Labor Day: Time to Think Big

Ok, so I'm a bit late. I spent most of my Labor Day celebrating my son's birthday and fighting the urge to think about what to write about not only today but the past few weeks and the next few months to come.

So much of our future hangs in the balance it is difficult not to offer up a set of opinions of what I think we should be doing to reverse the decline of unions and thus reverse the decline in wages, benefits and working conditions for millions of American workers. Literally dozens of Newspapers, Blogs, and more than a few TV shows today highlighted the fact that unions are singularly responsible for the creation of the American middle-class and with the weakening of unions that same middle-class living standard is disappearing.

It is always good to hear our leaders state in so many different ways that we are going to fight like hell to win this years election. Regardless of anyone's opinion of President Obama's record on delivering on his commitments to labor, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and the cabal of reactionary operatives like Karl Rove and Grover Norquist represent an existential threat to unions. They are committed to waging war on our ability to fight for a fair economy that works for all of us.

A key question in this years election will be whether labor's increased emphasis on diverting resources away from Democratic Party structures toward membership mobilization and messaging as well as direct contact with non-union voters will be sufficiently robust to counter the tsunami of corporate money that will bombard voters with billions of dollars in negative advertising.

The spike in corporate money entering elections and the corresponding uptick in right-wing independent expenditures in 2010 caught labor by surprise. That unexpected infusion of corporate cash along with substantial cynicism among union and progressive voters (the "enthusiasm gap") led to the shellacking we took in 2010. After much hand wringing and exhaustive analysis labor has hopefully developed a ground game that can play a key role in delivering a defeat to Mitt Romney.

I accept that most discussion between now and Nov. 6th will be focused on beating our blood enemies. I don't often use the term "our only hope", but this comes about as close as you get to a life or death election for labor.

But aside from the fiery speeches about kicking Mr 1%'s ass, Labor Day allows us to also take a few stabs at thinking about strategies for not only our immediate survival but also turning our current defensive posture into one of offense.Labor Day is a day to think big and dig deep. It is a day to look back in reverence and to look forward with renewed determination.

Thinking beyond Nov.6 is critical. If Obama wins or loses, there are dozens of state houses and Governors now in the hands of people committed to our destruction who will open up legislative sessions next year with a whole new set of attacks on workers.

The same quandary over growth and renewed power for unions in America continues to elude us. Commentary from scores of radical pundits notwithstanding, serious and deliberate action is required to begin retooling the labor movement to meet the challenges ahead:

• Unions must be willing to restructure to and do away with redundancy, waste and any structure that does not serve the immediate need to grow and raise living standards for our members and the millions  we must organize to maintain those standards. Serious thought has to be put into consolidating organizational bodies, pooling resources, and where possible mergers of entire unions. I say this not to rehash the debate that Stephen Lerner initiated, but because I see that perspective vindicated every day when I see local unions who have jurisdictions ripe for organizing in their cities with no ability to grow because they lack resources or when I see entire International unions with less than five organizers on staff. Fetshizing tiny fiefdoms where we negotiate increasingly marginally better contracts for smaller and smaller groups of workers is a notion that must rejected and vilified. Clinging to standards that no longer determine the wage scale in an industry simply represents impending death for any organization unless we are aggressively working to rebuild density.
• Make the "Second Bill of Rights" campaign real. The recent trend towards independent political activity should be expanded into a focus on mobilizing our members in state house legislative sessions around the country. We should also be willing to learn from our enemies and make our presence felt whenever town hall meetings are called as congressional representatives come home to their districts during recesses as either confrontation or positive reinforcement whichever is appropriate. 
• More and more we must renew the idea of looking at organizing entire markets with campaigns that capture the imagination and/or demand the attention of the surrounding community.The increased use of strategic researchers and campaign staff can and should be used to great effect in these campaigns to piece together comprehensive campaigns that use maximum leverage to achieve employer neutrality or at least muted objection to being organized. Where we choose to continue utilizing the NLRB to organize, we must be crystal clear with companies that we are organizing that there will be a political price paid for aggressive anti-union campaigns. Whenever there is a point of vulnerability, coercive anti-union campaigns should be met with public campaigns of equal strength that expose their coercive nature, rally community allies, and bring public pressure to their doorstep.
• We have to develop alternate or parallel forms of organization for workers who are either not afforded the right to organize or whose employment structures make it all but impossible to organize through traditional means. Structures for misclassified workers, workers excluded from the NLRA, temporary and contingent workers, as well as public sector workers in states that prohibit collective bargaining can and should be developed that allow these workers to build organizations that will allow these workers the ability to collectively fight back. These could take the form of associate member programs, paralleled associations or membership based 501c4's based on the concrete circumstances.

