysler and General Motorswere slashing jobs and gutting union contracts as they drifted towardbankruptcy amid the worst economic slump since the GreatDepression.

It was during that 1930s crisis that the United Auto Workers (UAW)stormed onto the scene with dramatic factory occupations led bycommunists, socialists, and other radicals. Today’s UAW, though, is avastly different organization. It has followed its long-established

strategy of partnership with employers to an extreme conclusion bybecoming, through health-care trust funds, a major shareholder in GMalongside the U.S. government and the majority (55 percent)shareholder in Chrysler. To achieve this bizarre form of employeeownership—the union trust fund will get just one seat on the companyboard—the union agreed to ban strikes for six years, eliminate workrules negotiated over decades, cut overtime pay, and furtherconcessions.4 The result of all this is the virtual elimination of thedifference between UAW-organized plants and nonunion ones. TheUAW, which once steadily raised the bar for wages and benefits for theentire U.S. working class, is now leading the way down.

The driving force in obtaining these concessions is the Obamaadministration, which publicly claimed that it had been tougher on theUAW than the Bush White House.5 Rather than use the $50 billionnationalization of GM to launch a green industrialization program, theObama administration wants to create a slimmed-down “new GM”while selling off unwanted assets at fire-sale prices. This will intensifythe crisis in the auto parts industry.

Even mainstream liberal commentators were aghast at the terms of Obama’s GM bailout. “Wouldn’t it be better to use the money to

convert GM and other declining manufacturing companies intoproducing what America needs, such as light rail systems and newenergy efficient materials, and training laid-off autoworkers for thetechnician jobs of the future?” said former labor secretary Robert

4 John D. Stoll and Sharon Terlep, “UAW discloses terms of GM deal,” WSJ.com, May 26, 2009.5 “Obama administration auto restructuring initiative—General Motors restructuring,” the White House,

June 2009,www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Fact-Sheet-on-Obama-Administration-Auto-

Restructuring-Initiative-for-General-Motors/ .

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Fact-Sheet-on-Obama-Administration-Auto-Restructuring-Initiative-for-General-Motors/







Reich.6 Rather than use GM to create good paying jobs, the Obamaplan will further downsize GM’s UAW. “At the end of the 1970s, whenthe first round of concession bargaining began in the U.S., the UAWhad 450,000 members at GM,” wrote Sam Gindin, a former economistfor the Canadian Auto Workers:

Today, after repeated contracts that allegedly “won” job security inexchange for workplace, wage, or benefit concessions—sold by theunion as well as the companies—the UAW’s GM membership is down to64,000. If GM is “successful” in its current restructuring, that will befurther reduced to 40,000. Thirty years of concessions and a 90percent loss in jobs. If ever there was a failing strategy for workers,this was it.7

The capitulation by UAW leaders has boosted the confidence of employers everywhere in their effort to make workers pay for the

economic crisis. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger met nounion resistance when he imposed unpaid leave on state workers,which amounted to a 9.2 percent cut in pay. He planned to seekanother 5 percent cut as this article was being written.8 Fifteen otherstate governors have made similar moves.9 And when United TeachersLos Angeles (UTLA) dared to show resistance by organizing for a one-day strike to protest layoffs, they were hit with a judge’s temporaryrestraining order that banned the action by threatening to levy finesthat would bankrupt the union and strip the credentials of any teacherwho walked out. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the mostactive of the big-city labor councils, failed to mobilize in response.10

If union leaders can see a bit of a silver lining in one of these manyominous clouds, it’s the appointment of a pro-union member of Congress, Hilda Solis as labor secretary.11 But that’s littlecompensation for Obama’s leave-no-banker-behind economic policy.So far, Obama’s funneled trillions in U.S. taxpayer money intoenormous bailouts for Wall Street, compared with only modest tax cutsfor workers and an economic stimulus plan that will create far fewer jobs than the six million jobs that the recession has already

6

Robert Reich, “No reason for public involvement in GM,” Marketplace, June 1, 2009.marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/06/01/pm_gm_bailout_comm/.7 Sam Gindin, “The auto crisis: putting our own alternative on the table,” The Bullet/Socialist Project E-

Bulletin No. 200, April 9, 2009.8 Jon Ortiz, “State pay cut likely; how it’s done is the question,” Sacramento Bee, May 31, 2009.9 Herbert Sample, “California provides example for Hawaii plan,” Associated Press, June 3, 2009.10 Gillian Russom and David Rapkin, “Battle intensifies in LA schools,” SocialistWorker.org, May 19,

2009, socialistworker.org/2009/05/19/battle-intensifies-in-la-schools.11 “The labor agenda,” New York Times, December 28, 2009.



destroyed.12

Besides this immediate onslaught, the U.S. working class faces anepochal shift as the result of three intertwined crises: a protractedeconomic crisis that will lead to plant closures and layoffs

(“restructuring” in the employers’ parlance); a generational transitionin which younger workers find that decently paid union jobs held bytheir parents are no longer available; and a great demographic shift inwhich immigrants account for an increasing share of the working class.Before we can assess the prospects for labor’s revival, we need to takeaccount of these developments and understand their economic, social,and political implications.

Kim Moody, the veteran socialist, labor activist, and author, has madean invaluable contribution to this task in his recent book, U.S. Labor inTrouble and Transition. Moody argues that organized labor, already

weakened by decades of decline, has become further disoriented andthrown onto the defensive by several trends, including an aggressiveattack on unions by Corporate America, demographic change, and arestructuring of manufacturing around “lean production” that involvedsteady job loss—not simply as a result of globalization, but throughnew labor-saving technology and a shift to nonunion operations in theU.S. South. The analysis that follows will take Moody’s work as a pointof departure.

Impact of the economic crisis

The recession—or perhaps, depression—is greatly exacerbating theproblems of the U.S. labor movement. Even as the economic downturnbegan in December 2007, one labor economist pointed out that, “17.5percent of all unemployed workers were long-term unemployed,compared with just 11.1 percent in March 2001,” the start of the lastrecession.13 And if job growth had simply kept pace with the populationincrease, there would have been an additional 3.2 million more jobs inthe U.S. economy by 2008.14 Today, workers are facing what theEconomic Policy Institute calls a “jobs desert,” with joblessness at 9.4percent in May 2009, the highest level since 1983. One in four of theunemployed—some 3.9 million people—had been jobless for at least

six months.15

12 Shobhana Chandra, “Slower U.S. job losses signal recession is starting to ease,” Bloomberg News, June

6, 2009.13 “Statement by Chad Stone, chief economist, on the December unemployment report,” Center on Budget

and Policy Priorities, January 4, 2009.14 Josh Bivens and John Irons, “A feeble recovery: The fundamental economic weaknesses of the 2001–07

expansion,” Economic Policy Institute, December 9, 2008.15 Heidi Shierholz, “Jobs picture,” Economic Policy Institute, June 5, 2009.



The leadership of organized labor has been unable—and in many caseunwilling—to resist job losses among unionized workers. Rather, theyhave concentrated on organizing the unorganized. This led to anincrease in the numbers of workers in unions by 311,000 in 2007 and

by another 428,000 in 2008, bringing the so-called union density rateto 12.4 percent, up from 12.0 percent in 2006.16 These gains—especially in the context of a recession—highlight the fact that tens of millions of workers are prepared to organize, a conclusion supportedby recent opinion polls.17

While these increases in unionization are important, the pace is far tooslow to change the balance of power between labor and capital—andthe recession and the anticipated “jobless recovery” will likely wipe outthese advances. Further, unionization is down from about 35 percent inthe mid 1950s. In the private sector, union density is just 7.5 percent,

a figure comparable to that of a century ago. Yet even these starknumbers fail to convey the extent of labor’s crisis. Half the country’sunion members (about eight million people) live in just six states—New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and California. The Southremains a bastion of anti-unionism, where six states had unionizationrates below 5 percent.18

The union bureaucracy has sought to overcome its crisis throughpolitical solutions via the Democratic Party. And unions did play amajor role in Barack Obama’s presidential victory, spending $300million on the elections and mobilizing enormous numbers of union

staff and members.19

This led labor to look forward to the politicalspoils—chiefly, the passage of EFCA. But, as usual, organized laborbadly overestimated the support of its supposed Democratic friends inCongress and the White House. Instead of using its election fieldoperation to launch a campaign for EFCA, the unions pulled back justas big business geared up.20 Nevertheless, union leaders continue tolook with hope toward the Obama administration for a political solutionto their problems—if only because they have no other strategy to dealwith the employers’ escalating demands for givebacks.

Indeed, the auto crisis is only the most egregious example of

concessions bargaining that has taken place since the onset of the

16 “Union members in 2008,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 28, 2009, 1.17 Costas Panagopoulos and Peter L. Francia, “Labor unions in the United States,” Public Opinion

Quarterly (New York), Volume 72, Number 1, Spring 2008.18 “Union members in 2008,” 3.19 David Moberg, “Wooing unions for Obama,” Nation, October 13, 2008.20 Tom Hamburger, “Labor unions find themselves card-checkmated,” Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2009.



recession in December 2007. For example, Teamster officials reopeneda contract at YRC, the parent company of the Yellow and Roadwayfreight haulers. Union officials agreed to, and workers ratified, a 10percent cut in pay and mileage compensation. In return, the workerswill get part ownership in the company.21 YRC’s main unionized

competitor, ABF, is expected to demand similar givebacks.

