There are no fortresses for labor; no metaphorical stone
walls that we can shelter ourselves behind to try and ride out the
onslaught. MaryBe McMillan, secretary-treasurer of the North Carolina
AFL-CIO, said that we must “
Organize the South or Die,”
and she is absolutely correct. The fact of the matter is that without a
deliberate, concerted effort to organize in the states of the old
Confederacy, there will not be a labor movement worth speaking of within
the next ten years, and all the gains for working people that brave men
and women fought and bled and died for over the past century will be
clawed back by rapacious corporate oligarchs bent on societal
domination.
The notion that this is a crisis is massively underselling the
problems facing labor, both organized and unorganized, right now. The
destruction of PATCO, the air traffic controllers union, in 1981 was a
crisis. The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement through a
unified Democratic federal government in 1993 was a crisis. The recent
“Civil Wars in American Labor” between the Service Employees
International Union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, and UNITE
HERE were a crisis. What the union movement faces right now is not a
crisis, it is nothing less than a threat to the existence of unions in
their present form, and with that comes a threat to the very basic
minimums all workers in the United States can rely upon.
As we discussed in
our previous piece,
there is a cultural void in the South when it comes to labor. What we
didn’t do is go into detail on why that is. There is a long and ignoble
tradition in the South of active repression of workers organizing. Much
of this tradition was exercised against the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO) in the largest unionization drive in the South to
date: Operation Dixie.
Operation Dixie was conceived because of a
problem that may sound familiar to many today: companies were shifting
their operations from the heavily unionized North and Midwest to the
South, where unionism had comparatively not taken hold. The predominant
focus of the campaign was on the burgeoning textile industry in the
South, which stretched largely from the Carolinas through Alabama, as
well as the wood products industry. The CIO committed 250 organizers and
around $1 million in 1946 (about $12 million in 2013) to set about
attacking the largest firms and the most recalcitrant workers within
those firms. The organizers came from across the industrial spectrum,
and the citizens’ committees were surprisingly diverse for the times,
including workers from across the racial barrier, religious leaders, and
recent veterans of World War II. It was a campaign that held much
promise, and a victory in Operation Dixie would go a long way towards
building a powerful labor movement in every corner of America. However,
while there were some successes in organizing tobacco workers and
workers in other smaller industries, the effort to unionize the textile
and wood products industries were largely dead by the end of 1946.
Where did Operation Dixie go wrong? How did it fail? The biggest
reason for its failure was the lack of preparation for the power of the
business-carceral alliance: the cooperation between law enforcement and
industry whose primary purpose was preventing the ability of their
workers to collectively bargain. This alliance worked in numerous ways;
the detaining of organizers, the harassment of pro-union workers, and
the refusal to prosecute crimes committed against both groups (even
murder) created an atmosphere of fear that kept many workers from
signing up for the union from fear that they would be placed in the
crosshairs of this powerful alliance. The organizing of workers across
racial lines also caused problems, with the interracial organizing that
was occurring being compared to a Communist takeover of Southern
industry. Red-baiting was frequently deployed by the business-carceral
alliance…and the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
Another obstacle to organizing in the South was the conservative AFL,
which used Red-baiting tactics later seen by the likes of U.S. Sen.
Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) in order to turn public opinion against the CIO’s
organizers. Interestingly enough, at same time that then-AFL President
William Green was using Red-baiting and race-baiting to halt the CIO’s
progress in the South, he steadfastly refused to assist the Florida
labor federations’ attempt to stop the first right-to-work statute in
the United States from becoming law in 1946. Green’s tepidness in
Florida combined with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act made it more
difficult to sustain the successes that the CIO managed to wring out, as
right-to-work laws spread like a fever across the South. The final
reason that this did not come to pass is a simple one: a lack of
resources. The amount of money and organizers committed to this project
was tepid at best, and in many places, the union’s presence was
stretched thin while it weathered attacks from the House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC) and the AFL at the same time. When the CIO’s
balance sheet for Operation Dixie showed a deep hue of red, resources
were cut back dramatically and eventually ended, as was the campaign
itself.
There is so much more that can (and will) be said about Operation
Dixie, but that will be at a later date. What we need to talk about is
labor’s future in the South. In the wake of the recently-passed
Resolutions #16 and
#26
at the 2013 AFL-CIO Convention, it’s clear that the movement grasps the
need to build power in the South and is willing to contemplate
significant action to do so.