Finally we have to renew the spirit of discussion that can help us flesh out the details. I realize that what I am writing here is just the opinion of one union staffer who has a very limited ability to implement any of what I am writing about. But I also know that many labor leaders I speak with grapple with these exact questions. The main obstacle that seems to be present is a clear method of overcoming the various obstacles both human and material to rebuilding our movement. Happy Labor Day.

Labor South: UAW vs. Nissan in Mississippi: Operation Dixie Revised? An in-depth look

A great article on the UAW organizing drive at Nissan in Mississippi.

Labor South: UAW vs. Nissan in Mississippi: Operation Dixie Revised? An in-depth look

Marrying Actions and Rhetoric

I have to thank Stephen Lerner because I am stealing the title of this post from this speech of his given last year:



This is the short version, you can watch the full version here. I chose the title because regardless of how much I understand that changing the labor movement is a titanic task nowhere near as easy as many seem to imply, I deeply feel that there is a disconnect between the state of the labor movement, the challenges we face, and what we as a movement do on a daily basis to achieve these goals, grow and build power for working people.

I attended one of the many labor sponsored banquets not to long ago. While I often find most labor's gatherings dry and mundane, I attend them because it is an opportunity to network and connect with leaders of our movement and to show my unwavering support for our movement at one of its few public events in my city.

Most of the speakers were what I considered to be fairly traditional as were the topics, the 2012 elections, political attacks on our movement, fighting for good contracts, and honoring the storied history of our movement's forefathers. Many of our key politcal allies attended and were recoginized. Drinks were had and fun (or something resembling it) was had by all.

At the end of the dinner, I came to the realization there was huge disconnect between events like this and the reality of the fact that we are actually facing the destruction of our movement.

I am just as guilty as the next person of being part of that disconnect. Intellectually understanding the depth of our crisis and taking action that corresponds to that depth requires having the shirtail to move the necessary changes but more importantly the political will to take the necessary action. The issue for most of us that the process of overcoming lethargy is a daunting thing to tackle and building intertia is harder than it looks.

Most of our time is spent doing what the labor movement needs to have done to exist and protect what members we do have. We negotiate contracts, we represent workers in grievance hearing, arbitrations and panels. These are the main things that workers organize to obtain, ie. to improve their working conditions, to have better wages and benefits, to have these gains "put into writing" in a legally binding agreement, and to have that agreement be enforced by their union.

For many of us, we give everything we have everyday and it is nowhere near enough. Local and regional officers often percieve their organizations as "doing all they can" and often are strapped for resources themselves.

The tendency to "circle the wagons" keep our heads low and hope the assault on labor will "blow over" after Obama wins a second term is strong.

Most in the upper echelons of the various unions do indeed seem to understand the crisis and also seem to have some idea of what it will take to overcome it.The national AFL-CIO has some new itiatives such as the creation of "Workers Voice" a "superpac" that will serve as an independent voice for labor in supporting pro-labor candidates and the Workers Stand for America Rally next week that is meant to role out a campaign for a "second bill of rights".

Both of these initiatives give substance to the notion that labor must redirect resources more towards independent activity rather than sinking resources into the national Democratic Party structure. The justification for this redirection of resources was underscored by DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz's comment that the struggle over collective bargaining in Wisconsin would "have no impact on the November election".

Similar to the National AFL, a good number of International unions affiliated to both the AFL and Change to Win have adopted varying degrees of restructuring, directing resources more towards organizing and a more independent approach to electoral politics for this election season. Unfortunately, in every instance the extentof these changes has been either exclusively contained in the International unions or is spotty among regional union structures

The biggest obstacle remains in local and regional structures, where the policies adopted and moved by International leaders trickles down in a very inconsistent way.

