I'm an organizer for the SF Bay Area IWW. Yes, we are a real union. We represent fourteen small shops, mostly retail and recycle workers. We absolutely refuse to sign off on no-strike contracts. This has made for some arduous contract negotiations but we stand tough. Currently, Urban Ore, a shop in Berkeley that repairs and sells recycled goods, has been on a ULP strike for nearly three weeks. The support from the community and the workers is overwhelming. Owners are refusing to negotiate a first contract, so far. My point is this: no union should sign off on no-strike. When the time comes to renegotiate, no-strike needs to go. Yes, workers can (and should) strike either way. But let's dump no-strike wherever possible.
I’m really interested in these sorts of coalitions. I spent many years working as a carpenter on the residential remodeling and custom
homes side if things. Most of that time I chose to work as a subcontractor as I could get a higher hourly rate, and the benefits most of these small companies offered didn’t really make up the difference. (In practice, this made me an employee by every outward indication, just one who got paid maybe $6/7 more per hour and didn’t get paid days off.)
The union world in construction in my experience was only to be found in big commercial jobs like chain retail stores, casinos, large corporate office buildings, and things like that. Almost an entirely different skill set. So while I was completely aligned with organized labor philosophically, there never seemed to be a way for me to join a union and continue doing the work I was good at.
I subbed at a mid-size cabinet shop for 15 years, working from
my own shop on portions of their projects. The owner of the company is an OK guy, but to this day none of the employees have health care. The boss has avoided hiring a 15th employee, even though they could really use that extra person, because at that point Massachusetts state law would require that he pay into health care. I seriously doubt that anyone in that shop has considered unionizing. If they did, I have no idea where they would turn for assistance.
Seems to me there needs to be a big surge in IWW locals so that people in smaller sectors can organize and demand better pay and benefits. Hamilton’s writing has made me aware just how much easier that is to say than to do. How do you make it work in the bay area?
We make it work with lots of volunteers. Workers mostly organize their own shops with a minimum of union direction. Some of us have experience negotiating, and experience working with the NLRB, so we pitch in to get the workers up to speed. It’s very DIY, but it can work, especially for smaller shops. You know, anyone that isn’t a boss (or a cop) can join the IWW and work toward opening a local branch. It’s organizing at ground level!
Good column and I can’t argue with what you wrote as I agree wholeheartedly with it. Your last sentence kinda sums it up as I’m afraid the horse might already be out of the barn.
I would love for you to interview union officials ( notice I didn’t say leaders because they all aren’t leaders) and get their thoughts on what they think about the best way to combat Trump and fight to preserve democracy. If they want to be off the record so be it, I think it would still be very informative and insightful . I would love to hear from them. Not just the handful of the more militant unions but a good cross section of the building trades, service, factory unions, and public sector.
I know a lot of union members voted for and support Trump and I’m sure that affects the decisions of unions. Also the fear of pissing off Trump. I don’t blame them for being fearful, I’m fearful as an individual about the future of our country. But, I do not believe we can put our head in the sand and decide to run away and live to fight another day. That day may never come.
Hello Hamilton, I recently discovered your work and it’s been both a lifeline for me and a powerful wake up call.
I’ve never been a union member, and have been crazily lucky in my life in ways that mean I live like a comfortably middle class person, but am keenly aware that my life could have made a turn at many points that would have left me a powerless Home Depot employee answering like a supplicant child to a. Overbearing middle manager until I was too old and tired to show up for work anymore.
I’m closing in on the finish of your book The Hammer, and it has impressed on me just how much harsher the situation is for unionization than I even imagined (and I didn’t think it was a cake walk to begin with.)
As a citizen who is *strongly* philosophically aligned with labor, I’m wondering - do you have concrete ideas on how people like me can be more effective advocates/supporters of the labor movement?
***THANK YOU***, those are supremely useful starting points.
I’m a member of my town democratic committee and they are a frustratingly feckless group by and large. I’ve been calling for a renewed commitment to labor but didn’t have any concrete ideas on how. This is great stuff.
There’s also a local coalition of BernieCrats who are pretty good with organizing but are almost all in their 70s. Several of them are old Labor organizers and I’m hoping to get some input from them while they are still in the fight.
