Unions, Organizing, and Democracy

...Union successes of the thirties and forties were preceded by years of party-based organizing and shopfloor struggles by workers...

...Nursing homes were mapped and leaders identified...

...Movement building requires understanding how learning and organization take place at the bottom...

...Most important, "member mobilizers" were hired from as many homes as possible to help deepen participation and develop local actions...

...Organizers' primary responsibility runs less to the people they are organizing than to the campaign...

...Nevertheless, the campaign succeeded brilliantly at deepening the commitment and parUNIONS, ORGANIZING, AND DEMOCRACY ticipation of members, and it was clearly this depth of commitment that finally convinced Beverly that the union would endure until a contract was reached...

...This was central to the success of the effort, as was the safety to have open disagreements with staff and officers...

...But while prior rounds of coordinated bargaining had taught members the need to fight, activism had faded between contracts, and bargaining and servicing remained highly staff-dependent...

...In the course of mobilizing, workers also discover a need for greater knowledge and understanding, and organizers must respond with education to meet those needs...

...SEIU organizers coordinated escalating activities throughout the state...

...But for staff, a leader was someone with followers...

...developing a real organization is never a waste of time...

...For member mobilizers and many of the worksite leaders who assisted them, the experience was transformational...

...Often, people think that being a good organizer is survival of the fittest, and that this is how they themselves learned," he says...

...Failures may count as much as successes, depending on what is learned...

...Being able to ask questions—and get responses— from local and international staff whenever they needed to helped to build the mobilizers' confidence...

...The campaign did not produce a clear road map for success...

...Workers' accounts—gathered through interviews during the spring of 1998—provide a rich description of the role of education and learning in organizing, leadership development, and movement building...

...How can it reforge the essential link between an active membership and movement building...

...DISSENT / Spring 2000 81...

...They need the safety to disagree and dispute strategy...

...If we ever stopped to understand what we are already doing right, we'd be a dangerous movement...

...Nursing homes with mobilizers generally had higher participation rates in state-wide SEIU activities...

...Organizers need the same things as members: contact, community, safety to disagree, and mentoring—a personal relationship in which someone is paying attention to how they learn, and helping them move to the next step...

...Leaders—including the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.—functioned as effectively as they did because of this rich organizational base...

...They didn't talk about "pushing" but instead about trust and personal support, education, and letting workers make their own decisions...

...Staff and officers were less effective in arguing for an action than co-workers, because only co-workers were personally affected by the outcome...

...Willing to take more risks...

...As important as the role of democracy in building commitment is mobilizers' understanding of leadership...

...And their concern for the campaign went beyond the contract signing to the life of their chapter and union as a whole...

...Freire took the position that the process of UNIONS, ORGANIZING, AND DEMOCRACY organizing, if the organizers were good, inherently involves education in the beginning, the middle, and the end...

...They need mentoring...

...Members need to see each other...

...Most important, mobilizers did not see themselves as a core group separate form the rest of their members...

...As Larry Cohen explains, CWA made a heavy investment up front to develop a worker organization at US Airways that was a real organization, and not simply instrumental to winning a campaign—and if they hadn't they wouldn't still be there...

...What are the corollaries for organizing...

...Yet when members were asked what enabled this activism, they talked not about the militancy of mobilizations, but about the educational process they went through—what they had learned from other organizers and taught other workers...

...One described how members now read their contracts themselves and came to her with their own views of violations...

...Negotiating committees were built with five workers from each home—sessions with Beverly had as many as one hundred workers—and caucus time was used for leadership training, role-playing, and strategy sessions...

...When mobilizers explained how information was shared, how learning to ask questions changed their lives, and the importance of feeling safe to disagree, they were describing what motivated them to deepen their commitment...

...What is striking here is that in describing their roles, most SEIU staff organizers failed to capture the open communication style and support for growth and learning that members had praised and identified as central to the success of the campaign...

...We don't know our own history, and then we impose it on other people...

...Helping co-workers build the confidence for leadership within their workgroups in turn meant creating a sense of safety and group support, as well as personal reassurance...

...Organizing is shaped by what a small group of insiders know and impart, rather than by workers exercising power...