What is needed is nothing less than a bigger, modern-day Operation
Dixie. Anything less would make these resolutions paper tigers: fine
rhetoric that has been heard before with no chances taken or resources
committed behind it. In some ways, the plan we propose is even more
ambitious than the original Operation Dixie:
- The AFL-CIO should, over a six month ramp-up period, hire one
thousand organizers, half drawn from existing rank-and-file activists,
half drawn from young activists who support the kind of worker
self-determination that the AFL-CIO ultimately stands for. This massive
hiring would exhaust the supply of organizers with union experience
looking for work. Other organizers, such as those with experience doing
field work for Democratic political campaigns or those who have worked
for public interest research groups (PIRGs), would be a good place to
staff up once all experienced union organizers were brought on board.
However, all people hired for this project who have not either been a
rank-and-file activist or on staff as an organizer for a union would
have to go through a training run by the Organizing Institute to
guarantee a minimum of capability.
- Experienced organizers already working for AFL-CIO affiliates or
with extensive experience in the movement would be shifted over or hired
on to this project to provide day-to-day supervision of this cadre of
activists, with regular local oversight of this project performed by the
Central Labor Council (CLC) of the area it is operating in. The reason
for the CLC performing oversight is twofold: it allows international
unions, through their locals, to ensure their specific concerns with
regards to this project are addressed regularly, and it allows union
workers direct oversight over this work, as CLCs are the most elemental
representative body within the movement.
- Once this project reaches 85% staffing levels, the AFL-CIO would
commit to keeping the resources for this effort in place for no less
than four years, after which the Executive Council would decide to
re-authorize, modify, or end this project in its current form.
- Successful organizing campaigns would initially form locals that
directly affiliate with the AFL-CIO. Once the first contract is
negotiated by this local, it would choose an international to affiliate
with, preferably with an international that has experience in the
industry they are working in.
- The South would be divided up into seven regions and would have
seven regional offices from which this project would be directed for the
duration, with other offices opened as organizing campaigns dictate.
The headquarters for this effort would be in Atlanta, GA, and that
office would oversee the operation across Georgia. Other regional
offices would be based in Raleigh, NC (covering North Carolina, South
Carolina, and Virginia), Birmingham, AL (covering Alabama and
Mississippi), Tampa, FL (covering Florida), Baton Rouge, LA (covering
Louisiana and Arkansas), Nashville, TN (covering Kentucky and
Tennessee), and Austin, TX (covering Texas).
- The importance of developing relationships with community groups is difficult to overstate.
As such, this project would work to cultivate relationships with faith
leaders, local environmental organizations, and other progressive
political organizations in the South to address the needs of workers
outside of the workplace and in their homes and neighborhoods. It would
also work to shepherd the expansion of alt-labor groups like Working
America in the places where it’s operating.
This is a monumental undertaking, and it will mean other worthy
efforts will go under-resourced while this project is operating, but
there is no other way forward. With a Democratic President, a Democratic
House, and a Democratic Senate, we could not get the Employee Free
Choice Act through at the federal level, and anti-union policies
continue to advance through state legislatures. Unless we rebuild our
power in a big way, there is no way forward for any of the significant
improvements to public policy that the labor movement would like to see.
Everything from an increase in the minimum wage to labor law reform
will rot in committee while things get worse for working people in this
country.
We make this proposal knowing full well the kind of resources it will
take to carry this monumental effort forward. However, the time for
quarter-assing things has long since passed and the hour is late for
labor. It takes bold moves to counter bold foes, and foes like Art Pope,
David and Charles Koch, Eli Broad, and the Walton family are nothing if
not bold. The only alternative to a monumental effort like the one we
are outlining is a too-timid outing that will only delay and not reverse
(or even arrest) the labor movement’s accelerating decline into
extinction.
Crossposted from The South Lawn
This was a joint post, written by Douglas Williams and Cato
Uticensis
Douglas Williams is a
third-generation organizer,who is currently a doctoral student in
political science at the University of Alabama , where his research centers around
public policy as it relates to disadvantaged communities and the labor
movement. You can find him on Twitter at @DougWilliams85, as well as at The Century Foundation, where he blogs about the labor movement.
Cato
Uticensis, is the pseudonym of a union organizer working in the
South. He likes barbecue, bourbon, cigars, and labor politics. He can be
found on Twitter at @Cato_of_Utica.)
Sources for historical info on Operation Dixie:
Griffith, Barbara S. The Crisis of American Labor: Operation Dixie
and the Defeat of the CIO. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.
Print.
Goldfield, Michael. “Race and the CIO: The Possibilities
for Racial Egalitarianism During the 1930s and 1940s.” International
Labor and Working Class History 44 (1993): 1-32. Print.
Gall, Gilbert J. “Constant Vigilance: The Heritage of the
AFL’s Response to Right to Work Legislation.” Labor Studies Journal 9.2
(1984): 190-202. Print.
Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth, and Ken Fones-Wolf. “Sanctifying the
Southern Organizing Campaign: Protestant Activists in the CIO’s
Operation Dixie.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the
Americas 6.1 (2009): 5-32. Print.
