Roberta Wood has made some outstanding contributions to the United Steelworkers and to the labor movement and to movements for social change over the years. The award and recognition that Sister Wood is receiving here is well-deserved. I have had the good fortune to have met her a few times and to have engaged with her writing. I'm reposting this video with the hope that our readers will give it a look-see, think carefully on what is being said here, and share it with others. I have two reasons for doing this.
First, I think that this video captures some important aspects of labor history and nails down some ideas about our history. Getting this is important to any kind of union organizing, union representation work, or even the routine tasks of what it takes to keep your union moving forward. Like Sister Wood says near the end of the video, our history is in the past, in the present, and in the future. I think that we need to ask ourselves if we're finding a place for ourselves in our history or not and what that place is. What do you want your union to do and what are you doing to make that real? How will the work that you're doing look five years from now or twenty years or fifty years from now?
Second, I also think that in this short video we get a good account of how things change in real time. Many young people coming into the labor movement accept that our unions are only there to improve our wages, hours and working conditions and that delivering those improvements is someone else's job. That kind of unionism is obsolete. It doesn't work and it won't last.
But there is also a body of people who think that our first problem is with our union leaders, and not the employers and companies who hold the purse strings and who own and control our labor. They believe that our unions have to be reformed and adopt their philosophy of "class struggle unionism" before progress can be made. They believe that strikes are the main or only ways forward. Their idea of labor history forms from over-emphasizing the role of certain factions within the labor movement and from either misunderstanding or not coming to terms with the inevitable push-and-pull that takes place in every workplace between workers and management and employers and so they never come to terms with the real labor history of the United States. They put forward a divisive and limiting set of tactics, not a strategy for making things better or winning real change, and they do so as if they have been freed from our specific North American labor history.
There is another path forward besides what I just described. I believe that it works, and I believe that Sister Wood is teaching us that it works. The best organizing and the most secure wins won't come from closed-door unions that feel like the leaders are in a club, and it won't come from picking fights with people who might be won over to supporting the issues that most matter to working-class people. Dividing our ranks doesn't help anyone on our side of the fence.
The better path that I think Sister Wood is describing is for us to do the hard daily work of identifying issues that matter and issues of principle, like civil rights and inequities at work that undermine us, and figuring out how to win majorities to our side and directly involve people in taking action around those issues. It isn't about my great idea or yours, but about what those around us need and what we can help them accomplish. It's about building and presenting a united body of people willing to fight step by step every step of the way, including those we're trying to win over and sometimes reluctant union leaders, in order to take on our employers and win gains. There are allies, people on the fence, and die-hards all along the path. There are right times and wrong times to bring in outsiders and right and wrong times to raise new issues. Each group that we will encounter as we go along will have its own interests and concerns, and we have to understand what these are and why that is so. But at the end of the day it's all about winning concessions from our managers and our employers.
The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of the MPYCLC or the Oregon AFL-CIO. Other opinions from union members in our region are encouraged.
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