SYMPOSIUM: Split to Win?: Assessing the State of the Labor Movement
Weinbaum, Eve
DISMAL MEDIA REPORTS notwithstanding, no one can predict the eventual impact of the split between the AFL-CIO and Change to Win (CTW). Both the old federation and the new have announced...
...Whatever the differences of the individual unions in the new federation, they all agree that organizing has to be the top priority...
...When organizations are winning, or imagine they are, they are unlikely to change course in any meaningful way...
...For the first time in decades, major unions decided that it was more important to assess their prospects honestly and openly than it was to enforce the unity that had served the labor movement well in the past...
...Some of the member unions do: UNITE-HERE and SEIU have demonstrated great success organizing people of color who work as janitors, as hotel housekeepers, in food services, and in other parts of the otherwise invisible service sector...
...Both the old federation and the new have announced ambitious plans to organize the unorganized, to mobilize millions of working people around political campaigns, and to defeat some of the greediest transnational corporations...
...The split in the AFL-CIO was fundamentally the product of failure...
...Such campaigns can galvanize liberal allies who can be crucial to political efforts and organizing campaigns...
...Supported by their union (PACE, now merged with the United Steel Workers), these eighty-six workers mounted a four-year comprehensive campaign...
...On questions of political campaigns and organizing, these unions have had conflicts in the past and will disagree again...
...The unions and organizations that can most effectively work together to craft bold campaigns will be able to use the lessons of past failures to create new kinds of success...
...By 2004, "Big Labor" represented only about 9 percent of workers in the private sector...
...Some argue that this coalition represents the progressive wing of the labor movement, the unions that focus on the most disadvantaged, marginalized, low-wage workers...
...Unions have found ways to organize the unorganizable...
...They have no panacea for some of the most serious economic policies that have weakened labor in the past fifty years...
...FLOC used innovative tactics, including Paolo Freire-style popular education, political theater, and communitybased organizing...
...they know the strength of their opposition and can assess their tactics realistically...
...The press releases and public statements of each group sound surprisingly similar...
...What is new about Change to Win...
...The experience of failure, acknowledging it, and moving on, can make social-movement organizations stronger...
...On this score, we can find many reasons to be DISSENT / Winter 2006 59 hopeful...
...Other successful campaigns have involved very small groups of workers, but they are no less consequential...
...If the history of social movements is any guide, good things should come out of the upheaval...
...Last year, eighty-six workers in Ponca City, Oklahoma, were locked out by Continental Carbon...
...Before leaving the AFL-CIO, these unions led the way in thinking about transforming immigration policy, international organizing, and other political issues that represent a radical departure from the ways of Lane Kirkland's AFL-CIO...
...BUT THE GREAT strength of the Change to Win coalition is that these unions have all admitted failure...
...The challenge for both CTW and AFL-CIO unions is to be willing to try new tactics and to trust new partners...
...Is it possible that the U.S...
...and they have built the organizational capacity necessary to accomplish their goals...
...But like the AFL-CIO, Change to Win is not monolithic...
...The Carpenters and the Teamsters represent very different constituencies from UNITE-HERE...
...On the contrary: the most successful social movements have grown out of major failures...
...But the real test for the labor movement is going to be where it always has been: in workplaces and communities all across the country and increasingly across the world...
...Back in North Carolina, FLOC and the independent Black Workers for Justice formed a unique Latino-African American alliance, working together on issues from human rights to immigration reform to reparations for slavery...
...After winning the first union contract for guest workers (and after workers immediately filed three thousand grievances...
...But to say that failure created Change to Win is not to say that its prospects are bleak...
...and the fastest-growing companies were aggressively anti-union, undermining pensions and health care, wages and human rights...
...EVE WEINBAUM teaches at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Labor Center...
...60 DISSENT / Winter 2006...
...They have expertise in comprehensive campaigns, and their skilled researchers can take on major corporate enemies...
...the Laborers and the UFCW have had very different strategic priorities and capacities from SEIU...
...labor movement can revitalize itself...
...They won back their jobs and sent a clear warning to the rest of the industry...
...She is the author of To Move a Mountain: Fighting the Global Economy in Appalachia and was an organizer with UNITE and HERE...
...They are committed to fighting the degradation of jobs and the "WalMartization" of the economy...
...Leaders are able to reflect on what worked and what didn't...
...This level of cooperation was never possible under the loose federation of the AFL-CIO, where local unions controlled most resources and no leader could compel individual organizations to act differently...
...Failure was undeniable...
...FLOC opened an office in Monterrey, Mexico, to organize and educate Mexican workers about their rights under H2A and with the union...
...Exciting campaigns are underway in the most unlikely places, among some of the most oppressed workers, in "right-to-work" states and rural areas...
...The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, recently won representation for 7,500 Mexican guest workers under the H-2A program in North Carolina, the most anti-union state in the country...
...And they are pooling their resources to work together on these goals...
...Still, can CTW succeed...
...In this case, a strategic victory strengthened the hand of thousands of other workers...
...Corporate research will help to identify strategic targets and new sources of leverage over the most intimidating conglomerates...
...unionized industries were fleeing the United States with the aid of a series of "free trade" agreements...
...The most famous breakthroughs of the civil rights movement, the women's suffrage movement, or the farm workers' organizing campaign under Cesar Chavez—all of these happened only after organizers had tried their most promising strategies and failed...
...That leverage has to be paired with grassroots strategies that involve workers in leading the struggle...
...Through alliances with environmental justice groups and Native American tribes and trips to NASCAR races and to Taipei, Taiwan, the workers fought the lockout, crippling the company's ability to do business...
Vol. 53 • January 2006 • No. 1