...Bernard Moore, who supervises memberorganizer training for SEIU, believes we are only beginning to accumulate the store of collective knowledge and understanding needed for effective organizing...

...they were capable...

...But because people learn so differently, this one thing only works for some people...

...Education and critical reflection were central throughout...

...As to lack of resources, Tom DeBruin, president of one of the three locals that conducted the Pennsylvania Dignity campaign, gives a short answer...

...One clue is that SEIU staff and officers' explanations of leadership and development in the Beverly campaign differed substantially from workers' descriptions...

...A major goal of the Pennsylvania Dignity campaign was deepening leadership and activism of nursing-home members, specifically to strengthen both workplace organization and the role members could play in their communities and state politics...

...But no additional Beverly homes were organized...

...One reason is that organizers don't talk enough about what they do...

...Openness and emotional support from the staff helped buffer the stress of the campaign...

...This development of staff and leaders as educators is the missing link needed to support democratic decision making, participation, and organizing by members...

...Disagreements over strategy and tactics were frequent, not only between the AFL and the CIO, but between the CIO and local organizing forces...

...But we weren't taught on our own...

...Rather, the CIO was successful because it marshaled its massive resources to support and give direction to, instead of trying to control and supplant, the many forces that were already in motion and fighting for workers' rights...

...Members authorized a three day unfair labor practice strike that included blocking rush hour traffic in Harrisburg, the state capital...

...But because making it happen now—which is usually equated with winning National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections—takes immense resources, certain tasks are postponed: developing rank-and-file leadership, member education, building the kind of enduring local union organizations that can give workers real power and change their lives...

...labor movement experiences between resources for organizing and servicing owes much to the postwar paradigm of business unionism, which encouraged member passivity and staff expertise...

...An "interesting time," for better or worse, is one of upheaval—a period when large movements of ordinary people can create sweeping changes that would otherwise take decades...

...The civil rights movement—this century's other great movement of mass participation and disruption—also illustrates the role of historical learning in movement building...

...Nor could they have sailed through a second election after the first was thrown out and continued their successful first contract campaign without missing a beat...

...Most of all, it means paying attention to workers'—not just organizers'—accounts of organizing...

...One step is to look at the last "interesting" period of organizing and ask how it happened...

...But as 78 • DISSENT / Spring 2000 "doers" they had to be representative of their co-workers and needed their backing to be effective...

...Some] just needed someone stronger telling them...

...In an attempt to organize this giant, CWA is focusing first on building a real workplace organization...

...Getting information from several co-workers was more effective than getting information from just one...

...Mobilizers knew they were part of a small group of "doers...

...So was] taking someone with you to a meeting, and saying, 'Here's this report, will you give it for me?' [But] they have to make sure the core of the group of their fellow workers are going to jump...

...According to Larry Cohen, executive vice president and director of organizing for CWA, everything else will be derived from that—whether or not there is collective bargaining and whether or not there are contracts will be up to the workers...

...WHAT COULD this history teach us...

...Becoming more conscious of actual practices could make them even more effective, perhaps easing burnout, turnover, and the stress of campaigns...

...When they were asked in interviews what it would take to be successful in the next round of bargaining, their response was clear: ongoing contact and communication between members in the different nursing homes...

...Yet for the most part organizers don't give workers a voice in how they are organized...

...The three locals intensified their already vigorous community campaign...

...There are important lessons here about education, organizing, and movement building...

...Yet underpinning labor's hope and vast investment of funds is the belief that the lowly staff organizer can not only make all this happen, but—since union density continues to fall and there is no time to waste—she or he can make it happen now: before the money runs out, before backlash sets in, before the forces of complacency reassert themselves...

...Yet we don't simply inherit this history...

...Two years after the campaign, mobilizers still reported members being more active and likely to stand up to their bosses...

...Implications for Organizing Beverly is only one campaign, mixed in its results...

...In a last series of conversations with Paolo Freire, recorded in We Make the Road by Walking, Myles Horton, longtime director of the Highlander Center, talked about organizing and education...

...We may have been taught badly...

...This means frontline organizers, educators, and labor intellectuals alike beginning a process of open, critical reflection about failures as well as successes...