The ability build a grassroots movement of working people rests with politically revitalizing the local and regional structures of our various internationals.Mainly because those are the structures that have the most direct contact with union members.

The challenges of doing this are huge. While on the one hand just about every labor leader in the U.S. would call labor's current state as standing on the precipice, the ability to challenge deeply entrenched norms and structures that impede growth and our abilty to build power remains elusive.

This is where the notion of "marrying our actions with our rhetoric" must occur.

Abandoning traditional collective bargaining, and transforming our various unions into movements explicitly geared towards the fight for power is not realistic in the near term. Saying that, we need a sense of urgency in how we frame the state of our movements and the corresponding actions that we should be asking of ourselves, our coworkers and the members we serve.

We are in a crisis folks, let's act like it.

Well, is Labor a "Lost Cause?"

Stephen Lerner and Bill Fletcher appeared on Bill Moyers yesterday. Moyer's theme for the show was "Is Labor a Lost Cause?".

I have to confess Having Stephen Lerner and Bill Fletcher on TV talking about the crisis of labor was enough to make my labor nerd head explode. Both of them have been thinking, writing and speaking about labor strategy for decades and both of their voices are welcome contributions to this discussion.




I came away from the discussion with a sense of clarity that while labor is not a "lost cause", we have a tremendous amount of internal self imposed conservatism that must be broke through at every level of the labor movement. Where the discussion comes up short is that while the ways in which labor is lacking are pretty clear (at least if you are looking), those of us thinking of how to carry out the type of needed transformation were probably still left with many of the same questions we had before.

How do we convince labor leaders at every level of the labor movement to get into "crisis mode" and begin to behave as though the destruction of labor can only be averted by their own bold decisive action? How do we make the case to leaders of union Internationals that they must more aggressively challenge the disfunction and atrophy that may be present among local unions who are more inclined to hole up and hold on to what they have hoping for the best instead of mobilizing? The internal political relationships of the various international are a minefield for a President looking to stay where he is. Not being dismissive of this dynamic and looking for solutions that take it into account are essential to any realistic approach to organizational change.

One difference I have with brother Lerner is his perspective that labor should move beyond traditional collective bargaining towards bargaining startegies that directly benefit large sectors of the non union population.While it certainly reflects a deeper sense that labor should be the voice of the entire working-class, demands such as these are an extremely heavy lift in terms of convincing members that they should lead the fight for the entire working-class by deprioritizing fighting to maintain their own wages and benefits. If labor's survival is deependent on our members reaching this level of consciousness in the near term, we are doomed.

Whether you agree or not with Fletcher or Lerner, you came away after watching their discussion with a greater sense of vision from two people who have spent their lives thinking through how we can fight and win. You also have the sense that both of them strove to frame any criticisms they made from a sense of real historical knowledge of how we arrived at this crisis devoid of the moralism or paternalism that have defined so many critiques.

Freedom and the Debate About Labor's Future

I actually felt a bit cheesy today as my family celebrated Independence Day the traditional way, poolside in the sun cooking out with family, while I type out my thoughts on the vanishing of real freedom for the American worker.

Labor's crisis is bound up in the dramatic expansion of corporate power. The same forces that have sought to villify and portray labor as a special interest group are the same forces that are hijacking American Democracy with a tidal wave of cash funneled through a variety of corporate sponsored front groups unleashed by the Citizen's United Decision.

Gordon Lafer's latest contribution to the post Wisconsin  debate "Labor's Bad Recall?" does an exellent job of pointing out how Doug Henwood and many of the other critics of labor fail to acknowledge the impact of corporate power and its ability to impact public opinion through media outlets and pundits.

It can't be overstated that it is IMPOSSIBLE to understand labor's steep decline in influence and power without looking and the dramatic increase of corporate influence over American politics. The 2010 election that ushered in so many of the Governors, Congresspeople, State House Reps and State Senators who launched the offensive across the country against unions, voting rights, and public services was the first election carried out under the principles of Citizen's United.

