The Southern Workers Assembly And Some Questions For Readers

Photo from Portside/Southern Workers Assembly

I sometimes take a simplistic approach to strategy and tactics. I put what I think out there when I tell people that I believe in what works. I often measure what might or might not be working by looking at the times and places where there are special difficulties. If your project works in a place wherte it is bound to meet some hard and thick walls, I'm interested. For those reasons I support the on-going Southern Workers Assembly and their Southern Worker Schools and I'm particularly interested in whether or not the models they're projecting can be adapated to conditions here in Oregon and elsewhere.

A recap of the most recent School on the Assembly's website leads off with this:

Southern politicians have gone out of their way in word and action to make clear they stand on the side of big business and racism as they’ve recently lamented that the “Alabama [ie – Southern] model for success is under attack” and vowing to “fight unions to the gates of hell.”

Nearly two hundred rank and filers who are developing a movement of workers in the South that can build power to make these politicians’ fears a reality gathered in Charlotte, NC on May 17 – 19 for the 2024 Southern Worker School. These convenings are the annual organizing conference of the Southern Workers Assembly network, which includes local workers assemblies, worker organizations, and other workers from various sectors and states throughout the region.

As the upsurge in worker organizing and fightback continues to expand – most notably represented in the UAW drives across the auto industry – the 2024 elections loom and the broader social movement to end the U.S. supported Israeli genocide in Palestine widens and spread, the gathering came at particularly timely juncture to assess conditions and develop united plans for advancing in this period.

“Being in a room with such a diverse group of workers, we can consider that a real cross section of the American landscape. It felt like a new beginning of the labor movement to me, a room filled with people organizing to achieve justice in the workplace, from all walks of life, to make sure we have justice for everyone regardless of race, gender, etc,” remarked Jamie Muhammad, Vice President of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1414 in Savannah, Georgia. “It was powerful, too, to see so many people wearing keffiyehs and showing solidarity with Palestine. Those are the type of people who look at the news and are aware of everyone’s suffering and want equality for everyone. I’ve never been in a room like that before. When the working people in the South rise up and we come together on a common cause, we can lead the rest of the nation where it needs to go.”

This was the largest worker school convened by the Southern Workers Assembly to date, and included delegations and participation from: El Futuro Es Nuestro/It’s Our Future; Siembra NC; United Campus Workers; UAW; ILA Local 1422; ILA Local 1414; Truckers Movement for Justice (TMJ); UE Local 150; UE Local 111; Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW); National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA); Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity & Empowerment (CAUSE); Duke Graduate Students Union (DGSU); National Nurses United; and several locals of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), among others.

So right from the beginning here we're talking about people from many unions and backgrounds getting together under difficult political and economic conditions to talk and learn about things that matter and coming to the table prepared to struggle and make connections between their experiences as Southern workers with one another and with people in Palestine and elsewhere. 

You can see from the article that people showed up with a sophisticated understanding of how the world works. One speaker is quoted as reporting on the attempts to organize auto workers in the South and saying, "The Southern auto industry will not be organized one election at a time, nor will the hospital industry or logistics or any industry. We encourage other unions to follow their example. The UAW founding in the 1930s was based on sit-down strikes that were multi-corporation, multi-location efforts to organize the entire auto industry. That’s the way the modern labor movement was formed. And that’s the way the South will be organized today.”

We're going way beyond the comfort zones of most union trainings when the Assembly's report says

In light of these developments, the Southern Workers Assembly has recently launched a program aimed at recruiting workers to get jobs in some of these growing, strategic sectors of the Southern economy. This program was discussed in some detail during the weekend.

There was also a great deal of discussion of political power and how it’s developed, in light of the 2024 elections. The Southern Workers Assembly’s nine point Worker Power Program was raised as a way for workers to make independent political interventions that are connected to the primary objective of building organization and power in the workplace.

The report on the School makes for some quick and good reading. The Worker Power Program takes a bit more time and concentration. Please read the two documents together and consider how or if you can relate to what is being said there. If you can relate to that, my next question for you is if you think that this can be duplicated here in Oregon or elsewhere and to what extent that you think this could be done.

Please support the Southern Workers Assembly by going here.