Unrelated: I’m listening to The Hammer as an audiobook (through Libro!), and I appreciate hearing your own voice reading it. Many a nonfiction audiobook is ruined by detached sounding readers. Your tinge of southern accent is grounding and your delivery puts across the urgency of the text really well. Sure, I can hear the “fixes” because you don’t have Simon&Shuster money producing it, but I got used to that fast. It’s great hearing the book coming straight from the author.
Great piece. There’s also been the problem in recent years of stretching the definition of the strike itself to include short partial walk outs and the even bigger one of underinvestment in the internal organization necessary for workers to prepare for a successful strike. My rather obvious question about your article is whether AFGE and the others fear that if the public sector workers walk out they’ll be locked out.
I'm sure they do fear that-- I have written more on this in other pieces but AFGE's lack of leverage in this case is the central reason why the whole movement has to rally to help them here. Can't let them pick off all the weakest public sector unions one at a time.
Hamilton, this sums up reality for all of us -- union member or not: "I like to rage against all those lazy and unimaginative union leaders as much as anyone, but this problem is mostly a structural result of unions that have been built to operate under a social contract that is abruptly being withdrawn."
Hour by hour, the social contract for everyone is being burned to the ground.
I'm retired and about to see Social Security -- something I paid into for over 50 years -- destroyed and looted by the billionaires.
Meanwhile, I came into my favorite coffee shop a few minutes ago to find a room packed with almost 20 retired boomers that meets weekly with the pastor of a local good liberal church -- complete with a LGBT flag flapping outside. I have attended the church a few times in the past. Sitting in an adjacent room, I could hear their chatter about their first car or some story from their college days. their last vacation in Florida or their favorite Looney Tune cartoon growing up.
This happens every week.
When the US/Israel genocide began I approached the pastor to see about forming a Peace & Justice committee at the church to educate people on Palestine and perhaps organize some actions. She looked completely panicked and sputtered she would "think about it and get back to me" ... and, of course, never did.
Last week three workers at my local credit union told me there have already been delays in Social Security payments of "a few days" to a "couple weeks". Given what is happening to the federal employees, the checks will stop in the next few months.
And the nursing homes will close and we'll Alzheimer patients out wandering on the streets. Yet, the boomers from this church want to sit around and talk about fuzzy memories from a long-dead America.
At one time I was an editorial cartoonist and newspaper reporter. In recent years I got back into the cartooning. I make all my work available completely for free and if any workers have need of artwork for organizing, striking or labor education let me know. You can check out samples of the art at: https://mark192.substack.com/
Totally agree. Just look at the 1970 Great Postal Strike. 55 years ago, Letter Carrier went on strike for better pay, contract negotiations, and poor working conditions, and they put their jobs on the line. Five days later they won, which turned the Postal Department into an federal independent service that did not receive tax money.
Well said. I'm no longer in the workforce, being 72, but if I was, I would be more involved than I ever was when I was working. I worked in the public sector and was around when our organization was granted the right to be unionized. By that time unions were fairly toothless already. Today, the threat of privatization of government jobs is very real because of the current president's callous and outrageous attempts to crash the economy. We'll see how far that will go. The saying "We live in interesting times." has a sharp point to it.
“When radical things happen, only fools do not become more radical.”
Word. Dovetails nicely with my favorite retort to liberal class condescension when confronted with the urgent need for radical change - There is nothing pragmatic about incremental solutions to catastrophic problems.
Some are begrudgingly beginning to wake up. The key will be keeping them in the labor/99% silo and not allowing them to fall back into the red/blue election illusion.
That saying, "When radical things happen...", applies even more so to the failure of the Democratic party to address the descent of the GOP into cultism, criminalism and illegitimacy.
No question. But it’s hard to vociferously address that GOP descent when the Dems have been complicit in it. It wasn’t a Republican president who primed the pump for the financial rape of Main Street in 2008, nor one who bailed out Wall Street in ‘09.
The major political parties of the duopoly are bought and paid for. Not saying there aren’t differences; but both are prostitutes for monied interest donors and the MIC.
The elites seem determined to immiserate everyone, and make them hopeless for the future. This is likely going to speedrun mass worker revolts, purely by necessity.
I remember my father, who worked for the B&O Railroad at the time (late 1970s), staying home because the B&O employees union was on strike and he “wouldn’t cross the picket lines”. These days, the only unions that strike are teachers, actors, and baseball players. The last time the players struck, all MLB team owners but one gave their striking players the finger and put together shoddy teams of has-beens and never-were’s. The only holdout: Orioles owner Peter Angelos. I’ve never been prouder to be from Baltimore!