Has labor been in a crisis since before 2010? Yes.
Has labor made mistakes? Yes
Do changes need to be made ? Yes.

But the sharpness of the attacks launched have blunted labor's ability to organize it's way out of the crisis, no matter who is at the helm and despite the best efforts of even what the critics would consider to be model unions.

Lafer rightly points out that the poll Doug Henwood uses to demonstrate his thesis that labor is losing influence due to it's supposed longstanding opulence and lethargy shows what are in fact more recent phoenomenon that are more the result of external factors. There is much anectdotal evidence that the uptick in spending by corporate front groups like the Center for Union Facts , the Koch Brother-funded Americans for Prosperity and other Superpacs has been able to successfully influence public opinion through media saturation aided by entities like Fox News and a host of right-wing pundits.

It is fair to say that labor could have done more to confront its crisis and to push back on this new offensive. The fact that the more recent slew of criticisms fails to even acknowledge that corporate influence has had even the slightest effect is telling about their motives. I would say it suggests a more fundamental difference of political perspective than a competing view of strategy.

Any discussion of restoring labor's power must begin from the standpoint that the primary source of labor's woes lies in the boarddrooms of corporate America, not in the union halls and International headquarters of the labor movement. The corporate cabal that is plotting labor's destruction is the very same threat to American freedom we are fighting to stop from stealing democracy from the American people. The solution to our crisis and the crisis of hope in America lie in defeating those forces

Some Thoughts on Wisconsin

Now that some of the smoke has cleared and most of the Monday Morning Quarterbacks have shot their load, I get the chance to give my two cents:

Claims of Our Demise are Grossly Over-Exaggerated

As much as many pundits and bloggers would like it to think, defeating the recall did not qualitatively alter the balance of forces nationally. Labor is still embattled no doubt, but we have beaten back as many post 2010 attacks as we have suffered defeats.

While not being sucessful at recalling Walker we were able to blunt his agenda by retaking a pro-labor majority in the Senate. We were also enormously successful in energizing a critical mass of members not only in Wisconsin but around the country. While we are not dead yet, in order to ensure that we didn't just wake up to die, we have some serious work to do.

Labor needs to deepen the process of how to make the drastic changes we HAVE to make in order to survive. Obviously we cannot continue on the downward spiral that we have been in for decades. We cannot continue simply tinkering with structure and resource allocation while avoiding challenging deeply entrenched disfunction that prevents us from climbing back from statistical irrelevancy.

The battle in Wisconsin DID reveal how precarious public sector unions are in relation to changing political winds. Labor has been far too dependent on growth in the public sector as a substitute for much needed growth in the private sector. Large scale organizing in the private sector and a deepened commitment to educating and mobilizing our members is the only way out of this mess, otherwise we eventually (and by eventually I mean soon) will reach the tipping point of being so tiny we lack the resources to claw back from the abyss.

Debate is Good (and Essential)

I Sincerely appreciate The Nation for Opening up it's website to be a forum for debate about the Recall and the struggle in Wisconsin. The opening to "Labor's Bad Recall?" asks,

Unions invested heavily in the campaign to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Was that a huge mistake?

 The opening exchange between  Doug Henwood and Gordon Lafer  does a pretty good job of putting forward two perspectives that many would agree with on each side of the debate. The discussions happening now give another teachable moment that helps to underscore the need for all of us to dig deep, put aside longstanding presumptions, and truly do some soul searching about the future of our movement.

One big problem is that too much of the debate is coming from outside the labor movement from people who know very little about the inner workings of the very movement they are discussing. The need for folks to have a forum for a broad discussion in the labor movement is great. Unfortunately, no one Blog or Website has successfully caught on as a place where the strategists discussing and assesing Wisconsin and the state of the labor movement could coalesce into a popular discussion.

Labor is Not in Denial, We Just Know How to Lose a Fight

The handwringing by many progressive pundits over Labor's alledged flippancy or minimizing of the defeat in Wisconsin reminds me of the differences in how people from different social classes often react to losing a fistfight.

