If Unions Are So Dead, Why Do Workers Still Strike For Them?

So many self-professed progressives from Kevin Drum to The Nation so eagerly writing unionism's obituary: you'd think what happened in Wisconsin was the passage of a national Constitutional Amendment outlawing labor unions.

Conditions for workers in this country are as bad as they have been since the Thirties. Not just Management was against them; local, state and federal government hated and despised them as much as the Bosses did. They had no one but themselves. And so they fought.

The rest of us have been coasting on what they won ever since. The 90 percent of us who don't belong to unions have been gorging off the union-provided Endless Buffet for decades. Now there's not enough left for everybody - or even some - and we have to figure out how to feed ourselves.

And so we are going to have to fight again. Fortunately, we are surrounded by exploited workers at all levels who are hopping mad and ready to fight.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

... the urge to take more radical action has to come from the workers themselves. Any other source is probably illegitimate because it will amount to people whose jobs are not on line exhorting reluctant workers to risk their livelihoods for reasons not clear to them. And that would be a bad thing.

But let’s also be clear–workers can be pretty radical on their own. A story. In 1999 and 2000, I was in Knoxville, Tennessee working on a number of campaigns after I concluded my master’s degree. We worked on a living wage campaign, some student organizing, etc. Our group was getting very heavily involved in labor issues. This received a serious assist from the nearby Highlander Center, whose head at the time was Jim Sessions, a major figure in the labor world who was the minister who sat in with workers at the Pittston coal strike. We began to meet local union leaders through Jobs with Justice, etc. We decided we wanted to have a labor teach-in at the very conservative campus of the University of Tennessee. We planned it over the year and thanks to Sessions, were able to get some big names to come–Elaine Bernard, Bill Fletcher, and AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka. Not bad for a bunch of kids, no.

As the time came to hold the teach-in, we were very aware that a labor event without workers lacked legitimacy. So we put fliers around campus about it, gave a number to call if workers were interested in talking. We get a call from a group of housekeepers. For whatever reason, I am sent over to talk to them. And boy howdy are they fighting mad. They are ready to tear down the university. Their primary complaint, as I recall 12 years later, was working conditions–including that they feared for their safety because they kept getting pricked with hypodermic needles cleaning the dorms and the university didn’t care. And that was the Eureka moment for everyone–we had done a ton of work preparing for an organizing campaign and there was a large group of workers very much ready to be organized. I don’t know how many came out to the teach-in rally, maybe 80-100 housekeepers and a few other workers too. Having Trumka rally the troops was a good start. We marched over to the administration building, gave them a set of demands, and started organizing.

I left soon after to start my Ph.D. program, but I am proud to say that this event, and years of hard work by others after it, led to the creation of the United Campus Workers which became CWA Local 3865.

I tell this story not to laud myself–it was a long time ago and my role in this was limited. But I want to point out that sometimes workers are quite ready to lay it on the line and if properly organized, the labor left can help shape that discontent into productive activity that leads to long-term improvement to workers’ lives that they themselves lead and create.

The question isn't "Do you want to join a union?" the question is "Are you willing to fight for your rights on the job?" When the answer is yes, union becomes automatic.