Before the start of the pandemic, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II said that the Poor People's Campaign had stress-tested and could put 1.3 million people into the streets on short notice.
It seems like non-union groups like this could support / play a role in unionization.
I just want to say something about a very old, pre-NLRA labor concept - "volunteerism." Volunteerism said everything the government does and touches is to the detriment of labor. All those injunctions; support for yellow-dog contracts. The militia and police shooting down strikers. Complete self-reliance; go and organize your workplace or locality or industry or craft and just slug it out with management. Power vs. Power.
Now, of course, you can see how volunteerism as a strategy was effectively rejected as unions embraced the NLRA. Nor did they stop embracing it even after Taft-Hartley substantially changed the terms of the equation and enabled the government to intervene on the side of the employer - no solidarity strikes, for example.
I don't think we need to wholly abandon political action. If you can get legislation passed that raises the minimum wage or prohibits Clopening in workplaces you can't organize, that's good. But, really, government is SO against us and worse is coming. Yet if you look on the AFL's website, their big plan for the end of federal union collective bargaining is to get Congress to pass a law prohibiting that!!!!!
Workers need to talk to each other, and big unions need to do the same. If subway workers go on strike, the buses and the taxis need to go out too. I've had occasion to help organize some bookstores in the Bay Area for the IWW. We contacted unionized bookstores throughout the country for help and advice, regardless of their union affiliation. Helps a lot. We need to recognize the importance of sympathy strikes, Taft Hartley be damned. Our strength comes from our ability to withhold our labor.
Trump does pull some union voters but it’s important to remember that even blue collar unions are 50-50ish red and blue, the vast majority of them endorsed Harris, and union voters overall are strongly democratic. Our issues are deeper than just pointing fingers at Trumpy construction workers.
Democracy is a union for all citizens. Organized citizens can balance the power of those in business and government who are misusing their power for the benefit of the few at the cost of the many. An independent, non-partisan Informed citizens Commission can require a moral and ethical purpose for business and government and require reporting to hold them accountable to it. See www.informedcitizens.com
“What is the plan for organized labor to wield power when the courts do not offer us any help, and when the avenue of electoral politics is foreclosed?” My friend, this is the entirety of my Substack: macro-level labor movement strategy.
Take a look at that photo posted at the top. What's the message here? Classic union guy, picketing in the sunset? And what does his sign say? Scorn, contempt, resentment, shaming somebody else, right? This is the poison pill that labor has been sucking on for three generations. The lines drawn between "us" and "them" by the NLRB have eaten into our consciousness. Spit it out.
Until we neuter SCOTUS corporate-friendly precedents, we have no shot, at any policy reform. No whining about the impossibility of accomplishing this; the amendment granting 18yos the right to vote took less than a year. Contact your congressional representative and tell them to co-sponsor HJR-54, and vote for it when it comes to the floor. And tell them they will not get your vote if they don’t, and mean it.
People know the game is rigged, and monied interests call the shots. Take the anger of this fact, and channel it into a goal that transcends partisan politics.
I’m not saying organizing labor, with the goal of altering the current levers of power paradigm, in order to address inequality and a plethora of other policy issues, isn’t a worthy goal. Just that the amendments process, crazy as it might initially sound, imo, is a quicker path to get there.
I’m not relying on any legislator. I’m relying on people like you do everything they can to make it happen. So are you going to sit on your defeatist couch, or step up?
A few years back, I got the only GOP congressional legislator in the U.S. to sign on as a co-sponsor for HJR-54. I wasn’t even a constituent of his. He has since passed away, but it can be done.
Any thoughts on Kshama Sawant's Socialist Alternative party? The women is fierce and uncompromising (maybe too much?), but her energy, IMO, is what the labor movement needs more of. Labor leaders at the top, as I understand it, are in themselves a major obstacle to increasing union awareness and energizing worker movements.
I’m not an expert on her but generally the way that those types of groups can demonstrate their credibility is by organizing large numbers of workers. Which has not been the case thus far.
She organized large numbers of workers who voted for her, and the policies she endorsed, while on the Seattle City Council. She took on the Seattle corporate powerbrokers, and their millions targeting her, and prevailed.
Not talking about alternatives. Kshama is as pro-worker as you are. We are going to need elected federal officeholders with that mindset to always support worker movements that percolate from the grassroots. Right now we have zero. She’s running for a congressional seat in Washington state. It would behoove you, and anyone else wanting to build worker power, to endorse her candidacy. We can walk and chew gum here.
Another problem with an over-reliance on the public sector is that it’s been the worst possible rhetorical setting.
“We create value, we deserve our fair share of the rewards” — A government with return on investment would be a predatory gov’t without legitimacy. Not the best to link union demands with public resentment of taxes and fees.
“Bosses are just lining their pockets” — See above, plus, empirically not really true on the labor extraction side.
“We are public servants, our moral value means you should treat us better” — Workers in private enterprise serve no greater good and therefore deserve what they get?
Public sector organizing not only hasn’t inspired private sector organizing. Rhetorically, it can’t.
Before the start of the pandemic, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II said that the Poor People's Campaign had stress-tested and could put 1.3 million people into the streets on short notice.
It seems like non-union groups like this could support / play a role in unionization.
I just want to say something about a very old, pre-NLRA labor concept - "volunteerism." Volunteerism said everything the government does and touches is to the detriment of labor. All those injunctions; support for yellow-dog contracts. The militia and police shooting down strikers. Complete self-reliance; go and organize your workplace or locality or industry or craft and just slug it out with management. Power vs. Power.
