Labor at the Crossroads

by Allison Porter and Richard Bensinger

Those of us who have devoted our careers to the labor movement are painfully aware of the constraints unions now face. We know about the external obstacles to union growth: an antiquated and unfair system of labor law, hostile and manipulative employers, and the vagrancies of international capital. And we are even more aware of the internal obstacles: complacency, defensiveness, and bureaucratization. But rather than celebrating past victories, or despairing about present limits, we are now trying to convert this awareness into new strategic ideas about organizing.

Four years ago the AFL-CIO established an Organizing Institute to develop such ideas. The Institute is pursuing two projects that carry significant promise for addressing some of the troubles that unions face.

To learn from recent organizing successes and guide future efforts, the Institute is forming an Elected Leader Task Force on Organizing that will bring together local and regional union leaders with strong records of organizing. Unions need to change as organizations in order to reach out to unorganized workers; the aim of the Task Force is to figure out what kinds of changes would help.

To build future strength, we are recruiting and training a new generation of organizers, people with a burning anger at injustice, a commitment to building the worker organizations needed to rectify it, and the energy to carry the project off.

Put these two together, organizations willing to change in order to grow, and organizers with an urgent sense of injustice, and you have a powerful source of hope for anyone who cares about democracy and understands that unions are an essential part of it.

A New Organizing Culture

Under the terms of the postwar social contract² between labor and management, the role of unions was to serve their members, to ensure decent wages and benefits, and to protect workers from management abuse. For the most part, they succeeded.

But providing services to existing members is one thing; organizing new members is another. And as relationships between unions and management collapsed in the 1980s under the weight of layoffs, concessions, leveraged buyouts, and corporate restructuring, many unions were unprepared for the new terrain. With membership contracting, it was a struggle for even forward-thinking leaders to make the organizational changes required to move from servicing to organizing.

Some local unions, however, have restructured and mobilized their members around an organizing agenda. It is a risky and complicated business, especially in such a hostile climate. But, miraculously, these unions are growing, and their experiences are instructive.

In the face of intense management opposition, union organizing is a staff-intensive process, requiring a well-conceived, long-term strategy. Leaders who want to move organizing from rhetoric to reality need to shift scarce union resources from servicing the membership to the uncertain arena of organizing the unorganized, and to put in place the staff to direct and carry out the campaign.

Moreover, leaders alone cannot create the political will required to restructure local unions into organizing machines. They need to marshal member support for tough decisions, for example, raising dues to fund organizing programs, or insisting on employer neutrality in organizing campaigns as a bargaining demand. They also need to involve members in the organizing itself. Rank-and-file activists with important roles in bargaining and political action must volunteer to work on organizing campaigns. And they need to develop policies and practices that appeal to unorganized workers.

For example, in the early 1980s Tom Woodruff became president of a District 1199 local union, now affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). His first move was to make organizing a priority, by putting it in the spotlight at every union meeting, negotiation, convention, and function. He also recruited members to help organize. (According to Woodruff, they love this fight.²) Then, by vote of the membership, he dramatically shifted resources from servicing to organizing. Woodruff's SEIU local now spends 35% of its dues on organizing, by contrast with the five percent spent by the average local.

With the resources in place, Woodruff recruited an outstanding organizing director. Without such a person to train, mentor, support, and nurture the organizers, and to hold them accountable, the investment of member dues would never pay off. Because of this commitment to organizing, the local has attracted some talented new organizers. In less than three years, two such organizers, rank-and-filer Robin Ball and Organizing Institute recruit Rachel Brickman, have together won 15 representation elections and organized more than 2,000 workers.

Other unions, too, are moving forward in these directions. They have taken an aggressive posture in organizing and negotiating; set priorities; allocated sufficient resources; won the support of members; and created a culture in which organizing can happen. But even when they have done all of this, they still need to find the people, like Robin Ball and Rachel Brickman, who will put the numbers on the board.

A New Generation of Organizers

It has never been easy to find people willing to take on the lifestyle and salary of a union organizer; and as the odds against success have worsened, it has gotten harder. So the Organizing Institute's recruitment program has been looking for new organizers in non-traditional places, interviews in college placement offices, or rank-and-file volunteer organizer training.

We have found that increasing numbers of recent college graduates, community organizers, and rank-and-file activists are willing to take up the call. And more women and people of color are working on campaigns for union recognition around the country. The people who respond to the Organizing Institute's outreach usually have had a personal experience of injustice. But they know that such experiences are common, and expect that union organizing will help to give people the power they need to address injustice at its roots. These new organizers bring more than commitment, hip hop, and the occasional nose ring to their work, in fact, they are at once discovering and reinventing the labor movement.

