Today’s a day when I’m worried about the tone of the debate inside the labor movement (maybe because it’s my sister’s birthday and I’m feeling touchy-feely). Mind you, I’m glad there is a debate about how to save a movement that is on life support. Until the Service Employees International Union kicked the can last year, the labor movement was like a giant, enabling family, ignoring the drunken lout (read: irrelevancy brought on by internal dystopia) in our midst.
But, it’s gotten so personal that I worry what happens after the July AFL-CIO convention: can people work together?
No matter what happens beginning in August, no matter who is running the show at the AFL-CIO and no matter which unions stay or leave the federation, the lines of communication must stay open, enabling unions to muster the resources and energy needed to try to keep the ship of labor afloat.
So, I have a modest solution. Let’s go back to the beginning of the debate, the time when ideas trumped politics. Put the power struggle aside for a few days, forget about the tough words, whether justified or not, and have a no-holds barred discussion. Given the tensions, it might help to recruit a few respected non-combatants who have a stake in the survival of the American labor movement, to act as facilitators: I’d nominate Nelson Mandela but, if he’s unavailable, would settle for someone else with stature.
Without dramatic changes, the movement faces extinction. Why not take that basic point and get everyone into a room, maybe a big room or a virtual room or a set of rooms, and thrash out the central questions. No one has to agree to any pre-conditions to participate by ceding any view or position—each of the major proposals can stand and be advocated for. But, who knows, maybe a deal will emerge.
Once the doors are closed, here’s my modest list of the five big questions to tackle:
How do we organize on a large scale? Kudos to the unions trying to transform their organizations partly by pouring more resources into organizing. But, the truth is that no one has figured out how to slay this mind-boggling challenge: just to increase its ranks a measly one percent above the current 12.5 percent (and that’s generously including public sector workers), labor needs to bring in a net of 1.5 million workers, according to Jeff Grabelsky, a labor educator and strategist at Cornell University. In 2003, unions organized just 500,000 new workers. To get back to the nirvana of 1954, when unions represented 35 percent of the workforce, unions would have to have a net growth of 25.5 million workers. I think we should give serious thought to choosing a few big employers, commit to a minimum five-year campaign to organize their workers, and focus the entire labor movement on those strategic targets. Key victories could spawn new excitement and energy for organizing millions of other workers across the nation.
What do we do about China? It’s absolutely clear to me that what happens to Chinese workers, and the Chinese labor movement, will determine the future of every American worker who counts on a paycheck to make ends meet. No one in labor has an answer. Rather than be reactive and respond when it’s too late, labor has got to have a plan, one that toes the dicey line of keeping unrelenting pressure on an authoritarian regime in China without stoking anti-Chinese racism at home.
How does labor have a meaningful role in shaping the country’s political landscape and triggering the kind of social movement that will make large-scale organizing possible? I’ve argued for some time that we should abandon the federal electoral field for a period of time. That suggestion might not fly, but I know this: labor’s political strategy hasn’t worked if one takes the controversial approach of counting up labor’s wins. Why keep throwing good money after bad? At a minimum, I’m for turning labor’s energy solely to local or state elections and issues.
How do we transform unions to be something young people of all races want to be a part of? I recently did my own unscientific focus group with six people under the age of thirty (all of whom I had never met before, with one exception). The majority said they don’t love their employers but not one said they saw a union as the solution. They’ve been raised in an age of relentless propaganda, by conservatives and liberals alike, about the “New Economy”, where everyone supposedly succeeds by dint of their individual skills and educational prowess. And I think young people are a good focus to confront issues of race and class. Maybe it would be smart to appoint a few people under 30, drawn from various communities, to the Federation’s Executive Council.
How do we capture the growing realization that good jobs and the survival of the planet are deeply connected? The Apollo Alliance is probably one of the most exciting ideas I’ve seen in the past few years: achieve energy independence in one generation by investing in alternative energy projects that offer good, high-paying, unionized jobs. It’s great that some unions have endorsed it. But, why not make this a center piece of labor’s identity? Imagine that: labor on the cutting edge of a daily campaign to save the environment, as it evolves a vision for a sustainable economy that would, as author Paul Hawken argues, force businesses to:
Replace nationally and internationally produced items with products created locally and regionally. Take responsibility for the effects they have on the natural world…not require exotic sources of capital in order to develop and grow. Engage in production processes that are human, worthy, dignified and intrinsically satisfying. Create objects of durability and long-term utility whose ultimate use or disposition will not be harmful to future generations. Change consumers to customers through education.
I don’t think people have to come out of the room in agreement. In fact, let there be one or more thought-out proposals that are presented to the movement’s 13 million members for their consideration and vote per my proposal from yesterday. If nothing else, the discussion would remind everyone, that at the end of the day, we’re all on the same side.