Many other companies are pressing similar demands, reported theBureau of National Affairs (BNA), a private research company. Otherlarge contracts set to expire this year include regional grocery storeagreements covering 110,000 workers. Overall, contracts covering 2.2million private-sector workers will come up for negotiation throughout2009.22 It should be added that most unions that took majorconcessions in the last recession of 2001—such as the airlines—havestill not overcome the job losses and pay cuts that they took then.

One big showdown could come at AT&T, which demanded concessionsthis spring in contracts that cover 100,000 workers. Despite $2.6 billionin profits last year, the company recently laid off 12,000 workers. Nowmanagement wants health-care concessions that amount to a 7 to 10percent pay cut.23 After mobilizing for a possible strike, the CWAallowed an April 4 contract deadline to pass without an agreement,apparently to allow its other contracts with the company to expire tobetter coordinate bargaining.

A notable exception to this concessions bargaining trend is Boeing Co.,where a long strike by machinists last fall forced management to back

down on demands for virtually unlimited outsourcing and minor gainson pensions.24 Boeing’s backlog of orders gave the union leveragedespite the slump. Nevertheless, the strike victory did not roll backprevious concessions on outsourcing and lower-tier pay for newworkers. Moreover, despite a huge backlog of orders for new airplanes,the economic slump has led Boeing to announce 10,000 layoffs.25

21 “YRC Teamsters to vote on 10 percent cuts,” Teamsters for a Democratic Union, December 3,

2008, www.tdu.org/node/2571. See also John Schulz, “A YRCW-Teamsters deal reached,” Gerson

Lehrman Group, December 3, 2008,www.glgroup.com/News/

22 “Bargaining calendar is fairly light, but some early reopeners expected,” Labor Outlook 2009, Bureau of National Affairs, January 29, 2009.23 Randy Christensen, “CWA gets ready for a fight,” SocialistWorker.org, March 25, 2009,

socialistworker.org/2009/03/25/cwa-ready-for-a-fight.24 Darrin Hoop, “Boeing strike ends in union win,” SocialistWorker.org, November 4, 2008,

socialistworker.org/2008/11/04/boeing-strike-ends-in-win.25 Christopher Hinton, “Boeing plans to slash 10,000 jobs as the economy weakens,” MarketWatch,

January 28, 2009,www.marketwatch.com/story/boeing-plans-to-slash-10000-jobs-as-the-economy-

weakens.

http://www.tdu.org/node/2571

http://www.glgroup.com/News/


http://www.marketwatch.com/story/boeing-plans-to-slash-10000-jobs-as-the-economy-weakens









Meanwhile, in the public-sector, recession-driven budget cuts areleading to layoffs and aggressive management demands at thebargaining table. In New York City, billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberghas extracted $400 million in health-care concessions from public-sector unions as he pushes to eliminate 2,000 jobs.26 New York

governor David Paterson, a Democrat, backed off a plan to lay off 9,000 state workers, will eliminate 7,000 union jobs through buyoutsand attrition, and reduce workers’ retirement benefits.27 Across theHudson River, yet another Democrat, New Jersey governor Jon Corzine,also used the threat of layoffs to get state workers’ unions to agree toan eighteen-month wage freeze and ten unpaid furlough days, agiveback worth $304 million.28 Across the country, in WashingtonState, Governor Christine Gregoire, another Democrat, submitted abudget that eliminates funds for pay raises that the state hadpreviously negotiated with unions.29 There are similar examples fromother states.

Organized labor’s failure to resist concessions has lowered the livingstandard of all workers. According to the BNA’s Wage Trend Index,annual wage growth in 2009 will be about 2 percent, as the economywill “eliminate any ability for the vast majority of workers to negotiatehigher wages,” said Kathryn Kobe, the economist who worked on thereport.30

The recession will accelerate the transformation of the U.S. into a low-wage economy—a trend that is already far advanced. As the New York Times’ Louis Uchitelle wrote last year:

The $20 hourly wage, introduced on a huge scale in the middleof the last century, allowed masses of Americans with no morethan a high school education to rise to the middle class. It was amarker, of sorts. And it is on its way to extinction…. The declineis greatest in manufacturing, where only 1.9 million hourlyworkers still earn that much. That’s down nearly 60 percent since1979, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.31

What’s more, household income was propped up only because of the

26

Paul von Zielbauer, “City labor unions agree to reductions in health benefits,” New York Times, June 3,2009.27 “Unions, Paterson reach agreement to avoid mass layoffs,” Albany Business Review, June 5, 2009.28 “Corzine, union deal avoids layoffs,” Associated Press, June 4, 2009.29 Adam Wilson, “State wins union lawsuit: Gregoire can shelve contracts, judge says,” Seattle Times,

February 12, 2009.30 “Slowdown in rate of wage growth to continue, BNA index shows,” Bureau of National Affairs, January

15, 2009,www.bna.com/press/2009/specialreports/wtijan09.htm.31 Louis Uchitelle, “The wage that meant middle class,” New York Times, April 20, 2008.

http://www.bna.com/press/2009/specialreports/wtijan09.htm





increasing role of women in the workforce—that is, it took two (ormore) incomes to achieve the living standards that one wage earnercould have supported previously.

As the Economic Policy Institute noted with the release of the State of

Working America 2008/2009,although the economy has expanded by 18 percent since 2000,most Americans’ household income does not reflect that growth.Quite the opposite: real income for the median family fell by 1.1percent from 2000–2006. A small increase in the median family’shourly wages (1 percent) was more than wiped out by the 2.2percent drop in annual work hours. Moreover, whatever wagegrowth occurred since 2000 was based on the momentum fromthe 1990s recovery—wages did not improve at all over the 2002–07 recovery.32

As measured in today’s dollars, the State of Working America authorsnote, “from 1979 to 2007, wages are up only slightly, from $16.88 in1979 to $17.42 in 2007, a growth of just 0.1 percent per year overnearly 30 years—virtually stagnant, despite some rapid growth in thelate 1990s.”33

In the recovery of the 2000s, the share of national income going toprofits reached a forty-year high. This change in the distribution of national income, the authors’ estimate, is “the equivalent of transferring $206 billion annually from labor compensation to capitalincome.”34

For African Americans, as always in U.S. capitalism, the system isqualitatively worse, owing to the legacy of slavery and the persistenceof racial discrimination. The Black jobless rate in May 2009 hit 14.9percent.35 If there is still a controversy among economists whether tocall this downturn a recession or depression, in Black America there’sno debate.

In short, U.S. workers are experiencing a rapid and sharp drop inincome, employment, and living standards, with slim opportunities forimprovement in the foreseeable future. This will have far-reachingsocial and political consequences. The aim here is to try and frame

32 “For most, economy yields more of less,” Economic Policy Institute press release, August 28,

2008,www.stateofworkingamerica.org/news/swa08_pr_final.pdf .33 Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz, The State of Working America 2008/2009

(Washington: Economic Policy Institute 2008, advance PDF edition), Chapter 3, 12.34 Mishel, et al, State of Working America, Chapter 3, 42.35 Shierholz, “Jobs picture.”

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/news/swa08_pr_final.pdf






some of the questions facing the labor movement that will arise fromthis crisis.

The one-sided class war

The 1960s and 1970s are remembered as the heyday of the civil rightsand antiwar movements. But it was also a time of worker rebellions inthe “basic industries” of auto, steel, and coal mining as well trucking.Much of a revived revolutionary left threw itself into union organizing. Then came the PATCO strike of 1981. President Ronald Reagan usedthe full power of the state not only to replace 11,000 striking air trafficcontrollers, but also to obliterate their union. The signal to employerswas clear: It was open season on unions, and “concessionsbargaining”—negotiations in which unions surrendered pay andbenefits—became the norm.36

The obliteration of PATCO also encouraged further governmentintervention in strikes, from routine injunctions limiting picket lines toviolence by police deployed to protect strikebreakers. The NationalGuard was used to violently break strikes by Arizona copper miners in1983 and Minnesota meatpackers in UFCW Local P-9 in their heroic1985–86 strike against wage cuts.37 A decade later, striking newspaperunions in Detroit abided by court injunctions and violent police tacticsthat shut down effective, militant mass pickets during the openingweeks of the long Detroit newspaper strikes.38 In January 2000, SouthCarolina state troopers attacked a picket line in Charleston, S.C., whichled to five longshore workers being placed under house arrest for more

than a year until a solidarity campaign forced charges to be dropped.39

The heavy hand of the state ensured that most picket lines wouldremain symbolic rather than active attempts to stop production, as

36 Kim Moody, U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition (London and New York:

Verso, 2007), 108–10.37 For excellent accounts of these struggles, see Jonathan D. Rosenblum, How

the Arizona Miners’ Strike of 1983 Recast Labor-Management Relations in

America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995) and Peter Rachleff,

Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the LaborMovement (Boston: South End Press, 1993).38 James Bennet, “After 7 weeks, Detroit newspaper strike takes a violent turn,”

New York Times, September 6, 1995.39 The story is told by Suzan Erem and E. Paul Durrenberger, On the Global

Waterfront: The Fight to Free the Charleston 5 (New York: Monthly Review

Press, 2008).



