This post was inspired by a session that I attended on independent union organizing during the Labor Research and Action Network (LRAN) conference that was held in Portland, Oregon on June 20 and 21. Speaking in that session were Nat Glitsch of ILWU Local 5, Hans Heintze of the New Seasons Labor Union, Mark Medina of Portland Jobs with Justice, Prachi Goyal of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, and Eric Blanc of the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations.
I have put two other posts up on this blog on co-eneforcement strategies and tactics which were inspired by another workshop that I attended at the LRAN conference. Readers can go here and here to read those posts.
Defining independent unionism and independent union organizing can be tricky. Most of us probably think of independent unions as unions that are not affiliated with the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). The AFL-CIO was founded in 1955 and can be described as the mainstream of the labor movement in the United States. The Federation unites trade, craft, public worker, and industrial unions into local, state and regional, and occupational bodies and carries the positions taken by unions working through these bodies into politics, policy-making, organizing, and advocacy.
As a federation the AFL-CIO is limited to working with the positions commonly shared by its affiliates, which means in practical terms that the Federation's abilities to advocate for positions taken by particular unions and to act quickly on the positions that the Federations has adopted are often limited. On the other hand, the AFL-CIO and its constituent unions are the only organizations in the United States that have a steady dues base and resources and that unite critical numbers of working-class people across racial, ethnic, gender and gender-preference, religious, and sectional lines and behind what are most often liberal political and social concepts.
But defining independent unionism by what it isn't carries with it some problems. The Teamsters, Carpenters, National Education Association, and Service Employees unions are not affiliated with the AFL-CIO but are very much a part of the mainstream of the labor movement. They are not usually thought of as being independent unions given their histories and their cooperation with the AFL-CIO. The local unions that are affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World seem to operate more-or-less independently but exist within the framework of a unitary organization, however decentralized that is. The United Electrical Workers (UE) and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union are both on their own but now organize workers outside of their original jurisdictions. The UE in particular is having tremendous growth just now, thanks in part to its rightful claim to being a member-run union and in part to its strategic alliance with the Democratic Socialists of America and the Emergency Workplace OrganizingCommittee. The UE and the ILWU share a comon progressive history. Some independent unions are worker centers or non-profits that do worker organizing and engage in forms of worker representation and legal enforcement but that don't negotiate union contracts or become collective bargaining agents.There are also some independent unions that are barely unions at all, and some that are the tools of employers and attorneys. Non-profits and attorneys that do some forms of what many of us consider to be forms of organizing and representation work look like the next big thing coming.
In the moment that we're in right now it may be best to think of independent unionism as being driven in great part by workers in the food, grocery, retail, preschool and childcare, logistics, non-profit, sex work, and freelancing areas of the economy. These are workers who are employed in occupations that mainstream and other unions do not have a strong record representing, or these workers likely do not identify with mainstream unions. A significant number of these workers have not had positive experiences with unions in their pasts. These workers may want things that fall outside of wages, hours, and working conditions, the three areas that most unions are legally limited to negotiating over.
Certain points emerged in most of the presentations that I heard at the LRAN conference workshop. These were:
1. These are unions with few or no staff and little or no money. Some of these unions do not collect dues.
2. There were questions raised about who is a leader and how influential leadership should be. Are leading activists, educators, and the people who make connections between workers as they organize also leaders, and how important are they?
3. Workers have "learned hopelessness" and helplessness in mainstream unions, and pro-union workers in these unions are regarded as having access to power that others don't.
4. There was much talk about "worker-led organizing," "centering" workers during organizing, "worker-empowering models," and "popular education models." The optimistic slogan "When workers lead, workers win" was popular. A dominant idea was the dogmatic notions that the only good ideas about organizing will be those that come from workers and that "The revolution will not be led by organizations with staff."
5. There were questions about capacity. Can independent unions take on large corporations? Can they exist and survive outside of places like Portland? What about strike and defense funds and research costs?
6. There was a recognition that we have to meet the moment that we're in---a moment characterized by an increase in working-class organizing to meet the crises of the times---and that people want democracy and organization, but that there is also the belief that people do not want to join existing organizations.
7. "Worker self-organizing" brings democracy and teaches lessons that will last a lifetime.
8. Some of these unions are winning elections without having majorities of workers signing union authorization cards.
9. Members of the independent unions that were represented in the workshop only see their unions as a means of fighting the boss and fighting for power.
