I organize for the IWW because anyone (excepting bosses and cops) can join. Having union members in non-union shops is a good way to get things started. I agree, a massive (and expensive) effort is needed, but young workers have no idea how unions can help--the US has been virtually non-union for too many years. Educating them starts with a single worker.
A $15,000,000 budget / 433 employees = $34,642 / person. I love the idea, I also think that a substantially greater budget would be required (even allowing for part time staff) to cover wages, healthcare, and other benefits
433 full and part time organizers. Training members as part time organizers is much more cost effective. You can easily have one full time organizer supervising a dozen trained part time member organizers. Secondly, I use $15m as a reference point but there is nothing magic about that number. The combined resources of American unions are in the tens of billions of dollars.
What if your company already provides everything you need, but they're ablest jerks? I'm actually unemployed, but wonder if this is a union fix or a CEO fix. BTW, the CEO wasn't an ablest jerk, it was the people under him that were, middle managers.
And what does the average Amazon warehouse employee make? How much time do they get for lunch?
Is there good health insurance, on-site high quality childcare, paid family leave, support for folks when they have sick parents, children, spouses?
Do I buy stuff from Amazon? Yes. If I cannot find it easily somewhere else.
Should I stop?
Maybe. Maybe I need to stop rewarding Amazon’s dismal treatment of the backbone of its money-making machine.
Maybe we need to organize a “consumer support for Amazon workers” movement, too.
How much longer will people have jobs before automation takes over?
What about the taxes on that $1.3 trillion that could fuel a renaissance in creativity, joy, family health and connection were those taxes collected as Elizabeth Warren wishes and our “richest nation in the world” put some equity and humanity into the experiment and helped with a guaranteed basic income as payback for all the years people have toiled to build the infrastructure that allowed Bezos, Gates, and the others to get started and have people to exploit?
There are both national and statewide labor groups of gig workers at present, encourage you to look into getting involved. Likewise there is active tech organizing underway at Google and elsewhere, a union at Kickstarter, and tech labor groups you can join.
Youtube workers in Austin are fighting to bring Google to the table. It's a real david and goliath situation at the moment but they've won some nlrb rulings that pave the way for them to bargain with Google. I think this is exactly the kind of thing we should pressure the AFL-CIO to aim the money cannon at. https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/05/tech/nlrb-says-google-must-bargain-with-youtube-music-union/index.html
The unions won't do this, because their aristocracy has enslaved them to the center-right Democratic Party; who always considers the wants and whims of the bosses on an equal or higher priority with the needs of the workers.
The union aristocrats also consider non-union workers as not worth caring about; "burger-flippers" whose mites won't add up to even one of their grandiose buildings' rent.
If they did, even a little bit, they'd establish "auxiliaries"; associations with a modest membership fee that take anyone who works a job anywhere in the US, and connects them with modest resources and more importantly each other, and fosters the idea that a burden spread is a burden lightened. Kinda like the modern "krewes" of New Orleans, or suchlike.
This is a good article with two glaring omissions. One is that SWOC only succeeded after the Rubber and Auto workers' sit-down successes. SWOC was a top down undemocratic organization. the investment by Lewis and the CIO was good, but not the only crucial element. The role of the left in rubber and auto was also crucial. Second, past failures in steel were largely (not totally of course) the result of successful union busting using Black workers who had been kept out of most jobs in the mills in the past. Again, thanks for a provocative and stimulating article.
This was not meant to be a full history of the CIO, just to illustrate the SCALE that an industry organizing effort was launched with back then, versus today.
I organize for the IWW because anyone (excepting bosses and cops) can join. Having union members in non-union shops is a good way to get things started. I agree, a massive (and expensive) effort is needed, but young workers have no idea how unions can help--the US has been virtually non-union for too many years. Educating them starts with a single worker.
A $15,000,000 budget / 433 employees = $34,642 / person. I love the idea, I also think that a substantially greater budget would be required (even allowing for part time staff) to cover wages, healthcare, and other benefits
433 full and part time organizers. Training members as part time organizers is much more cost effective. You can easily have one full time organizer supervising a dozen trained part time member organizers. Secondly, I use $15m as a reference point but there is nothing magic about that number. The combined resources of American unions are in the tens of billions of dollars.
What if your company already provides everything you need, but they're ablest jerks? I'm actually unemployed, but wonder if this is a union fix or a CEO fix. BTW, the CEO wasn't an ablest jerk, it was the people under him that were, middle managers.
Sobering but true.
Thank you. $1.3 TRILLION dollars.
That is incredible.
And what does the average Amazon warehouse employee make? How much time do they get for lunch?
Is there good health insurance, on-site high quality childcare, paid family leave, support for folks when they have sick parents, children, spouses?
Do I buy stuff from Amazon? Yes. If I cannot find it easily somewhere else.
Should I stop?
Maybe. Maybe I need to stop rewarding Amazon’s dismal treatment of the backbone of its money-making machine.
Maybe we need to organize a “consumer support for Amazon workers” movement, too.
How much longer will people have jobs before automation takes over?
What about the taxes on that $1.3 trillion that could fuel a renaissance in creativity, joy, family health and connection were those taxes collected as Elizabeth Warren wishes and our “richest nation in the world” put some equity and humanity into the experiment and helped with a guaranteed basic income as payback for all the years people have toiled to build the infrastructure that allowed Bezos, Gates, and the others to get started and have people to exploit?
Imagine!
People have been saying there will be no jobs due to automation since the beginning of the industrial revolution. There are always jobs of some sort
Would love resources on how tech organizing is possible given reliance on contractors, and what contractors themselves can do.
There are both national and statewide labor groups of gig workers at present, encourage you to look into getting involved. Likewise there is active tech organizing underway at Google and elsewhere, a union at Kickstarter, and tech labor groups you can join.
Youtube workers in Austin are fighting to bring Google to the table. It's a real david and goliath situation at the moment but they've won some nlrb rulings that pave the way for them to bargain with Google. I think this is exactly the kind of thing we should pressure the AFL-CIO to aim the money cannon at. https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/05/tech/nlrb-says-google-must-bargain-with-youtube-music-union/index.html
The unions won't do this, because their aristocracy has enslaved them to the center-right Democratic Party; who always considers the wants and whims of the bosses on an equal or higher priority with the needs of the workers.
The union aristocrats also consider non-union workers as not worth caring about; "burger-flippers" whose mites won't add up to even one of their grandiose buildings' rent.
If they did, even a little bit, they'd establish "auxiliaries"; associations with a modest membership fee that take anyone who works a job anywhere in the US, and connects them with modest resources and more importantly each other, and fosters the idea that a burden spread is a burden lightened. Kinda like the modern "krewes" of New Orleans, or suchlike.
This is a good article with two glaring omissions. One is that SWOC only succeeded after the Rubber and Auto workers' sit-down successes. SWOC was a top down undemocratic organization. the investment by Lewis and the CIO was good, but not the only crucial element. The role of the left in rubber and auto was also crucial. Second, past failures in steel were largely (not totally of course) the result of successful union busting using Black workers who had been kept out of most jobs in the mills in the past. Again, thanks for a provocative and stimulating article.
This was not meant to be a full history of the CIO, just to illustrate the SCALE that an industry organizing effort was launched with back then, versus today.
Happy to be able to buy your book to support you because this platform is dead to me and I will not be giving them money
We need to do this! What a force for a better world this could and should be.
Who's "our"?
Are you really an "owner" of capital; or just their noisy purse-puppy?