Many middle class people that I have seen lose fights often immediately begin explaining why they lost the fight. Most blue collar folks I know that lose a fight simply get up dust themselves off and often state matter of factly some variation of," wow he/she sure kicked my ass".

The point being many of the faults laid out with some venom by the progressive professors are things that labor has been discussing internally for decades. NOT A SINGLE point made has been unique nor stated for the first time. We get it we lost, we came up short, but it was not the end of the world for the labor movement.

Electoral Politics Will Continue to Be a Tactic in Labors Arsenal

One of labor's  loudest outside critics is Left Business Observer Editor Doug Henwood. He places the majority of the blame on labor's utilization of the recall as a tactic:

But lingering too long on the money explanation is too easy. Several issues must be stared down. One is the horrible mistake of channelling a popular uprising into electoral politics.

The recall  became the strawman along with labor's alledged lack of rapport with the majority of Wisconsin workers on which the defeat was largely blamed by Henwood and other critics. The fact is that an overwhelming majority of those who participated in the mass protests participated in the recall movement. The recall was simply another stage in the movement. Most of the people involved in the protests voted with their feet and the protests fizzled well before the recall kicked into gear.

As much as it tortures uber radical armchair activists and their more active but just as misled hangers on, electoral politics is still one major component of how most American people will continue to choose to express themselves politically. Yes people are cynical about elections, but that is borne more out of a lack of collective power that also translates into not being active at all rather than engaging in more militant activity that they fantasize about. It is important not to confuse cynicism and abstentionism with militancy.

I wake up every day working to help workers to engage in collective activity, to gain a greater sense of their own power. The day that the majority of working people are ready to move will be a day of celebration, but we are not there yet. We need a combination of grassroots organizing and education that builds power in our workplaces and our communities, but as long as elected officials continue to determine as much of our lives as they do elections will be a terrain we must operate on, recalls included.

Labor Did Not "Sell Out" the Struggle

The biggest myth perpetuated by Henwood and people like Matther Rothschild is that labor "shut down" the protests at the Capitol and "funneled" the movement into the recall campaign. According to Rothschild, the masses of Wisconsin were prepared to carry out open ended sickouts, slow downs, and mass civil disobedience and labor missed it.

No doubt there were people agitating for a general strike and other forms of direct action, the fact is that the critical mass of workers, students, progressives and other people that were part of the movement suffered from the all too human element of exaustion. Bills had to be paid, no strike clauses were in place that people as a whole were not willing to violate, so people returned to back work and continued to organize. Workers did in fact continue to organize on the shop floor by wearing buttons stickers, signing petitions. Maybe not as sexy as Henwood would like, but this is the stuff that actually builds movements.

The romantic notions of what was possible in Wisconsin make for good blog posts but were obviously written by people who have never actually organized workers. This post on Cory Robin's blog gives some insight into the mind one participant who was part of one of the most militant elements of the Wisconsin struggle, the Teaching Assistants Association, who lead the first demonstration and initiated the occupation of the Capitol.

 Which Labor Movement are They Talking About?

Doug Henwood says:

A major reason for the perception that unions mostly help insiders is that it’s true. Though unions sometimes help out in living wage campaigns, they’re too interested in their own wages and benefits and not the needs of the broader working class. Public sector workers rarely make common cause with the consumers of public services, be they schools, health care, or transit.

I don't know what union Henwood is talking about. All the major unions I know of and most of the major private sector unions build labor community solidarity as a major component of any organizing campaign where it makes sense and many if not all public sector contract campaigns.

SEIU, AFSCME, ATU, NNU (Nurses), the Teamsters and a host of other unions with public sector members almost always put a sizable chunk of effort into build community alliances over staffing issues related to public safety and services to the broader community. The days of meat headed "go it alone" unionism are the exception and not the rule and they certainly are not how most union leaders are trained in today's labor movement.

This also further underscores Henwood's lack of understanding of what the purpose of a union actually is. Unions exist specifically to improve the lives of their members. Worker do not join unions to change the world and members take action because broader social change will increase their capacity to improve their own lives. People join struggles at least initially out of their own self interests, union members included. That is a basic ABC of organizing that Henwood apparently misses in his critique.