they had been in the militant struggles of the 1930s. Striking unionsadopted the slogan, “one day longer” to show their willingness tooutlast employers. Workers sacrificed enormously in what were oftenvaliant, but losing, battles, such as the Illinois “War Zone” struggles atfood processor A.E. Staley, heavy equipment maker Caterpillar, and

tire maker Bridgestone/Firestone.40

The big exception to this pattern is the victorious 1997 Teamstersstrike at UPS—a big employer was caught flat-footed by workers’solidarity and widespread pro-union sentiment. UPS could make noserious attempt at strikebreaking. But UPS was able to use its politicalconnections to mount a campaign against then-Teamster presidentRon Carey, who was elected on a reform slate. In the months after thestrike government overseers of the union removed Carey from officefor campaign violations by his staff, even though Carey, who passedaway recently, was later cleared of all wrongdoing in federal court.41

In the post–PATCO labor movement, the heaviest judicial hammer hascome down on Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100, whichrepresents 38,000 bus and subway workers in New York City. In 1999,a judge put in place an injunction in which fines of $25,000 for strikersand $1 million against the union would double each day of the strike.After the union did walk out for sixty hours in 2005, a judge imposed afine of $2.5 million on the local, banned the automatic deduction of union dues from workers’ paychecks, and ordered the brief jailing of union president Roger Toussaint.42 Local 100—already weakened byex-reformer Toussaint’s high-handed administration—has yet to

recover.43

The New York injunctions were apparently the template forthe judge who banned the planned one-day strike by L.A. teachers. This hard line recalls the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,when unions routinely faced “injunction judges,” violent attacks onpicket lines by police and armed forces, and naked class justice.

In this environment, unions have all but abandoned the strike as aweapon. In 2008, there were just fifteen work stoppages involving1,000 or more workers, compared to 424 in 1974. In the last two

40 See Steven K. Ashby and C.J. Hawking, Staley: The Fight for a New

American Labor Movement (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press,

2009).41 Joe Allen, “Remembering Ron Carey,” SocialistWorker.org, December 16, 2008,

socialistworker.org/2008/12/16/remembering-ron-carey.42 Steve Downs, Hell on Wheels: The Success and Failure of Reform in Transport Workers Union Local

100 (Detroit: Solidarity, 2008), 20, 45.43 Amy Muldoon, “Taking back the TWU,” (Interview with Marvin Holland), SocialistWorker.org, May

15, 2009, socialistworker.org/2009/05/15/taking-back-the-twu.



decades, there have never been more than fifty-one such workstoppages in a given year.44 Less union militancy led directly toorganizational decline, Moody writes:

[Unions] grew when they fought for something and in particular, as in

the 1960s and early 1970s, when they fought to sustain or increasepower in the workplace. These days, the notion that growth andmilitancy have any connection, except possibly a negative one, isangrily dismissed by precisely those who lay the greatest claim tostrategies for growth…above all…the SEIU.45

A bureaucratic solution to union decline?

Labor’s long crisis led to the victory of John Sweeney’s New Voicesteam, which took over the AFL-CIO in 1995. Sweeney’s team gave aliberal makeover to the stodgy Cold War federation apparatus, and

promised a labor renewal. (Under Sweeney there was also arepackaging of, but not a fundamental change in, the AFL-CIO’s largelygovernment-funded foreign policy operation, notorious for itscollaboration with the CIA.46 That, however, is beyond the scope of thisarticle.)

To survive, Sweeney’s AFL-CIO developed a strategy with four basicelements: (1) encourage mergers with other unions to compensate forshrinking membership; (2) organize in industries that cannot beshipped overseas, such as in health care, hotels, and construction; (3)collaborate with management to try and gain employers’ neutrality in

union elections; and (4) pour big money and member activism intoelecting a Democratic president and Congress in the hope of prolaborlegislation.

This approach is pursued by both the AFL-CIO, the historic nationallabor federation, and the Change to Win (CTW) coalition, which brokeaway in 2005. It’s a perspective that fits the needs of the top levels of the union bureaucracy. The top union officialdom functions as a bufferbetween capital and labor, and, in the U.S., most embrace that roleenthusiastically. Far removed from the shop floor (if they ever workedthere at all—many are lifetime staffers), leading U.S. union officials

have a lifestyle and social connections that tie them more closely tomanagement and politicians than to the rank and file. While crises andsplits in the union hierarchy can open the door to reform candidates

44 “Major work stoppages in 2008,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, February 11, 2009.45 Moody, 101.46 K im Scipes, “An unholy alliance,” Znet, July 10,

2005,www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/5864.

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/5864






and pressure from the membership, the union bureaucracy will at bestvacillate unless pressed forward by rank-and-file action.

And that’s exactly what today’s union leaders are keen to prevent.While their methods differ, both the UAW’s Ron Gettelfinger in the AFL-

CIO and SEIU president Andrew Stern in Change to Win haveessentially the same goal: create a union machine that isunaccountable to, and impregnable against, the rank and file. Stern’smethod is to create gigantic “locals,” often more than 100,000 workersthat span one or more states, run by people who were appointed orinstalled through electoral maneuvers orchestrated by unionheadquarters.47 In this way, Stern, argues, SEIU can have the clout toforce employers into neutrality agreements. Yet this has most ofteninvolved top-down organizing in which the workers are passive, evenunknowing, recipients of union membership.48

Stern’s scorched-earth effort to destroy the opposition-controlledUnited Health Care Workers-West with dismemberment andtrusteeship is only the biggest and crudest expression of theauthoritarian rule that has become the norm in SEIU. Stern’sauthoritarianism was on display in April when hundreds of SEIUmembers were sent to physically attack the Labor Notes union activistconference outside Detroit as part of a dispute with the CaliforniaNurses Association (CNA).49 Stern called off the dogs a year later andmade peace with the CNA and its affiliate, the National NursesOrganizing Committee, which led to trades of members in Nevadahospitals, a move that, as union democracy organizer Herman Benson

put it, left “nurses on both sides feeling like bartered chips.” This, inturn, was part of a complex regroupment of the CNA and registerednurses into a new 185,000-member union affiliated with the AFL-CIO.50

The SEIU’s deal with the CNA wasn’t a case of Stern turningsofthearted, however. The deal preempted an emerging alliancebetween the nurses’ union and the new National Union of HealthcareWorkers (NUHW), which was founded by leaders and members of theSEIU’s United Health Care Workers-West after the local was put intotrusteeship by the SEIU International.51 In any case, the seamy side of Stern’s regime came to light, as corruption scandals took down two

important union leaders in Southern California and another in47 Steve Early, Embedded with Organized Labor (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009), 218–24.48 Brian Cruz and Larry Bradshaw, “Roots of the crisis in the SEIU,” SocialistWorker.org, April 25, 2008,

socialistworker.org/2008/04/25/roots-crisis-seiu.49 Ibid.50 Herman Benson, “Nurses now for sale, barter and trade,” Union Democracy Review, March–April

2009.51 Randy Shaw, “The shocking SEIU-CNA alliance,” BeyondChron, March 21, 2009.



Michigan.52

In defense of these organizing methods, Stern and his supporters claimthat workers are more interested in power than democracy.53 It’s truethat SEIU has had major success in organizing mostly immigrant

janitors after achieving a breakthrough in Los Angeles in the early1990s. But as Moody points out, the L.A. janitors’ real wages fell byaround 10 percent over the course of two consecutive five-yearcontracts.54 More recently, the SEIU policy of “bargaining to organize”has led to strict limits on traditional union workers’ rights, including theright to speak out on bad conditions in nursing homes. The agreementsalso included a low wage increase and bans on strikes.55 In Stern’seyes, the crime of Sal Roselli, who was then president of the SEIU’sUnited Heathcare Workers-West, was to resist such deals andchallenge the SEIU’s approach to partnership.56 Now head of the newNational Union of Healthcare Workers, Roselli has the support of tens

of thousands of SEIU members, most of whom, for the moment, arelegally prevented from joining the new union, which calls for a fighting,democratic labor movement.57

For his part, the UAW’s Gettelfinger is also seeking ways to preservethe bureaucracy by making it as independent from the rank and file aspossible. The means to do so was to be the retiree health-care trustfund handed over to the union by GM, Chrysler, and Ford under theterms of the last contract. Now that those funds give the unionownership stakes in GM and Chrysler, the union itself will be theenforcer of harsh working conditions, lower-tier pay, and a ban on

strikes.

Of course, unaccountability and hostility to rank-and-file militancy havelong been the norm in the U.S. labor bureaucracy. But Stern andGettelfinger have pushed bureaucratic control to new extremes. Theirargument to the rest of the labor movement is that the unionmachinery must do whatever it takes to survive. In this view, unionsmust help make employers profitable and minimize, if not eliminate,union democracy in order to permit leaders to make difficult,unpopular decisions. This will allow the unions to survive and rebuild anew base among different sections of workers in nonunion industries.

