The New, Young Organizers

...For all the talk that the spirit of the times has produced a materialistic majority of young people and a "politically correct" minority who are pure in spirit but preoccupied with questions of personal identity, the institute does succeed in finding potential organizers on campus with the talent, the attitude, and the energy to be useful to the unions...

...Thirty-one-year-old WINTER • 1992 • 47 Labor's Young Organizers Duane Stillwell is organizing director for ACTWU's southwestern region, which includes Arkansas...

...Nearby, the company had set up an exhibit of photographs of scenes from actual labor disputes...

...She moved to Austin, Texas, and, during the past year, she's spent most of her time in Earl and other small towns in Arkansas...

...Student Association...

...The job doesn't offer "immediate gratification," but there are rewards, like "the roar we heard from the workers in the parking lot" when word went out that the union had won the second election at Earl Industries...

...Another organizer who wants to make a career of it is Megan Parke, who, at age twenty-three, was on-the-scene coordinator for the campaign at Earl Industries...

...Mostly black women, the workers get low pay, meager benefits, and minimal respect...

...The institute's director, Richard Bensiger, is an ACTWU veteran who seeks out potential organizers with the same zeal with which he used to recruit union members...

...Still others, like Megan Parke, are recent college graduates...

...In one community, where the union faced an even more uphill fight than in Earl, the company's management "turned a lot of the town against us," and a local restaurant even refused to serve her lunch...

...Challenges like that don't discourage Parke, nor does a typical workday which she describes as "Get up at 5:45 in the morning to leaflet the plant, eat breakfast, go back to the motel room to write a leaflet and do paperwork, meet workers for lunch, then get the leaflet copied, meet with the staff, visit workers at home until late at night, then get ready for tomorrow morning's leafleting...

...They're more grounded than a lot of people were in the sixties, and that's good...

...Two of the organizers working on the Earl campaign are typical of the people in their thirties and forties who are the shock troops of today's labor movement...

...It keeps the mind active...

...Meanwhile, to show that they weren't intimidated, a group of workers from the factory were wearing union tee-shirts, holding hands, and singing gospel music...

...Her studies convinced Parke that "the women's movement and the labor movement directly intersect...

...More than a decade earlier, after employees voted to be represented by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), the company kept stalling in contract negotiations and eventually persuaded workers to vote out the union...

...Yes, "it's incredibly difficult on my personal life," Stillwell admits, but he sees himself making a career of it...

...Louis, Stillwell travels throughout Missouri, southern Illinois, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma, usually working "hundred-hour weeks...

...We wrote our own briefs, presented our own case, and, of course, they beat us...

...Jesse Jackson in support of ACTWU...

...At age thirty-three, I found myself thinking I didn't want to spend the rest of my life living out of motel rooms...

...As the late jazz great Art Blakey used to say: "I like working with those youngsters...

...After passing the bar examination, he took a job with a law firm for six months, then "took a big pay cut and leave of absence from which I've never returned" to become a union organizer...

...A "white suburban kid" who grew up near Denver, the son of a salesman and a secretary, he's living proof that the modern middle-class experience can still produce union firebrands...

...On one side were the company lawyers in suits," he remembers...

...The training program in which Parke participated is the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute, founded by the labor federation in 1989...

...The union had won an earlier election in March by a margin of 172 to 101, but the company had filed objections with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), claiming that the presence of an AFL-CIO video crew during the campaign had intimidated workers...

...Bensiger estimates that most of the program's graduates are rank-and-file members ranging from people in their twenties to those in their forties, who know unions and the workday world from the inside and welcome the chance to try their hand at organizing...

...We get these applications—twenty of them a day on the average—and one after another talks about greed and escaping the yuppie syndrome and living a life where you make a real contribution to society...

...While unions representing teachers, government employees, and health-care workers conducted successful organizing drives during the past two decades, most other unions had a hard time protecting their existing members in an era when basic industries declined and corporate managements cut payrolls, wage scales, and fringe benefits...

...The organizer's life took me from age twenty-five to thirtythree, and only in the last year did I tire of it...

...What's almost as remarkable as the heroism of the workers at Earl Industries is that, after the cynicism of the seventies and the selfishness of the eighties, there are still young people eager to devote their lives to union organizing— a job that will pay them much less, and challenge them much more, than almost any other career they could choose...

...Ajagunna notes that, for the children of the eighties—"products of the world of microwaves and MTV"—patience may be the most important virtue of all...

...Parke grew up in Champaign-Urbana, a college town in Central Illinois, and attended Sarah Lawrence College, where she concentrated on labor studies and women's studies...

...And other unions are also using the institute's services, from organizing advice to staff training...

...The Organizing Institute's Richard Bensinger is fully aware of the danger that some seasoned staffers will resign, retire, or burn out before passing their skills and experiences along to the next generation...

...Learning that the AFL-CIO had started a new program to train union organizers, Parke enrolled in the course in 1990, participated in several campaigns in Virginia, and was hired as an organizer by ACTWU's southwestern region...

...That's a tragedy of the labor movement," he explains, "potential mentors who never get the chance to mentor...

...For those who manage union staffs, the challenge is not only to recruit more young dynamos like Parke and Ajagunna but to find ways to hold on to dedicated staffers and keep them doing their best work...

...At law school, Stillwell remained an activist, organizing his co-workers at a Legal Aid clinic and winning more resources for the student attorneys...