In the case of fed workers in the Spring of 2025, the bosses of the moment explicitly do not want our labor. Fed workers stopping work would make their day.
I recommend the “Bartleby the Scrivener” approach: when asked to leave, ordered to stop working, or escorted off property, respond: “I prefer not to.” It is guaranteed to drive the oligarchs as batty as it drove me in 11th grade English class! Eventually, they’ll give up or face charges of harassment/assault. If you end up in jail, consider it an honor to be in the company of MLK and Thoreau. The only person who can do anything to you with impunity is the “president”.
"the bosses of the moment explicitly do not want our labor."
I understand and agree with what you said, but...
Felon Trump, President Musk, DOGie and the whole GOP cult are NOT the bosses. We the People are the supposed to be the bosses of the Federal government and maybe We the People would get really pissed off and do something radical if EVERY federal worker went on strike. Maybe We the People would even shut the whole f'ing economy down in solidarity.
That 'maybe' is better than what I've been seeing in my 73 years of watching my country deteriorate... 1st slowly, and now at a blinding pace.
Two out of three links to suggested books about the history of labor unions redirect to the frontpage of thenewpress.org. Hamilton (or anyone) - can you name those suggested books?
Hamilton, I found a 2024 piece of yours on the possibility of a 2028 General Strike. I followed your links and signed up at the Bargain Together website to help create strike-ready unions. I am a new member of SEIU 1021 but ready to help. I don't feel like there is great communication at the moment though, between our shop labor management committee and our local about how to think long-term and strategically like this. Our negotiators are in the weeds of current negotiations. If there is anything else that could be on union members' "strike-ready to-do lists" at the moment, please share. Thank you for your work (and I just ordered your book)!
I'm an organizer for the SF Bay Area IWW. Yes, we are a real union. We represent fourteen small shops, mostly retail and recycle workers. We absolutely refuse to sign off on no-strike contracts. This has made for some arduous contract negotiations but we stand tough. Currently, Urban Ore, a shop in Berkeley that repairs and sells recycled goods, has been on a ULP strike for nearly three weeks. The support from the community and the workers is overwhelming. Owners are refusing to negotiate a first contract, so far. My point is this: no union should sign off on no-strike. When the time comes to renegotiate, no-strike needs to go. Yes, workers can (and should) strike either way. But let's dump no-strike wherever possible.
I’m really interested in these sorts of coalitions. I spent many years working as a carpenter on the residential remodeling and custom
homes side if things. Most of that time I chose to work as a subcontractor as I could get a higher hourly rate, and the benefits most of these small companies offered didn’t really make up the difference. (In practice, this made me an employee by every outward indication, just one who got paid maybe $6/7 more per hour and didn’t get paid days off.)
The union world in construction in my experience was only to be found in big commercial jobs like chain retail stores, casinos, large corporate office buildings, and things like that. Almost an entirely different skill set. So while I was completely aligned with organized labor philosophically, there never seemed to be a way for me to join a union and continue doing the work I was good at.
I subbed at a mid-size cabinet shop for 15 years, working from
my own shop on portions of their projects. The owner of the company is an OK guy, but to this day none of the employees have health care. The boss has avoided hiring a 15th employee, even though they could really use that extra person, because at that point Massachusetts state law would require that he pay into health care. I seriously doubt that anyone in that shop has considered unionizing. If they did, I have no idea where they would turn for assistance.
Seems to me there needs to be a big surge in IWW locals so that people in smaller sectors can organize and demand better pay and benefits. Hamilton’s writing has made me aware just how much easier that is to say than to do. How do you make it work in the bay area?
We make it work with lots of volunteers. Workers mostly organize their own shops with a minimum of union direction. Some of us have experience negotiating, and experience working with the NLRB, so we pitch in to get the workers up to speed. It’s very DIY, but it can work, especially for smaller shops. You know, anyone that isn’t a boss (or a cop) can join the IWW and work toward opening a local branch. It’s organizing at ground level!
https://www.iww.org/membership/
Liked? No, loved
Good column and I can’t argue with what you wrote as I agree wholeheartedly with it. Your last sentence kinda sums it up as I’m afraid the horse might already be out of the barn.