Now, of course, you can see how volunteerism as a strategy was effectively rejected as unions embraced the NLRA. Nor did they stop embracing it even after Taft-Hartley substantially changed the terms of the equation and enabled the government to intervene on the side of the employer - no solidarity strikes, for example.
I don't think we need to wholly abandon political action. If you can get legislation passed that raises the minimum wage or prohibits Clopening in workplaces you can't organize, that's good. But, really, government is SO against us and worse is coming. Yet if you look on the AFL's website, their big plan for the end of federal union collective bargaining is to get Congress to pass a law prohibiting that!!!!!
So useless...
Workers need to talk to each other, and big unions need to do the same. If subway workers go on strike, the buses and the taxis need to go out too. I've had occasion to help organize some bookstores in the Bay Area for the IWW. We contacted unionized bookstores throughout the country for help and advice, regardless of their union affiliation. Helps a lot. We need to recognize the importance of sympathy strikes, Taft Hartley be damned. Our strength comes from our ability to withhold our labor.
It would be nice if blue collar unions would stop voting for the same people who destroy them. There’s a start!
Trump does pull some union voters but it’s important to remember that even blue collar unions are 50-50ish red and blue, the vast majority of them endorsed Harris, and union voters overall are strongly democratic. Our issues are deeper than just pointing fingers at Trumpy construction workers.
https://open.substack.com/pub/howthingswork/p/to-unfuck-politics-create-more-union?r=5d10r&utm_medium=ios
Even 50 percent red is very bad.
I am continually shocked by their short sightedness. I don't know how to fix that.
Amen.
Democracy is a union for all citizens. Organized citizens can balance the power of those in business and government who are misusing their power for the benefit of the few at the cost of the many. An independent, non-partisan Informed citizens Commission can require a moral and ethical purpose for business and government and require reporting to hold them accountable to it. See www.informedcitizens.com
If an injury to one is an injury to all, why do we not have a general strike now in solidarity with the federal workers?
We are at a hard pass indeed if we are looking at Anton Chigurh as an ally.
“What is the plan for organized labor to wield power when the courts do not offer us any help, and when the avenue of electoral politics is foreclosed?” My friend, this is the entirety of my Substack: macro-level labor movement strategy.
Take a look at that photo posted at the top. What's the message here? Classic union guy, picketing in the sunset? And what does his sign say? Scorn, contempt, resentment, shaming somebody else, right? This is the poison pill that labor has been sucking on for three generations. The lines drawn between "us" and "them" by the NLRB have eaten into our consciousness. Spit it out.
The single best path is here: HJR-54. MoveToAmend.org
Until we neuter SCOTUS corporate-friendly precedents, we have no shot, at any policy reform. No whining about the impossibility of accomplishing this; the amendment granting 18yos the right to vote took less than a year. Contact your congressional representative and tell them to co-sponsor HJR-54, and vote for it when it comes to the floor. And tell them they will not get your vote if they don’t, and mean it.
People know the game is rigged, and monied interests call the shots. Take the anger of this fact, and channel it into a goal that transcends partisan politics.
I’m not saying organizing labor, with the goal of altering the current levers of power paradigm, in order to address inequality and a plethora of other policy issues, isn’t a worthy goal. Just that the amendments process, crazy as it might initially sound, imo, is a quicker path to get there.
Reliance on legislators such as you are suggesting is useless when we are so powerless.
I’m not relying on any legislator. I’m relying on people like you do everything they can to make it happen. So are you going to sit on your defeatist couch, or step up?
A few years back, I got the only GOP congressional legislator in the U.S. to sign on as a co-sponsor for HJR-54. I wasn’t even a constituent of his. He has since passed away, but it can be done.
https://youtu.be/9XEnTxlBuGo?si=Jv_ASKMS_2OwkdHZ
Any thoughts on Kshama Sawant's Socialist Alternative party? The women is fierce and uncompromising (maybe too much?), but her energy, IMO, is what the labor movement needs more of. Labor leaders at the top, as I understand it, are in themselves a major obstacle to increasing union awareness and energizing worker movements.
I’m not an expert on her but generally the way that those types of groups can demonstrate their credibility is by organizing large numbers of workers. Which has not been the case thus far.
She organized large numbers of workers who voted for her, and the policies she endorsed, while on the Seattle City Council. She took on the Seattle corporate powerbrokers, and their millions targeting her, and prevailed.
Okay. That would make her a successful progressive politician, not an alternative to labor unions. Maybe we are talking about different things.
Not talking about alternatives. Kshama is as pro-worker as you are. We are going to need elected federal officeholders with that mindset to always support worker movements that percolate from the grassroots. Right now we have zero. She’s running for a congressional seat in Washington state. It would behoove you, and anyone else wanting to build worker power, to endorse her candidacy. We can walk and chew gum here.
Another problem with an over-reliance on the public sector is that it’s been the worst possible rhetorical setting.
“We create value, we deserve our fair share of the rewards” — A government with return on investment would be a predatory gov’t without legitimacy. Not the best to link union demands with public resentment of taxes and fees.
“Bosses are just lining their pockets” — See above, plus, empirically not really true on the labor extraction side.
“We are public servants, our moral value means you should treat us better” — Workers in private enterprise serve no greater good and therefore deserve what they get?
Public sector organizing not only hasn’t inspired private sector organizing. Rhetorically, it can’t.