...And willing to become more involved in campaign planning and strategy...

...The battle was part of SEIU's Campaign for Dignity, Rights and Respect, an ongoing attempt to build a national movement of nursing-home workers by linking coordinated local bargaining to organizing...

...An educator who begins by giving the answer, will have to end by giving the answer...

...a number of homes have fully functioning chapter officers, as well as secondary leadership...

...They wanted communications within the union to be continuous...

...One mobilizer explained: "Some of the quietest people were the most productive...

...They have to know they can trust the group...

...And unless how someone learns is identified, they stop learning once pushing stops...

...Although a communication structure established early in the campaign played a key role in sharing information, for the mobilizers, getting and giving personal support was inseparable from sharing data about the campaign...

...76 DISSENT / Spring 2000 Beyond the workplace, women's clubs, community organizations, ethnic networks, and organizations of the unemployed all provided bases for overcoming gender, race, and ethnic divisions and building solidarity...

...The campaign shifted into higher gear when Beverly ripped down bulletin boards, denied staff representatives access to facilities, and made other unilateral changes...

...And for an active base, education is essential...

...Leaders and activists benefited from an independent worker education movement dating back to the 1920s...

...Faced with a choice between winning and educating, Horton thought that an organizer must choose winning, and if necessary provide the strategy for success...

...The promise is that once we move ahead with this process and begin to integrate organizing and education more deeply, we will magnify resources for organizing, and our capacity for organizing effectively...

...The Service Employees International Union (SEIU)'s successful 1996 contract campaign against Beverly Enterprises in Pennsylvania is one recent fight where workers mounted a powerful response to corporate abuses and a wider range of participants were able to tell at least part of their story...

...Few campaigns are properly debriefed, and Moore believes that as a result organizers often take the thing they do best and make it the main thing they do or teach...

...Until experience and resources reach a critical mass, and political and economic conditions scream for new solutions, sudden massive growth is unlikely...

...We end up further from, not closer to, our goal of movement building...

...SHARING INFORMATION and building trust within the group as a whole became the foundation for group learning and decision making...

...Yet members wanted an even larger role in planning...

...If we do, we will be...

...Waiting to educate and develop our members until after we have organized, all the while making decisions for them, compounds, rather than simplifies, our problems...

...Talking . . . was one way...

...Meanwhile, rank-and-file members organized petitions over grievances, marched on the boss, and held "sticker days" to demonstrate solidarity...

...Another said her chapter played a greater role in the community because of her ability to get the information she needed to respond to requests for help...

...The problem is not whether to do both, but how...

...Organizers often talk about leadership in instrumental terms: doing what must be done to pressure the employer and win key supporters...

...Objections to Education and Group Development One objection to an approach that places so much emphasis on education and development of both staff and members is that it takes too much time and may work with contract campaigns but can't work with new organizing...

...From this standpoint, the overarching lesson of Beverly is that workers may be willing to go much farther than most organizers commonly assume...

...Mobilizers made themselves available to co-workers for personal and campaign needs day or night...

...Most fundamental is that while many staff organizers may be divided over the role members should play in campaign decision making, Beverly workers were clear...

...A political strategy was launched that combined electioneering with a campaign for nursing home "report cards" to notify residents and families of staffing levels and health-department citations and a campaign to block reimbursement of funds spent on union busting...

...The fact that so many organizers are still white and male, in addition to being outsiders with a plan, ensures that race, gender, and especially class hierarchies reassert themselves and block the full sharing of information and ideas needed for long-term success...

...These efforts were often independent of both the AFL and the CIO, and sometimes went on for years without formal union recognition...

...Certain politicians were also targeted with militant sit-ins at the state capital...

...Most of all, workers had to be consulted while a strategy was being planned, not after...

...Education— including building confidence and trust— supported information sharing and open decision making and helped mobilizers to develop the group rather than remaining themselves simply a cadre of lead activists...

...But in the Beverly campaign, mobilizers' descriptions focused on learning and moving ahead with their co-workers...

...The irony of this prevalent, though not universal, approach is the contradictions it creates for the deeply shared goal of movement building...

...As Aldon Morris shows in The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, the mass base of support on which it depended was highly organized internally, the culmination of a long history of protest and community building beginning with nineteenth-century slave revolts...