FACT: The National Democrats Turned Their Backs On Us

Yes Barrett was a sucky candidate, yes our messaging could have been better, yes labor could have done a better job of conveying it's message to it's members, all that is true.
BUT THE DNC AND OTHER NATIONAL DEMOCRATS SCREWED US, HARD. And that more than anything set the stage for defeat.

While some other Democratic groups, such as the Democratic Governors Association and the Obama campaign did send money and resources, the massive infusion of cash that was needed to counter Walker's arial bombardment of anti-recall commercials never came. And for a period of time the recall was openly dismissed by DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz as not relvant to the national election. What did come from the DNC came after Walker had already been allowed to define the race and to undermine the recall as a legitimate tactic.

The unanswered call for president Obama to make an appearance in Wisconsin no doubt left a bad taste in the moths of many especially in the aftermath where exit polls showed that a majority of voters were Obama supporters and it was those supporters who provided Walker with his winning margin.And just for the record, the fucking tweet from the President was outright insulting and an outrage.

 It would be suicidal for labor to sit out 2012 in retaliation for the inaction and some would say outright betrayal of the national Democratic Party apparatus out of our own interests in America not lurching further on an anti-worker trajectory. We should also have no illusions that until labor regains substantial density, we will more and more be seen as a junior partner and ATM by a party that is increasingly dominated by business interests. Ultimately the old quote by Samual Gompers that "labor has no permanent friends, only permanent interests" rings as true as ever.

Update: I had wanted to include some commentary about this post by Van Jones where he points out "The lesson of Wisconsin is pretty straightforward," "This is what happens when we put our minimum against their maximum." but the clock ran out.

A Debate Renewed

This was not how I hoped we would get this discussion going again.

I have often bemoaned the fact that the debate that began back in 2004 that led to the formation of Change to Win had come to a premature end.

The anti-Change to Win crowd basked in the glow of Andy Stern's pyrhic fall from grace and immediatly began the drumbeat that the experiment of Change to Win had been a disaster at worst and a failure at best. The anti-Stern crowd used Stern as a strawman to declare their victory with their perspective vindicated.
But for many of us inside and outside the AFL-CIO who could not influence the policies or the debate, we were left hanging. For us the question still remained: "How do we reverse the seemingly irreversable decline of labor's power?"  The time remaining to reverse that decline is ticking away every day and a seemingly endless stream of body blows are landed on the body of labor as we move from one battle to the next. The question now for those of us tired of getting our teeth kicked in is, "what is the plan"? How can we regroup to fight back and if we can what form should that fightback take?

The attacks launched against labor after the 2010 election had both the effect of galvanizing labor leaders who rightly mobilized union members to fight back and revealing the limitations of labors ability to beat back the assault. In state after state the results were mixed. When the final shoe dropped in Wisconsin where labor failed to recall Scott Walker but stalled his anti-worker agenda by reclaiming the majority in the Wisconsin Senate, a new debate ensued.

Out of the wordwork came a slew of Monday morning quarter backs railing against labors numerous inadequacies and the bankruptcy of electoral politics. Many of these folks lack any real experience in the labor movement, which prevented them from being privy to the decades long discussion that they thought they were presenting for the first time, or they were the same perennial critics who have been making the same criticisms from the sidelines as part of carrying out a long term ideological agenda.

While the "war on workers " raged across the country, the occupy movement burst onto the stage. The space created to discuss and strategize on how to defeat corporate domination of our society was immense and regularly reached into the discourse on the Sunday morning pundit shows, talk radio, the blogosphere andother forms of social media.

This is the context we find ourselves in. A big mess with everyone explaining to us inside the labor movement what we are doing wrong. A debate raging outside of our movement that lacks the perspective of the ins and outs of actually organizing and mobilizing working people. Maybe it has never occurred to them that some of us understand the problem, but solving it isn't as easy as writing a snarky tweet or blog post.

This blog was created for those of us who want to talk strategy but who lack the shirttail to get a hearing and at the same time aren't necessaritly interested in joining the chorus of perennial critics. I want to hear from the people who really are thinking about strategy on the ground, not the "I told you so" Left. So let's get it on!