52 Paul Pringle, “SEIU spending scandal spreads to Michigan,” Los Angeles Times, August 26, 2008.53 Sustar, “Behind the UNITE HERE merger,” Socialist Worker, July 23, 2004.54 Moody, 195.55 Brian Cruz, “Will SEIU obliterate a California local?” SocialistWorker.org, January 9, 2009,

socialistworker.org/2009/01/09/will-seiu-obliterate-a-local.56 Mark Brenner, “Trusteeship looms for dissident SEIU local,” Labor Notes, February 2009.57 Clawson, “A battle for labor’s future.”





to labor’s culture,” he says, “its actual activity and what it representsto workers. Organized labor doesn’t represent a movement at thispoint that workers can attach themselves to—where they feel a certainsense of upsurge or upward momentum.”62 Moreover, EFCA wouldn’tnecessarily lead to the kind of strategic focus needed to rebuild the

U.S. labor movement. Crucially, no union has been willing to committhe resources necessary to organize (or reorganize) the critical supplychains of trucks, trains, and warehouses that are integral to today’s just-in-time production methods. (The failure of the Teamsters’ poorlyplanned and ineptly run 1999-2002 strike for unionization at theOvernite trucking company—now UPS Freight—highlighted thisfailure.)63

The most import thing about EFCA or similar legislation is that it couldreinforce the idea that there’s a federally protected right for workers toorganize. As in the 1930s, when organizers used New Deal legislation

to claim “your president wants you to join a union,” today’s unionofficials and rank-and-file activists could use EFCA to encourageworkers to be confident to organize. They can use Barack Obama’sown words as justification.64 The United Food and Commercial Workers(UFCW) took an important step in this direction when it used the EFCAdebate to relaunch its effort to organize Wal-Mart.

But even the best labor law reforms won’t overcome the crisis of organized labor. As U.S. labor history demonstrates, unionization hasincreased not in small increments, but in great upsurges of struggle, asin the 1930s.

Immigration and the unions

Amid the latest escalation of the employers’ relentless war on laborthere are also signs of the possibility of renewal. On May 1, 2006,millions of immigrants and their supporters marched in cities acrossthe U.S. against proposed federal legislation that would havecriminalized the estimated 12 to 14 million undocumented people inthe United States. In response, immigrant labor took to the streets. AsMoody points out, companies in industries heavily dependent on

62 Sustar, “What can turn labor in a new direction?”, (Interview with Jerry Tucker), SocialistWorker.org,

April 11, 2008, socialistworker.org/2008/04/11/turn-labor-new-direction.63 Tom Leedham, “The road ahead runs through UPS Freight,” TDU.org,

March 16, 2006, www.tdu.org/node/153.64 Sustar, “A new battle over the right to organize,” SocialistWorker.org,

November 21, 2008, socialistworker.org/2008/11/21/battle-over-right-to-

organize.





immigrant labor—from the Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach truckdrivers to meatpackers to textiles and landscaping services—were shutdown for the day, demonstrating the power of immigrant labor in thosesectors.65 These actions revived May Day, International Labor Day, inthe country where it began during the struggle for the eight-hour day

in 1886. The marches were won of the biggest displays of workers’power seen in the U.S. in many years.

The impact of the immigrant rights demonstrations underscored bigdemographic changes in the U.S. population—especially in the workingclass. Moody sees the new prominence of immigrant labor as evidenceof a third great demographic transformation in the U.S. working class,following the earlier wave of immigration at the turn of the twentiethcentury and the changes wrought in the mid-twentieth century by themass African American migration into the cities, the North, andindustry, and the large-scale entry of women into the workforce. Each

of these changes posed challenges to organized labor, whichsometimes rose to the occasion (uniting white and African Americanworkers in the old CIO mass production industries, for example) butoften did not. Today, he notes, “immigrants are already attempting toorganize in a variety of ways. The question is, are the strategies andstructures of today’s unions fit for the job?”66

To be sure, many unions, especially the SEIU and UNITE HERE, have formany years sought to organize immigrant workers. Those effortsresulted in a historic policy shift in the AFL-CIO in 2000, when theunion’s executive council voted to call for amnesty for undocumented

workers. This is a big break with the past, when most unions sawimmigrant labor as a threat and supported restrictions on immigration.In 2003, the HERE union of hotel workers helped organize “ImmigrantFreedom Rides” across the U.S., linking the historic struggle of AfricanAmericans for civil rights to immigrants’ willingness to struggle.67

But even as the immigrant rights movement erupted in 2006, laborbecame consumed in a debate over whether to support employerprograms for a guest-worker program. The SEIU and UNITE HEREfavored this approach, collaborating with employer organizations toadvance the agenda; the AFL-CIO opposed it.68 It wasn’t until President

Obama began pushing for immigration reform legislation that the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win federations agreed on an approach thatopposes guest-worker programs and proposes a national commission

65 Moody, 211–12.66 Ibid., 78.67 Alan Maass, “Freedom ride for immigrant rights,” Socialist Worker, October 3, 2003.68 Sustar, “Labor and immigration,” Socialist Worker, May 5, 2006.



to decide on future levels of immigration of permanent and temporaryworkers.69

This is a step forward from supporting guest workers, even if it fails tolive up the AFL-CIO amnesty position of 2000. But the unions are still

far from coming to grips with the changes that immigration hasbrought to the U.S. working class—and the potential to organize in aradically different way. In the big May Day marches of 2006 and 2007in Chicago, for example, unions easily could have passed out flyersannouncing informational meetings in immigrant neighborhoods in andaround the city to explain how the marchers could unionize theirworkplaces. The self-organization that enabled uncounted numbers of workers to negotiate with bosses for time off—or together plan not toshow up—could have been the starting point for workplaceorganization.

However, most union officials, locked into the narrowest cost-benefitanalysis of organizing, simply couldn’t grasp the fact that immigrantworkers were willing and able to organize themselves. Other unionofficials may have understood that potential—but were unwilling orunable to give their full backing to a movement that was beyond theircontrol.

Organize the South—or die

A key focus of Moody’s U.S. Labor in Trouble is the shift in productionto the South. While there certainly has been a shift in jobs overseas,

the numbers are questionable, Moody points out, because much of the job loss is the result of technological change that makes a smallernumber of workers vastly more productive. As a result, even thoughthe number of manufacturing workers in the U.S. now stands at 12.3million—a drop of 5 million over the past decade70—the U.S. remains afundamentally industrial economy: “the ratio of service output togoods and structures, as the government measures these, has notchanged much in almost half a century…. The industrial core remainsthe sector on which the majority of economic activity is dependent.Hence it is the power center of the system.”71

The continued centrality of production could allow U.S. manufacturingunions to retain their clout, despite job losses. But the unions have notonly failed to maintain wages and conditions in their historic bastions,

69 Julia Preston and Steven Greenhouse, “Immigration accord by labor boosts Obama effort,” New York

Times, April 14, 2009.70 “Unemployed exceed manufacturing jobs,” Manufacturing & Technology News, April 17 2009.71 Moody, 39.



they’ve been unable to follow work into nonunion facilities, particularlythe South. Here labor is paying a steep price for its historic failure toconfront racism directly during the era of Jim Crow segregation. In thelate 1940s, the old CIO’s Operation Dixie organizing drive was stillbornas Southern employers used both racism and anticommunism to attack

any and all efforts to organize Black and white workers. “Only aconfrontation,” writes labor historian Sharon Smith, “with Southernwhite supremacy could have paved the way for organizing success.”But the CIO at that time was busy purging and raiding the left-ledunions that were willing to take on that challenge, and its support forthe Democratic Party made it incapable of challenging the party’ssegregationist Southern wing.72

As a result, in the postwar era the South became an attractive localefor both U.S. and foreign capital. The region has become home to mostof the auto “transplants” owned by German and Japanese companies,

all of which are nonunion despite repeated efforts by the UAW toorganize workers. The picture is similar in other industries: by 2000, 30percent of manufacturing jobs were in the South.73

Even where labor has made inroads in the South, the unions’ pursuit of corporate partnership and aversion to rank-and-file activism has beenill-suited to the fierce resistance they’ve encountered. A particularlytelling example of this is the struggle of the Freightliner Five, leaders of a UAW local at truck plant in North Carolina. When the workers led abrief strike in April 2007, they were fired. Four of the workers had beenleaders of the organizing committee that helped compel the company

to recognize the UAW a few years earlier. Yet rather than defend thesemilitant, diverse leaders—three of the workers are Black, one is awoman—the UAW excluded them from membership by the union localpresident. Two got their jobs and union memberships restored inarbitration.74

An important exception to labor’s losing streak in the South was theUFCW’s organizing campaign at the huge Smithfield pork processingplant in Tar Heel, N.C. Despite years of setbacks through companyviolations of union election laws, firings of union militants, and generalrepression—including an in-plant jail—the union prevailed. Key to this

was outreach through workers’ centers to both immigrant and African-American employees, and on-the-job organizing that made the union’spresence felt. Long before the union officially won the right torepresent employees, the union became a resource for immigrant

72 Sharon Smith, Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States (Chicago:

Haymarket Books, 2006) 189–92; 197–98.73 Moody, 45.74 Sustar, “Split ruling for Freightliner Five,” Socialist Worker, November 7, 2008.



workers coping with the threat—or reality—of job loss and deportationby supporting a walkout against a raid. For Black workers, the unionwas key to the successful fight to win Martin Luther King Day as a paidholiday.75