...And, after the union won the second election by 165 to 131, the company once again challenged the result, objecting to events surrounding an appearance by Rev...

...Those years left me with some of my best memories and many of my best friends...

...Stillwell was never beaten up, but he was fired...

...It was 48 • DISSENT Labor's young Organizers an innovation whose novelty was appreciated by close observers of the labor movement...

...Staging a grim parody of a strike in an effort to scare workers out of voting for a union in the federally supervised election being conducted that day, supervisors from the factory were marching around, wearing company tee-shirts, carrying picket signs, and shouting slogans...

...Several hundred potential organizers have already passed through the institute's training program since it first opened its doors in 1990, and most have been placed in full-time organizing jobs with unions at the national and regional levels...

...However, a core group of workers kept the union idea alive and provided the base for ACTWU's organizing efforts...

...We're getting a minority of students who feel alienated from the eighties," she says...

...It's just like working in the cotton fields, except you're out of the sun," workers told the organizers...

...For union veterans weary of the road-warrior's life but wary of becoming desk-bound bureaucrats, there should be the possibility of making a mid-life arrangement: training and guiding a new generation of organizers...

...Although I left union work because I wanted to pursue other interests, there are those who leave solely because they tire of life on the road...

...But it takes patience to build a union, win an election, and bargain a contract...

...Since the 1930s and 1940s, when organizers fanned out into America's auto plants, steel mills, electronics factories, garment shops, textile mills, loading docks, and retail stores, organizing had been something of a stepchild within all but the largest and most activist unions...

...On October 25, workers were voting for the second time in 1991 on whether to be represented by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU...

...At age twenty-three, Megan Parke says emphatically, "I don't want to sit behind a desk...

...Many stay on union staffs but lose the energy and enthusiasm of their younger selves...

...Working through student organizations and college career placement services, the institute recruits from a crosssection of campuses, including state universities, the Ivy Leagues, and historically black colleges...

...50 • DISSENT...

...Talking to these evangelists for the union organizer's life, I thought back to my own WINTER • 1992 • 49 Labor's Young Organizers years as a traveling troubleshooter for AFSCME...

...It was an incredibly radicalizing experience," recalls Stillwell, who says his own political commitments are concentrated on the practicalities of winning better wages and conditions for working people...

...As a high school student working in a local McDonald's, Stillwell tried to organize his co-workers...

...To coordinate recruiting on the campuses, the institute recently hired twenty-two-year-old Anike Ajagunna, who was student-body president at Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus and serves on the board of the U.S...

...By emphasizing the importance not only of organizing new members but of training new organizers, the Organizing Institute may bring in new blood and recharge old batteries...

...For eight years, from 1976 through 1984, I traveled around the country, writing organizing literature for union drives and doing public relations for strikes, struggles against budget cutbacks, and other crisis situations...

...Other recruits come out of community organizing or political campaigns...

...One night when he was working at the fast-food restaurant, a police officer walked up to the counter and warned him to "keep your head down and make sure you have witnesses wherever you go," because the word was out that the store's manager was going to have some of his friends go after Stillwell...

...Based in St...

...But on October 25, 1991, a noisy drama was taking place in the parking lot of Earl Industries, the town's leading employer...

...There's a real anger among many of these young people, directed against the overselling of false gods of the eighties—the Boeskys and Lorenzos and Trumps," Bensinger observes...

...The confrontation was one more episode in more than a decade of labor-management conflict at the factory, where more than three hundred workers make garment bags, shoe bags, and fabric hangers for closets...

...Thus, the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute serves urgent needs: recruiting a new generation of organizers, making them available to unions throughout the labor movement, and evaluating organizing campaigns and devising new strategies...

...The institute is sponsored by six unions with aggressive organizing efforts — ACTWU, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Service Employees, the United Steelworkers, and the Carpenters—which use trainees in their campaigns and hire graduates of the program...

...Delaying tactics are nothing new to the company's management...

...The institute looks for a mixed bag of organizers, and that's what it's getting...

...For the union organizer who spends a year or more in a campaign like Earl Industries, where you can win two elections and find yourself back at square one, persistence is part of the job description...

...And on the other side were a bunch of us in plaid shirts and blue jeans...

...So, in her senior year, when she had the option of pursuing independent studies and work experience, she took a job with the Coalition of Labor Union Women designing its reproductive rights program, and wrote her senior thesis on how the women's movement influenced the growth of flight attendants' unions...

...And her personal observation showed her that service workers at the college were underpaid and exploited...

...The best organizers, Bensinger says, are persistent and pragmatic, people who get angry at injustice but aren't in the grip of an abstract ideology...

...The organizers found a "hot shop," where workers were eager to hear the union's message...

...Many of the best recruits, Bensinger says, are students from working-class backgrounds who attend elite colleges and find "it grates on them being around kids from more privileged backgrounds...

...As a college student, Stillwell unsuccessfully tried to organize workers at the Pizza Hut where he waited on tables, and found himself challenging company lawyers at an NLRB hearing...

...That was when Stillwell decided to go to law school, so that "never again would I be in a great organizing position and get beat in a courtroom...

...For employees who'd stuck it out for more than a decade, still talking union after years of management resistance, their endurance is near-heroic...

...Particularly for smaller unions in private industry, the cost of recruiting, training, and deploying organizers became increasingly prohibitive...