...Most important, changes in the political climate during the depression helped blunt the use of police power in strikes and led to positive social and labor legislation...

...If the members' description is accurate, it may mean organizers who were effective didn't fully understand what it was they were doing that worked...

...Only nursing-home workers who had recently joined the union staff tended to answer this question similarly to the member mobilizers...

...They were also outlining the essential elements of union democracy in action...

...Finally, as exhausting as the campaign had been—a much-loved leader died from a heart attack during it—mobilizers and worksite leaders wanted to be prepared to do it again if necessary...

...It was "pushing" workers by putting them into positions and situations where they had to speak to a larger group or the press or organize an action, deciding where they were in their development, and, as one organizer put it, "figuring out the direction they needed to go in [and] pushing them to go several steps beyond where they would have gone on their own...

...One is the importance of open communication and decision making—of democracy—in evoking the degree of commitment and participation needed for serious campaigns...

...As one organizer explained, you can take workers through mobilization after mobilization—but if they play no role in building and debating strategy, they won't necessarily learn anything...

...In the United States, where organizing and education aren't well integrated, it is still difficult to make the space to do both...

...The result is more power, clearer strategic thinking, and more resources to change society and for movement building...

...As one senior organizer explained, "If we want workers to exercise power, we have to let them take it...

...Organizing and Education The Pennsylvania Dignity Campaign underscores how essential education and group learning are to union organizing aimed at movement building...

...How can labor develop the capacity for this kind of creative organizing, not only at IBM, but at myriad employers across industries and among diverse workforces...

...Workers develop a healthy fear of abandonment...

...Indeed, if, as Bernard Moore suggested, we now share only a small part of our knowledge of organizing, sharing more of it, listening more carefully to our members, and further integrating education with organizing could produce a great windfall...

...We also inhabit it...

...They valued the experience and expertise of staff—the Beverly campaign was extraordinary for the openness with which it was conducted and the closeness and respect that developed between members and staff...

...A related objection is that there simply aren't enough resources...

...Leadership development meant teaching specific skills to workers so they could take over certain campaign tasks and local union functions...

...To Cohen, there is little difference between so-called new organizing and internal organizing...

...UNIONS, ORGANIZING, AND DEMOCRACY Vitality comes from an active base...

...The turning point, however, came after Beverly rejected an unconditional offer to return to work and permanently replaced five hundred strikers...

...In other words, the CIO didn't create the movement it came to lead...

...The argument that this approach takes too much time rests in part on the assumption that an employer will move aggressively to end a 8o n DISSENT / Spring 2000 union campaign before it gets off the ground...

...The campaign raised the visibility of SEIU organizing in the state and contributed to subsequent successes by demonstrating the union's ability to stay around for the long haul...

...CWA's successful US Airways campaign is one practical example...

...Where winning is impossible, the union walks away to devote scarce resources to other efforts...

...Chosen from recognized leaders replaced during the strike, they were assigned to international organizers who worked intensively with each of them to create individual plans for their development as leaders...

...For frontline organizers, then, the crucial link between union campaigns and movement building is not just militancy...

...This contradiction—having to live and organize without a movement yet struggling to prepare for one—is especially acute for labor organizers today...

...KATHERINE SCIACCHITANO is a former labor lawyer and organizer...

...To build maximum participation, the campaign began with a state Dignity Conference where activists adopted a bargaining platform, debated priorities, and brainstormed about how to build community support...

...Virtually every member who was interviewed described how learning to ask questions and get information—a core skill they were taught during the campaign—had transformed their lives and the lives of their nursing-home chapters...

...Even successful campaigns may see resources shifted to other struggles—perhaps to key targets elsewhere in an industry—before fledgling local organizations can be consolidated...

...Beverly workers emphasized development of the group as a whole, personal support for learning, and freedom to disagree...

...In fact, he believes the time to gain recognition will shorten once the employer is convinced the union is there to stay...

...The revitalized American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) has set its sights on nothing short of movement building...

...Organizers burn out...

...The split that the U.S...

...Disagreements had to be accepted...

...Yet every organizer struggles to be prepared—and to prepare the way—for them...