Reviving social movement and class-struggle unionism

The Smithfield victory provides a glimpse of how labor can win evenagainst a hostile employer. But labor’s unwillingness to embrace socialmovement unionism—among immigrant workers and in general—highlights the larger reasons behind the unions’ repeated failure toorganize the unorganized. As Kim Moody explained:

While the blame for so many not getting a chance to choose aunion lies heavily with the employers and a broken [NationalLabor Relations Board], the labor leadership must take a good

deal of collective responsibility. This isn’t just the lack of organizing effort by many unions, but the long-standing, top-down business union practices (or worse) of most of those whoare organizing in the private sector. You can’t be a unionmember unless you are, or are about to be, part of a recognizedbargaining unit. You can’t even be part of an organizing drivethese days unless your employer was targeted by the strategistsat union HQ. If you are part of an organizing effort that fails (bycard check or election) you’re out. If the union wins recognitionbut fails to get a first contract and gets decertified, you’re outeven if you voted to keep the union. All of these practices are

self-imposed, none are required by law. There are a handful of unions that are now practicing non-majority unionism, such asthe UE and CWA. And the AFL-CIO and some unions have given ameasure of recognition to worker centers and immigrantworkers. But most top union leaders don’t want members orallies who aren’t under their control. This needs to change.76

The example of UE should be emphasized. Once the largest union inthe old Congress of Industrial Organizations founded in the 1930, itwas decimated in the late 1940s and 1950s by a series of splits andraids orchestrated by rival unions because of its left-wing leadership

that included members of the Communist Party. Nevertheless, UE hassurvived as a small but vigorous independent national union of about35,000 members, one that has in recent decades focused heavily onimmigrant workers.77

75 David Bacon, “Unions come to Smithfield,” American Prospect, December 17, 2008.76 Kim Moody, “A few additional thoughts on the new situation,” contribution to the Center for Labor

Renewal listserve, November 23, 2008.77 Jim Wrenn, “UE ‘non-majority’ union organizes the old-fashioned way,” Labor Notes, August 2002;



UE’s militant and democratic approach to trade unionism wasvindicated in December 2008 during the successful six-day occupationat the Republic Windows and Doors occupation in Chicago. Theoccupation was organized by workers to demand severance pay after

the company announced that the business was closing its doors.Overnight, a factory occupation—something usually reserved for laborhistory books on the 1930s and nostalgic speeches at unionconventions—became a focal point for working-class resistance amid aprofound economic crisis. The widespread attention to the fight eveninspired a California “green” window manufacturer to buy the plant,with plans to hire most, if not all, Republic workers.78

That militancy didn’t develop overnight. Republic workers haddecertified two conservative and corrupt unions before joining UE inorder to build a fighting, democratic union. Those years of struggle laid

the basis for the battle of December 2008. By day three of theoccupation, the importance of this fight was clear to millions of workingpeople across the United States. “This is the end of an era in whichcorporate greed is the rule,” said James Thindwa, executive director of Chicago Jobs with Justice. “This is the start of something new.”79

Crucially, the Republic workers—most of them Latino immigrants, aminority African Americans—became the faces and voices of the U.S.working class as it faced the worst economic slump in seventy years.At a spirited December 9 rally of several hundred outside the occupiedplant, UE Local 110 President Armando Robles got an especially loud

cheer when he declared, “We are America,” a popular slogan from theimmigrant marches of 2006. This time, it was a reference to the entireworking-class majority in the United States.80

Rebuilding the labor movement in a changing working class

Does the Republic Windows workers’ victory represent, to borrow theoverused cliché from the business press, the first “green shoots” of arecovery for labor? Or will the UAW’s epic collapse foreshadow yetanother series of retreats and defeats for the unions? Can theindependent National Union of Healthcare Workers establish a model of

Steve Bader, “Pre-majority” public workers union makes gains in North Carolina,” Labor Notes,

September 2002.78 “Chicago window factory reopens with occupying workers back on the job,” Democracy Now! May 15,

2009,www.democracynow.org/2009/5/15/chicago_window_factory_re_opens_with.79 Sustar, “A rallying point for labor,” SocialistWorker.org, December 8, 200,

socialistworker.org/2008/12/08/rallying-point-for-labor.80 Sustar, “Republic workers target Bank of America,” SocialistWorker.org, December 10, 2008,

socialistworker.org/2008/12/10/workers-target-bank-of-america.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/15/chicago_window_factory_re_opens_with






democratic, member-driven, militant unionism? Or will the SEIU’scorporate-style gigantism predominate, as shrinking unions seekmergers for survival in a perverse realization of the old IndustrialWorkers of the World dream of creating “one big union?”

These questions can only be answered in the struggles of the monthsand years ahead. But what is already clear is that the depth and lengthof the economic crisis means that organized labor will have to fight likehell to just to keep its ground, let alone advance. But reviving class-struggle unionism—to use another term from labor’s past—will be apainstaking task. Complicating the process is the fact that thegeneration that led the last wave of labor resistance in the 1970s isnearing retirement or is out of the workforce already due to job loss.And given the low level of union struggle since PATCO, a youngergeneration has little or no experience of unions as fightingorganizations. As some academic labor relations experts noted, “the

reduction of strike activity has created an environment in which thegeneral public, and perhaps some union members have littleconception of what a strike is or does.”81

Resistance, nevertheless, continues. Crisis-driven government budgetcuts in the months and years ahead makes public-sector strikes inparticular more likely. Teachers are in the crosshairs, as the crisiscombines with the “school reform” agenda to give school boardsadditional leverage to attack seniority, impose merit pay, and createnonunion charter schools. Private employers too are using the crisis topush for givebacks that finally forces a showdown, as several long,

recent strikes, such as the one at the Stella D’oro bakery in New YorkCity.82

The potential for a labor victory that could change the dynamics isthere. Certainly the Los Angeles political establishment was relieved atthe judge’s order that banned a teachers’ strike, lest it become apopular rallying point for working people fed up with attacks on theeducation of working-class kids.

Other elements of labor revival may well come outside the establishedunions altogether. Moody calls attention to the network of workers’

centers that meet the needs of nonunion workers, often immigrants, tohelp pursue wage-and-hours claims and assert their legal rights. Healso points to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the organization of

81 Paul F. Clark, John T. Delany and Ann C. Frost, “Private sector collective bargaining: Is this the end or

the beginning” in Clark et al (eds.), Collective Bargaining in the Private Sector (Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press,

2003), 4.82 Jessica Carmona-Baez, “Stakes get higher at Stella D’oro,” SocialistWorker.org, June 4, 2009,

socialistworker.org/2009/06/04/stakes-get-higher-stella-doro.



nonunion immigrant tomato-pickers who waged a successful campaignto force Taco Bell, the corporate customer for their tomatoes, to pay ahigher price to finance higher workers’ wages. McDonald’s surrenderednext.83 To this list could be added the Starbucks Workers Union (SWU),a project of the IWW. Although it lacks formal collective bargaining

rights and represents workers in a relative handful of stores, the SWUhas, through tenacious organizing, made gains on the job, reversedfirings of union activists, and won precedent-setting cases before theNational Labor Relations Board.84

These creative efforts highlight the possibility for new organizing. Yetthere also needs to be a strategic focus to rebuilding the unions in theheart of production and distribution. For it is there that workers havethe greatest leverage to reverse the decline of their class and begin tomake gains.

This point is rightly emphasized by Moody. He points out that the leanproduction system—minimizing inventories, for example—has createdseveral choke points for U.S. industry. To rebuild their muscle, unionsmust reconquer, or conquer anew, lost ground in the ports, on trucks,in the warehouses and on the railways. At the same time, unions haveto finally make the commitment to organize Southern industry, a taskthat will require an explicit commitment to fighting racism, long-termpreparation, and, ultimately, courageous actions that draw upon thetraditions of the civil rights movement. Opposition to racism will beessential in efforts to both organize immigrant workers and serve astheir advocates amid xenophobic attacks from the right as it seeks

scapegoats for the current crisis.

Entering such battles will require a kind of politics very different fromthat put forward by union officials, who typically follow the dominanttrends inside the Democratic Party. What’s needed is independentworking-class politics. This doesn’t mean prematurely declaring theexistence of a workers’ party, but rather building on the basis of political independence of the working class. This will necessarily be along-term project, one that applies the lessons of labor’s largely buriedradical history to new conditions.

For that reason, the new debate on socialism in U.S. politics should betaken up inside the labor movement. While socialism re-enteredpolitical discussion as a right-wing epithet for Barack Obama’s policies,

83 Moody, 219–20; Helen Redmond, “McDonald’s caves to farmworkers,” Socialist Worker, April 20,

2007.84 Adam Turl, “Standing up to Starbucks,” SocialistWorker.org, April 17, 2009,

socialistworker.org/2009/04/17/standing-up-to-starbucks.



there is a genuine interest in socialism as an alternative to today’scrisis-ridden system. Left-wing labor activists should seize the momentto bring socialist politics into the workplace—not only as a vision of amore egalitarian and democratic society in the future, but as a way toinform how workers organize and fight today.

To be effective militants today, union activists need to assimilate thelessons of previous generations of socialists who rejected labor-management partnership and promoted class-struggle, social-movement unionism. It was those socialists, communists, and othermilitants, not the established union leaders, who led the battles thattransformed the U.S. labor movement. The 1934 general strikes in Toledo, Minneapolis, and San Francisco and the sit-down strikes in autoand other industries a few years later couldn’t have happened withoutthat rank-and-file upsurge. The expansion of public-sector unionism inthe 1960s couldn’t have been achieved without the civil rights and

Black Power struggles that involved and inspired millions of African-American workers.

