Another problem arises when comprehensive campaigns often feature confrontational tactics that may discomfort or embarrass local union leaders who are not used to them. What often results is a lack of local support, if not outright sabotage, and organizers are caught in the middle of a bureaucratic pissing contest.
Internal Organizing versus New Organizing
Positing internal organizing against external organizing is a false choice, borne out of prioritization forced by labor’s declining resources. Both kinds of organizing are vital to labor renewal. But in the rush to find new money for new organizing, many unions targeted the vast sums that are spent on grievances, arbitration, business agent salaries, and shop steward training, expenses that do not tend to build union power absent a meaningful member mobilization plan.
At the risk of caricaturing, the “Organize or die!” logic essentially meant the following: We cannot grow if all we do is “service” our existing members and we cannot substantially improve pay and working conditions without meaningfully increasing union density in a given industry. Therefore, we should devote as much of our resources as possible to organizing for growth. Taken to its extreme, this resulted in quick and understaffed organizing campaigns under neutrality agreements, even quicker negotiations that prioritized union recognition and agency fees over detailed work rules, and new union members receiving business cards with an 800 number to handle grievances.
In such a framework, international unions jealously guarded resources meant for new organizing from being sneakily expended on contract campaigns. But here’s the thing. Many organizers, including those on international staff, found it very difficult to organize new members into locals with poor reputations and weak contracts, and thus often prioritized reinvigorating legacy bargaining units with contract campaigns.
Because of vicious employer retaliation in union organizing campaigns, workers must have a sense that running the gauntlet of employer opposition will be worth it. Any organizer can vouch for how detrimental a worker with a “bad union experience” can be to a campaign. Conversely, if a worker has experience, or intimate familiarity with some other member’s experience, such a worker. with meaningful “asks” of an informed and democratic organizing committee, comes away a bit more radicalized and vastly more likely to take action in a new campaign.
The choice between internal organizing or new member organizing may be a false choice, but to the extent that unions have been making it so, there is a strong argument to be made that we have been choosing poorly. It is the visible resistance of organized workers that inspires people to join the labor movement. As a recruiter and trainer of new union organizers, I can recall very few new recruits in the last few years who did not cite as their “reason I want to do this work” either the Chicago teachers’ strike or the Wisconsin protests. The Wisconsin protests were a failure, but the example of union members standing and fighting the right-wing agenda was still an inspiration. Of course, I am citing examples of workers who decided they wanted to work on the staff of unions, not stand and fight for a union where they currently work. Clearly, we have a long way to go toward inspiring an upsurge in spontaneous organizing.
In this regard, I agree with much of Richard Yeselson’s “Fortress Unionism,”36 which proposes that labor focus on preserving and strengthening existing unions “and then … wait” (his words). Except we must all take exception with his prescription for waiting for a spontaneous worker uprising. Our job is to inspire it! Unions should engage more in well-planned contract campaigns and job actions with the vast audience of non-union workers in mind.
Comprehensive new organizing campaigns are important for the same reason. Most workers in this country do not even know how a union gets formed. The assumption that workplaces either do or do not have a union by some kind of bureaucratic fiat is surprisingly pervasive. Non-union workers need to see big campaigns of workers standing up to their employer and demanding improvements and a voice at work to get inspired to do the same. We must talk more about this symbolic and inspirational value that comprehensive campaigns have because institutional support for them seems to be at a historic low. They are too often the victims of impatience, the changing priorities of new leadership, and the institutional conflicts outlined herein. But they are essential and must be revived.
Some Thoughts about Moving Forward
We need more training for union leaders and staff in the kind of facilitation and consensus-building that actually gets areas of disagreement and hesitation on the table and develops campaign plans with true “buy-in.” This is some of our most difficult work, and yet we devote little attention to building these skills.
International unions, in partnership with their affiliates, should develop, or revisit, their own organizing models. Transparency, honesty, and a commitment to organizing must be the bedrock principles of any model.
There should be a greater openness to chartering new locals where an existing local, for whatever reason, is an impediment to new organizing. The kind of union-building that results in a leadership and a membership base that can stand on its own is time-consuming and resource-heavy, which is one reason why unions are loath to do it. But unions should only be engaging in organizing projects with long-term commitments to building power any way.
Unions must continue to raise their dues and implement special assessments for organizing and strike funds. Members will vote to raise their dues if it is presented as a real plan for increased power. Union dues should cost at least $1,000 a year. Many unions have already raised their dues to this level. Those unions who keep their dues “cheap” do the labor movement no favors.
And unions should continue to find ways to devote a larger percentage of their resources to organizing. We could certainly be more judicious about how and what we spend on politics. Doubling down on political spending in 2014 when, historically speaking, the president’s party was inevitably going to lose the last midterm of the last presidential term, converted the Democrats’ loss into labor’s loss. That money could have been spent more wisely on organizing.
Finally, the AFL-CIO does have a role to play. The smaller international unions that have not yet engaged in comprehensive campaigns need the Federation’s leadership. The AFL-CIO should take the lead in facilitating the development of organizing models and plans. A special focus should be placed on unions with similar jurisdictions that could be coaxed into combining resources in joint campaigns that result in new merged locals.
The great push to organize and grow that began twenty years ago with the start of the Sweeney administration, and which intensified ten years ago in the Change to Win split, has frankly and obviously stalled. Perhaps this discussion merely nibbles at the edge of the problem, but we need a thorough analysis of the institutional barriers that have kept unions from truly committing to organizing for growth and power.
FIVE
The Changes We Have the Power to Make
THERE ARE TWO BASIC PHILOSOPHICAL approaches that union activists—staff, leaders, and members alike—generally fall into. Both are variations of putting your nose to the grindstone, and both involve magical thinking that something will come along and save the labor movement.
The first approach is to view legislative labor law reform as a necessary precursor to labor’s next upsurge. This entails running as many good campaigns as you can within a broken system, while shrugging “it is what it is” about the rules, and working to elect enough Democrats to Congress so that we somehow get a majority that will ditch the filibuster and finally repeal Taft-Hartley, pass a card check provision like the Employee Free Choice Act, and institute financial penalties for union-busting employers so that we can finally get on with the business of organizing the millions of workers who want and need unions right now.
The