The Right Tools

Mark Erlich

The labor movement in the United States is at a crossroads. After a quarter of a century of declining membership, bargaining strength, and political influence, there is a cautious sense of hope for a union revival. The election of John Sweeney to the presidency of the AFL-CIO is only the most visible sign of the ascension of local and national leaders in recent years who have advocated a return to the union traditions of organizing and grass-roots activism.

As a long-time innovative organizer, Steve Lerner is in a position to know what has gone wrong and what needs to be done. His article crystallizes the obstacles workers face and reflects the resulting anger that many of us in the labor movement share. While Lerner's account of today's "terrifying" workplace climate is hardly unique, he pulls no punches in his all too accurate characterization of employers' views of workers' rights as little more than barriers to the unfettered pursuit of profit. Others have analyzed economic, legal, and political developments in labor relations in greater depth, but few have been as brutally honest about the external and internal problems unions confront.

Labor's civil disobedience tool has become rusty; it is time to sharpen it and return it to the toolbox ready for use.

Working people have taken it on the chin long enough. Fortunately, voices like Lerner's that have called for a more pro-active agenda are now part of the mainstream of the labor movement. But the biggest obstacle to organizing in the 1990s is fear. Union workers are reluctant to strike for fear of being permanently replaced by strikebreakers. Union and non-union workers are reluctant to speak out for fear of being downsized, re-engineered, outsourced, or seeing their jobs shipped to low-wage labor markets, at home and abroad. Most important, unorganized workers are reluctant to organize for fear of being, simply, fired.

In response to the crisis, Lerner dismisses incrementalism as hopelessly inadequate and calls for a strategy of multi-industry regional organizing. These notions of broad-based campaigns are more reminiscent of the CIO upsurge of the 1930s and the Civil Rights movement than of typical union efforts in recent years. If this approach sounds more like movement building than institution building, that is precisely Lerner's intent.

Lerner devotes nearly half of his article to a discussion of the merits of civil disobedience as an answer to restrictive labor laws and unsuccessful stabs at labor-management cooperation. He claims that direct action will dramatize the plight of the unorganized, reestablish the moral high ground, mobilize large numbers of workers, raise the level of conflict, and force employers to come to terms with powerful worker organizations.

In his haste to counter the risk-averse approach of too many labor officials, Lerner may be overselling the cure-all effects of civil disobedience, undervaluing other effective methods, and elevating one particular tactic into an overall strategic model. There is no obvious reason why a direct action approach will be any less vulnerable to the same corporate juggernaut. In the Decatur "war zone," for example, the persistent militancy and activism of striking union workers ultimately failed to overcome unbridled management hostility. While Lerner rightly wants to rattle labor's cage, his blanket approach obscures the very real complexities of varying labor markets, competitive pressures, and, therefore, appropriate tactics for American's heterogeneous industry sectors.

Perhaps it is just my training, but I was taught that a competent carpenter had a full toolbox, with a tool ready and available for every situation. Organizing is no different. Labor's civil disobedience tool has indeed become rusty and it is time to sharpen it and return it to the toolbox ready for use. But we need all our tools -- education, political action, capital strategies, and all of the necessary organizing skills. Organizing, like carpentry, is situational. The challenge is to figure out the right tool or tools for each situation in order to address and overcome workers' fears.

Lerner's focus on direct action is meant to provoke, and to remind us that this particular tool needs to be used. But his more valuable insight is the notion of whole market organizing. In an era of global markets and mobile labor forces, unions have to organize the world of work as it is, not as our outdated structures might wish it to be. That will require cooperative activities among unions across geographical areas and a willingness to take risks and think creatively. The alternative is grim. The decline of organized labor has been one of the main causes of stagnating wages and growing income disparity in the US. A more just society hinges on labor's revival. As Lerner puts it, "Without powerful unions, democracy is replaced with corporate oligarchy." It is time to manifest that power.