In today’s crisis, as Sam Gindin argues, the survival of organized labor—let alone its revival—will require bold new approaches:

This is an historic moment that challenges us to think big orsuffer even worse defeats. Faced with immediate needs, workersand their union have too often shied away from taking on largerissues of social change that seemed too abstract, too distant, toointimidating. The lesson however is that if we only focus on the

immediate, the options we have are always limited. We are allnow paying the price of that failure to think bigger…. In thiscontext, what is truly unrealistic is not new options, but thenotion that stumbling through the present crisis will preservepast gains or bring new security.85

Where and when the next upsurge will come is impossible to predict.But with capitalism in a protracted crisis—and the system morediscredited than in any time in decades—the conditions for a fightbackare developing. And despite the catastrophe in the auto industry andthe seemingly endless stream of bad news for workers, the RepublicWindows and Doors victory points the way towards a renewed, fightinglabor movement. Melvin “Ricky” Maclin, vice president of UE Local1110, spoke for millions of workers the night that the Republic workerswon:

I feel wonderful. I feel validated as a human being. Everybody isso overjoyed. This is significant because it shows workers

85 Gindin, “Auto crisis.”



everywhere that we do have a voice in this economy. Becausewe’re the backbone of this country. It’s not the CEOs. It’s theworking people.86

86 Sustar, “Victory at Republic.”





about individual people’s struggles (which are real and deserveattention) to also include the politics and culture of the workplace as awhole.

One way that gender affects all workers explicitly at my job is aroundworkplace safety issues. In an almost entirely male workplace,organizing around workplace safety involves having a complicatedunderstanding of gender politics and a specific set of skills fornavigating them.

Specifically, the guys I work with will often not work safe unless thereis another issue at stake. We will do job actions which rely on enforcingsafety regulations only if somebody is suspended for something else,being off the job for example. Safety issues on their own, and not as astrategy for slowing productivity, are ignored. Working safe isessentially for “wimps.”

This “macho” attitude persists while safety issues at work are huge. Iwork in manholes, where the safety issues range from risk of immediate injury to longterm health risks from exposure to dusts andgases. My co-workers essentially police each others’ masculinity andeffectively enforce management’s approach to on the job injuries,claiming they are always the employees’ fault.

Management actively denies what union activists know, that thehazards exist at work because of how work is organized, that workersthemselves do not create these hazards. Nonetheless managementsuccessfully claims that we’re not careful enough while climbing rusty

ladders, lifting 300-pound manhole covers, or driving trucks withoutworking turn signals. Hyper- masculine workplace culture affirmsmanagement’s claims.

My co-workers say injured workers aren’t strong enough or smartenough to navigate these hazards. Consequently the unionmembership has no active demands or positions around safety. All of the union’s gains regarding safety equipment and procedures havebasically become a nuisance or seen as compromising masculinity.

Management makes safety equipment available for liability reasonsand uses safety violations as a way to discipline workers. In my

workplace safety, previously a union victory, has become a tool of management.

Because of this dominant workplace culture, organizing for moreeffective and widespread safety measures at work is also organizingagainst some of this staunchly hetero-normative masculine behavior.Convincing people that “unsafe for one is unsafe for all” does notcompromise their individual worth, only management’s increasing



productivity demands.

Organizing with the goal of redefining what is valued on the shop floor,not hypermasculinity but collective engagement in class struggle, isessentially a socialist-feminist project: a project that strengthens thecollective power of all workers, regardless of gender identity, byundoing the centrality of those individual gender identities to how wework, how we relate to the union, how we define the union, andultimately to what we think is possible in the world.

What we as socialist feminists believe is that it is possible, necessary,to live a life in which you are not constantly struggling to meet thestandards of oppressive gender roles, and that individual struggle mustnot interfere with our collective project of building working classpower.

2. Gender is used to organize society.

Understanding gender roles plays such a central role to organizing inmy workplace because hypermasculinity is such a big part of thedominant culture there. In reality, there is actually extreme variety ingender and sexuality, and every worker’s relationship to thoseidentities gets lost in this dominant culture.

Though I want to recognize and understand this workplace culture, I donot want to essentialize any aspect of gender or sexuality. Some of thepeople I work with are not as macho; there are some women, there aremacho women, there are serious union activists who derive their

macho pride from yelling at the boss and not from working unsafely,and there are much more passive characters, etc.

I am trying to say that the diversity of the working class, which is trulyinfinite, is not made apparent by the dominant cultures in ourworkplaces and our unions. These cultures are often a response to howwork is organized, which is not by the class, or to how union life isorganized, which is not often enough by the class. Therefore, graduallychipping away at the homogenous and destructive force of patriarchyand homophobia in these places makes the way for real and lastingchange.

The more and more we organize together and have each others’ backsat work around safety issues, the more the very terms of how to be asuccessful “guy” at work change. This strategy also makes more spacefor people who are not “guys.” The more successes we have as a shop,the more solidarity there is.

After months of organizing with this socialist-feminist understanding atthe core, my whole shop is getting closer to working safely for our own



sake. Increasingly, there is not as much to prove as before, and whatwas perceived as a defense of gender is not as necessary.

What we are now defending is our collective rights to a safe workplace,reclaiming that tool from management. We have had only somesuccess with this at my shop, but the amount of convincing it takes toget people on board has decreased drastically, which is a sign thatsolidarity has increased.

3. Gender is about radically redefining the potential for liberation.

Some of the success of the feminist movement has been the creationof rules for behavior and legal recourse for people who encounterdiscrimination and hostility on the job. These rules are valuable andare the consequence of a very real and brave fight by people of color,queers and women on the job.

Without a politicized union membership, however, these rules do notget integrated into the core of what solidarity looks like. And withoutanti-racist, feminist and queer organizing in the workplace, there is notthe collective commitment to confront these violations of unionsolidarity. Management, afraid of lawsuits, essentially enforces theserules around sexism, homophobia and racism.

It is our job as activists, especially in the workplace, not to allow thesevictories of the movement to be turned into the very things that undoour movement. We need to redefine the terms of what it means to be

union, what it means to be human. It is our job to intervene effectivelyin all of these manifestations of racism, sexism and homophobia on the job. It is also our job to do this in a way that builds solidarity anddoesn’t simply scold offending union members, which is precisely howmanagement undoes our solidarity.

This is the difference between a socialist- feminist approach to buildinga collective that can demand and enforce the rights of all unionmembers, and a liberal approach to simply safeguarding individualrights.

A socialist-feminist approach is not only more effective in terms of building lasting structures and relationships to preserve the essence of feminist, queer and anti-racist demands, but it makes more sense. Itcreates situations where we are asking people to step up and haveeach others’ backs, not to step down and get out of the way becausethey just don’t get it. It demands that people be their best for the sakeof their coworkers, for the sake of the union. It builds relationships andresponsibility to the collective.



When building one-on-one relationships, which are the building blocksof bigger organizing, socialist-feminist politics is decidedly differentfrom liberal politics and it makes a difference when you’re talking withpeople on the job.

People hate “liberals” — partly due to racism and sexism andhomophobia and seeing liberals as representing minorities only — but Ithink all of that masks the fact that people really hate liberalismbecause it has failed to change the world in ways that make adifference for the class.

Liberal politics depend on the class for support but work in oppositionto the class, privileging individual mobility and individual citizenship.Radicalism places all of these individual struggles in the context of howcapitalism alienates us from each other and ourselves. People “get”radicalism because radicalism accounts for all of people’s strugglesunder capitalism. They want to support each other and be supported —

“an injury to one is an injury to all” — and if we don’t support eachother we’re all more vulnerable.

Placing workplace struggles in this context is a radical project.Understanding how gender plays a role in alienating people from eachother and themselves is a socialist-feminist project. Socialist feminismis also an approach to organizing because it understands the rolegender plays in developing the class conscious of workers as well asunderstanding the personal as political. And this is radical.

There’s a personal and emotional connection that people have to feel

to trust each other, to take risks on the job, to undo the privileges of whiteness, maleness, heteronormativity, being a productive worker —organizing is fundamentally building trust, about caring for and abouteach other, about creating a place where the class takes care of eachother for common struggles against all of the effects of capitalism.

These personal politics play out while organizing around workplaceissues and in informal social interactions away from work. Occasionallypeople go out, drink, open up to each other, and we as human beingswho struggle with the ways capitalism organizes our lives on and off the job share our stories with each other about our needs for respect

and care, our needs to respect and care.We don’t necessarily build on these conversations upon returning towork the next day. But we share an understanding that we are in thistogether because of our struggles, not in spite of them, andchallenging each other to be fuller people is part of our project as aclass.

In all of this formal and informal conversation, issues of gender,



sexuality, race, the war, how we organize our personal lives,relationships and work are constant. Being a socialist feminist helps tounderstand what people say, and why they say it.

When people talk about stuff they want to assert the value of thechoices they have made in life, the sacrifices that they’ve made. Andpeople are brilliant, insightful, creative and sincerely trying tounderstand this mess capitalism has made of our lives. They areinterested in engaging with and arguing about all of these issues anddesire for these struggles to be taken seriously.