...Nor are established institutions— such as the AFL in the 1930s or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1950slikely to occupy the sole place at center stage...

...At the same time, staff turnover was high, and the locals' activist agenda placed a heavy drain on resources...

...Organizers grow and change by reflecting on what they have done and on what, and how, workers have learned...

...Yet only a few homes now function independently of staff...

...The successful use of civil disobedience, far from giving birth to the movement, followed from a long process of learning from the successes and failures of many organizations in many communities— organizations that were often in conflict...

...Inspired by the militancy and industry-wide drives of the 1930s, the federation and its affiliates are pouring millions of dollars into rebuilding organizing capacity in workplaces and in communities...

...Yet, for DeBruin, the alternative— continuing to lose power and make key decisions without worker participation or input— is worse...

...Beyond more thorough and frequent debriefing of campaigns, another step would be demilitarizing the model on which so much organizing is conducted...

...An educator, on the other hand, doesn't provide answers, or tactics, or strategies, but helps people learn to analyze the problems they face and develop different ways to act on them...

...To Moore, as to members in the Beverly campaign, organizing is a personal act...

...Finding resources for keeping in touch with members, giving members the skills to play a larger role in politics and the economy as well as the workplace, strengthening local chapters and doing new organizing all place immense strains on staff and activists...

...They need group support...

...Co-workers had to be treated with respect, and trust earned gradually through honesty and personal support...

...But it is precisely because of the ferocity of employer campaigns that workers need real workplace leadership...

...No organizer can create interesting times...

...It also suggests we need to develop and train staff, as one CWA educator and organizer put it, not just to educate leaders and committee members to mobilize co-workers, but to educate them to develop the group as a DISSENT / Spring 2000 n 79 UNIONS, ORGANIZING, AND DEMOCRACY whole...

...But the upsurge of organizing wasn't sudden, and it wasn't simply the product of the CIO...

...She teaches at the George Meany Center for Labor Studies in Washington, D.C...

...How can it move beyond "hot shop" organizing—waiting passively for pockets of dissatisfaction and militancy to develop—and instead hone the capacity to organize the strategic industries and employers needed to build real power by developing and nurturing democratic leadership among the new workforce...

...Education isn't organizing, but it makes organizing—and movement building—possible...

...Black churches were key places where communities defined their needs and goals, nurtured networks of leaders responsive to these needs, and mobilized resources and developed tactics...

...The Example of the SEIU Most analyses of union organizing rely primarily on organizers' experiences and observations...

...The campaign also illustrates potential hurdles that may develop in the process of building a strong local base for organizing as well as bargaining...

...They may be willing to make deeper commitments of time and resources...

...One unanswered question from the Beverly campaign is why some staff functioned much more effectively than others...

...But it's not true—we all had mentors...

...Three SEIU locals had already organized 10 percent of the state's nursing homes, including half of Beverly's homes in the state...

...So was having fun...

...The Communications Workers of America (CWA)'s Alliance at IBM is just one example...

...Maintaining the continuity and depth needed for building leadership and real capacity for social change becomes more, not less, difficult...

...Moore puts the problem concisely...

...The lesson generally taken from the thirties is that the Great Depression created a huge and sudden upsurge of organizing, fueled by CIO militancy and funds...

...DISSENT / Spring 2000 n 75 UNIONS, ORGANIZING, AND DEMOCRACY Lessons From the Thirties and the AFL-CIO At a time of economic restructuring that rivals the 1920s and 1930s, and as the workforce is transformed by women, immigrants, and people of color, the ability of organized labor to rebuild itself depends more than ever on workers having a direct role in deciding what form unions should take, how to organize, and what the goal of union power in the twentyfirst century should be...

...The problem is compounded by the fact that, despite changes in the economy that should by now have lifted all bets on the shape unions will take in the twenty-first century, most organizers are still sent into campaigns not only with a model of organizing that workers are asked to accept, but often with a predetermined strategy...

...In interviews, they eagerly described the revelation that they were DISSENT / Spring 2000 n 77 UNIONS, ORGANIZING, AND DEMOCRACY the union, the power they experienced from being united, and the importance of joining forces with members at other nursing homes...