There is a military axiom that if your positions are encircled by far superior forces, you will inevitably be annihilated, unless you break out. I have been a member of our labor movement and left wing since I got out of high school in 1979. For every one of those 46 years our labor movement has been under heavy attack, and at the end of every year we were smaller and more exhausted than when it began. This year will be no exception.
With only a few scant exceptions the U.S. labor movement continues to avoid the key question of new organizing. The call to “Organize the Unorganized!” is no longer heard. Embattled unions must draw to their support the masses of unorganized – or face destruction. As the left, we had better face up to the fact that unorganized workers do not get organized by themselves. That’s our job. William Z. Foster taught us the simple fact that, “The left wing must do the work.”
New union organizing today continues to dwindle in scale and in degree of success, with only a few contrary examples. Much of today’s labor journalism – what little remains – tries mostly to rally the faithful by extolling mythic breakthroughs and upsurges. Readers of this good-news-only reporting might not realize that our labor movement has already been exterminated from entire industries and regions of this vast country. They might not know that most of the unions do little to organize the unorganized.
But the recent UAW win at Volkswagen, the Staten Island Amazon success, the Teamsters’ Corewell Health East victory, UE’s addition of 35,000 new members, or the remarkable 13,000 workers in the 650+ store Workers United organizing wave at Starbucks, are all proof that large numbers of workers can be organized even in today’s hostile climate. Public opinion polls blare that overwhelming majorities of working people strongly support unions. Who among us is surprised by this fact? But why, at such a moment, are the unions doing so little to make new organizing any sort of top priority?
The only force capable of reversing labor’s decline is a unified, activated, and focused left. A labor left which works diligently to bring the healthy center elements inside the unions to the realization that mass campaigns of new organization are not just vital to our very survival, but actually possible today. A left that comprehends the consequences of further inaction. With the legality of the NLRA now headed for our thoroughly corrupted and Trump-controlled “Supreme” Court – there is no time to waste.
Scattered but expanding efforts such as the Emergency Workers Organizing Committee (EWOC), the Inside Organizer School (IOS), various Workers Assemblies, numerous salting initiatives, and other assorted left organizing projects are reflections of the wide support for labor organizing among workers. These efforts cannot substitute for the labor unions lacking coherent organizing programs, but they are adding greatly to the process of training members and organizers in the push towards new organization.
The broad labor leadership must be challenged on this key question. Only the left possesses an understanding of the significance of new organizing. We are part of the most financially wealthy labor movement in the history of the world, yet our small organizing efforts putter along as ineffective as ever. Some unions make sporadic forays into new organizing, but timid and erratic approaches doom much new union organizing long before the employers begin their bombing.
Yes, some unions are organizing and winning, but it is largely disconnected and scattered. Sitting atop this failed organizing situation is the AFL-CIO itself, both incapable and unwilling to show leadership on this life-and-death question. My own extensive efforts to generate organizing leads, to salt, to train organizers, and to initiate real organizing campaigns ends up too often searching in vain for even a single union interested in new organizing. An end must be put to this situation.
Faced with this crisis it’s time to turn the members loose! Members in great numbers can be trained and deployed with little delay. Then mobilized to reach out to the unorganized workers who surround us on all sides. There is no need for more complicated “studies” to find them, or expensive conferences to delay the task. New organizers must be trained basic-training style, and sent to the workplaces. Older and retired organizer talent must be tapped and mobilized, offsetting today’s dire experience deficit. It’s time for salting to be deployed on a massive scale in multiple industries, joining those salts already in place.
There is no time to wait for perfect targets to be discovered or developed. The unions who come forward can be pushed to do more. Those who sit it out will be bypassed. The labor left must mobilize, to stimulate individual participation as well as to place pressure on the unions to take this necessary action. A left obsessed with a grab-bag of disparate issues must set them aside. To the workplaces! Organize the unorganized!
Such a push will bring new drives, some wins, some losses, and valuable experience will be gained. It will certainly stimulate the employers and governments to combine and counterattack. The class struggle battle will be joined. We bet on the mood of the masses, workers across many sectors hopeful for progress, fed-up with the status quo, and tired from decades of backward steps. There are real signs that such a strategy has merit. The Starbucks organizing phenomenon itself offers one example.
Such a course of action – even if only launched in a few sectors or regions – would be electrifying. Thousands even tens of thousands would be put into motion. And the unions, now being decimated, will begin to move forward. The unorganized will join in small detachments at first, but in larger numbers as momentum builds. Breakout will become a possibility.
Is success guaranteed? Of course not. But we can proceed with the knowledge that with history as our guide, labor organizing upsurges are made possible by this chemistry. If you want to play a part in saving and rebuilding the labor movement you must jump-in and help row. It’s as simple as that. A labor left that complains, daydreams, waits on complacent labor leaders, or chooses to avoid the working class with 101 peripheral issues, will accomplish nothing.
To sum up; if we do not get out of this encirclement, and move forward towards break out, the labor movement will be annihilated. It’s that simple. All of us have a role to play, old and young, experienced and new. The labor left has a role to play, directly in the workplaces and within the unions themselves. As volunteers of all types, as organizers, as salts, and as community supporters. It’s time to go for broke and push as hard as we can on the labor leadership to either lead, or get out of the way.
- First published at Marxist-Leninism Today.