I would love for you to interview union officials ( notice I didn’t say leaders because they all aren’t leaders) and get their thoughts on what they think about the best way to combat Trump and fight to preserve democracy. If they want to be off the record so be it, I think it would still be very informative and insightful . I would love to hear from them. Not just the handful of the more militant unions but a good cross section of the building trades, service, factory unions, and public sector.
I know a lot of union members voted for and support Trump and I’m sure that affects the decisions of unions. Also the fear of pissing off Trump. I don’t blame them for being fearful, I’m fearful as an individual about the future of our country. But, I do not believe we can put our head in the sand and decide to run away and live to fight another day. That day may never come.
I’m gonna need Molly’s contact because I want that print BIG in the atrium of our union office and on a nice soft, fitted woman’s tshirt.
Hello Hamilton, I recently discovered your work and it’s been both a lifeline for me and a powerful wake up call.
I’ve never been a union member, and have been crazily lucky in my life in ways that mean I live like a comfortably middle class person, but am keenly aware that my life could have made a turn at many points that would have left me a powerless Home Depot employee answering like a supplicant child to a. Overbearing middle manager until I was too old and tired to show up for work anymore.
I’m closing in on the finish of your book The Hammer, and it has impressed on me just how much harsher the situation is for unionization than I even imagined (and I didn’t think it was a cake walk to begin with.)
As a citizen who is *strongly* philosophically aligned with labor, I’m wondering - do you have concrete ideas on how people like me can be more effective advocates/supporters of the labor movement?
Thanks Benjamin-- some ideas on that are in here:
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/what-can-i-do-to-help-the-labor-movement
***THANK YOU***, those are supremely useful starting points.
I’m a member of my town democratic committee and they are a frustratingly feckless group by and large. I’ve been calling for a renewed commitment to labor but didn’t have any concrete ideas on how. This is great stuff.
There’s also a local coalition of BernieCrats who are pretty good with organizing but are almost all in their 70s. Several of them are old Labor organizers and I’m hoping to get some input from them while they are still in the fight.
Unrelated: I’m listening to The Hammer as an audiobook (through Libro!), and I appreciate hearing your own voice reading it. Many a nonfiction audiobook is ruined by detached sounding readers. Your tinge of southern accent is grounding and your delivery puts across the urgency of the text really well. Sure, I can hear the “fixes” because you don’t have Simon&Shuster money producing it, but I got used to that fast. It’s great hearing the book coming straight from the author.
Agree 100%. It's always a difficult choice to 'strike' and one has to stay strong.
Janice Fine
Great piece. There’s also been the problem in recent years of stretching the definition of the strike itself to include short partial walk outs and the even bigger one of underinvestment in the internal organization necessary for workers to prepare for a successful strike. My rather obvious question about your article is whether AFGE and the others fear that if the public sector workers walk out they’ll be locked out.
I'm sure they do fear that-- I have written more on this in other pieces but AFGE's lack of leverage in this case is the central reason why the whole movement has to rally to help them here. Can't let them pick off all the weakest public sector unions one at a time.
Hamilton, this sums up reality for all of us -- union member or not: "I like to rage against all those lazy and unimaginative union leaders as much as anyone, but this problem is mostly a structural result of unions that have been built to operate under a social contract that is abruptly being withdrawn."
Hour by hour, the social contract for everyone is being burned to the ground.
I'm retired and about to see Social Security -- something I paid into for over 50 years -- destroyed and looted by the billionaires.
Meanwhile, I came into my favorite coffee shop a few minutes ago to find a room packed with almost 20 retired boomers that meets weekly with the pastor of a local good liberal church -- complete with a LGBT flag flapping outside. I have attended the church a few times in the past. Sitting in an adjacent room, I could hear their chatter about their first car or some story from their college days. their last vacation in Florida or their favorite Looney Tune cartoon growing up.
This happens every week.
When the US/Israel genocide began I approached the pastor to see about forming a Peace & Justice committee at the church to educate people on Palestine and perhaps organize some actions. She looked completely panicked and sputtered she would "think about it and get back to me" ... and, of course, never did.
Last week three workers at my local credit union told me there have already been delays in Social Security payments of "a few days" to a "couple weeks". Given what is happening to the federal employees, the checks will stop in the next few months.
And the nursing homes will close and we'll Alzheimer patients out wandering on the streets. Yet, the boomers from this church want to sit around and talk about fuzzy memories from a long-dead America.