As radicals, as socialist feminists, we do take all of these personalstruggles seriously. It is at the core of what we believe. The effects of capitalism on our identities and how we organize our lives aresometimes traumatic.

We do not reduce our politics to only these personal struggles, but we

incorporate them into our understanding of the world and ourapproach to organizing. This is appealing to people. This is socialistfeminism.

4. Our gender roles are central to developing radical classconsciousness.

If this can be seen as one of our goals in the workplace, and in theworld, we need to approach it as activists. We need to earn the respectand trust of our coworkers, our community. This is no small task. Ourapproach to being good organizers is also derived from our socialist

feminist tradition. We integrate our understanding of the centrality of our gender roles in developing political consciousness with ourmethods for building democratic movements. Individual identities arefragmented under capitalism, there are unrealistic standards for livingunder this gendered order, and the wholeness of our humanity takes abackseat to surviving under capitalism.

I experienced this myself when I started at my job. I kept looking foropportunities to talk to other workers as a worker about the contract,the wages, working conditions, union, and management, but insteadfound people most interested in personal life — theirs and mine.

I mistakenly thought this focus on being workplace activists, focusingon what material demands we had in common, had to happen at theexpense of my other identities, which were not heteronormative andtherefore, I mistakenly thought, were distracting from our commonalityas workers. I was struggling with how to integrate my sexuality andgender identity with my identity as a workplace activist. I was worriedabout making my sexuality an issue, but people seemed to be more



fixated on obsessing about their own sexuality and gender than aboutmine.

The people I worked with were, in a funny way, more socialist feministthan I was, integrating their work and after work lives, being movedcompletely by both experiences. They challenged me to do the same,to be myself comfortably. Coming out ended up making me closer topeople, not more alienated as I wrongly suspected. I was challenged bymy coworkers and my broader politics to understand the workplace asbeing about more than work, as being about our whole experience inlife.

One of the ways my socialist-feminist politics played a role in how Ihandled coming out at work is that I started out understanding thateveryone has experience as a gendered and sexual person — andeveryone in some way or another struggles with these identities, andwith insecurities. So I didn’t see myself as unique or different from the

straight men I worked with in that way. It also forced me into theunfamiliar place of knowing myself to be the “one” in “an injury to oneis an injury to all” and the less familiar place of allowing the “all” to bemy coworkers.

When I realized that being more of who I am on the job was the key tobeing able to establish trust and solidarity, it brought me back to mysocialist-feminist politics in a way. As an activist, I took what Iperceived as a risk to let people know more about myself. Coworkersrespected this honesty and saw it as respectful, and together weeffectively established a deep trust. This interpersonal politics is part of

our socialist- feminist understanding of what is political, but also asocialist-feminist strategy for organizing.

Understanding that we are all in all of our struggles together, asocialist-feminist organizing approach, led me to be a more effectiveorganizer around those workplace issues I had initially focused on andcontinue to work on, now with the benefit the trust and support of mycoworkers. This support goes both ways and contributes to thedeveloping of leaders and activists on the shop floor. When I interveneon somebody’s behalf, they intervene on mine. We tap each other forsupport, and stand together on the shop floor.

Integrating a broader understanding of what moves people, a socialist-feminist strategy for organizing, leads to developing a culture whereindividuals are more willing to take risks as activists around shop floorissues, ranging from the way work is organized, safety issues,discrimination, the humiliation of being constantly managed, deniedbathroom breaks, and the unbelievably long list of things that workersstruggle around every minute of the day at work.



Building trust and developing relationships is necessary for organizingaround workplace issues. But this process does not only happenbecause of “typical” issues. Our broader struggles under capitalismcontribute to our ability and interest in fighting, to developing aconsciousness that sees all of our personal struggles as connected, to

see how these struggles affect all of our fights. Socialist feminismprovides us with the political framework for organizing towards thisgoal.

5. The tradition of socialist feminism is included in our strategies as organizers.

There has been a lot of focus on socialist-feminist process in buildingsocialist organization. And I do think it is important to be explicit aboutthis as a political process and decision. But I also do not want tooverlook the fact that socialist feminist process is good organizing:

listening more than talking, caring as a task and a goal, seeingconsciousness as a kind of process in which everyone is equallyresponsible and engaged.

Socialism has a tradition; socialist feminism is part of that tradition. Inmy time as a rank-and-file activist I have learned so much about whatmoves me and my coworkers, how to effectively organize collectiveaction, how deep and broad the range of things we struggle with undercapitalism, as workers in our lives and at work. And I have also learnedhow enormously lucky I am to be aware of this larger tradition of struggle and thought.

Sometimes we assume that people’s lack of interest or commitment tothese traditions is deliberate. I have learned that people are unawareof these traditions. The left has not been widely present in theworkplace for a long time. Some labor leaders see the middle class asour goal, and while demanding more of the share of wealth we produceis not a horrible goal, we know as radicals it doesn’t touch the sheerinhumanity of capitalism.

Sharing this tradition and the lessons of these politics is an importantpart of organizing, sharing the potential for a different world, adifferent world that is informed by all of our insights into the failure of

capitalism as a way of organizing life. And going about it in a way thatunderstands people’s alienation from the processes of struggle itself ismore effective organizing. At least it has been for me in modest shopfloor activities. Building bigger more lasting organization with thisfoundation is a longer-term project.

There are many more opportunities to learn from this socialist-feministapproach to organizing because capital is constantly reorganizing our



lives and work in ways that further alienate us from ourselves, eachother and the very process of political change. For all the abovereasons, I think a socialist-feminist process is the most effective way tobuild the power and collectivity needed by the class. And for thereasons above, I think the workplace is an important place to

implement this strategy.Only conscience resistance will effectively undo the institutionalizationof gender roles and the obstacles they create for building-classconscious movements. Gender roles are institutionalized and interferewith building collective struggles, interfere with collective goals andidentities. Socialist feminist process and goals are aimed at developingthis conscious resistance.



Steve Downs, “Review of Solidarity Divided ”

Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Pathtoward Social Justiceby Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin

In the preface to Solidarity Divided Bill Fletcher and Fernando Gapasintell of an encounter between Service Employees (SEIU) leaders andSouth African unionists. A South African reminds the SEIUers that aunion’s role is to represent the interests of all workers. “There aretimes,” he says, “when the interests of the working class conflict withthe interests of the members of our respective unions.”

Fletcher and Gapasin use this moment to illustrate one of theirunderlying themes--that the U.S. labor movement does not see itself,or act, as if it is rooted in “class struggle.” It has failed to be a vehiclefor creating a broader social movement. It represents a rather narrowsubset of interests--of its members--and is not doing that particularlywell either.

The authors argue convincingly that the union framework is brokenand a complete overhaul is needed. They come to this position fromlong and respected careers in different unions, as rank-and-filemembers, staff, and officers; they participated in John Sweeney’s NewVoice leadership in the AFL-CIO and had an inside view of thefederation. Fletcher was the education director and then assistant toPresident Sweeney. Before becoming principal researcher for the AFL-CIO’s Union Cities project, Gapasin was a rank-and-file activist and

then an officer in his local union and central labor council. They alsobring their unique perspective as activists of color and as leftists with abelief that the labor movement should be the engine of a movementfor broader social change.

Behind the Scenes

Last month the AFL-CIO met in Pittsburgh. One Change to Win union—UNITE HERE—rejoined the federation it left in 2005. Were thedifferences that caused the split resolved? Did they ever actually exist?Not really, according to Fletcher and Gapasin.

The authors take us behind the scenes of the debates that led to thesplit. Their insider knowledge makes clear that the way the mediaportrayed the split--old versus new, political activity (AFL-CIO) versusorganizing (CtW)--was misleading. They argue that no fundamentaldifferences existed on “consolidation, core jurisdiction, pragmaticinternational solidarity, and political flexibility.”



Fletcher and Gapasin present a damning picture of SEIU PresidentAndy Stern’s organizing and management methods. Their critique of Stern’s brand of unionism, with its emphasis on consolidating locals,creating mega-locals of 200,000 members in half a dozen states,making deals with employers to organize workers, and crushing

internal democratic initiatives -- all in the name of growing the union --has been validated by recent events. Stern, long the darling of some inthe labor movement and the press, is now intensely criticized forputting United Health Care Workers-West in trusteeship and fosteringthe split in UNITE HERE.

Labor would do well to listen to Fletcher and Gapasin’s critique of theprevailing approach to organizing. They point out that simplyorganizing new workers into a union is not in and of itself a solution.What kind of union are they being organized into? Are they going to beactive participants, members with voice and representation? Will they

be able to negotiate good contracts, or will they be union members inname but not in practice?

Never a True Movement

The authors say that the U.S. labor movement has always been definedby an inclusion/exclusion dichotomy. Racial exclusion, they say,“crippled the movement from its birth. One can argue that the UnitedStates has never had a true labor movement, only a segmentedstruggle of workers.” They lay out the ways employers have used, andworkers have accepted, race to divide workers, from the exclusion of African-Americans in the building trades to the hostility shown

immigrants. They argue that unions’ inability to overcomemanagements’ use of race is a fundamental failure, leading to labor’scontinued fragmentation and weakness.