10. Representing workers and winning union fights in small and under-resourced workplaces takes time, money, and people power that an independent union may not have. Legal compliance is also costly.
On the one hand, these ideas and perceptions are valid if large nubers of workers believe that they are and if they are willing to take action to back these ideas and perceptions up. Many of these ideas and perceptions are not wrong by themselves, and some spring from the lived experiences of large numbers of workers. On the other hand, much of what was being said invites reactions and further discussion.
It is reasonable to believe that an independent worker organization without funds and resources is always vulnerable. One lawsuit, unfair labor practice, badly-timed job action or strike, or arbitration case can cost large sums of money and cost workers their jobs and savings. Individual workers may be held liable under certain cirumstances and pay for the mistakes of others.
The emphasis on "class-struggle unionism," "worker-led organizing," "centering" workers during organizing, and "worker-empowering models" assumes that mainstream unionism is not, in the first place, able to understand the elements of class struggle. It seems to assume that the workers who organize within other models and with other ideas either do not or cannot understand that there is an "us" (the workers) and there is a "them" (the bosses) and that a struggle goes on between us and them daily. Most all unionism is "class-struggle unionism," or can be transformed to be more struggle-oriented through the daily push-and-pull that goes on at work and through good organizing and leadership. Whatever the mistakes and shortcomings present in mainstream labor and the UE and ILWU and union locals that were purged from the CIO for their progressive policies, there is accessible institutional knowledge and there are resources there that have not formed and been gathered in vain.
There has also been a long-standing trend in the labor movement in the United States towards what looks and feels like a radical unionism based on worker self-reliance but that has turned out to be quite conservative. This unionism understands quite well the Leftist arguments that labor, or labor power, is a commodity like any other and that wages represent the cost of labor embodied in the means of production and the cost of reproducing labor power daily. But this unionism has also taken working-class self-reliance to another level with apprenticeship programs, credit unions, apprentice and journeyperson and traveling cards, and union hiring halls. If the radicals who spoke in favor of independent unionism as a form of struggle-oriented self-reliance at the conference maintain their views they could well become tomorrow's conservative craft or "business" unionists.
If workers cannot be leaders, or if working-class leadership is not important or is inherently bureaucratic and problematic, then workers are, almost by nature, running backwards and are doomed. Every other class in society has leadership and uses leadership to gain what they want and to either fight for power or hold power. You cannot win power without organization, and you cannot have organization without leadership. The alternatives are undemocratic and depend on spontaneity. What happens when worker militancy is depleted, spontaneity leads to defeat and demoralization, and a strategic or tactical retreat is needed?
There are dogmatic and ideological matters at work here. It can't really be true that workers win every fight that they lead and initiate and that only workers who are the forefront of their workplace struggles produce good and right ideas. Does one's class identity or relationship to working-class struggle necessarily change for the worse when one becomes a leader or a union staffperson? Is it true that masses of workers want democracy and organization but are rejecting all existing organizations, or is this a dogmatic overlay suggested by anarchists, or what only seems to be true in a system that is rigged to delay and then torpedo union elections and union contract negotiations? Where is the responsibility for class-conscious workers to struggle against the idea that existing organizations are hopeless or useless and their responsibility to lead people into existing organizations and cause these organizations to reform?
It does seem doubtful to me that lasting independent unionism of the kind described at the LRAN conference can survive for long outside of places like Portland. One of the elements intrinsic to the survival of mass unionism is homogeneity, and a kind of homogeneity does exist in places like Portland. This can be foundational to anarchist-inspired workplace organization. Just so, other forms of independent unionism could take root in the Black Belt South or in parts of this country that are particularly under-served or that have been left high and dry by the industries that developed these areas. I think that SEIU shows a remarkable sense of this with its attempt to build the Union of Southern Service Workers, and that the UE contnues to lead in some of these areas, but we can't count on other independent unions to be as progressive as they are. Think of the old Southern Labor Union or the Christian Labor Association here.
Finally, are fighting the boss and fighting for power always linked to one another, and is that all there is to our lives? Is the dogmatic formulation that the working-class and the employing class never have anything in common true in a time when fascism is threatening the existence of society and ecological destruction is well underway? Are we limited to class-against-class at all times and under all circumstances or are politicized and principled united fronts and popular fronts in defense of democratic rights and for the survival of species possible and necessary?