The sketches that follow are based on interviews by Allison Porter with some Organizing Institute recruits.

Christine Jaspers

When other kids in her hometown of Lake Crystal, Minnesota hoped to grow up to be farmers and homemakers, Christine decided she would be a United States Senator. (Her family is mostly Republican; she wanted to be a Democrat.) At Marquette University, she served in the University Senate, became Director of Women's Affairs, and eventually was elected student body President. Passionate about politics, Christine turned every position into an organizing opportunity, on issues ranging from abortion rights to educational access for prison women. As her involvement grew, she began to consider avenues other than elected office for bringing about social change.

When she graduated, she came to the Organizing Institute as a path into the labor movement. Her explanation provides important insight into the new sources of organizing energy: It seemed like the best way to incorporate my belief in feminism and multiculturalism into something where I could see actual results.² She took an apprenticeship, and eventually a job, with the public sector union AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees), and organized clerical workers at the University of Illinois-Champaign. It was all about women being treated with respect and getting decent pay. I didn't truly understand at what level I would be working with people. None of my college friends have had this kind of opportunity.²

Christine says she is still reassessing her level of involvement in electoral politics. But for now she is convinced that she can make the most difference at the grassroots,² that mobilizing people to put pressure on employers and politicians may be the most effective way to bring about her goals. I don't want to be someone's hero,² she says. I want to be there so people can win for themselves.²

Cassandra Davis

Cassandra Davis was a shop steward for her Teamsters local in Gary, Indiana when I met her. Young, outspoken, and with a contagious smile, Cassandra had already organized three small nursing homes in her spare time: as she put it, Some people watch soap operas, I organize nursing homes.² The President of her local, Bob Simpson, recommended that she go through the Institute's training program.

Like many Institute recruits, Cassandra did not plan to become an organizer. In fact she was not involved with the union at all when she first went to work at Med-Inn Convalescent Center. She became active only after an election was scheduled to vote the union out. But her commitment to the union grew with her experiences as an organizer. During her apprenticeship, Cassandra played a key role in organizing a factory of mostly African-American women in Earle, Arkansas. It was something in the faces of those women when they won the election that helped me decide I would take the position if I had the opportunity.²

Cassandra got that opportunity and is working now as an organizer for the Teamsters in Chicago. Her job is a product of a new organizing culture in which jobs as union organizers are not given as political rewards but as precious opportunities to build the union. Juggling three campaigns and contract negotiations, Cassandra reflected recently on her decision to go to work for the union. It's a struggle, but I have never looked back. I can do more for people this way.²

Emily Stewart

Raised in West Virginia in a family of union organizers, Emily Stewart grew up knowing the emotional draw and personal hardships of a life in the labor movement. But like Cassandra Davis, she did not start out in a career as an organizer. After college, she took a job in a community health clinic. But she soon became active in the union at the clinic, and joined the negotiating committee. Her first assignment as an Organizing Institute apprentice was a campaign to organize a major textile employer in North Carolina. I remember watching her that summer in front of the plant gates, putting her arm around an older woman who had just agreed to help leaflet and walking up to a group of skeptical workers with a confident, upbeat style that got their attention.

Currently in Minneapolis, Emily is in charge of a city-wide campaign by the Steelworkers to organize group home workers. The group home industry was created when the state divested itself of responsibility for the developmentally disabled. Now it consists of a series of sweatshops for underpaid health providers. Within the Steelworkers, Emily is part of a crew of new organizers who are building on a strong organizing tradition within the union and trying to up the scale of activity through aggressive and innovative campaigns. Not everyone in the union is convinced they should hire non-Steelworkers for organizing positions in the union. But Emily's passion inspires everyone she works with. Her drive, and ultimately her success in organizing, creates space for people like her to grow within and build the union.

Both the labor movement and a new generation of social activists are at a crossroads. Many unions are struggling with external and internal obstacles to strengthening their base and expanding it. In order to build, they need to restructure. For them, other unions a little further down the road provide critical examples and a source of inspiration and hope. At the same time, a younger generation of activists is wondering how to make a difference in a society that identifies making it² with escaping from class and racial heritage, rather than changing power relationships. For them, the labor movement offers an important alternative avenue.

These new organizations and new organizers are a window into the path unions might take to secure a vital and relevant labor movement for our children. From migrant camps to sweat shops, from factories to offices, workers have never needed them more.