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The years of denial are over. For several decades, as union membership declined as a share of the workforce, top union leaders refused to acknowledge the problem. Now, every labor leader, from AFL-CIO President John Sweeney down, agrees that rebuilding labor’s numbers will require unions to devote more resources to organizing. But the same leaders also agree that increasing membership alone isn’t enough. The central issue is how to organize to increase the power of workers.

“People are frustrated. Giant corporations are winning, workers losing, unions losing,” one union president, speaking off the record, lamented. “The question is what we do about it?”

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David Moberg: 'Organize, Strategize, Revitalize,' IN THESE TIMES 1/16/04.

See also, from the same issue:

Andrew Stern (Intl President, SEIU): 'Change Labor, Change America.'

Gerald McEntee (President, AFSCME): 'Organizing: The Future of the American Labor Movement.'

Thoughts?

[ 17 January 2004: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

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they protect incompetent people

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If a union fails to represent a worker to the best of their ability the union can be brought up on charges of "unfair representation".

And this does happen fairly frequently so union representatives are ever mindful of this. Mind you most "unfair representation" charges end up getting tossed out.

If a serial killer is entitled to legal representation then surely a worker who simply commits the "crime" of not being very good at their job deserves representation.

As for organizing the unorganized yes indeed more of this needs to be done. But governments have been putting ever increasing obstacles in the way of unions doing this. Look at what the Harris/Eves gang have done in Ontario. Weakening the ability of workers to organize was one of their first acts.

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Originally posted by ReeferMadness:
Unions need to decide whether they want to be forces of social good or merely agents for the employees they represent.

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However, there are some very good efforts being made within organizations like the United Autoworkers, Steel, Communications Workers of America and even the Teamsters.

One thing that needs to happen is getting beyond the US Labour Department imposed bureaucratic attitude that has crippled so much of the movement for so long, and see themselves for what unions really are: cooperative associations of working people, not agencies that "represent" workers at an arm's length.

Of course, there will always be a future for unions--in the US or anywhere else. The question is what forms they will take and how they will interact and change the communities and economies they are part of.

Contrary to all the corporate crap we are fed, organizing into a union or association of some kind is a natural as breathing. People have done it since the dawn of civilization. It's an integral part of community building that humans naturally do.

That's why it's so hard to suppress. governments, corporations and other hierarchical anti-community institutions around the globe spend enormous amounts of resources and often resort to the most brutal and invasive behaviors in order to suppress or restrict unionization.

Laboring for Justice in 2004: A Critical Year for the Labor Movement

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The fact is, workers don’t check their other identities and social positions at the shop floor door; they are people of color, women, immigrants, gays and workers on the shop floor, at home, at church, at the store, and on all the streets in between. Yet a dominant ideology within the labor movement continues to minimize and subsume workers’ other political identities, despite the numerous alternative models of unionism displayed by black, immigrant, female and gay workers throughout labor history.

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A strategy that recognizes the many identities of workers can make a tremendous difference to organizing and contract campaigns. Realizing that workers bring a variety of ethnic, racial, gender and sexual backgrounds with them does not have to be divisive within the unifying framework of a union. Unions should not mimic corporate America’s dumbed-down “sensitivity trainings” and adopt a superficial celebration of “differences.” Instead, there are three lessons we can draw when unions take seriously the maxim “an injury to one is an injury to all”.

- First, and most important, recognizing the multiple identities of workers—and the varied and overlapping injustices the face as a result—brings valuable and often underused resources to a union.

- Second, when the tough issues of racism, nativism or sexism are addressed internally and head-on, it can increase strength and solidarity. Doing so allows unions to put these issues on the table before the boss uses them as ways to divide and conquer.

- And third, the most innovative and successful models of unionism, especially during periods of resurgence and rejuvenation, historically involved the active recruitment of previously excluded workers and the infusion of these workers’ other solidarities—race, ethnicity, gender, religion and even neighborhood—into the movement.

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[ 20 January 2004: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

Unions across Canada are slowly rediscovering this, as corporate power consolidates and governments get more restrictive and oppressive.

Even in the US, some unions are realizing the un-tapped power they have due to the pension and other benefit plans they fought so hard to get have become among the biggest sources of accumulated capital wealth.

Now the effort for democratization of these funds has begun. There also seems to be a resurgence in interest in community economic development, and cooperatives, union-sponsored businesses and other forms of employee-run enterprises.

This goes along with globalization efforts to build working links (instead of just occasional support) with labour and community groups in other parts of the world.

And administrations are going to have to confront the fact that they have created a situation where the legal environment leaves working people with so little stake in the system, and hold it in such contempt, that the laws are no longer respected.

The problem with that from the government point of view is that once workers no longer feel bound by all the restrictions and bureaucratic hurdles intended to put lids on labour disputes, they won't feel bound by any of them. The elaborate mechanisms in place nowadays operate on a tacit social contract: Unions respect various rules intended to stop labour disputes from doing a lot of damage, and in return government makes those rules sufficiently fair that unions can get by quieter means results about as good as they could have previously gotten by getting serious. That social contract has long been broken on the government side, and I do wonder how much longer before the unions stop honouring it by themselves.

If they stop, labour disputes will look rather different. Instead of giving 72 hours notice that a strike vote has been held, and then waiting to see if the government declares them an essential service, and then pausing for some mediation that everyone knows is pointless but it's part of the game, they'll just down tools and walk. And instead of abiding by rules about picketing at the side of the road all nicely-nicely, they'll blockade the worksite, and rough up anyone who tries to get in. And if they're smart, the union will utterly ignore the laws against secondary picketing, sympathy strikes and so forth. That way, a strike one place will get lots of affiliated workplaces out, putting a *lot* of pressure on the primary workplace to settle (and putting too many people on strike at one time for them to easily be all arrested at once).