And as unions surrender their past gains, divisions among workersdeepen. Two-tier contracts, for instance cause conflicts betweenworkers with more seniority, who are often white, and workers whowere hired later, disproportionately people of color and women. When jobs are cut to “restore profitability,” people of color and young peoplehave the hardest time finding work.

Fletcher and Gapasin describe how difficult it is to change entrenchedunion culture: bureaucrats are akin to “crabgrass, with deep anddurable roots.” Describing the failures of the AFL-CIO and Change toWin (CtW) is almost too easy, though, and Fletcher and Gapasin do notstop there. They assert that all union leaders adopt one of three“ideologies”: they are traditionalists, pragmatists, or leftists. Theyargue that the function of unions is to represent the interests of allworkers, not just their members—but that only leftist leaders are





slowdowns, or other mobilizations of the members. But their rolerequires union officers to enforce “management’s right” to run thebusiness and organize the work.

Over the last 30 years, as employers have stepped up their efforts toroll back union gains, more and more officers have moved from simplyenforcing management’s rights to embracing management’s goals. Their inability to envision an alternative to capitalism leads most toaccept the need for wage cuts and taxpayer subsidies to preserve jobs. They defend socially harmful production, such as SUVs.

It is the role of mediator between boss and workers (and the highersalary and better working conditions that usually go with it), andenforcer of the contract, that is union leaders’ daily reality. That’s whatshapes their ideology, and goes a long way toward explaining why aleftist is more likely to become a pragmatist than the other wayaround. This is why a strategy for change driven by leftist officers and

staff is a non-starter.

Top-Down or Bottom-Up?

Despite their useful insights about the failures of New Voice and CtW,Fletcher and Gapasin implicitly accept that change will come downfrom the top and dismiss the possibility of its coming from the ranks of the union movement. They give short shrift to the so-called “caucusmovement” of the late 1960s and early 1970s. While they give duecredit to the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and a shout-out to Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the thrust of their argument is that

the time for rank-and-file-based caucuses has passed.

But caucuses (such as New Directions in the UAW and the LongshoreWorkers Coalition) keep forming, because they are necessary. They areorganizations of rank-and-file members and sometimes low-levelofficers who are not removed from the day-to-day class struggle. Thebest of them organize their co-workers to engage in that struggle andin the process, they provide training, skills, and, yes, ideology, for anew set of union leaders.

Like every other effort to bring about a new kind of labor movement,rank-and-file reform has been slower and more uneven than any of uswould like. Many of the caucuses that formed in the 1970s or 1980swere defeated by union officials or withered away. There areexamples, however, which point to the potential of this strategy. Teamsters for a Democratic Union helped transform that notoriouslycorrupt union. TDU was essential to the election of reformer Ron Careyto the Teamster presidency. That election, in turn, made the New Voicechallenge within the AFL-CIO possible. More important, TDU’s rank-and-



file network helped make the 1997 strike against UPS one of the mostsuccessful in recent history.

In my own local, New Directions in TWU Local 100 in New York City leda 15-year struggle against giveback contracts, unsafe work practices,abusive supervisors, and ineffective union leadership. In 2001 it tookcontrol of the 38,000-member union of bus and subway workers. Powerand authority in the local shifted to persons of color. New union leadersmobilized members through demonstrations and the enrollment of hundreds of new stewards.

Unfortunately, the caucus succeeded in ousting pragmatic localofficers only to have the new leadership turn away from the kind of rank-and-file organization and mobilization that had enabled it to win. The transformation of TWU Local 100 was derailed not because thenew officers lacked “an ideological framework to place reform in abroader context of social transformation”—many of them had that—

but because they lacked a sufficient commitment to internal uniondemocracy and building a member-run union. The new presidentactively resisted the idea of an ongoing caucus that might have heldhim accountable, and members and leaders of New Directions wereunable, or unwilling, to maintain the organization.

TWU 100 is not the first union local where reformers succeeded ingetting elected but the new leaders soon began to emulate the verypolitics they had run against. Frankly, this has happened too often andreflects a serious problem for the reform-from-below strategy.

One example where the rank-and-file movement did not fold up afterthe election victory is TDU. TDU kept going strong—and recruited moremembers—after Ron Carey and his team took power at the top. Thecaucus continued to push Carey—supportively—and was a big factor inthe UPS strike. While Carey was eventually ousted for other reasons,while in office he didn’t back away from his platform. This experiencesuggests that when members become union officers, a strong caucus,or a local union with a culture and practice of rank-and-fileorganization, can provide a critical counter-weight, keeping officersfrom succumbing to the conservatizing influences of contractenforcement and union administration. It could help to keep the

“leftists” from becoming “pragmatists.”

Union democracy is hardly mentioned in Solidarity Divided . WhenFletcher and Gapasin do address democracy within unions, theymaintain their focus on what is happening at the top. They call forunions to “embrace consistent democracy.” Consistent democracyessentially comes down to practices that promote inclusion. But whenthey give examples, they either list demands the union should make



on the employer or the government, or they narrow their focus towhether women and people of color hold staff positions high in theunion hierarchy and whether those positions are invested with realpower and authority.

These aspects are important, but what about consistent democracy formembers? What about investing members with real power andauthority? How about building structures and practices that place theinitiative for the union’s transformation in the hands of the members,rather than urging leftists to become officers and then educatemembers? Fletcher and Gapasin do acknowledge the importance of internal democracy and point out how the move toward mega-localsundermines members’ ability to hold their officers accountable. But itis hardly integrated into their larger critique of unions and seems to besomething union officers should promote, not something fought for anddefended by the rank and file.

Globalization

Like most other authors on the state of U.S. labor, Fletcher andGapasin take a hard look at the causes and effects of globalization. They make a strong case that it is neither a natural nor an inevitableprocess. It is driven by political and economic decisions intended to“eliminate obstacles to the achievement of profit.” Without a betterunderstanding of globalization and the decisions that facilitate it, theyargue, unions will not be able to build an effective response.

Here, unlike most authors on the state of U.S. labor, Fletcher and

Gapasin link their understanding of global capitalism to changes indomestic politics, especially the character of the U.S. government. These changes have resulted in what they call the “neoliberalauthoritarian state.”

They argue that the government reacted harshly to the socialmovements of the 1960s and 1970s, intensified its authoritarianismduring the “war” on drugs, and escalated further in the aftermath of 9/11. They point to a connection between that increasingauthoritarianism and the drive to reorganize the international economyto eliminate obstacles to the achievement of profits. They argue that

the U.S. ruling elite is committed to this project but is divided betweena “unilateralist” wing (who think the U.S. should act on its own toachieve its international goals, saying “take it or leave it” to its allies)and a “multilateralist” wing (who believe the U.S. “cannot succeedalone” and must act in cooperation with its international allies). Thesetwo wings compete over who can best achieve the goals of theneoliberal authoritarian state. This is a thought-provoking argumentbut, unfortunately, Fletcher and Gapasin do not draw out its political



implications.

Organize, But Where?

Central to their vision for achieving a union movement committed tosocial justice unionism is the idea that “…if class struggle is notrestricted to the workplace, then neither should unions be [emphasis inoriginal]. The strategic conclusion is that unions must think in terms of organizing cities rather than simply organizing workplaces (orindustries).”

Doing this will require the formation of “social/political blocs” of theworking class. They don’t define this term, but I take it to mean long-term, strategic alliances of unions and other working-classorganizations that will define common goals and carry out commoncampaigns to achieve them.

The mechanism for building the “bloc” is the central labor council(CLC). Fletcher and Gapasin argue that CLCs, rooted in the workingclass of particular communities, can take the lead in reorganizing thelabor movement and promoting social justice unionism. They arguethat CLCs should open themselves to a broader set of working-classorganizations than just unions and should see themselves as thecenters of a labor movement, not just the union movement.

But how does this call for social/political blocs organized through theCLCs fit with the authors’ notion of the neoliberal authoritarian state?Any local working-class “political bloc” is going to feel the gravitational

pull of the Democratic Party quite early in its life. But a resurgent labormovement, especially one committed to social justice unionism, isbound to find itself at odds with a pro-globalization, authoritariangovernment. Does it make sense for workers to back themultilateralists, found principally in the Democratic Party, over theunilateralists, found principally in the GOP?

In an important step, some CLCs are already opening up to workerscenters and organizations such as the New York Taxi Workers Alliance,but the CLC strategy by itself is not convincing. Having ruled outreform from below, and having been disappointed by heads of the AFL-CIO and its affiliates, Fletcher and Gapasin have turned to local andregional union officers to lead the transformation. Without dramaticchanges in local unions and a more active and aggressive rank and file,it’s not going to happen.

Of course some CLCs can and will play the role Fletcher and Gapasincall on them to perform. But if we focus on the CLCs and the localofficers who fill them, we miss the struggles within unions and at theworkplace that make it possible for unions to become cornerstones of



local working-class movements. Encouraging and supporting caucusesand rank-and-file-oriented unions is a better use of our time andresources.

Fletcher and Gapasin have done an important service in challengingunion activists to think about how their work fits into a bigger strategythat challenges capitalism. Solidarity Divided poses big and importantquestions about transforming the labor movement. We need morethoughtful contributions like it.

Documents

Study Group 9 - Labor Movement