At one time I was an editorial cartoonist and newspaper reporter. In recent years I got back into the cartooning. I make all my work available completely for free and if any workers have need of artwork for organizing, striking or labor education let me know. You can check out samples of the art at: https://mark192.substack.com/
And: https://demockracy.ink/
Thank you, Nolan for your good work representing the needs -- and RIGHTS -- of American workers.
Organize across the nation.
Or submit to the brutal new feudalism.
Our children and grandchildren deserve us to resist.
Totally agree. Just look at the 1970 Great Postal Strike. 55 years ago, Letter Carrier went on strike for better pay, contract negotiations, and poor working conditions, and they put their jobs on the line. Five days later they won, which turned the Postal Department into an federal independent service that did not receive tax money.
Well said. I'm no longer in the workforce, being 72, but if I was, I would be more involved than I ever was when I was working. I worked in the public sector and was around when our organization was granted the right to be unionized. By that time unions were fairly toothless already. Today, the threat of privatization of government jobs is very real because of the current president's callous and outrageous attempts to crash the economy. We'll see how far that will go. The saying "We live in interesting times." has a sharp point to it.
“When radical things happen, only fools do not become more radical.”
Word. Dovetails nicely with my favorite retort to liberal class condescension when confronted with the urgent need for radical change - There is nothing pragmatic about incremental solutions to catastrophic problems.
Some are begrudgingly beginning to wake up. The key will be keeping them in the labor/99% silo and not allowing them to fall back into the red/blue election illusion.
That saying, "When radical things happen...", applies even more so to the failure of the Democratic party to address the descent of the GOP into cultism, criminalism and illegitimacy.
No question. But it’s hard to vociferously address that GOP descent when the Dems have been complicit in it. It wasn’t a Republican president who primed the pump for the financial rape of Main Street in 2008, nor one who bailed out Wall Street in ‘09.
The major political parties of the duopoly are bought and paid for. Not saying there aren’t differences; but both are prostitutes for monied interest donors and the MIC.
The elites seem determined to immiserate everyone, and make them hopeless for the future. This is likely going to speedrun mass worker revolts, purely by necessity.
I remember my father, who worked for the B&O Railroad at the time (late 1970s), staying home because the B&O employees union was on strike and he “wouldn’t cross the picket lines”. These days, the only unions that strike are teachers, actors, and baseball players. The last time the players struck, all MLB team owners but one gave their striking players the finger and put together shoddy teams of has-beens and never-were’s. The only holdout: Orioles owner Peter Angelos. I’ve never been prouder to be from Baltimore!
In the case of fed workers in the Spring of 2025, the bosses of the moment explicitly do not want our labor. Fed workers stopping work would make their day.
What should the workers do then?
I recommend the “Bartleby the Scrivener” approach: when asked to leave, ordered to stop working, or escorted off property, respond: “I prefer not to.” It is guaranteed to drive the oligarchs as batty as it drove me in 11th grade English class! Eventually, they’ll give up or face charges of harassment/assault. If you end up in jail, consider it an honor to be in the company of MLK and Thoreau. The only person who can do anything to you with impunity is the “president”.
"the bosses of the moment explicitly do not want our labor."
I understand and agree with what you said, but...
Felon Trump, President Musk, DOGie and the whole GOP cult are NOT the bosses. We the People are the supposed to be the bosses of the Federal government and maybe We the People would get really pissed off and do something radical if EVERY federal worker went on strike. Maybe We the People would even shut the whole f'ing economy down in solidarity.
That 'maybe' is better than what I've been seeing in my 73 years of watching my country deteriorate... 1st slowly, and now at a blinding pace.
Exactly.
'Think about power, not laws made by people who are out to destroy you.'
Excellent piece HN. ✔
Two out of three links to suggested books about the history of labor unions redirect to the frontpage of thenewpress.org. Hamilton (or anyone) - can you name those suggested books?
Hamilton, I found a 2024 piece of yours on the possibility of a 2028 General Strike. I followed your links and signed up at the Bargain Together website to help create strike-ready unions. I am a new member of SEIU 1021 but ready to help. I don't feel like there is great communication at the moment though, between our shop labor management committee and our local about how to think long-term and strategically like this. Our negotiators are in the weeds of current negotiations. If there is anything else that could be on union members' "strike-ready to-do lists" at the moment, please share. Thank you for your work (and I just ordered your book)!